An Italian Christmas

We've started several Christmas traditions, and one of them is having an Italian meal on Christmas Day. We enjoy the ham, turkey, stuffing and other side items at Thanksgiving, but we like to do something different for Christmas.

This year we made seafood lasagna rolls-ups stuffed with asparagus and topped with a creamy vodka tomato sauce. Besides looking like Christmas colors of red, green and white, they were delicious. We prepare everything on Christmas Eve, so all we need to do on Christmas Day is bake everything.

Our Christmas Eve meal carries over from my parent's tradition of having ham sandwiches, sausage balls and chips and dip. We bought Boar's Head deli meat from Kroger, and they have some great selections. We decided on the Salsalito turkey and rosemary and sundried tomato ham with Havarti dill and Asiago cheese slices. We eat the sandwiches on onion rolls, and this year, we tried a new brand we found at Meijer stores, Aunt Millie's. They were better than ones we've had in the past.

This meal would not be complete without David's favorite chip ever, Cool Ranch Doritos.

We also make sausage balls each year, and David is holding the giant sausage ball before I rolled about 50 individual ones. This year, I used the sage pork sausage and Bisquick and added some Gruyere cheese along with extra sharp cheddar, garlic salt and red pepper flakes.

OK, back to the seafood lasagna meal. We used crab, lobster and bay scallops for the filling. David sauteed the crab in a dab of olive oil, and then cooked the lobster in Sherry cream.

He then mixed in some minced garlic while he cooked the scallops in garlic butter.

Next, he combined all the seafood and garlic with ricotta cheese and two eggs.

Here is what the filling looks like before it's rolled into the cooked lasagna noodles.

We steamed the asparagus and set it aside.

It's time to put everything together.

Start with a lasagna noodle.

Add some seafood and ricotta cheese mixture.

Cut the asparagus into smaller pieces and add it.

Almost ready to roll it up!

Let's roll!

The first one in the pan.

They keep multiplying.

Finally finished rolling.

For the sauce, we used a jar of Vodka sauce, a jar of light Alfredo sauce, a can of Italian style diced tomatoes, Italian seasoning, and some garlic cloves.

We poured the sauce on top and covered the dish for baking on Christmas Day.

A Christmas meal wouldn't be complete without Herman rolls.

We also had an Italian side salad with mixed greens, tomatoes, black olives, carrots, green peppers, banana peppers, green onions and grated Parmesan cheese.

Here is the main course hot out of the oven and topped with Pecorino Romano cheese.

It was a delicious meal!

Hope you had a Merry Christmas!