Christmas dinner with the missionaries in Nauvoo

We were in charge of organizing the Christmas dinner for 175 missionaries.

We had bone-in ham, baked potato, creamed peas and pearl onions, dinner roll and...

A green salad of romaine, spinach, cabbage, honey roasted peanuts, craisins, and poppyseed dressing, plus...




Orange jello salad packed with oranges, pineapple, bananas and frosted with fruit juice pudding and a sprig of parsley picked from the herb garden at the Lyon Drugstore which is one of the restored historical sites. The parsley hadn't frozen yet, it's tough.




For dessert we had white cake frosted with whipped topping and topped with raspberry sauce.




The food committee was incredible! With a lifetime of experience serving at church functions all I had to do was say, "This, this, and this need to be done, and like a whirlwind meat was carved, salads were dished up, food was plated and then served to everyone in about 15 minutes and it was still warm for the hungry Christmas feasters. Sister Gifford on the left below made us some ham and beans the next day from the leftover ham. It was soooooo yummy.
The Giffords live in the apartment below us.


Dinner was at 4 pm and we were home by 6:30 pm. One of the missionaries' grandchildren secretly went in the kitchen to do as many dishes as they could during the program. So with a little wrapping up to do in the kitchen we were done in no time. Sister Hess on the right of the photo at the sink made us all dish towel aprons; red for the sisters and black for the elders.

Elder Speirs below is a terrific carver. There was hardly anything left on the bone. He is the heavy equipment operator here at Nauvoo Restoration Inc.

These photos are in reverse of the process. Carving the meat was the first order of business.

Elder Hess in front is a bricklayer for NRI and Elder Young below is a teamster with our Belgian horse teams.

This was the scene before everyone arrived. The table decorations were bird houses with our beloved bird of this area, the red cardinal. This is Sister Young, she is a college professor and a descendant of Brigham Young but her husband isn't, even though he is the one with the last name of Young.