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>From: (Hazels65)

>By the way what are you having for dinner Christmas Eve?

Nothing special at all, unless I get creative again...

One time I was down in Cancun for Christmas week, and the beach resort I was
staying at put up a sign on the restaurant door that reservations were going to
be required for the "traditional Christmas Eve dinner"...

Well, that surprised me, because my Yankee family (of essentially English and
Scots-Irish origin) *never* had a traditional *Christmas Eve* dinner it was
always a *Christmas Day* dinner of turkey, ham, chicken, roast beef, mashed
potatoes and gravy, corn, peas, stuffing, etc. We even waited until Christmas
Day to unwrap the gifts under the tree...

It was a meal just like Thanksgiving Day, a holiday which isn't celebrated on
Thanksgiving Eve...

Christmas Eve is more of a commercial holiday honoring Santa Claus and and the
retail sales industry than a religious holiday...

We always had a Christmas Eve *supper* when I was growing up, but supper wasn't
a fancy meal at all...

I was tired from touring Mayan ruins that Christmas Eve in Cancun, and didn't
want to bother taking a taxi downtown, looking for authentic Quintana Roo
cuisine, so I ordered room service to bring me some traditional American
cheeseburgers and french fries...

But I have been thinking of creating a quasi-Mexican dish again, one of these
days soon, it could be on Christmas Eve...

My recipe for delicious Papas Enchiladas en Salsa Verde con Camarones y
Nopalitos starts off with a box of freeze dried sliced potatoes, as in Betty
Crocker, or whatever...

Following the recipe on the box, the potato slices are placed in a
microwave-safe bowl with the required amount of water, and nuked until
tender...

Then, drain every bit of the water that it is possible to
get out of the potatoes. Mix the package of powdered cheese that came in the
box with 8 ounces of salsa verde and the speciifed amount of milk from the
package side panel...

Throw 1/4 of a pound of cooked cocktail shrimp in the the bowl, as well as a
handful of cooked nopalitos...

Pour the cheese and salsa mix over the potatoes and shrimp, etc. About 2
tablespoons of butter or margarine will help the dish, too...

Nuke the concoction for about five minutes and let the cheese/salsa sauce
thicken...

Gently stir the salsa into the potatoes, avoiding breaking the slices of
potato...

It tastes great, the shrimp flavor comes through the green chile salsa, and the
nopalitos add a crunchy texture...

If I ate this green and orange and pink and white dish at a taqueria that had
somehow stolen this recipe from me, they'd probably charge me $10 for a plate
of it...

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