Traditions, oh sweet traditions

Don't you love traditions?  Especially Christmas traditions?  They make you feel warm and fuzzy and take you back to sweet moments of your childhood, or some wonderful moment in time.  My Christmas traditions are apple cider during decorating and Christmas Eve and my grandmothers cheese soup during some Christmas dinner.  It is fabulously, sinfully delicious.  It is a requirement, a necessity really.  Every time I smell it I am reminded of Christmas Eve dinner at my grandparents house.  Now, my grandmother served this as an appetizer in demitasse cups, but I have served it in large bowls, because that is the glutton in me.

This year I decided that we would have soup, a large salad with the extras that you don't normally have in your salad (i.e., avocado and artichoke) and some asiago french bread.  Oh, my plan was working out fabulously.  The smell was divine and my mouth began to water.  I couldn't stand.  In moments, mere moments I would be consumed with eating my cheese soup.  Christmas dinner would be complete.  But alas, everything went wrong, and very quickly.  While making dinner, I was also making grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids.  Yes, I would gladly have offered dinner to my children, but I knew better than to think that they would eat cheese soup, salad and bread for dinner.  Seriously, I know my audience.  Well, I started to smell something and I thought it was the sandwiches.  Little did I realize I had turned the soup up and forgot to turn it down.  Within a matter of moments, my soup began to separate.  In the twinkling of an eye it looked terrible.  It was no longer creamy and dreamy and mouthwatering.  It was weird looking.  Yes, weird.  I served it anyway, hoping that it would still taste ok, but oh my gosh I was so wrong.  So terribly wrong.  It tasted like something burned.  I was crushed.  Really.  I was so crushed I honestly wanted to cry.  My dinner was ruined.  Mark and Mom really tried to eat it, but they gave up.  They just couldn't do it. In the end we all had a delicious salad, bread and about 10 cookies.

While I was crushed that my soup was an absolute disaster, it was a wonderful Christmas Eve.  I was with my family and well, you just can't beat that.