Christmas Dinner

I like ham on Christmas. This year we had ham with traditional sides.



By traditional I mean potatoes au gratin, green bean casserole, cranberries etc. When I was a kid we also used to have a huge spread of appetizers and a relish tray but it was just the 4 of us this year (the 4th being the dog).

It is a hanging offense to serve ham or pork roast without fresh horseradish in every decent household in northern Iowa. We had a particularly strong jar of it and I spent a lot of time rubbing my eyes and gasping for breath. Once when I was younger my dad covertly mixed some horseradish into one of my little sister's mashed potatoes. The result was spectacular.