on Christmas day in the afternoon

[calimac]

Since B.'s brother and his wife, who've traditionally hosted the family Christmas, have moved up to Seattle to be near their grandchildren, her niece (sister's daughter) T., who's already taken both Thanksgiving and Easter, has claimed this as well.

So thither we went. A few other scattered relatives and several of T's friends. Not too many to crowd out the house this time, but enough to make a serious dent on the fixings, which included both turkey and roast beast. Having had luck with my green bean casserole last time, I made it again, although the making was much interrupted by my sous chef. Cut ends off bean, pick up cat from counter and put him on the floor, cut ends off bean, pick up cat from counter and put him on the floor, cut ends off bean ...

Only this time, since B. doesn't like mushrooms, I changed the cream of mushroom part of the recipe. I'd figured the "cream of" part could be used to make cream of something else, and had previously experimented by using the recipe to make myself for lunch cream of shrimp, which worked very well, and cream of chicken, which tasted a little burnt. This time I made cream of celery, which was blander than I expected, but served.

After exchange of presents (I having received both Amazon and B&N gift cards), we headed home just in time to feed hungry cats. Toasty afternoon on a cool but not inclement day.

Comments

[bibliofile]

Cream of celery sounds like a decent choice if you have any mushroom-hating vegetarians at the table. Do you plan to experiment with every variety of Campbell's cream soups? (I don't know how many there were.)

Ah, Tybalt clearly needs more training as a sous chef. [tries to imagine what to sharpen on the cat so that Tybalt can cut the ends off the beans; fails]

[calimac]

There's one other one I know of, cream of sweet corn, but I've only seen that once. But indeed it would not have occurred to me to make from scratch any of the other three had I not actually had the Campbell's canned versions of each at one time or another.

[cmcmck]

I have to admit to being a mushroom junkie.

Hope you're having a good holiday?