Christmas Food

[Aliantha]

Yeah...a bit like some of the cheap generic brand easter goodies we get here I suspect.

I guess I could always try one of the ornaments and see how they taste.

[ZenGum]

I just hope your place is air-conditioned, Ali. Melted chocolate on the carpet would suck.

[Aliantha]

We don't have carpet. Tiled throughout.

If we had carpet the house would smell because of the cats...and be more trouble to keep clean.

[Trilby]

One year I made these German cookies that literally took DAYS to make.


they were freaking awful.

[Aliantha]

I'm not too fond of the German Stollen cakes either. They're always so dry. I prefer just to make gingerbread cookies instead. Much nicer.

[Aliantha]

Cake day today.

[Aliantha]

The cake is in the oven now, along with 8 fruitcake muffins and one V small cake which may or may not end up being a gift.

[Aliantha]

OK, here's my mini christmas cake (naked) and 7 of the 8 muffins. I had to do a taste test of course, and it was yum yum yummy.

[Sundae]

Ooooh!
Looks lovely. I'd eat it as it is, before being contaminated by marzipan and icing

I've come here from the peanut thread, for a bit of reminiscing, because I realised Christmases past were not the same as Christmases present.

I've said before, and no doubt will again - we grew up poor in the 70s. Not dirt poor, not below the poverty line poor, but working class poor, council estate poor. We had a holiday every year, and that was more important than having a car (we hired one to go camping). We shopped on the market, dragging fruit and veg over a mile in a shopping trolley rather than get the bus. We didn't eat out unless Dad's brothers came to see us, and they paid - we didn't have take-aways until I was at least 10 and that was only Mum & Dad as a real treat.

But Christmas... Christmas!
Mum & Dad were part of the church Christmas Hamper group. I didn't realise until years afterwards that some people gave to the fund who didn't actually want a hamper. So although my parents used it as a weekly savings fund (Dad was paid weekly in cash) they effectively got more than they paid in, in goods. For years I remember Christmas really arriving with Father Harris dropping off the hamper. He'd always stay for a cup of tea, but I think he stayed to witness our excitement on opening it. He's still in touch with my parents now.

I can't explain how amazing it was without sounding like I was a starving orphan. We always had enough to eat, but this was pre-packaged food. Food in exciting tins and packets and boxes. Bird's Trifle, fruit cocktail, tinned ham, tinned pineapple, Christmas pudding, shortbread, tinned hotdogs (which no-one ate at the time, but that's another story).

Over Christmas there was another bonanza of food. There was food for the taking, eat what you want. Always nuts out (as previously mentioned) but also sausage rolls - tray after tray of them. Mince pies. sliced turkey - help yourself, even between meals! Leftover roast potatoes - eaten cold in pre-microwave days, but still good. As we grew older there were also leftover fish dishes - prawns, salmon, scampi. All available in the fridge. And Pickles! Pickled onions, red cabbage, piccalilli, beetroot. Cheese! Always big cheese eaters, we excelled ourselves at Christmas - Stilton, Brie, Camenbert, Boursin (well it was the 70s).

The amazing thing - and I can't stress it enough - was that it was all available and you could help yourself. Even bread, which was closely monitored the rest of the year. There were a couple of loaves in the shed (attached to the house, not a spidery thing at the bottom of the garden) where they froze quite effectively before we had a freezer.

It's not the same now of course. You need a certain type of deprivation to glory in gluttony. But it shines in my memory anyway, like a slice of cherry in a fruit cake.

[Aliantha]

i didn't know sausage rolls were christmas food in the UK. I can't remember ever having them over here for that purpose.

Most of the other stuff you mentioned we've always had though. Even though our Christmases are blazing hot here, we've usually had a roast pork and some kind of bird along with ham and fish dishes. Roast veges, sweets on the table such as coconut ice, fudge, white christmas, rumballs (all of which I'll be making again this year) and of course nuts. For us when we were kids it was the cashews which were such a treat. Mum used to get the mixed bag of salted nuts and us kids would pick out the cashews because they were so expensive and we didn't have them besides at christmas. My family was middle class when I was a kid. Dad was a manager of an electrical workshop, so I guess we had it better than lots of others, but not as good as plenty either. I was lucky though. Our Christmases were always awesome and I guess I have just tried to keep the traditions going for my kids. They seem to like it although they have life much easier than I did (as is generally the case) so a lot of the treat items aren't such treats for them as they were for me.

[Undertoad]

You 'ad it lucky! We 'ad to live in a pond, work down at t' mill for 23 hours every day...

[Trilby]

The more I hear of other people and their families, the more I know my family is whack.

last year for Christmas we had tacos! My 17 year old son said, "when you guys said you were having tacos for Christmas I thought you were kidding!"

This Christmas, hot roast beef sandwiches, hash brown casserole and assorted other side items.

[Aliantha]

It is weird Bri, although Dazza and I went to have Christmas lunch with his mum a few years ago and we were served beef stroganoff which I thought was weird, then the next year we went for Christmas with her the day before and had take away chinese. lol It was bloody weird to me. Pretty standard for them though apparently.

I think that's why Dazza has realized Christmas isn't just another day anymore.

[Sundae]

We now have a Boxing Day tradition of having salmon en croute and a prawn ring. Because my SIL really loves it and they usually come over on Boxing Day. Boxing Day always did have a bit of a fishy theme (I was cajoled into making salmon & cheese flan every year from 15 until I left) but it's a definite tradition now.

Not that I'm complaining, I love it too.
Although it's Boxing Day lunch I like best - jacket potatoes, sliced turkey, baked beans and pickles. There's something so simple and yet so wholesome about it.

I forgot to mention sweets on my Christmas food list. Again, it was the only tim we were allowed to eat them almost totally at will. Even at Easter we were monitored - especially after the year my brother went to bed with a headache and sicked chocolate up all over his duvet.

We always had pick n mix in a big Roses tin. Which was of course cheaper than buying Roses, but Dad always sneaked some in anyway. They came from Woolworth's, which had a great selection in those days, catering mostly for old ladies. They still do apparently, but the real money is in the kid's section, where you're charged an arm and a leg for things your parents bought as penny sweets. Still, I suppose they've gone up in line with house prices in the last 20 years!

We never made our own sweets (too messy, too expensive according to Mum) but we did make shortbread and mince pies.

BTW I don't know if sausage rolls are proper Christmas food outside our house. It's just that they're quick, easy and self contained. I'll take a photo of them this Christmas to prove it

[Pie]

SG, I had to google "prawn ring" -- I was imagining some sort of shrimp-fritter-doughnut thing!