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Your Favorite Holiday Food Tradition
| Meet the Blogger | More Posts by Elizabeth Beal
No other time of year is so richly steeped in tradition than the holiday season, and lucky for us, lots of those traditions involve cooking, eating and sharing great food.
We’ve all got memorable dishes and must-make recipes connected to this time of year. Maybe it’s Uncle Charlie’s extra-strong eggnog or Grandma Ruth’s red cabbage sauté. How about your own famous scalloped potatoes or a special-batch baklava you make every New Year’s Eve?
We want to know about your treasured holiday food tradition. Tell us about it in the comments section below by December 21 and we’ll pick a winner at random to receive a $50 Whole Foods Market® gift card.
To get in the spirit, we asked some Team Members to share their favorite food traditions.
From Mara:
"Our family is part Puerto Rican and we celebrate Christmas each year with paella. My mother-in-law spends the entire day cooking and makes her own sofrito as the base seasoning for the rice. While I love Christmas dinner, my favorite is leftover paella — it seems to even be more flavorful the next day."
From Anna:
"When invited out on Christmas I ALWAYS bring a huge green salad with lots of crispy fresh veggies with mandarin sections and dried cranberries. I use a light lime dressing. It is a tangy wonder that offsets all of the heavy food we love to eat this time of year."
From Jennifer:
"The children in our Chinese-American family insist on traditional holiday food – stuffing, ham, turkey, cranberry sauce, casseroles — the works! A few years back, one of my cousins who isn’t big on cooking ordered noodles from a Chinese restaurant as his contribution. Now our holiday meals aren't complete without some takeout Chinese noodles — it's the one dish at our table guaranteed not to have any leftovers."
From Elizabeth:
"For the past four years, my nephew and I have baked molasses cookies while listening to the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. The cookies have gotten tastier as he's gotten older, and now we know the songs by heart."
From Betsy:
"It's an unofficial Jewish tradition to go out for Chinese food on Christmas, so last Christmas Eve, my husband, in-laws and I decided to try a hole-in-the-wall Chinese barbecue joint. We enjoyed an amazing feast of Peking duck, hot and sour soup, fried rice, Chinese broccoli and all of the fixings. It was so good we now plan to ring in Christmas every year with Chinese barbecue."
From Allison:
"My husband’s family in Houston does tamales and chili every Christmas Eve. My mother-in-law makes the chili and the tamales come from our favorite Mexican restaurant down the street, and we open presents with plenty of hot sauce on the side."
What’s your favorite food tradition of the holiday season? Share it with us by December 21 for the chance to win a $50 Whole Foods Market gift card. We can’t wait to hear about your festive feasting traditions!
The fine print: No purchase necessary. Promotion ends December 21, 2011. Must be a legal resident of the US or Canada (except in Quebec, where it is void) age 18 or older to participate. Taxes on prize, if applicable, are the responsibility of the winner. Employees of Whole Foods Market, Inc., are not eligible. Void where prohibited.
1,104 Comments
Comments
My family is your very typical (but unique!) big, loud and obnoxious Italian bunch, but we modified the Seven Fishes to about four and concentrate on making them worth the zillions of calories. I have to say, though, that my favorite meal of Christmas time isn't the grand Christmas Eve dinner but the Christmas morning breakfast when my mom makes homemade Monkey Bread.
12/17/2011 7:21:50 PM CST
No Christmas is complete without our family's traditional scungilli salad, a luscious mix of calamari rings and sometimes the tentacles, slices of conch ( the scungilli), and shrimp. The fish marinate in lots of fresh lemon juice, olive oil, sliced garlic, and red pepper flakes. The longer it marinates the better. It's served cold as a first course to our king crab and linguine extravaganza on Christmas Eve!
12/17/2011 4:54:25 PM CST
We always buy a whole roast pork on Christmas eve and any very special occassions,and we always cook pansit which is a white rice noddles with chicken pcs.and vegetables mix all together as a filipino tradition,with a dessert of sweet rice cakes.
12/17/2011 6:21:59 PM CST
My family eats fried oysters for breakfast every Christmas morning. Yum!
12/17/2011 6:09:07 PM CST
I took piano lessons for many years growing up and always played Christmas songs in the family living room. The family sang along to my fumbling music while sitting in front of the fire and sipping egg nog. This year, my mom and dad came to Denver to celebrate the season early. We were enjoying downtown where there are pianos decorated in winter themes. Spontaneously, I sat down and played a tune. Soon, my family and everyone around was singing Christmas tunes - again, to my fumbling music. It was an old tradition reincarnated and was a fabulous twist on an old theme...
12/17/2011 6:10:05 PM CST
Our traditional Chanukah treats are Beignets; we keep frying them all through the dreidl games.
12/17/2011 6:51:38 PM CST
My mother-in-law makes the BEST whole wheat cinnamon rolls every Christmas morning. I always look forward to them. They're delightfully sweet...but not TOO sweet.
12/17/2011 7:54:12 PM CST
We celebrate our Norwegian Heritage every Christmas. We have lefse and lutefisk. It isn't the tastiest dish in the world and we don't all like to eat it but we have so much fun trying it and laughing around the dinner table.
12/18/2011 9:39:11 PM CST
My favorite holiday tradition is making sugar cookies with my family. Every year since I can remember, my brother decorates only the cookies he eats, my dad just participates in the taste testing, and my mom and me roll out the dough and decorate the cookies for Christmas.
