Christmas in the kitchen

Christmas is only three days away, and last night I finally made it to the grocery store for my big pre-holiday shop. I always make a large spread of appetizers and finger foods on Christmas Eve, and today and tomorrow Marla and I are getting together to bake cookies and other treats. Today will be the baking day, tomorrow will be the decorating day (we're planning several batches of iced sugar cookies).

Snowflake sugar cookies we made in 2014.

I ended up buying pounds of butter, sugar, and eggs. You can't have too much--nothing is worse than having to run back out to the store mid-bake. I still forgot a couple of things last night, but I'll go buy them before we start. I can't believe that after a two hour long and really expensive trip to the store that I still managed to forget a few things!

When Gregg helped me unload the car last night, he said "Holy shit! You know we're just two people, right?!" after he saw the back of the Scion loaded down with bags. He said he hoped I hadn't spent a small fortune on food! (I did) (I don't care). I'm determined that this Christmas will be a festive one. And since I'm off work next week, I'll be seeing friends and family that I can share the leftovers with anyway. It's going to be nice to have Christmas Eve off to listen to music, sip wine, and cook. A lot of the food we have will be homemade for once since I have all this time. I just sat down and made a list of the foods I'm planning to serve and it may be a tiny bit excessive:

• Brown sugar Coca-Cola baked ham
• Spicy grape jelly meatballs
• Deviled eggs
• Crab stuffed mushrooms
• Assorted cheeses (gouda, brie, sharp white cheddar) and crackers
• Crudite platter with sour cream dip
• Roasted pecans
• Cranberry, mandarin orange, and walnut compote
• Watergate salad
• King's Hawaiian rolls (to go with the ham slices)
• Assorted sugar cookies and homemade candies
• Mulled wine 

Oh well. It's just once a year, right?

Well, I'm off to do a little extra pre-bake cleaning in the kitchen before Marla gets here. It's a shame she can't drink wine with me this year, but maybe there will be less chaos if one of us remains sober! The last time we baked while drinking we blew up my stand mixer (it died dramatically in the middle of a batch of dough) and we made a monstrous mess of the kitchen. It looked like a bomb had gone off the next morning! It's all part of the Christmas fun, though. Next year when she's had the baby we can resume our shenanigans. :)

How are your holiday preparations coming along?