Merry Christmas!

Here at My Kitchen Is Open we celebrate the Christmas holiday with three very important days. We celebrate “Christmas Adam” (because Adam came before Eve). This is a tradition my husband brought into our marriage that worked out very well considering that we both already have extended family traditions for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We use “Christmas Adam” as a day to celebrate in our immediate household and sometimes we include a few close friends. We spend the day relaxing (or working depending on what day it is) and then, mid-afternoon I begin prepping to make “Christmas Adam Lasagna”. How we ended up with lasagna, I’m not sure but it has been a tradition for the past 3 years now.

My lasagna has ground beef, chopped carrots, onion, celery, zucchini and spinach in it. I also make a ricotta mixture that gets spread on the lasagna noodles that has Romano, Parmesan, Mozzarella and a bit of Monterrey Jack cheese in it.

This year our friends weren’t able to make it due to their little girl being ill but I still packed some up for them so they wouldn’t have to cook.

Oohh ANNNNNNDDDDD, we get to open a “small” present on this day. I got the prettiest bangle bracelet from my hubby and this here MacBook Pro that I’m blogging from. I was a good girl this year. At least my hubby thinks so!

Christmas Eve was spent with my hubby’s family at his grandma’s house. We noshed on tamales and cabbage slaw and all kinds of sweet goodies (that I tried hard to stay away from). Their family tradition is to open presents at midnight so, whatever gifts we collected there were opened there. I enjoy spending time with my husband’s family. When we got married, I not only got great in-laws I got MORE siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and more grandparents!

Christmas day was spent with my mom’s family. It was a lot of fun. My little sister even showed up. She lives out of town and doesn’t always get to visit so it was a very nice surprise! My momma was so overjoyed to see her. It was a great Christmas!

I rang in the new year with my mom’s family as well. We popped fireworks and ate LOTS of good food. Our tradition is usually menudo (which I dislike very much) and pizza. This year I added enchilada suisas, flautas and coconut pecan cookies. According to my cousin, Audrey, these three items have been approved for next year’s New Year Eve celebration! YAY!

Happy New Year everyone! Be expecting to read lots more from me this year!