Christmas Rewind

7 days into the New Year and I'm finally getting a moment to sit down and write about the whirlwind that was Christmas!  In typical Casey fashion, I had a long list written out of all the things to get done before family started coming in that week.  The weekend before the week of Christmas, I sat down and made even more detailed lists....what I had to get done on each day leading up to December 25th.

Yes, I am a bit of a list fanatic but two things will happen if I don't write this stuff down:  

• #1 I'll forget it 
• #2 It won't get done.

So I had my lists made and I was feeling a little better about it all, especially since my parents came in a day earlier than I thought to help me out with week of preparations.

A nod to the lists, the same thing I did for Thanksgiving...I pulled out all my serving stuff and labeled everything so I knew in advance I had room for what I needed.

Additional prep work consisted of:

• Finalizing Christmas Eve and Christmas Day menus
• Shopping the weekend before for items that I could get in advance
• Shopping again the week of and day of for items I needed to wait on (fresh French bread, herbs, bags of ice, etc.)
• Pulling out all the china and silverware, making sure it's clean and I had enough for everyone
• Making two separate grocery lists to coordinate with Christmas Eve and Christmas Day menus
• Clean, clean, clean the house!
• Extra linens and pillows
• Renting a mattress for extra sleeping space for guests
• Finish decorating
• The list goes on...and thankfully it's all done!

Now we move on to prepping what food we could cook or bake in advance.  I can't begin to explain the whirlwind of the week but I'll just say I was unable to/forgot to take photos of all my finished food. Sad face.  According to my family, it all looked and tasted wonderful. You'll have to use your imaginations. :)

I did manage to get a few photos of my prep work for one of the dishes.  

Oh!  You should know, my family does a slightly different take on the "traditional" Christmas meal.  If you didn't see my previous post about this, we basically do a different theme each year because my mom didn't want to repeat the turkey we all just ate a month ago.  I am continuing this tradition.

So, back to my one dish I took some prep photos of...Spicy Turkey Sausage Rigatoni.  This is basically a version of baked ziti.

CHEESE:  Yes please!

Rigatoni: fat, friendly, short cut pasta

Spicy turkey sausage getting all browned up

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of rigatoni
• 1 pound of spicy Italian turkey sausage 
• Parmesan and Ricotta cheeses - I didn't measure this, use as much cheese as you want!  I think I used roughly 1/2 cup Parm and 16 oz. Ricotta
• Tomato sauce - I made my own but feel free to use your own recipe or (gasp!) the sauce from a jar (I do this often, no worries!)
• EVOO
• Crushed red pepper

Instructions:

• Heat large pan over medium high heat.  Add roughly 1-2 Tbsp. EVOO. Remove sausage from it's casing and crumble into pan.  Cook sausage until brown.
• Meanwhile boil the rigatoni and drain it just shy of "al dente" (that means done "to the teeth" or where you like it since it will cook more in the oven)
• Put the rigatoni back into hot pot and mix with the browned ground sausage, Parmesan and ricotta cheeses.  
• Add tomato sauce (roughly 1 cup, just eyeball it and add more if you want it saucier) and stir.  You can add crushed red pepper if you want more heat.
• In a large baking dish, put a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of the dish, then pour in that cheesy, delicious pasta mixture.
• **If you're prepping this ahead, this is where you stop.  I stopped here on the 23rd so it was done in advance and I just baked it off on the 25th.**
• **If you're serving that night, top with some more grated Parm, pop into 350 degree oven and bake until cheese melts and it's all bubbly.
• **If you're prepping ahead, let cool completely, cover with foil and put into fridge.  Day of, take it out of the fridge and bring back to room temp.  Top with cheese and bake off at 350 degrees until warm through and cheese is melty.

Fun little story: 
I live in central Florida...
Where we don't get "winter"...
Where Christmas Day was 85+ degrees...
When I had lots of bodies in my house, drinking all day, putting off heat...
When the AC froze over and the temp inside the house got HOT...
When my brother and husband spent a good hour plus in the garage blowing hair dryers inside the AC to melt the ice (the only ice in Florida!)...
When the AC still didn't work after that...
When my brother found an AC guy to come out on CHRISTMAS DAY to try and fix it...
When I just re-filled my wine glass and stayed away because I couldn't deal with this...
When my oven was 350 degrees to cook dinner for 12 people...making the house hotter...
When the grumpy AC guy left and manged to do some sort of "hot wiring" to make it turn on again (Christmas freakin' miracle!)...
When I tried not to be too upset about it all and still managed to get hot dinner on the table for everyone...
When everyone loved my food...
When I loved everyone and said so at the table and started crying because I was happy...
When at the end of a long, full day of food, wine, laughter, some stress, fun, games, love and more, my husband and I finally had a quiet moment to ourselves to reflect on the 1st Christmas in our 1st home...
Ah, holidays and family.  There's nothing quite like it!