Christmas Eve Dinner – Life is Good!

Ever since we retired and moved down to East Tennessee from Chicago, life has indeed been good!  We are very lucky indeed…lucky to have a great family and to have great friends.  As for retirement and our home here in ‘paradise’, we earned it!

Christmas Eve 2012… What to have for dinner?  We knew that Dawn Marie was coming in to stay with us for a week and we know that she is a true carnivore.  We also knew that we’d like to invite a couple of friends over for a late afternoon Christmas Eve feast…

 

So we invited Bev and Larry over for dinner.  This is Larry’s favorite seat at our house…and he enjoys it because he can watch Laurie do her dervish routine…cooking and cleaning up at the same time!  He's amazed by this!  By the time we're through with dinner, all that’s left to do is to load the glasses, plates and silverware into the dishwasher and turn it on…

Larry is a true foodie and a blogger… He can make a meal, especially a breakfast, out of just about anything left over in his refrigerator.  Larry’s blog site is found at http://bigdudesramblings.blogspot.com/.   

 

As mentioned earlier, Dawn Marie flew in to stay with us for a week.  She’d arrived from New York a little after 2 AM on the Saturday before Christmas.  Dawn had been within 2 minutes of her flight being canceled in New York due to FAA ‘time out’ rules… The plane was able to back away from the gate at literally the very last moment!  Now she is able to enjoy a few days of  ‘chill time' before heading back to Miami and the pressures of her role as a retail consultant! 

 

 

Remember…I did use the word carnivore didn’t I?!  How about this great looking hunk of prime rib!  Tender and delicious it was…!  I still have a couple of left-over ribs to gnaw on. (This was a great piece of meat…purchased at a very reasonable price from The Fresh Market)

 

 

For once, I took the photo and for once, Laurie is actually in the picture! (Left to right: Laurie, Dawn Marie, Bev and Larry)

The table was laden with food…wine, prime rib, roasted potatoes, the best yeast rolls in the world as baked by Bev, a terrific salad…also by Bev, and some yummy horseradish cream sauce by Dawn.  A bit later, it was Apple Crisp with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream… Life is indeed excellent!

It isn’t all about us though… Laurie and I sent a significant contribution to the East Tennessee Food Bank and Dawn Marie bought out the last bunch of pre-packaged food cartons for the needy at our local supermarket.  We’re hoping that we helped a few other folks have an enjoyable Christmas as well.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by and sharing a bit of your time with us during this Holiday Season…

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave