Looks delicious. It's even easier if you go out to eat and let someone else do all the chopping, slicing, dicing and mixing. Then, you don't even see the poor guys who have to do the dishes. We don't have any kids home for the Holidays this year so Gary and I found a great buffet place over in Bedford that serves everything, American, Mexican, Chinese, and Middle Eastern main dishes and side dishes. They have a potato bar and a huge salad bar too. And to top it all off they have about a zillion different desserts. Frankly, if the kids were here I'd be a cooking fool just like in years past, but since it's just the two of us it's just a whole lot easier and more fun to go out. Cheryl

We are having brisket as requested by my youngest daughter. We are very traditional at Thanksgiving, but cook on request for Christmas. I love the hustle and bustle in the kitchen with my two daughters. It reminds me of when they (and I) were younger. Keep it simple or gussie it up.............being together is the most important thing to me.

Wow -- the mashed potato bar sounds like fun!

Not exactly what you are asking, but Mexican food is traditional in our family, or I should say NEW Mexican food. Ever since my parents lived in New Mexico for a few years while my Dad was in the Air Force we've had Posole at our family Christmas Eve gathering. Along with posole, which is a very tasty pork and hominy stew made by my Dad's special recipe, we buy the best tamales we can find, other family members make a fancy bean dip, cheese pecan rolls, southern pecan pralines, egg nog, and various other dips for veggies and such. Christmas day is more traditional with turkey or roast beef, but it's the posole dish I look forward to the most as we never have it except at Christmas.

Here is a link that might be useful: A posole recipe (you pronounce the E at the end)

We've decided to do brisket like Carrie is doing. Its better cooked a day or so ahead of time, so I can do it in advance. I'll be cooking it the Kosher way instead of BBQ or smoking it.

I'll do some kind of chicken for those in the family who don't like brisket. (Can you imagine Texans not liking brisket???)

I'll probably do chicken in some TexMex fashion, cuz that's just the kind of people we are! :)
Hopefully I'll figure out something that can be made ahead of time.

We'll have a chocolate bread pudding for dessert. The sides (except for salad) will be farmed out.

We decided to save the mashtini bar for a less "formal" family get together, like a game night or someone's birthday.

Thanks for the suggestions to get my brain to function.

Now I'll have time to set a really nice table and get the house clean and still relax about getting the meal on the table!

I do my brisket ahead of time as well, but DH will put a little mesquite smoke on it...not much, just enough for flavor, then I bake it in the oven (tightly wrapped in lots of foil) all night at 250 degrees. It gets really tender this way.

Yep.. long and slow is the way to go with brisket. :)

After thinking and searching for some kind of chicken dish to go with the brisket I've decided to scratch that idea.

We're going to do a crock pot of Swedish Meatballs and sauce instead.

It can easily be made ahead of time and held in a Crockpot most of the day.

Serving time will very flexible with this and the brisket on the menu.