Food Preparations for Christmas

I wanted Christmas day to be as much like it is back home as possible, especially in regards to what we eat. So, I had to make some changes to my mom's recipes for her breakfast and chicken casseroles since I don't have all the ingredients, but I thought the changes would work. Things take a little bit longer here because you can't go down to the store and get anything pre-made, such as cream of mushroom soup, etc. So, everything has to be made from scratch...which takes a while. All the food took two days to make.

Let me just say that I have a new appreciation for all the Mama's making all the food preparations for Christmas and every holiday!

I started by making some Christmas cookies to serve to everyone we planned to have come visit our house. 

Next, the chicken casseroles were made. I made one for us and one for our friends who just had their baby. Our gatekeepers youngest daughter came to help me while her brother and sister played with Elijah. She's always the sweetest thing!

Then the dough was made for the monkey bread.  

Here's me rolling the dough into balls...I think they were supposed to be smaller than I made them (I figured this out after the fact:).

Then the breakfast casseroles were made - one for us and one for our friends who had the baby. They don't do cow meat here (unfortunately), so I used water buffalo meat for the first time. It was a little gross cleaning it, especially knowing the street it came from with the hanging meat...I always hold my breathe on that street. 

This was my attempt at making homemade eggnog (this was actually done after Christmas, but it's a Christmas thing, so I'm including it). For some reason the milk curdled, so the recipe said to put it in the blender if that happens. I didn't think about the temperature of the liquid when I put it in the blender...           Need-less-to-say, I wasn't strong enough to hold the top on the blender, so half of the drink went all over me and all over the floor. However, Neal blended the rest and saved it for me to finish cooking. I was missing a main ingredient - nutmeg, so it didn't taste like Meadow Gold or Purity that I'd drink in the states. It tasted more like a thin custard. Not too bad, but not eggnog...guess that's something else I'll just go without as long as God has me live here in India - sad day!