Our family is such a mixed bag. We have people who celebrate different holidays during the season, so rather than put on several different functions, we honor each with one big party and take a tradition from each and work it in to our celebration.

We have families that celebrate Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and people that have different traditions than we do in the United States. My sister in law is from England and we wanted to do something to honor her as well.

We discuss our different ways of celebrating and work some of the traditional games in, but the best part by far is the food. When we first started it, we were all excited for the idea, but we didn’t really know how we would pull it off.

I started some research and decided that I was going to need a food processor for this amount of food. It would take way too long to try to do each and every thing by hand. There was a lot of prepping involved and I was going to need all the help I could get.

I did some reading about what my best option might be in terms of picking a food processor out. That was when I found KitchenWorksinc, where they sell authentic Cuisinart products. I went ahead and ordered the Cuisinart custom 14 food processor. I was so excited for it to arrive.

In the meantime, I was working on creating the menu. I planned on mincemeat pies, which is a tradition in England, Jollof rice for Kwanzaa, potato latkes for Hanukkah, and a spiral ham. There would be other sides and a plethora of desserts, but those were things brought by the guests and didn’t follow any type of tradition.

When my food processor arrived I wanted to practice with it first. I made up some of the recipes that I planned to make, just on a smaller scale. Everything was great.

When the party was just a week away, I prepped everything that I could make ahead and freeze. That made things so much easier, and would save me time on the actual day of. It was perfect.

When the celebration day arrived, I had 80% of everything done; everything just needed to be cooked and a few things needed to be added here and there. Doing things ahead of time gave me so much extra time to actually spend with my guests. Typically I’d be running around like a crazy person. Not this time though.

Everything went perfectly. Everybody felt included and mentioned how thought it was to honor everyone. We all agreed that this was going to turn into an annual tradition, and we would all put together different suggestions for the menu.

It felt really good to try something different, and even better that everyone felt recognized in the process. The day went amazingly, and it was all anyone talked about for weeks to come. My food processor was definitely the one that delivered for all of us.