Appetizers/Horderves

I was in charge of our day-after-Thanksgiving meal, and I did a take on Chipotle’s Build Your Own Burrito Bowls. Basically, beginning a few days before Thanksgiving, I soaked and cooked black beans and brown rice, grated cheese, boiled and de-boned chicken, thawed beef, and bought my produce. I also made a black bean and corn relish, homemade salsa, guacamole, and bought sour cream. I transported the beans, rice, cheese, cooked chicken and beef to my in-law’s house. Then, the day of, all we had to do was warm up the meat, beans, and rice, and set out the chopped lettuce, grated cheese, salsa, guac, and whatever other toppings we had. Everyone had their choice of beef or chicken and could either wrap it up in a burrito or put their toppings of choice on a bed of tortilla chips or lettuce. It was a wild success and so easy for me!

My husband’s family is coming here the Sat. before Christmas since I’ll be so close to delivery and I want to do “party food” so we can just graze rather than have a big meal. I’m planning on things I can assemble ahead of time & paper plates! Deli-style sandwiches, vege tray, fruit tray or fruit salad? I had a yummy artichoke-spinach dip recipe; hope I can find it! And maybe a pizza dip. Both to eat with chips or crackers. My MIL will bring pies for dessert & my SIL, drinks. I’ll try to remember things like pickles, olives, nuts as well. But on Christmas Day, I sure hope my parents are here so my mom, sis, and I can make some of our family recipes – I want some tradition too. 🙂

Our family tradition is to do an hors d’oeuvres party on Christmas Eve. Here is what we usually have:

Several varieties of dips like Queso, Spinach Dip (on the back of the Knorr veg soup package), salsa with tortilla chips

Little sausages in BBQ in a Crockpot

Little sandwhiches called Polish Mistakes that are made with tiny Rye bread slices and some kind of sausage meat concoction

Little bisquits or rolls with ham to make sandwhiches

Cheeseballs with crackers

Tamales – this is a Texas Christmas tradition

Pickle/Relish tray (olives, pickles, peppers, etc…)

Nuts

Fruit Salad

Sometimes a veggie salad (like Broccoli salad) – but, obviously this is a very meat, bread and cheese oriented meal!

Lots of cookies and homemade candy and fudge

My wonderful Step-Mom started this tradition and she makes most of this up in advance (cheeseballs, cookies and candies, etc…).

It is a lot of fun and makes for a festive meal…but you can see why we only do this once a year! And just typing that out has motivated me to go do a workout :).

Lindsey….Chipotle is my favorite restaurant (had lunch their today, LOL:)  I’ve been thinking this would be fun. Thanks for sharing how it worked out!!!

Misty, I rarely cook with a recipe, so I’ll give it my best shot.

For the ground beef, I just did taco-style meat.

For the chicken, I used spices like cumin, paprika, a little cayenne, salt, and lime. You could also find some canned chipotle peppers and dice one or two to throw in with the chicken, or just add a TBS or two of the liquid from the can.

Although I didn’t do it for this event, you can flavor your rice with cilantro and lime like Chipotle does. The reason I didn’t is because we have a lot of cilantro lovers in our family, so I had 2 bunches of cilantro chopped up so people could have as much as they wanted, rather than it just being on the rice. But I do want to attempt the cilantro/lime rice!

For my beans, I always cook black beans with no seasonings because I use them for desserts too. I make big batches and freeze part of them for black bean chocolate cupcakes and brownies, and salting them during cooking would make those desserts taste awful! When I serve black beans as a side with something like this, I like to mix them with onion, red bell pepper, and corn, lime juice, salt, chili powder, and a little cilantro. It makes more of a warm relish or compote, not just a side of beans. If you wanted beans by themselves, add the salt, lime, and chili powder to taste to your beans. 

And here’s my homemade salsa recipe…it’s famous in our family!

Merry Christmas!

We do apps in the evenings when I host holiday gatherings.  My (childhood) family’s traditions were to have the big holiday meal mid-day, then the evenings were appetizers and dessert.  When we get together with my hubby’s family, we don’t do it.  But if I host at my house (usually with my family) I do it.  It’s pretty easy.  I make as much as I can ahead of time, and the few things I can’t are things that can easily be thrown together last minute.  I love hors d’oeuvres!!  We don’t really eat them at other times of the year, so they just seem really special.

Some things I’ve done:  deviled eggs, mini quiches, pigs in the blanket, cheese and crackers (cheese can be slices, or cream cheese served with hot pepper jam), margherite pizza cut into really thin slices, meatballs, mushroom turnovers (from Trader Joe’s), onion and cheese things that I can’t remember the name of (also from Trader Joe’s – kind of like a quiche in appearance, but different), mini sliders, a few appetizer things from my cultural heritage, fruit plate, etc.

Again, most of this stuff can be put together ahead of time and require just a quick heat up.  Serve with hot cider and pie/dessert – yum!  Now, I’m hungry…

Lindsey…thanks for sharing how you do it Chipotle-style! I need to try this soon:) Gina