Holiday Eats

Planning the menus for Christmas is so much harder than at other holidays. Thanksgiving is turkey, Easter is Lamb or Ham depending on how high church you are, forth of July is burgers or lobster depending your bank account, but Christmas is a roulette wheel. In my family we did not have a standard Christmas meal.  
When I was a child we threw a huge Christmas Eve party and served Oyster stew and ham biscuits because we were the only southerners in Wilton, Connecticut. Since we had no family close by we invited all our friends who did not go to grandma’s house. Serving 150 people dinner right before Santa came meant that Christmas Day dinner was not at our house. We would go to out friend the MacLeas and we usually had beef.
Now as a grown up I have to plan both the Christmas Eve meal and the Christmas Day dinner. Now planning menus should not be difficult for me with my extensive food knowledge, but without any protein parameters the possibilities are almost overwhelming.
The last few years I have served the traditional beef tenderloin or standing rib roast on Christmas Day, but as we all age the ability to handle so much beef has diminished. I also came to find out that one of my newer family members does not like meat. I have a different set of guests at the table on Christmas Eve, who are uber appreciative of anything I serve, but one of them too also is not a big fan of meat.  
When I mentioned to Russ and Carter that I was having trouble devising the menus they both threw out requests for things they really wanted. Carter wanted lamb chops and Russ wanted ham. Neither of those things satisfied my non-meat eaters, but I decided I wanted to make everyone happy this Christmas.
I decided to make scallops and lamb for the eve meal and ham and salmon for Christmas Day. Not a cow will be found anywhere on our table. I am a little worried that the real traditionalist amount us might be disappointed, but I just can’t see making a fifth meat.
I have to say I am not “making” the ham. Today I went to the Honey Baked Ham store to pick up our meat. I have no guilt about buying a ham since I wold be hard pressed to make a ham better than the honey baked one.  
As I was standing in the “paying” tent in the parking lot of the Honey Baked store a film crew from some local TV station starting filming the people in line to buy their Christmas feast. The woman in front of me said, “I don’t want to be on TV because I don’t want my family to know I don’t cook this ham.” Shocked by the thought that she could keep it a secret I said, “Don’t they know a Honey Baked ham when they taste it?” She replied, “No, I have been lying to them for thirty years that I make and cut this ham.”
So for full disclosure to my family I am announcing now that Honey Baked store bought ham will be on the table. Not to worry if you only want to eat Dana prepared foods. I will have made everything else, including the homemade ginger ice cream. What else we are having with all those proteins I do not know yet since now that we are not having beef the side dish world is my oyster.