Home for the Holidays: Do you have a traditional holiday food?
To get some audience participation, if you will, for our Home for the Holidays week, we thought we’d ask YOU to share about what the holidays are like in your home. On each site, we’ve got a question we’d love for you to answer!
Share your thoughts here in the comments, and then hop to the other sites to jump in on the other holiday-related discussions.
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Most of us associate certain comfort foods with the holidays; that’s just how it is. It may be your grandmother’s plum pudding or mom’s bread stuffing, but it conjures up feelings of homecoming, no matter where you are.
My background is British, so there is always shortbread and mince tarts aplenty. My mother also makes an Italian inspired fruitcake called ‘Panforte’ every year. One of the highlights of the season is getting a thick wedge of it delivered in our Christmas package.
Since starting a family of our own, there are a few dishes Danny and I like to have around every year over the holidays. Tourtiere is a must ( I just made and froze several yesterday!), as is the German fruit and nut loaf, Stollen, for toasting on Christmas morning. We also like our homemade eggnog, with a grating of fresh nutmeg on top, thank you very much.
So that’s my question for you today: Do you have a traditional holiday food in your home?
I can’t wait to hear about your holiday baking or Christmas dinner menu! Do you boast a fruitcake recipe that has been handed down for generations? Do you make anything specific with your children? Is your tradition to buck tradition? Whatever your style, I’d love to hear it.
I have so many dishes that make me think of Christmas meals. Christmas morning: ham and cheese omelets with cinnamon rolls, Christmas cookies: grandma’s sour creams, peanut butter fudge, spritzer cookies, baklava, Christmas dinner: ham, yeast rolls, corn, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole. Morning after, cookies…and sausage breakfast casserole. The list does not stop. I don’t eat like this much anymore, don’t cook like this unless for nostalgia’s sake. But nostalgia is strong and just writing this makes it so amazing. Even coming from a divorced family, where the traditions above are mixed, between families, lines blurred for the adult me! Thanks for sharing and inciting such wonderful memories. Food can do that!
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, you’re right. I think once a year it’s OK to blur the ‘real food’ lines somewhat. 🙂
Christmas morning is always warm cinnamon rolls or monkey bread (almost like cinnamon rolls only you use crescent rolls instead). Christmas dinner is always a traditional turkey but what I love is we use the turkey leftovers to make turkey tetrazzini or turkey chili. I actually love leftovers the best!
We are big Christmas cookie bakers, but the one thing that screams “Christmas morning” to me is my mom’s cranberry-walnut bread with a healthy smear of cream cheese on top. YUM!
Christmas morning our family always loves sausage rolls. A recipe my mother gave to me years ago. As for snacks we always enjoy making cookies together and a few candies like peanut brittle, fudge and peanut butter balls.
My Nana’s warm sticky buns in the morning and a ham dinner for lunch. Now with a family of my own and Mexican/American In-Laws we now have a delicious tamale lunch so I created my own version of Chicken Tortilla Soup that has now become a favorite and a new tradition 3 years strong!
Sounds like a wonderful, nourishing tradition, Carolyn!
It wouldn’t be Christmas without ham (according to my husband).
We change up breakfast, but every holiday meal includes my grandmother’s sweet potato casserole. My mom and I lighten it to drastically reduce the butter, however we keep the topping simple with a plain walnut and brown sugar crust. It is not overly sweet, but very comforting.
cookies, chocolate dipped goodies…I think the sweet things stand out the most because we normally don’t have so many 🙂
For years I’ve made peppermint bark that my grandma showed me how to make when I was in college. It is easy to make, and I give it away to family and friends each year.
We have theme Christmas dinners, we have had Mexican, Thai, Indian etc, but since my parents are French we always have fresh oysters…that is a must!
