Anyone else here having seafood for Christmas Eve dinner?

[CTyankee]

My house helper Luisa is making her traditional Portuguese dishes of baccalao and octopus. We'll probably have clams, oysters, shrimp from Legal Seafoods in Boston. Yum.

What are you preparing?

[jakeXT]

1. I bet mussel soup will be part of it. /nt

[CTyankee]

3. Oh, is that Portuguese? nt

[jakeXT]

6. I think it's Italian /nt

[OffWithTheirHeads]

2. Actually, we will be celebrating Winter solstice but I will be making a Salmon Mousse.

I started cooking for this dinner over a week ago.

[CTyankee]

4. French? Italian? Iberian?

I mean your family heritage...

[OffWithTheirHeads]

5. Russian and Irish

[femmocrat]

7. We have a traditional Slovak meal.

it is called "bulbulki". It is little cubes of bread sauteed with butter and well-drained sauerkraut, then dipped in honey. We have mushroom-barley soup and sweet sausage with it.

[CTyankee]

9. Sounds interesting!

[R B Garr]

8. I did the seafood for Xmas Eve for many years. Not exactly the Feast of the 7 Fishes,

but my mom's side of the family is Italian, and that is what they have traditionally done. My choices were more of west coast, shellfish type selections, and nothing too traditional. I noticed that many of the Feast of the 7 Fishes recipes were for Atlantic type fishes anyway, since most of the Italian family is in the Northeast. I just modified what I did to generic type seafood widely available on the west coast, and shellfish is pretty easy.

I love the seafood for dinner tradition, which I did with a ceasar salad and some nice sourdough. But I think I'm just going to switch to a ham. I did a ham last year, and it worked out for leftovers for Xmas morning with some french toast I make. Love the seafood, but it got to be a bit much. Yours sounds wonderful!

[avebury]

10. I will be making lobster stew. nt

[CTyankee]

12. That sounds great!

[pipi_k]

11. Kind of...

We go to my son's house...his wife is Polish, so they do some traditional Polish dishes...Kapusta, pierogi, kielbasa, etc..

He fries breaded fish filets and makes some macaroni and potato salads.

My daughter brings a cake of some sort.

My DIL's dad sometimes brings a rum cake.

and I bring my homemade chicken lo mein that the kids have always loved since they were teenagers.

My DIL's cousin used to bring her seafood casserole, but hasn't been there in a couple of years so I'll miss that.

If you leave there hungry, it's your own fault.



PS...if I were to make an ethnic family dish, it would be French meat pie, but the kids have told me they only want my lo mein

[CTyankee]

13. Sounds nice!

[mulsh]

14. Growing up we usually had either cracked crab or cioppino for dinner.

Especially if we were going to Midnight Mass. A bay area Irish Catholic and Italian Catholic tradition. You can't receive communion if you've eaten beef with in a certain amount of time, as I recall

We'd usually have a big multi-fmaily Christmas Eve meals. Irish and Italian families. Lots of fun. All the older folk and most of the younger ones are gone now. But my twin brother and I have lots of fond memories.

My wife's family are Norwegian/Lutheran, good people but none of them like fish so dinner's a mixed bag. Mostly they have some sort of light pasta dish and save the feast for Christmas day. I once suggested we have cracked crab of cioppino for dinner but they shot me down quickly. I even volunteer to make the cioppino. Ufda, We have to make due with things like prime rib or a fat Christams goose. It's tough but its the right thing ; )

Here's a pretty standard recipe cioppino:
[link:http://americanfood.about.com/od/classicchowdersandstews/r/cioppino.htm|

[CTyankee]

15. Oh, so that's the reason for the fish! I had no idea...not religious at all...vaguely Protestant

upbringing in Texas...

[kentauros]

16. Our traditional meal is chili.

I get the vegetarian version

[Kali]

17. might

have a whole salmon in the freezer, I think. and some raw shrimps. I really need to clean that out

[Generic Brad]

18. We can't agree on anything

My daughter wants turducken. My wife wants scallops. I want snacks. In the end I am certain of one thing - I will not be getting snacks.

[texanwitch]

19. I am fixing chicken fried steak.

With all the fixings.

I make great chicken fried steak.

It is messy to make but so good.

[Packerowner740]

20. Prime rib