So Many Dishes

As you might expect from someone who blogs mostly about food, every holiday celebration in our family centers around food. Even if it’s a holiday that one wouldn’t normally equate with special dishes, and even if it’s just Ken and myself, food will be part of our holiday plans. But for purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Of course, it isn’t Thanksgiving without turkey. And, if I’m preparing it, according to my kids, it must include the Pennsylvania Dutch mashed potato stuffing that both my mother and grandmother made. Some must be stuffed in the bird; we have in-bird and out-of-bird people in the family. I prefer to eat the stuffing that’s been baked in a casserole. When my mother was alive, there would be mashed potatoes as well, but I’ve eliminated those from the menu.

Most years, I make an herb butter to rub on the turkey and put under the skin. I did try to brine the turkey one year, but that resulted in what is known in family lore as The Great Turkey Brine Disaster. I had made a brine that included maple syrup and bourbon, among other ingredients. I got up early Thanksgiving morning to turn the bird over in the brine. But, as I was trying to take it out of the refrigerator, the pan tipped, pouring sticky brine all over the floor! So there I was, with a bucket and mop at six in the morning, trying to clean up the mess, and listening to our son talk about the waste of good bourbon! Needless to say, that was my last attempt at brining.

While Thanksgiving food traditions are not to be messed with (cranberry sauce must be the jellied kind from the can; I have conceded that battle), our Christmas dinner tradition is no tradition. Many years, I try a completely new recipe. The food tradition revolves around breakfast.

When I was growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, my dad would go to the local bakery on Christmas Eve to buy a Moravian sugar cake, a local specialty, for Christmas morning breakfast. Once I moved away, I needed to learn to bake it myself. It’s an interesting recipe: a yeast dough that incorporates mashed potato. I tried several recipes before I found one that was just right, but I did it. My sugar cake became our Christmas morning tradition.

But a sugar cake is too big for just Ken and me, and in recent years, it’s been just the two of us on Christmas morning. I’m not sure exactly how we decided on pie for breakfast, but our new tradition is cranberry-apple pie, and it’s yummy.

Looking back through my menu logs, I’ve used a pork tenderloin as the basis for Christmas dinner three of the past four years. Last year’s recipe involved apples, and I roasted vegetables with it.

Whatever your holiday traditions, I hope they involve tasty food! Happy eating!