Well, the last few years I’ve ‘taken over’ the Christmas cookie baking for all sides of the family. From 12 to 23 varieties some years. Thus, on the tray would be favorites from my husband’s Dad, my brother, my mom, etc. However, three years ago my Grandma gave me a Krumkake iron was a tender transition. The gift meant that Grandma was handing over the Krumkake making to me–the cookie on the tray that meant heritage, history, and memories. This year, I’ll teach my new sister-in-law (and friend) how to make these crispy, thin cookies! I’m excited!
It’s a tradition for me to make some of my Grandma’s Swedish rye bread- there are several different varieties, but hers was quite simple- molasses and brown sugar with the rye flour. It’s great toasted with real butter. Last year I started having my kindergartner make it with me and we’ll do it again this year.
On Christmas Eve, we always have a Fondue Day, eating various different kinds of fondue throughout the day, ending the day with a dark chocolate and either vanilla or butterscotch fondue (for our chocolate hater). Some years have featured a Thai peanut fondue, green chili fondue, pizza fondue, and everyone’s favorite, a Japanese meal called shabu-shabu, which is like a broth fondue that you cook thin sliced meat and veges in and then dip in sauces.
Neat idea, Kelly! We will often do a cheese fondue on New Years Eve, followed by a decadent chocolate fondue.
There are a number of cookies and desserts over the holidays that we generally don’t see any other time of the year…and monkey bread on Christmas morning. But what says Christmas to me is having all of us in the same kitchen cooking and laughing. While we get together frequently over the year, usually the prep and cooking is not shared in quite the same way!
Every Christmas eve, right after dinner my husband whips up a breakfast stratta (crusty sourdough French bread, eggs, milk cheese, sausage, mushrooms, etc) and pops it in the fridge. Christmas morning we get up, pop it in the oven, and while we all open presents it bakes and fills the air with yummy smells. A nice hearty breakfast with no fuss!
I love that your husband steps up to the plate on such a busy day! I can just imagine how amazing that must smell. Sausage? Yum!!
When we do have occasion at home, we have traditional foods but sometimes, we try different recipes or even desserts and dishes..Especially when we have visitors, we try our best just to give them new food.
My Mother made the best peanut brittle! For years she made it for me to give as gifts. About a year before she passed, I had her to teach me her tricks so I could make it.
I can say, I finally can make it almost as good as hers and everyone loves it. It is so thick and never sticks to your teeth! I use my Mother’s candy thermometer and think of her! I have to make it every year.
Christmas Eve we always have cioppino with fresh dungenous crab, clams and mussels. Christmas morning is creme brule french toast and dinner used to be Prime Rib, but my new tradition is beef tenderloin. I always bake my mother’s recipe for date nut bars and my children’s favorite kiss cookies along with fudge and chocolate chip cookies and any new treats I’ve discovered to give away as gifts to friends and neighbors.
That sounds absolutely incredible, Carol. I can’t think of anything nicer than a simple, beautiful seafood cioppino.
I love making pizzelles! I think this year I may try dipping them half in chocolate and white chocolate. Yum!
Christmas dinner with our chosen family (the same folks for over twenty years now, often with a few other guests) always starts with my Christmas soup – Mollie Katzen’s Golden Pear Soup. It’s a light and simple but rich-tasting concoction of sweet potatoes cooked with cinnamon sticks and then blended with poached pears. I have occasionally made the recipe at other times, but it never seems quite right then, as it just tastes like Christmas to all of us.
Every Christmas Eve I make a huge lasagna for my extended family in a special pan my mother bought just for this years ago. A big Italian meal makes for a nice break from the more traditional foods we tend to eat from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day.
Our traditional foods at Christmas that I will not let the season pass without making is my
grandmother’s fruit cake. This isn’t that brick most of us might know, this is a bit of bourbon-infused heaven.
and my grandfather’s egg nog. Again, not that chemically tasting stuff at the store, but real rum-infused heaven :D.
Huh, I’m not a liquor lover, but these are must-haves.
Our traditional dinner is roast beef with yorkshire pudding and whatever sides I come up with for Christmas dinner.
