Grandpa Gotta Eat—Chicken In Mole (Christmas Dinner)

This edition of Grandpa Gotta Eat features Mexican food for Christmas dinner.

After going all in with traditional food for Thanksgiving, I wanted to change things up a little bit for Christmas.

Early on, there was talk about cooking another turkey, or just going with ham, both of which we ate for Thanksgiving. But while Thanksgiving in late November is largely an American holiday, Christmas is celebrated in much more of the world, which in my mind, opened up wide the cookbook.

I didn't want to get too carried away, but keep it within our comfort zone. And since I would be working the day of Christmas Eve, it would be left to my wife to once again cook the Christmas meal.

We considered traditional Mexican Christmas dishes, such as posole and tamales, but we had recent eaten posole, and tamales take a long time to prepare. Eventually, tamales would make it back into the dinner picture, but they would not be made by us.

After discussing other options such as enchiladas and sopes, my wife decided she would forego traditional Christmas food and make chicken in mole, with rice.

That meant defrosting a whole chicken, cutting it up into its various parts, and then boiling the pieces in water and chicken bouillon and salt .

While the chicken got underway, the rice was also being prepared. My wife starts out toasting the rice before adding water and letting it simmer in a mixture of tomatoes, onions and garlic. It's always amazing to me to watch how these meals start out and progress to their finished state.

And just for the record, those who read my recent review about the Mexican restaurant Habaneros, the rice my wife makes is far from dry or bland tasting.

Here you can see my wife adding some oil to the rice and pan to kick off the rice preparation.

We Interrupt This Post...

If you have some favorite music available, go ahead and play it.

The reason for this interlude is, there was more to the preparation process, such as actually putting the mole together (pronounced MOH-LAY), which in my wife's case includes a mole mix rather than starting it all from scratch, but because I was visiting with my sons and grandchildren, I didn't get to capture the entire meal preparation.

Suffice it to say that the chicken kept cooking, the rice, too, and that the mole was added a little later. Also, the tamales were defrosted and cooked.

Now Back To The Post...

When all was ready, everyone had a chance to fill their plates. I was one of the last to fill up mine, but I was one of the first to finish. So quickly did I eat mine, I failed to get a photo of my plate before the food was gone.

Instead, I offer this image of the food my older son ate. You can see the chicken smothered in mole sauce at the top of the plate, the rice (that he'd already started to eat) and a tamale, made with shredded pork. The tamales came from Costco, and were actually pretty good.

Taste Test

As always, the food was very good. I think everyone enjoyed it. Most took tortillas and made tacos to eat the chicken, mole and rice, though they could have all been eaten with the fork.

The tamales did have quite a bit of corn meal masa, but they were well cooked, and had quite a bit of meat, too. Tamales can come out too dry or too soggy, with a poor masa to meat ratio, so Costco's third party brand actually did a good job navigating away from the many tamale pitfalls.

A bottle of Coca-Cola was used to wash down the meal.

A Few Words

Compared to the spread we ate for Thanksgiving, this meal was pretty humble. Kind of like the humble beginnings of the baby Jesus, whose birth Christmas commemorates.

It was good to be with my boys and his families and to share this dinner on Christmas Eve. We opened up gifts ahead of time so the grandkids could see their presents, eat, and then go to bed.

In Mexico, my wife's family would prepare the meal to be eaten at midnight, and presents would be open later. I've participated in such a late night meal before (the first time I met my wife's family in Mexico). It's quite the experience. Eating so late isn't so bad. It's staying awake long enough to do it that is the big test, but there's generally plenty of conversations going on to keep everyone going.

Growing up, my family would always open presents in the morning on Christmas day, then have the big meal later, without necessarily a specific time, but more or less when it was ready. It's interesting how each culture and family has their own way of doing things.

Christmas is now in the rear view mirror and the new year is nearly upon us. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and I wish you and yours, a safe and happy New Year.

As always, until next time...

...Enjoy!

_{Images courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen}

This edition of Grandpa Gotta Eat is published in conjunction with the @foodfightfriday weekly contest. All are invited to participate. Simply write about food, post on a Friday, use the #fff tag, and then check out the posts of other participants. First, second and third places are awarded STEEM, thanks to a generous sponsorship by @appreciator.