One thing I really love about holidays is cooking special dishes. Before major holidays I always do a lot of research to find great recipes to try out to make really nice feasts for my family. This Christmas I spent a lot of Christmas Eve day in the kitchen cooking lots of good foods.

My day started off with a special feast for my duck friends.

Since my ducks had to be locked up Christmas Eve Day early and all day Christmas Day I made them a very special meal. I call it "Duck Salad." I cut up some cabbage and mixed it with cut up tomatoes and Cheerios. These are three foods ducks absolutely LOVE. I gave Sammy, Smokey, Bandit, and Reese their Duck salad and let them have a swim in their pool before locking them up for the day so we could travel to my mom's for cooking a family meal.

Roast Beef, Yorkshire Pudding, Broccoli Cheese Soup, and Desserts

Growing up Christmas dinner was always turkey and the trimmings. At some point my brother and I took over cooking Christmas dinner once we were adults. My mom hates cooking so it wasn't hard to get her to let us take over. My brother and I decided to change things up and we like to experiment on Christmas with foods. Last year was the year of finger foods where we made lots of different small finger foods like bacon wrapped crackers and taco dip. This year I wanted to make a fancy and nice meal while my brother wanted finger foods. We agreed I could have Christmas Eve to make a meal and he'd do finger foods for Christmas Day.

I decided to make roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding from the Downton Abbey Cooks Website. This is my all time favorite recipe for making a roast. My husband loves it so much he made me cook him roast three times the last few weeks. My stomach doesn't always digest roast very well (lots of heartburn) so I decided to make broccoli cheese soup as well so I could fill up on soup and eat less meat. I also made roasted carrots and potatoes,gravy, Yorkshire pudding, sugar free peanut butter cookies, and brownies.

The roast and roasted potatoes/carrots took an hour and a half to cook. During that time I made the broccoli cheese soup which is really easy to make. I made my Yorkshire pudding batter and desserts before leaving home that morning so those tasks were done.

You can't please everyone but that's okay.

My narcissistic, elderly mother wasn't happy I had my own recipe for roast beef. Growing up she made pot roast which is where you roast beef on low all day so it is fall apart tender. I hate pot roast. I don't like the texture of the meat so I moved away to roasting beef on high heat for an hour to an hour and a half instead of my mom's way of cooking it all day. My mother refused to eat my roast. She was convinced it wasn't cooked enough because I cooked it so fast. I even purposely cut her some and burned it but she wouldn't eat it. I knew it was a silent protest of me not doing it her way and it really didn't bother me a bit. I knew when I chose a recipe not hers that she'd be mad. It was a really good roast and everyone else loved it so I'm happy with the end result. Narcissists like my mother hate holidays because they have a hard time getting attention so I just ignore my crazy mother and enjoy the day with the rest of my family while she sulks in her recliner and watches TV.

I Happily Fed Her Portion To Howie The Dachshund

My daughter loved the broccoli cheese soup and ate good which made me happy. She's a wild little toddler so I know my food is good when she sits still and eats a lot. The scraps off of plates went to Howie the dachshund, my mom's dog and he happily ate the delicious foods. I love animals so it was nice giving Howie a good Christmas dinner.

I was beat after all the cooking. I'd been on my feet all day working on projects for the holiday. By the end of the night I was ready to crash but Little Rabbit wasn't. We got home and she went wild. She was up until 2 AM and drove her daddy and I crazy. "Santa" hadn't wrapped gifts yet and needed Little Rabbit to go to bed. She finally crashed at 2 AM and "Santa" was up until 4 AM wrapping and doing other tasks for Christmas morning festivities. Christmas Day was really fun and pleasant but boy was I exhausted. I'm glad I got to make a pretty meal for everyone and that almost everyone enjoyed it. I'm glad Christmas is over now and I can recover from all the work.

All pictures and content are my own