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Christmas dinner from the Drugstoreor How one Iron Chef makes Holiday DinnerBy Jan Belcher
We left our home Dallas for Atlanta, excited to see the grandkids. The plan was to come home on Christmas Eve and still be able to have dinner with friends and family in our new home on Christmas Day. We were busy and rushing around before we left, and I remember thinking that I would just stop at the grocery store on the way home from the airport on Christmas Eve. If memory serves, the stores always stay open late for those last-minute shoppers. I had never been one of them – planning ahead was always my game. But I just knew it would all work out. It was pouring rain when we landed. Traffic was slow and heavy. We started in search of a grocery store. Much to our surprise, they were all closed! I just knew that Super Target or Super Wal Mart would be open. No such luck. We thought surely some “mom and pop” store would be open to capture those last minute shoppers. Again, all closed.
My husband John and I decided to stop at every drug store or convenience store we could find to see what their food shelves had to offer. We found canned green beans at Walgreen’s. We found mushroom soup, canned onion rings and almonds at CVS. We found frozen ready-to-heat rice pilaf at 7-11. It might not be the best Christmas dinner ever, but at least we had something for the table.
Fast forward to Christmas Day. The food was beautiful. The table was beautiful. The people – family and friends – were beautiful. No one was fighting. Everyone was laughing about the saga of finding Christmas dinner at the drug store on Christmas Eve. Picture perfect. Life is good! Jan Belcher was Madelyn Miller’s neighbor for many years. Madelyn is lucky enough to be on the Christmas dinner list and was amazed when she heard the story. She asked Jan to share it with everyone. |
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TM
I have a picture in my mind of the perfect Christmas
dinner. Probably comes from numerous too-good-to-be-true movies and TV shows or
commercials where the food is beautiful, the table is beautiful, the people are
beautiful – all on time and without family fights. Reality often plays cruel
jokes on us would-be Martha Stewarts.
I did what any girl would do in such a case: called my mom
for advice. I had nothing but a ham and a small turkey breast in the fridge
ready to go in the oven the next morning. All the rest had to be bought.
Surely mom would have a can of sweet potatoes or green beans in her pantry.
Nope.
As we were removing our treasures from the bags, the phone
rang. Mom and my brother Randy had driven all the way to McKinney from north
Dallas to look for a grocery store. No such luck for them either. But their
drugstore run netted whipping cream for the pumpkin pie my mom had baked earlier
that day. They found canned sweet potatoes, canned pineapple and some pecans.
I found an old bag of brown sugar in the freezer. The sweet potato casserole
didn’t have marshmallows, but we made do.