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S/O: Holiday food traditions?

I have Christmas on the brain tonight (probably since I really won't have a break until then) and I wanna talk food! What's your favorite holiday food? Drink? Memory associated with those?

I love vegetable pizza (crescent roll crust, ranch-flavored cream cheese with tiny vegetables and shredded cheese), but as far as hot foods are concerned, I loved my grandma's home-baked buns. She baked her own buns right up until the day she moved into assisted living. My favorite drink is the sherbet punch we make for Christmas - it's Diet Sierra Mist and lime sherbet, mixed together until it looks right.

My favorite food-related holiday memory is from an Easter several years ago - BF and I had just started dating. My uncle brought two bottles of locally-made wine. One was chokecherry and the other was strawberry, I believe. He opened the wine before lunch and we all started drinking it. Rotgut would be a kind description. So all around the kitchen we were saying things like "This is awful! Hey, have you had any of this yet?" BF was watching us quietly until we realized he hadn't had any. So we naturally offered him the wine. I believe he said something like "No thanks, I'm good," but we made him drink it anyway. I think I even had some of that with lunch, and food did improve it, but it never made a reappearance.

Re: S/O: Holiday food traditions?

  • Favorite Holiday food would have to be Kumpa (a Norwegian potato dumpling boiled in the water you use to boil your ham), krumkake (a Norwegian cookie) and green bean casserole. All of these are a must! Before my grandma passed away she would sit for days and make krumkake because you can only make one at a time and she would fill up those huge popcorn tins for all of the family to grab out of.

    My favorite holiday drink would probably be the chocolate martini's my dad makes for New Years. He puts chocolate shavings on top and one of those babies will knock you off your feet for a bit :-)

    I think my favorite memory would have to be of the huge family gatherings we use to have at my grandma's house. She had 7 kids, plus all of the cousins... It was a huge family get together and there was always so much food. Geez, now I am getting hungry.

    Memory associated with those?
  • I've made krumkake! The year my grandma died, my mom and I pulled out her krumkake recipe - with about half the measurements, no cooking times, etc. And we laughed and laughed. Then we made it.

    My mom's cat also ate a whole batch of krumkake one year. We think it was because of the butter.
  • Lol, there is so much butter in the recipe! It is ridiculous! I have so many good memories :-) My grandma was the same way, she gave me her recipe before she passed away and she had no measurements. She would always just say that you have to feel it out. I try to make it every christmas. Not as many as she did though!
  • Holiday food: My grandmother used to make a Thanksgiving turkey with all the sides every time we visited her because she knew I liked it - that was basically every month from when I was three to thirteen! That woman was the best cook in the world (or maybe it was my grandfather; I noticed as I got older that she liked to "supervise" him in the kitchen, lol).

    My dad and I always made calamari for Christmas. It's weird, I know, but he doesn't eat meat, is Sicilian, and is very passionate about both of those things, so there you have it. I had more fun making it than eating it when I was younger, but now it's starting to grow on me.

    I don't really have a favorite holiday drink.
  • doeydodoeydo member
    Seventh Anniversary 5000 Comments 500 Love Its 5 Answers
    edited September 2013
    My mom makes crepes for breakfast on Christmas and they're delicious.  Beside those, my favourite holiday food is pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream!  
    Hot chocolate stirred with a candy cane is my favourite festive drink.

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  • My family mom makes homemade noodles for the holidays (or other special occasions). My grandma taught her how to make them and she taught me so it's one of my favorite family traditions that I can incorporate when I spend the holidays with BF's family.

    My mom is a fantastic cook so holiday meals are the best! We do pretty standard Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. I really love my mom's roast beef that she makes at Christmas and pumpkin pie is my favorite Thanksgiving food.

    I don't really have a favorite holiday drink but one of BF's family traditions is to go to a place called The Market in downtown Denver to get coffee and biscotti around Christmas. It's one I would really like to continue once we have our own family and family traditions.


  • My mom is German, so at holiday time we always have Glühwein (hot, spiced wine).

    She also always makes German red cabbage at Thanksgiving, which is a little nontraditional, but we all love it. She also makes fresh cranberry sauce (the jelly from the can is verboten).

    We also almost always make gingerbread -- REAL gingerbread, that you have to make a month ahead of time so that it is soft enough to eat by Christmas. Another treat we love if we can find it is the hot, candied almonds that are usually sold in a paper cone. yummy.

    Wasn't an every year thing, but my grandmother (french-canadian) made Tourtière, a meat pie, for breakfast on Christmas morning.
  • On Christmas Eve we usually have Schnitzel which is sooo good! It always makes me think of my Oma since her German cooking is out of this world.

    On Christmas day we usually have a baked Ham or a Roast. 

    We have a special day each year that we devote just to baking Christmas goodies and that consists of all the unhealthy treats you can wrap your mind around but they are all soo good. I kind of want it to be Christmas right now. 

    Thank God it's after my wedding so I can stuff my face and not have to worry about fitting into my dress lol.
  • My mom makes pineapple bread stuffing and regular stuffing and they're probably my favorite holiday dishes. 

    I do not like homemade cranberry sauce. It must come in a can for me to eat it. 

    My favorite holiday tradition is for Thanksgiving. We each bring empty pie crusts and fill them with all of the leftovers to make pot pies to enjoy for weeks. It's also nice to not have to worry about cooking so much during the busy holiday season. 

    Hmm favorite drink? I really love the peppermint mocha from Starbucks. 



