Christmas Eve Dinner Ideas

Christmas Eve in our home has always been "The" special day of the holiday season. We celebrate and exchange gifts on this day every year. Each year my sister and I dream up new Christmas Eve dinner ideas from traditional to pot luck and at times finger foods.

More and more as our children got older we began having Christmas Eve dinner ideas with just our own kids and friends. No matter how many kids you have eventually they will wander back home with someone else in tow so, in our case, two kids became four. Eventually, four become grandkids. You get the idea.

More times than not we celebrate Christmas Eve dinner with Chicken and Dumplings as our main dish. The kids will have other family get togethers to attend and usually their Christmas Eve dinner ideas are geared around traditional Turkey or Ham.

Chicken and Dumplings are such a wonderful comfort food. A hot meal that warms your insides and once it's made the meal can go in a crock pot, warming pan, or on low in the oven to be served when you're ready.

Sides are minimal with Chicken and Dumplings. We always have mashed potatoes with ours. Cole Slaw is a perfect crunchy match to the soft texture of the Chicken and Dumplings. Whatever you do don't forget yeast rolls. You just need the yeast roll to dunk in the dumpling gravy or it's not the same feeling.

There are many recipes for Chicken and Dumplings. However, there are a few tricks that will make your meal stand out from the rest.

· Roll the dumpling dough thin, 1/8 inch or so.

· Use a pizza rotary cutter to cut the slices.

· Prepare your dumplings in the morning. Let the dumplings sit out most of the day to dry.

· Make sure the broth is at a rapid boil before you drop them in it. Once, they are all in reduce to a slow boil so they cook through.

· Drop them in two at a time - not all at once.

No matter what your Christmas Eve dinner ideas may be you always want to remember it's about the memories. So plan to have wonderful conversation at the table and create new memories to last forever.

We found out that when everyone is involved in the dinner they enjoyed it more. So instead of running everyone out of the kitchen bring them in.

We did this a few years ago. I thought of several Christmas Eve dinner ideas. I decided the menu. I wrote each dish's recipe on an index card. Then I placed the recipe, utensils, and ingredients at different stations throughout the kitchen. Then we drew names and partnered up with someone and headed to our chosen dish. Men, women, kids, and elderly all can get involved. We had dinner ready in record time, it was a ton of fun and we got great pictures to remember the day. We set the photos out every year to bring back the memories.

Remember the bonding that goes on the next time you are thinking of Christmas Eve dinner ideas and include this step in the meal.