I have to admit this past week was a tough one. Making the time to cook from scratch in between shopping for gifts, wrapping presents, cleaning the house, shoveling snow, baking my own gifts for people and oh yeah – working – made for some pretty boring meals all week (for me that’s meat, vegetable, starch). If any time of year was ripe for reliance on convenience foods, I’m declaring that it’s the week before Christmas. Thankfully the holiday landed on the weekend so I had the time to plan out a Christmas dinner from scratch that would really bedazzle my guests with the culinary skills I’ve picked up so far.

My family has a holiday tradition of a “themed” Christmas gathering. It started years ago when my niece wanted us all to wear our pajamas on Christmas with the family. From there the themes began and transitioned into a toga Christmas (flannel holiday sheets), vintage aprons, Hawaiian shirts, space-themed outfits, to last year’s now infamous lumberjack Christmas. Not to be outdone by any themes of our past, the chosen theme for 2010 was ugly sweater. Now a sweater that’s “ugly” walks a fine line from those that are perhaps fashionable to wear for some, so you don’t want to cross that line and say “I’m wearing one ugly sweater”, to a family member who has gifts for you and would actually wear your sweater to a normal holiday gathering. And while there is never any contest between my family members when it comes to dressing the theme, this year when seeing my Dad in his ugly holiday sweater, my sister simply proclaimed “you win.”

Whenever I describe to someone which types of foods I have to make from scratch or do without, the tendency among many is to “gift” those foods to me. Now I’m not complaining, in fact the gifts of food this year in particular were generous and happily received (voice inside my head – yeah, get to the gym, Pam). There were the practical gifts (ie: you’re gonna’ need these to keep up with all your cooking), which I totally love, that came in the form of cookbooks, food magazines, and a set of lovingly stitched dish towels which my Mom proclaimed are not to be used but are only for show. Lisa and I also got matching coffee mugs handmade by our artist friend Annie, depicting a sea lion from our Maine vacation this past summer. And there were the food gifts, most of which appeared in the form of snack foods in my Christmas stocking on Friday morning, but also in the form of home made cookies, seasoned pretzels, home-seasoned Chex mix, and a bag of caramel “poofs” my sister makes that we all refer to as “crack.” The most clever gift of food, considering my current circumstances of eating out only when invited and only at local restaurants, was a tin of coasters from City Tins – each redeemable at a local restaurant for $10 off a minimum dining purchase of $25 or more. Now is the tin itself the invitation to dine out?

Okay, so here’s the deal with Christmas dinner. I planned to cook the “everything” from scratch meal consisting of lasagna, Italian bread, and salad with balsamic dressing. Simple enough. That meant I would need to make the marinara sauce from the tomatoes I froze this summer, the béchamel sauce, and fresh pasta for the lasagna, as well as bake my bread and throw together a salad dressing. Ultimately I had planned on making my own mozzarella cheese for the lasagna as well, but never having made cheese before this, I chickened out on that one pretty early on. As it was the bread was a two-day process as I needed to start the biga (to ferment) on Christmas eve, and still hoped to have enough time Christmas day for the early morning tradition of opening gifts before spending the rest of the day in the kitchen.

In retrospect I can laugh now, as our kitchen felt a bit like kitchen stadium on Iron Chef America - a chaotic disarray of ingredients and pots and pans thrown about, steam billowing from the sink from the pasta water, the two of us doing this kind of dance around each other while the smoke alarm screeches from the leftover burnt sweet potato on the bottom of the oven – me rushing to throw ice cubes into the hot pan to create the necessary steam that will give my bread a good crust. I was putting the two loaves of bread into the oven right as our guests arrived, and thankfully yes thankfully, I received one last food gift from Lisa that morning – a box of lasagna noodles.

The bread turned out fabulously, I mean it was really wonderful, the lasagna delicious but not quite saucy enough, and the salad was a fine accompaniment to the meal. I’m happy to share the recipes with you but I recommend twice the amount of marinara for the lasagna, to make sure it oozes over the top of the pan as it cooks.

Here is a comparison of how I used to make the marinara sauce for lasagna, and how the process changed using a truly from-scratch version with a recipe from Giada De Laurentis.

The Marinara Sauce

While the lasagna didn't turn out quite the way I wanted (needed more sauce) it didn't put a damper on the holiday. Merry Christmas everyone!