I’m with you on the boozy must-haves, although since I’m pregnant, I’ll be passing this year, sadly! Double the Yorkshire Pudding for me, consequently.
mine would be from my mother’s side of the family. mississippi fruit cake. it’s unlike any other fruitcake i have ever eaten. it’s very moist with no candied fruit or citron in it. if i were to give out the recipe to anyone other than my children or grandchildren both my mother and grandmother would roll over in their graves.
My family also makes Stollen and Pfefferkuchen each year! Another must is German-style cooked red cabbage with our Christmas meal. Yum!
We always have cheese fondue on Christmas Eve, and after the candlelight service we finish up with chocolate fondue!
Christmas morning we normally have quiche and monkey bread, and the highlight is fresh-squeezed orange juice. It is amazing how many oranges it takes to get two carafes of juice!
Every year for christmas I make a corn casserole. I have never seen the recipe anywhere and boy have I looked. It’s made with whole corn, creamed corn, eggs, sweetened condesnsed milk, salt and pepper and melted butter–put it in a greased casserole dish, top with crushed crackers mixed with melted butter and bake at 350 until firm. This is my now 29 year old son’s favorite dish. Once when he was about 20 he called me from college (200 miles away) and asked me for a favor. Of course I said SURE; then he asked me to mail him a corn casserole! After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing; I explained to him you can’t mail perisable food in the mail. We made an agreement that I would bake him the dish the following Saturday and he would drive home to get it. I surprised him with a whole christmas dinner. He made a plate ate it–packed up all the leftovers and went back to school. This dish means even more to us now that he comes home less and less.
What a great story, Linda! I love it and would do the same thing for my own boys.
My husband always makes his Grandmother’s homemade eggnog recipe – minus the quart of bourbon! It’s delicious and creamy and definitely only for the holiday season.
We have a famous sugar cookie recipe – everyone’s favorite!!
When I was a kid ( a loooooong time ago) my Grandma made these simple bittersweet chocolates rolled in coconut. That candy is what says Christmas to me, food-wise. Anyone make these? I wish I’d asked her for the recipe…….
I remember enjoying Pillsbury orange rolls a lot of Christmas mornings. My mom was never big on from scratch so I think it surprises her how much I cook. Definitely looking to start all kinds of fun new food traditions with my kids – making and decorating cookies etc Maybe one of these years we’ll even make a gingerbread house!
I come from a small family, so instead of doing a huge turkey dinner on Christmas, we started a tradition of having steak and salmon for Christmas dinner. My mother buys these awesome NY Strip steaks from our local butcher, and we grill the salmon and the steak outside. Wonderful!
My sisters, mother and I (along with my four kiddos) gather and bake cookies. It takes from sun-up well past sun-down and we bake and bake and bake. My favorite cookie we make, Swedish Broomstick Cookies! DELICIOUS!
First, baking: every year I make home-made ginger snaps. This year I don’t know if I’ll manage that, but I do want to make shortbread. Probably this weekend.
Next, our Christmas dinner. Christmas Eve dinner is nothing in particular, but on Christmas Day we pull out the stops:
Roast prime rib
Yorkshire pudding
Four-cheese scalloped potatoes
Maple-glazed carrots
Creamed spinach
There usually is no room for dessert.
Growing up we spent Christmas Eve at my grandmother’s home- she is Polish and among her traditional buffett was Polish sausage and sauerkraut- my favorite. I kept the tradition after I marry and luckily my husband identifies with his German heritage so we have a new traditional Christmas Eve meal: sausage, sauerkraut, red cabbage, potato pancakes with applesauce, spaetzle, various veggie sides, and mulled wine (kids have apple cider).
My husband’s mother and grandmother bake cookies and other holiday treats starting the day after Thanksgiving- I took up the tradition to honor them.
We have a whole couple days full of traditional foods during the holidays. My Grandma’s cinnamon buns to munch on in the evenings, everyone’s favorite Christmas cookies, lemon chicken and rice soup early Christmas Eve, pizza and chicken wings late Christmas Eve, gooey monkey bread Christmas morning, an assortment of dips and spreads with crackers and veggies through the day on Christmas (same ones every year), and our Christmas dinner: roast pork with Norwegian pork patties, red cabbage, browned-butter potatoes, Brussels sprouts. . .
pumpkin pie!!
