Harry Potter dinner

Every year for Christmas Eve*, my family has an ethnic dinner.  Typically it's from where a family member just got off their mission (or in my case, where I spent a semester abroad).  Two years ago Travis and I did an Israeli dinner.  Last year BJ was in charge of a Spain dinner.  This year, we didn't have any missionaries, foreign outings, or new members of the family.  Luckily, Travis and I** had a brilliant idea several months ago.  Harry Potter!  Perhaps many of you don't know, but I am a huge Harry Potter fan.  So a Harry Potter themed dinner was right up my alley.  We had pumpkin juice, butterbeer, pumpkin pasties, cockroach clusters, crystallized pineapple, treacle tart and chocolate wands (the wands were made by my cousin, Stephanie.  They were chocolate filled chocolate crepes.  Holy goodness. I maybe ate way, way, way too many).

Although such a meal would be quite appropriate for lunch on the Hogwarts Express, we decided it probably wasn't healthy for Muggles like us.  So I searched the books for Christmas day meals and put together a menu from that.  We had turkey, roast potatoes, cranberries and peas.  All in all, it was quite delicious.  And now, for highlights!

Kristen, Spencer, Parker and Tamra all enjoyed their dinner, washed down with butterbeer.

Damian also really enjoyed his butterbeer.

Taegen, on the other hand, preferred a good swig of pumpkin juice.

But his favorite were the cockroach clusters.

Kristen seconds that motion.

With such a successful dinner, something had to go wrong.  That's just the way things go.  The crystallized pineapple was, by far, the most time-consuming entree.  Weeks before Christmas I started boiling the pineapple in sugar water.  Every night.  The weekend before Christmas Mom took over.  She was down in Utah and took the pineapple home with her to start drying it in her food dryer.  All went well until I showed up at the house.  In my efforts to cook and clean up, brilliant Tianna moved a couple of loaves of bread onto the food dryer.  Turns out, putting plastic-wrapped bread on top of the vents of the food dryer is Bad News.  A) It dries out the bread and B) It melts the food dryer.  Ummm… sorry, Mom!  In good news, the pineapple still tasted good.

*The last few years we've opted to have our "Christmas Eve" dinner on another night.  This year was no exception.  Since Jalin and Co. were going to be in town, we pushed back the dinner until they could be there.

** I'm pretty sure that I should be exempted from being in charge of the Christmas Eve dinner for the next many, many years, seeing as how I have done the last three.  I think Travis gets exempted from the next many years since he did two of the last three.