Christmas Food Traditions!

[AmateisGal]

I love how everyone has such different types of food for the holidays. Wow. After reading these, my family is rather boring! For Christmas Day, we usually just do the Thanksgiving meal all over again - including the homemade raviolis. Oh - and my grandmother's homemade cherry cheesecake. That is also a must.

And after reading some of the descriptions of fruit cake, I think I may have to try one...

 

[The Outlaw Kyle]

Every year when my wife and I go get the Christmas tree, after we get back she makes a Cranberry pie. This all arose during our first Christmas when I said that I loved cranberries so much that I'd eat them in a pie. She said there was no such thing. Well 2 min. later the internets had found us 10 recipes. It takes a fair amount of sugar, and a lot of almond flavoring to get those tart berries under control, but put in my wifes ol' fashioned pie crust, it's as close as I'm like to get to perfection in this life. That's the only hard a fast food tradition with my family.

For my holiday office pot lucks I cook some polish sausage. It's from this old polish deli on the west side that hasn't changed since about 1952. Only cash and check!! Par boil for 15-20 min the night before and cut into 1 1/2" chunks. Then the next morning I put it in a crock pot with sour kraut and a decent craft lager (this year I used Atwater Pilsner and Bells Lager of the Lakes) I'd love to try a porter, but the sausage really tastes the best with lagers. I had several compliments on it, but in all honesty the work was all done by craftsmen in meat and beer, I'm merely the assembler.

 

[trettiotals]

God jul til dig ocksa

My parents made two large british style fruit cakes one year, a couple of months before Christmas, and put them in the basement to "mature". But when Cristmas came, we could only find one of them, which was delicious. A year or two later, we re-discovered the second cake, and that was wonderfull! Really, really tasty.

Fun to see how many of you who eat something Scandinavian in origins. And, if anyone of you have to eat Lutefisk, here's my advice: All Norwegians know that the whole point of Lutefisk is the side-dishes! (Bacon, mushy peas and such.) The fish itself is just....strange.

In my family we eat reindeer, as I said, and that is only traditional to my family. (Not typical Norwegian.) Before dinner, we go to the graveyard and put lanterns on my grandparents graves. Many people light candles on their loved one's graves, so the graveyard is so beautiful in the dark.

Then it's dinner, and we start with listening to the Jule-evangeliet, (Christmas Gospel, Lukas' description of the birth of Jesus), read by one of the family. Everybody dresses up for dinner, like you would do for a nice dinner party.

After dinner we do the joining of hands, and walking around the tree singing hymns and Cristmas songs. After that, we open the presents, which are kept under the tree.

The next day, (25th) we eat pinnekjoett, (smoked, salted and dried lamb), at my Grandmothers. This is also a day we dress nice, no jammies allowed!

I really love my families Christmas tradtitions. (Of which this was only a brief summary. We have many more, but I won't bore you any longer! )And now I can hardly wait for Christmas Eve. This year, I even have a brand new nephew (my first!) to celebrate with!

God Jul, everybody!

 

[trettiotals]

Sorry Flieger. No I did not - till now taht is. (My god you swedes eat more than we do!)
But my description was of a very danish christmas anyway. So I guesse no harm done...
God jul til dig ogs?•.

God jul till ni tva ocksa

 

[Spitfire]

God jul down under, trettiotals. Besides being 30 - whats the story here?( fftopic: )

 

[trettiotals]

God jul down under, trettiotals. Besides being 30 - whats the story here?( fftopic: )

Sjalv har jag inte fyllit 30 ars alder, an... namnet ar pga jag bara tycker om stil, klader fran trettiotalet

Med spraket? Precis som i skandinavien: dar ar alla tvungna att lara engelska i skolan... vi i australien maste lara svenska...

 

[Spitfire]

lol lol lol lol didn't know that.

 

[Helen Troy]

Trettiotalls: Det er morsomt! L?¶rer dere virkelig svensk p?• skolen!? Eller lurer du oss grundig n?•?

fftopic: Sorry, everybody, for the off topic. But since you can only PM that's been here for a while, tis is the only option.

 

[Nathan Flowers]

The one food that we always make each Christmas is hot chocolate. If anybody is interested, here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup semi-sweet real chocolate chips - Use good stuff, like
Ghiradelli. I have tried it with the cheap stuff and it tastes okay,
but not nearly as good as the good stuff. Good semisweet chocolate
makes all the difference.

1 cup regular sugar
1 cup water
2 pinches of salt
11 cups milk
1.5 quarts of heavy whipping cream
4-5 teaspoons vanilla extract (to taste)




How to cook:

You're going to need a big pot. Not quite turkey frying size, but a
good size, since you're going to end up with close to a gallon of the
stuff.

In that really big pot melt chocolate chips over really low heat,
stirring CONSTANTLY. Stir in sugar, water and salt into the melted
chocolate. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wire
whisk, until the mixture comes to a full boil. Boil,
stirring constantly for 3 min, and don't allow it to burn. It will be
very dark in color.

Stir in milk and whipping cream. Continue cooking over med. heat,
stirring occasionally, until heated through (15 - 20 min.) DO NOT BOIL
Add vanilla. Beat with wire whisk until frothy.

Pour into some big mugs. If you want, add 1 to 2 tbsp liquor (I prefer Maker's Mark) into each serving. Top each serving with some whipped cream if you want, but its pretty rich already with all that heavy whipping cream.

You can cut the recipe in half really easily, if you want to do a
trial run for 5-6 people at first. The main thing is to make sure that
you don't burn that initial melted chocolate-water-sugar-salt mix.
Boil, but stir constantly during the boiling, and only do it for 3
minutes before adding the milk and heavy cream. It helps to have
another person helping you to get the milk and heavy cream ready while you are constantly stirring the dark mixture.

I can't take credit for this recipe. I found it on the Internet back
in 1996 or 1997, and I can't find it anywhere now. It's a shame, too,
because it is really quite good.

 

[trettiotals]

Trettiotalls: Det er morsomt! L?¶rer dere virkelig svensk p?• skolen!? Eller lurer du oss grundig n?•?

fftopic: Sorry, everybody, for the off topic. But since you can only PM that's been here for a while, tis is the only option.

Jag skojar bara

Tyvarr ar sprak (alla sprak, vilket sprak som helst... samt engelska ) inte alls viktigt i australiensiska skolor.

Forklaringen ar att jag alskar sprak och forsoker lara mig de sjalv

 

[Ecuador Jim]

Oddly, I tend to have pickled herring. My grandfather and other relatives eat it around Christmas, but my immediate family (mom,dad,sisters) hate the stuff. I keep my grandfather's tradition going by stopping by IKEA and picking some up for myself. It sounds strange, but it is really tasty.

The great Norwegian tradition continues! My grandparents always pushed that one....not a big fan myself.

Stuffed shells on Christmas eve was always my parent's tradition and prime rib on Christmas day. Not very Norwegian or Scottish, I must say.

 

[Hawkcigar]

My wife has a tradition of making peanut butter cookies with chocolate stars (I think she calls them "peanut blossoms") every Christmas eve. In fact, she is in the kitchen doing that very thing right now. I wonder if the needs a taste tester?