I haven’t started my own traditional holiday food, but I always love when my mom makes Rum Balls and Russian Tea Cookies. This is the only time of year she makes them.
My mother always made cardamom bread and krumkake, as well as orange sticky buns on Christmas Eve (my father’s birthday). The Swedes do baking just right. 🙂
My hubby and I both grew up in the Southwest, so we always have Mexican food for Christmas. The funny thing is my family does “traditional” food (ham, mashed potatoes, etc) on Christmas Eve and then tamales, chiles rellenos, enchiladas on Christmas Day. His family does it backwards. So, depending on which way we spend the holidays, we either get Mexican twice or traditional twice.
Ours are “grand-ma’s rolls”. We call them that because they are the rolls that my Grandma always made for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now that she is no longer with us, we carry on the tradition (plus they are super yummy!!- Thanks Grandma!!)
My background is Swedish and we always have rice pudding with a hidden almond. Whoever finds the almond in their serving gets a wish! 🙂
We have two Christmas Eve dinners that we alternate every year. We have cavatini, made with peppers, mushrooms, and beef or we do an italian fondue made with red wine and tomatoes.
We make chocolate fudge, baklava, toffee, and iced sugar cookies every year on a dedicated baking day. Shortly after we met my husband and I began our own tradition of celebrating Christmas Eve with a Seven Fish Supper for good luck (an Italian tradition, though we’re not Italian)–we liked the idea and so we happily embraced it. Sadly, neither of our families have a dedicated feast for Christmas Day, it seems to change every year.
We have lots of food traditions for the holidays! Banana bread, grapefruit on Christmas (or your citrus salad from last year!), peanut butter/chocolate balls, and the real family tradition, lefsa, which is a Norwegian potato dish, basically like a tortilla, rolled up with butter and salt. YUM! It’s a huge mess, but the guys always cook and it’s a delicious treat. 🙂
Mmm, it all sounds great, Nicole. I need to make that citrus salad again, too.
I brought Angel Thumbprint Cookies (traditional cookie for Christmas Eve) to my marriage and my husband brought Nusecke, a german hazelnut deliciousness. Christmas wouldn’t be the same without either one now!
I’m a Kentucky girl, and every year I’m charged with bringing a traditional Derby Cheese torte to our celebrations for both sides of the family for an appetizer. (It’s soooo good!
My Grandma’s sugar cookies taste just like Christmas. And of course gingerbread. It’s become a tradition to bake them with my friend and her family and it’s so much fun. My husband’s mother is Italian and we live in Little Italy in our city so there’s always panetonne aplenty. Last year we started having fondue on Christmas Eve. We weren’t sure we would keep it as a tradition or not but as soon as we pulled out the advent calendar my daughter pointed at the number 24 and said, “That’s when we’re having fondue night!!!” So I guess a Christmas Eve fondue will stay as a tradition after all 🙂
The one thing we have every holiday we call “Grandma Rolls” its a recipe for sticky buns that was published by Rhodes way way back when? I don’t even know. My grandma used to make them for us every Christmas Eve and we wold enjoy licking the caramel off our fingers Christmas morning. I can still picture her gnarled fingers cutting the cold bread dough. I make them to honor her memory but I make them year round on special days in addition to Christmas. And I also make my two special recipe cookies, amazing chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal chocolate covered cherry cookies. YUM!
Oh! And how could I forget! Rice pudding with an almond hidden in it. Most of my family doesn’t even like it (my grandma used to put red and green food colouring in it to make it festive so it’s hard to blame them) but we still eat it so we can get the prize. And then there was the year my aunt cheated and put her own almond in her pudding. And the year everyone but one person got an almond and the person who didn’t get it was the winner.
I forgot to add my husband’s side of the family tradition – they’re Dutch so we have stroop waffles and chocolate letters 🙂