Ahhhh, 'tis the season. Yummy turkey and all the fixin's. Ham and stuffing chased down with pecan and pumpkin pie... Everything smothered in gravy.
I love traditional holiday dinners.
But during the holiday season, Air Force Family is anything BUT traditional (I'm sure you're shocked to hear that).
During the first few years of our nomadic wandering, I tried to keep holidays traditional. Two or three days before Christmas or Thanksgiving I would be at the supermarket, nun chuks in hand, violently shoving my way through the throngs for one of the last three "free with a purchase of 200$" turkeys. I woke up at 5 am to stick bread up the butt of a dead bird, and I spent 45 minutes beating a bit of home-made gravy so that it would not separate during our dinner prayer.
Don't get me wrong - the results of such efforts are truly wonderful; a little bit of all that is good in America (aside from barbecue) on a table and ready to eat. I told you before - I do love holiday dinners.
But I just don't have the patience, or quite often the facilities (since we tend to move around the holiday season) to fix up all the good stuff.
So about two years into our Air Force life, we started our own holiday tradition... Chinese food.
Yum.
And in order to make it even more special, we try very hard not to eat Chinese food very often during the majority of the "regular" year.
I know it probably sounds very silly, but we came to this decision honestly. Our lifestyle really isn't very traditional, so we decided not to go crazy trying to measure up to a traditional standard we just weren't able to meet. Unless we go home for the holidays, that is. And my Mom makes a very good traditional dinner.
This year we're on our own, though. So broccoli beef, egg rolls, crab rangoons, and won ton soup are on the menu.
Yum.
