Holidays always include memories of family and food for me, some of them delightful and others best not repeated. My family’s nineteenth century plum cake recipe still results in a glorious dessert and nobody has ever made sage stuffing as well as my grandfather did. Period. On the other hand, my mother’s tuna fish and cranberry mold tasted better than you might expect the only time I ever ate it.
I love to work descriptions of food into my novels. The recipes in The Irish Devil come from a period cookbook my grandmother gave me and a period travel guide to Arizona. (Who’d have thought ham was the priciest meat around back then???) The River Devil’s menus came from travelers exclaiming over the fine food available on board riverboats, especially its incredible freshness. I like to imagine my characters savoring a particularly delightful morsel, when it’s part of a reunion with friends. Or how easily inexperienced men could have ruined bean soup for dinner. (Nothing like scorching the bottom of the pan or not getting all the rocks and sand out to make beans the next best thing to inedible!)
What foods mean holidays and family – or friends – to you? Do any meals stand out in your mind?
I have a $25 Starbucks gift card for somebody who mentions food. I’ll pick a winner at random by Monday and will post it in the comments section.
Food, huh. I love food and love to cook. I make some “mean” Italian dishes and love to bake, especially cookies. I am an older lady and get up early in the a.m. to cook or bake.
Rose – I love Italian food! Can I visit your house, please? There’s an Italian restaurant & deli about two blocks from my new home. They make all of their pasta from scratch and their tortellini is to die for. I’m planning a Christmas Eve raid on their take-out counter.
I love preparing food but I hate coming up with new ideas. I give a tree trimming party every year but the basics have stayed the same (my daughter says it’s tradition now lol). I do experiment with all the snacks before hand but dinner is usually lasagna (has to be vegetarian for my nephew which does make it more challenging) and then a ham with vegies, salad and rolls. At least I can make the lasagna ahead of time and ham is pretty easy. So if anyone has a good idea let me know lol.
We use a Cajun recipe for ham, catslady. Pour a jar of mustard over the top, then a bottle of honey. (You don’t have to smooth it on evenly. The oven will handle distributing it.
) Bake and serve!
The leftovers are the best fixings for soup…
In our family we love our desserts so I remember to me the holidays must have my mother’s apple crumb pie and my sister’s cookies.
Food is everything to me, and my family. Honestly. I grew up cooking – food is huge culturally, and everything else. I love talking food (and making it too – though not the clean up). Growing up, for every holiday etc, our extended family was too far away, so we always got together with family friends for potlucks. Everyone coming together to have fun… and eat TONS of good food. Dinner parties – there isn’t one thing that stands out in particular, but we still do potlucks for the major holidays generally.
Whenever we visit relatives, sight seeing, visiting is all well and good, but the most important things are always the meals that cannot be missed, and where everyone in the family gets together. (And I have a monstrous extended family.)
This reminds me that I still have a lot of baking to do, and I have a big Christmas Eve dinner to prepare for. I love to cook, but I hope I can be ready in time!
All our winter holiday family dinners have to inclued a whipped cream salad, with fruit cocktail and bananas in it.
Oh the honey and mustard sounds like a wonderful idea – and easy lol. Someone just gave me a recipe for soup using cabbage and potatoes with the left over ham. I’m going to try it.
My favorite is green bean casserole with extra french fried onions. We always try to have a special dessert in addition to the tradition pumpkin and apple pie. One year we had cheesecake with an Oreo crust and another year we had passion fruit meringue. I’m hope this year’s menu will include key lime pie or red velvet cake.
limecello – My family always celebrated Thanksgiving with two big meals: Thanksgiving Day with my mom’s family. Saturday dinner was a huge feast with my dad’s family where we handed over wrapped Christmas presents. (They got unwrapped on the actual day.) Such a huge extended family that we had to organize the get-together somehow and food made a great excuse!
cheryl c – We’re praying we get the cooking done on time. But the snowy weather sure makes a great excuse for staying indoors and baking!
Oh, Jane, I love green bean casserole with french fried onions! And your tradition of having a special dessert just sounds too organized to be believed. I’m sooo jealous. LOL
Rice pudding with raspberry sauce and glögg are two things that remind me of Christmas and are favorites of mine. I also tend to pop way too many of the Swedish meatballs in my mouth each year. lol
Holidays usually say pumpkin dessert (I don’t like pumpkin pie) at Thanksgiving and caramel dumplings at Christmas. For desserts anyway. Hubs makes Teryaki Cornish Hens for Christmas dinner every year and it wouldn’t be the Holidays without it! *G* But, if I had to pick one recipe from all the ones that have been in my family to be an any time favorite, it would have to be Chicken Paprika.
Hi Diane!! Food! Oh I love cheese cooked in meals! Like making a chicken broccoli rice casserole! I was just thinking about making that soon because I haven’t for a while! And its a favorite of mine! They great for these cold days we are having.
I’m cooking for the family here on Christmas eve. I’m cooking chicken and dressing and a honey ham, as well as pecan pies. Those foods are comfort foods, that just are so much a part of our traditional holiday meals. Everyone else will be bringing the side items, so it should be a fun day. Happy Holidays!
We will be eating at Mom’s for Christmas. Turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, seven layered salad, green beans, dressing, and of course pumpkin pie.
i love food, my cooks a great meal no tjust the holdays, but i love her noodles
Limecello, we are two of a kind – food is very important to me also. I come from a big family on my dad’s side, and they all have huge appetites. My cousin and I always talk food when we get together and her husband always teaches us about our topic of conversation.
My mom and aunt are great cooks and I have some friends who are fabulous cooks too, one in particular – it is like going to a restaurant. He makes his own pasta and most delicous sauce and meatballs and brasiole.
Merry Christmas; I am hungry now with all this talk of good. LOL. I try to get as much prepared ahead of time so it is not too much of a drain on the actual day.
Christmas is the best time for a baker like me to go all out. You have more willing mouths to feed and nobody is concerned with calories or watching the fat content. I like to make shortbread and chocolate pecan pies. This year we got more eggnog than we can drink so I’ve made ice cream and snuck some of it into acorn squash quick breads. I’m still experimenting with a savory bread pudding to replace the bread stuffing. And after the turkey dinner there’s always leftovers to deal with.
Hi, ladies! (and maybe gents?) You’ve all found far too many delicious ways to mention food here. My waistline is deeply grateful you did so via text. LOL
Caffey is the winner of the $25 Starbucks gift card! Yay! Please send me your email addy via my website at http://www.dianewhiteside.com and I’ll get the little darling right off to you.
May your holidays be filled with good times, good friends and the best possible meals, y’all!
wtg cathie won again lol, good times good times
Congratulations Caffey!
Congratulations, Caffey – goodness, you’re on a roll
A *very* happy holidays to you, lol. You’ve won on the other blog I checked today too! 