When my father's mother was alive, the whole family gathered at her house on Christmas Eve for dinner and opening presents.



The menu was always the same: oyster stew, those round oyster crackers, home made dinner rolls, celery sticks, and tomato aspic. Dessert was mincemeat pie made with real meat. Every year my grandma would borrow a giant mixing bowl from Rodea's bakery and put up a big batch in canning jars.

This is how I make oyster stew. I add the clam juice to give it a deeper flavor, but the family recipe didn't include it. Mr. Kitchentales doesn't like oysters, so we haven't had it in years.

Oyster Stew

MIlk
Half and half
1/2 cup butter
(Clam juice)
Oysters
Salt and pepper

Slowly heat the milk and half-and-half in the top of a double boiler with the butter until it's melted. Stir in the clam juice, oysters, and their juice and heat until the oysters rise to the top, but don't boil it. Taste it and season with salt and pepper.

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Tomato aspic is a gelatin dessert with vegetables in it. It's mostly red with green from the sliced olives, so very Christmasy. Mr. Kitchentales doesn't like it, so I never make it, but some of my cousins still do.

If you have some of those little individual Jello molds, this would be when to use them. Serving it on a little piece of iceberg lettuce was a 50s thing. It was the only kind of lettuce we had back then, and a salad was just naked without it.

Tomato Aspic

2 cups tomato juice
1 tablespoons unflavored gelatin
Lemon juice to taste
(Tabasco sauce to taste)
Worcestershire sauce to taste
Sliced stuffed green olives
Diced celery

Pour 1/2 cup tomato juice into a small bowl and soften the gelatin in it. In a 1 1/2 quart saucepan, heat remaining tomato juice. Add seasonings, and then softened gelatin and stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved. Pour out into an oiled 9 by 13 inch pan, and stir the vegetables into it when it's about to set. Chill until set. Cut into rectangles to serve, place each on a little piece of iceberg lettuce, and garnish with a dab of mayonnaise.



This is my sister and I with our girl cousins who grew up in the same town. My Aunt Eleanor had a doll Christmas party for us every year, and this was taken at one of those parties. The boy cousins were out of luck.