Christmas ended up being much busier than Christmas Eve this year. Dad and I went to my Grandma's this year and had lunch with her and my Aunt Elaine and Uncle Bob. Anyways, lunch was not bad for $3.00: chicken kiev, wild rice, and some mint cheesecake for dessert. As usual when my Dad, Grandma and aunt get together, I get to learn about some "ancient" Stearns county history; however, it is pretty interesting .

When we got home, we began preparing dinner for the Kollmann family's 1st Annual Authentic German Christmas Dinner. I originally came up with the idea after thinking about my unfortunate birthday experience from last year. After going through some websites and cookbooks, I decided that it would awesome to make up some rouladen, sp?tzle, and pfeffern?sse for dessert. If you think we are good "Germans", you'd be wrong since no one in my immediate family (myself included) ever had prepared any of this before. Basically, rouladen is a sliced roast that we wrap up around some bacon (we used turkey bacon), pickles, and some onion. Sp?tzle is an egg noodle, and pfeffern?sse is a christmas cookie.

The dinner definitely required more work than I originally thought and got some great help from the whole family which really added to the whole "togetherness" feel which I hoped. BTW, the picture is of the rouladen cooking. The sp?tzle definitely required some work as well. I had grabbed a recipe online for it and the directions were sort of vague, like a particular direction telling us to add "some" lukewarm water to the dough. We used a potato ricer to make the noodles which only take about 30 seconds to cook in boiling water.

Overall, the dinner turned out awesome, but mostly thanks to my family. We were all pretty surprised and definitely hope that it turns out this well every time we experiment on random food, though I suppose it doesn't make me feel more German . I think we've all agreed that this is a tradition we should keep going for a while.

-Trevor