  • That's a great idea, @swazzle! An awesome time-saver.
  • Let's see, favorite holiday food traditions.

    My paternal grandmother and her sister used to make this delicous fruit salad that ended up being called "worm salad" since once year someone found a worm in it. It has apples, grapes, pineapple, bananas, mini marshmallows, mayo and powdered sugar. My paternal grandmother also made the best freaking sugar cookies ever. I have the recipe and was going to make some last year, but never got around to it. I did make worm salad for Thanksgiving. My BF hates it, but it took me a few years to actually like the stuff, now I want to eat it all the time.

    My maternal grandmother used to bake a ton of cookies and leave them out on the dining room table with nuts, candies, etc. No wonder I eat so much now hahaha.

    My mom has been making the best apple pie I've ever had and BF has requested it for this Thanksgiving so I guess that's becoming a holiday tradition.

    My dad and I get drunk together on Christmas Eve. We get a big bottle of Baileys and drink the whole thing. Last year he was in NY and I was home, but we still drank Baileys.

    Favorite holiday drink would be anything gingerbread.

    I'm also stealing @swazzle's tradition and making pot pies with leftovers.

     

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  • Mmmm on holidays my favorite is smoked sausage and my mom's sauerkraut... yum.  The only time of year I get it - Christmas and sometimes on Easter.

    My dad's side also has a dish called kugelis - like a shredded potato and bacon grease and onion casserole - absolutely awful if you are thinking in any way about what you are eating calorie-wise, but oh. my. GOD do I love it!

    I think my favorite holiday tradition though is our annual Cookie Bake - my cousin, mom and I get together and bake Christmas cookies for three days straight (with my dad as dishwasher and my aunt coming into town whenever she can) - we usually make between 3000-5000 cookies, and it's such a goofy, fun, Christmasy time :)

    Mmmm favorite holiday drink?  I think spiked cider, or Baileys on the rocks (need one hot and one cold!)


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  • My family back home (mom's side) makes the usual dinner, and drinks heavily on mimosas and wine (my favorite part.)  I am excited because this will be the first year since I moved out of state that I'll get to go back to celebrate with them.

    My dad's side is a big chinese takeout kind of family, as they do their get together after christmas.

    My SO does not get along with his family, so he does not celebrate with them. We celebrate together, but we don't make a big deal as it's just the two of us. We did make a big dinner last year and it was awesome, but we gave so much food away because it was too much for us to eat.
  • Mmmmm, holiday food discussions make me hungry.  We usually have a Danish feast for Christmas which consists of a Danish soup (ox tail broth base with bread balls, meat balls, cardamon balls, and carrots), followed by a roasted chicken and finished with Risalamande (a rice almond pudding we top with hot strawberries....yummy).
  • My favorite holiday foods...

    Ricoise:  Portuguese half-moon shaped "pastries" that have shrimp and vegetables inside.  NOM!

    Octopus salad

    Laetao:  Roast suckling baby pig

    Calderada:  Portuguese seafood stew, with cod, lobster, clams, mussels, and shrimp.  NOM!

    Alletria:  Portuguese rice pudding made with angel hair pasta

    Rebanadas:  Portuguese "french toasts" preserved in homemade candied sugar.  NOM!

    Flan
  • I love seeing everyone's traditions! I guess the only ethnic food tradition we had was we used to microwave lutefisk when I was a kid. I don't recommend it. Lye-soaked fish is bad enough to start with, but something "magical" happens when you microwave it.
  • I love thinking about the holiday season! For Christmas we usually have baked ziti, a ham with orange-maple glaze, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams with brown sugar, stuffed artichoke, and a lot of other things I'm forgetting right now. We also always have too many desserts - last year I made a cake that was 2 layers of red velvet with a layer of cheesecake in the middle, with cream cheese frosting. It was amazeballs. 
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  • @keptinstitches - As a Dane, I'm familiar with Lutefisk....makes me sick to the stomach just to visualize it. My H doesn't understand why I can't stand the smell of fish...well, Scandinavians had a way with making fish less appetizing<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />. 
  • @hummingbird125's post reminded me, we have lasagna on Christmas Eve

    Also a new holiday tradition in our house is wearing matching pajamas on Christmas morning (don't judge) and drink mimosas

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  • We have hot dogs by candlelight on Christmas Eve; it's a tradition from my mom's family.
  • @hummingbird125's post reminded me, we have lasagna on Christmas Eve

    Also a new holiday tradition in our house is wearing matching pajamas on Christmas morning (don't judge) and drink mimosas

    BF and I have had mimosas for during our Christmas mornings for the past two years! The first Christmas I didn't wake up at my mom's house felt a little weird, but I absolutely love opening presents with BF while drinking a few mimosas, and it's one of my favorite new traditions!
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  • We have hot dogs by candlelight on Christmas Eve; it's a tradition from my mom's family.
    this is the best tradition ever.
  • Aww, thanks! Most people look at me weird when I say it.
  • Aww, thanks! Most people look at me weird when I say it.
    NP! It kind of makes me want to do a "Christmas Cookout" =P How fun would that be?!

    We have a patio set that has a gas fire pit... sit around it and drink hot cocoa and grill burgers and hot dogs and corn! YUM!
  • Swazzle said:
    My favorite holiday tradition is for Thanksgiving. We each bring empty pie crusts and fill them with all of the leftovers to make pot pies to enjoy for weeks. It's also nice to not have to worry about cooking so much during the busy holiday season. 
    Love. it. *yoink*
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