… but enough about me

[Part 10]

Grandma's cake looked a little something like this.

Whereas turkey was the center of Thanksgiving a month prior, Christmas Eve dinner revolved around a turkey and a ham! Those were from Dad. It was a food orgy—like Thanksgiving plus Easter … plus a birthday party.

My uncle Dennis always brought a cold tuna-noodle salad that the food of the gods as far as I was concerned.

Aunt Kay always brought dinner rolls and home-made chocolate candies. Starch, salt, sweet and fat, the chocolate-covered pretzels were irresistible.

Grandma spent a day stewing probably the best baked beans in the world—with bacon and molasses and brown sugar … and bacon. It may one day just save the world.

Mom made her potato salad, unequalled on seven continents, with the sliced hard-boiled eggs on top and drifts of sprinkled paprika.

Christmas was also the occasion for mixing up a huge two-gallon jar of fruit cocktail. Most of it was from canned fruits that we cut up into smaller pieces. We dumped in peaches, pears, pineapple, white cherries, red cherries. Sometimes white grapes. And we peeled and cut up oranges and droppen them in ,too. The best part was washing my hands and plunging my arm into the jar past my elbow to squish all the fruit around and mix it all up. It tasted best served with Grandma’s egg nog cake. And Cool-Whip.

There were vegetables, of course, and various other side dishes. Boring. These were not even forgettable co-stars, they were more like extras. Microwave for five minutes. Butter. Salt. Good. Now let’s get to the good stuff.

There was so much food, there was no room at the table for people, but wasn’t it better to sit in the family room on the floor playing board games or watching movies, anyway?