I have so far avoided hosting Christmas Day for the whole family– the count on Christmas Day is 35, and it’s a time when we have an extra 4-6 people at the house already, Steve’s daughters and sundry partners/boyfriends. I avoid hosting the whole gang by offering to host every Easter, which I really enjoy. It’s always warm enough for the kids to go outside, and I “hide” plastic eggs filled with candy and make the special ham.
This year, however, I agreed to host Christmas Eve, which is just open to people on the farm. Even with that restriction, we had 14 this year, as everyone was around and we had two extra. I made my special ham and also put into play the end of some important garden vegetables. I emptied out the carrot bucket and made roasted carrots and parsnips with a honey glaze. I also emptied the stored fingerling potatoes (La Ratte) and roasted them with local mushrooms and onion and dried garden thyme. We had several vegetarians, so I wanted to make sure there were plenty of veggie options, so I had the girls prep a big batch of Brussel’s sprout leaves and sauteed them in the last five minutes. Annie brought a salad and Amy brought cheese and crackers and I had a ton of cookies for dessert.
It was a primo meal, and it closed out a nearly perfect day here on the farm. It was a day marked with activity– a regular Santa’s workshop.
It is clear that Steve’s daughters were raised to consider the farm a place of almots endless creativity. As his daughter Catherine said today, “So many raw materials, so little time!”
While Homer and I busily put together three pies for Christmas Day, Steve got to work on a pillow for his new couch. He had picked up some shredded denim insulation and was making it work as stuffing.
Out in the wood shop, Julia had found some thin, pine boards and was making cheese boards, sanding and applying poly. I went out to check the progress and found the chickens in their solarium (the glare
ruined what would have been a great photo).
One thing I love about this time of year is the worn path through the snow between the wood shop and the house. Another path veers off between Tim and Annie’s house and our house, made by the girls going back and forth during the holiday.
Catherine was busy sewing, too, making bags and pouches with the collection of leather and zippers she’d picked up at SR Harris, a fabric warehouse they always stop at on the way back from the airport. Later, she turned the extra table into a wrapping station and got even busier.
One thing I loved was the brightness of the day, flooding every room with light. It was also very cold, but I managed to get in a cross country ski around the property in the afternoon. My sister-in-laws are very good about blazing trails when it snows and there are two large loops that take about a half hour to complete.
The pies were all amazing, but by far the best one was the nutmeg-maple cream pie that Homer found on smittenkitchen.com. We followed the recipe closely, and Homer checked the baking progress frequently 
because, as he pointed out, with custard it turns in a few minutes from creamy wonderfulness to scrambled eggs.
This pie looked a little homelier than the other two, but it was creamy wonderfulness and then some. Reducing the maple syrup (we used St. John’s Abbey maple syrup, which is already “strong”) is the key to good maple flavor. Next time I will make it as a tart, as the crust did shrink up and was a bother to pre-cook.
