Everyday Canvas

Munching through the Holidays

Prompt: It's the holiday season, what recipe are you known for amongst your friends and family?

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Truth be told, I don’t serve large family dinners anymore since the family has scattered all over the globe, but I do take care when I prepare anything for the small kernel of who is left.

I found out, through the years, holidays are not the time to experiment as far as the food is concerned. At a holiday dinner, the expected legacy dishes are the best. Those of us cooking hostesses have to make sure to serve what our family members like or we’ll get “the look.” It is possible, however, to introduce a new dish on the side as long as we make sure all the tried-and-true ones are on the table.

My family, I think, likes my baking the most, especially home-made breads from scratch, small tea cakes, and a few other pastries and snacking goodies. My kids always praised my soups; the older one’s pick has been the Manhattan clam chowder, and the younger son likes the yellow-pea soup and by proxy so does his wife. My husband will eat anything and everything, especially if the food has potatoes in, but more than that, I think he likes my service, which is almost immediate. Whenever we go out to a restaurant, he complains that they take so long to bring food to the table.

During the holiday months, I rarely experiment, or do fancy work--for example, use gizmos for pitting cherries--but I do make my own cranberry sauce, which listening to the cranberries pop is a lot of fun, and I use the oven a lot to make several dishes at the same time. After all, if things don’t turn out as well, there’s always the spirits in bottles to spirit people up.

Having said that, I do take care of some little niceties, such as grinding coffee beans fresh for each time I make coffee and using organic food stuffs, if or when the organics are available.

My experience is, the easier and simpler the food is to make, the likelier it will be applauded. Surely, I won’t let my family in on the secret that the meal was a cinch to prepare while I am basking under the sun of easy glory.