Day 18: Special Christmas Food

This will be our fourth Christmas in Tucson. When we moved here, all Christmas festivities moved to our house, as we have the only small children in the family (at least locally). Christmas Eve dinner is at our house. Christmas morning breakfast is at our house. And then after a little break, Christmas dinner is at our house too. That means a lot of cooking for my husband and me. For Christmas Eve, we’ve adopted a Tucson/Mexican tradition and make chile con carne. I use a recipe that was typed up by one of Mike’s great aunts sometime in the ‘40s.  Last year I made it a little too sweet. You have to add just a bit of sugar to cut the tartness. And for some reason, it just kept tasting really tart to me … and I added too much sugar. Everyone ate it, but teased me the whole time. We serve the chile with fresh tortillas, usually from St. Mary’s, as well as beans and rice. It’s so tasty and I start dreaming about Christmas Eve dinner long before Thanksgiving.

Too bad we’re not having it this year ... but that’s a whole different story.