12/18/2011 12:27:54 PM CST
Our entire family makes and decorates Christmas sugar cookies. We judge the most creative, the prettiest, the craziest- any category we think appropriate. We eat some that night, the rest are part of dessert on Christmas day. We finish them between Christmas and New Year's. My son-in-law has quickly become the most adept at rolling the dough! Not bad for only two years into the tradition!
12/18/2011 5:55:20 PM CST
Frying and gobbling up latkes followed by Chinese food and movies (with all the other Boulder Jews & Buddhists on Xmas eve). No standing in line!
12/18/2011 7:27:57 PM CST
A tradition that we started over 15 years ago was to give my father a crown roast of pork for his christmas gift. He had always talked about wanting to try one and so instead of getting him another pair of pajamas, we tried the roast one christmas. It was a hit, and dad passed away 10 years ago and we still enjoy the roast every christmas day and toast to him!
12/18/2011 8:01:03 PM CST
My mom or I, or both of us, make chocolate chip oatmeal drop cookies. They are the embodiment of my childhood in cookie form! One whiff of them baking in the oven transports back in time.
12/18/2011 8:53:35 PM CST
It never seems like the holiday in my house until my mom bakes up a batch of her christmas fudge. I love helping her and then we pack up some for gifts and eat the rest. Other holiday foods are lumpy mashed potatoes and lots of green beans.
12/18/2011 10:30:24 PM CST
In addition to the traditional cut out sugar cookies, I always make a several batches of cheese crackers that we cut into shapes, bake and decorate for a savory addition to all the sweets. YUM!!
12/19/2011 9:52:40 AM CST
My memories of my grandparents home in New Orleans revolve around the foods and aromas from my grandmother's kitchen. She always had an assortment of cookies, including date pecan pinwheels, anise meringues, pecan spice, vanilla wafers and sugar cookies. We would have shrimp and stuffed crabs for appetizers. Then main course was always a medium rare prime rib from my grandfather's meat market on Magazine street. Mirlitons stuffed with shrimp for a side.
My parents had continued to create the same wonderful foods and now I will continue the tradition with my family.
12/19/2011 7:39:01 AM CST
I don't eat meat so my favorite dish around the holidays is Scallops with Bechamelle sauce and good gruyere cheese. we also have a cheese plate with Gorgonzola and pears. sometimes I make belgian endive salad with Bleu d'Auvergne and walnuts.
12/19/2011 9:49:58 AM CST
My family comes over for a prime rib dinner. We then make a birthday cake for Jesus and read the story of Christ's birth and sing happy birthday and the kids get to blow out the candles. I want my kids to grow up knowing the true meaning of Christmas and this is a great Christmas tradition, plus they get chocolate cake!
12/19/2011 9:44:49 AM CST
I love to cook and tend to make different kinds of food every year because I can never settle on just one thing (cracked crab one year, roasted beef tenderloin the next, seafood-heavy Italian dishes this year) . However my mom, who doesn't cook, happily puts out her go-to appetizer every single year on Christmas eve: A block of cream cheese covered with red pepper jelly, served with crackers. No matter what kind of meal we're having that evening, it doesn't feel like Christmas eve until everyone starts digging into "Mom's Christmas Special", which is actually quite yummy despite its simplicity. It's the only holiday food she makes, and she's adorably proud of it. We like to have it with cocktails and/or champagne.
12/19/2011 10:54:26 AM CST
My mother is Jewish and my father is Catholic so our holiday traditions have always been a little, well, nontraditional. As the years have passed and diets have changed, we've tried it all, but the one constant has been my dad's favorite cherry wink cookies. We've tweaked them a bit; vegan-ized them, substituted out the sugar, you name it, but the holidays just aren't complete without those moist delicious nut and date cookies rolled in corn flakes and topped with a cherry! Happy Holidays!
12/19/2011 12:27:15 PM CST
My oldest boy is autistic and on a restricted diet. We are learning that he likes to help out in the kitchen. So our tradition now is to make grain free cookies! (almond flour!)
12/19/2011 1:06:37 PM CST
Being from the south we have LOTS of food related traditions but one of my most fond is of making pecan candy with my mimi (grandmother). The sight of her 5ft tall frame standing on a stool over the stove. The smell of carmelizing sugar and butter filling the house. Getting popped with the back of a wooden spoon for trying to snag already cooled pieces off the counter before all of the bags for family were finished. Absolutely nothing better!
12/21/2011 12:43:22 PM CST
When I was younger we'd drive up north to the UP to see my Grandparents. There was always a ton of snow because she lived acrossed the street from a hillside park sledding a big part of these holiday visits.
We'd come in from the cold and put our gloves on top the warm stove to dry out. We'd have coffee with warm milk and fresh warm Nisua, a Finnish cardamom bread.
Just the smell of cardamom is enough to remind me of my Grandma's kitchen in the UP.
12/20/2011 10:41:54 AM CST
This time of year I am a huge sucker for frosted sugar cookies and chocolate walnut fudge!!! mmmmmm! Can eat both until I am sick! LOL
12/20/2011 9:04:01 AM CST
Growing up my mother would always make a traditional Chanukah dinner. To this day she uses the same recipe to make her potato latkes and every year they seem to get better and better. She doesn't take any shortcuts and puts her heart into each batch. She hand grates 10 potatoes and 3 onions. She then drains the mixture and adds six eggs, garlic, salt, pepper, a cup of flour, and some baking powder. This is followed by several hours of frying in a skillet on the stove top. I cant imagine celebrating any other way! Now that my sister and I are older the three of us compete every year to see who makes the best batch.
12/20/2011 12:27:55 PM CST