The holiday meal isn't complete without . . .

What item or items do you require for your meal to really be a "correct" traditional holiday meal? I'm talking Thanksgiving or Christmas, here. The two meals (at least in my family) tend to be very similar.

There's the turkey, stuffing (or "dressing" if you must), mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberries, and what else? And what sort of cranberries? White potatoes or sweet? Candied or mashed? Some people in Maryland even serve sauerkraut with their turkey. :P

For my family, it was always white mashed potatoes and turkey gravy. It was always real fresh cranberries, microwaved in a glass Pyrex bowl or cooked on the stove with sugar and water. (You use less water if you're microwaving it.) Only recently has mom started with a sweet potato/marshmallow/nuts dish. A nice addition, I think.

Since I was a teenager I've been making a Cranberry Nut Bread for both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. I'll copy you the recipe out of the Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery if anyone's interested. It's made with orange juice.

As I said on another thread, my father's meal isn't complete without creamed onions.

Anybody else?

Aside from the requisite items you posted, our table is not complete without "Morad's Pickle Bowl".

We spent most of my growing up years living in Kuwait, and Morad was our houseboy who came everday to help my mother.

The day before we left to come back to the states, he tearfully brought us a beautiful purple glass bowl which sits in another bowl of beautiful filigreed silver. He was emphatic that the bowl was from beautiful Persia, not to be mistaken with the country that it had become.

We use it every year to hold bread and butter pickles on our holiday table, and make a special toast and rememberance to our friend.

"Real Cranberries"...you know, the kind that slide out of the can. No Thanksgiving dinner would be complete without it.

Mincemeat pie.
Pumpkin pie.

Cold turkey sandwiches at midnight.

At our house, we need to serve no fewer than three different veggies as sides, and later, either freshly baked gingerbread or a cobbler or pumpkin pie.

Thanksgiving would be home baked pumpkin and pecan pie. Christmas is home made chopped chicken liver only time of year my wife will make it for me. She absolutely abhors the stuff. Rest of the meals are traditional fare Turkey in November and Baked Ham in December.

Thanksgiving just wouldn't be the same without my wife's Corn Pudding . This is an old family recipe that lives on in our home at holiday time.

For our family the holidays are not complete without congealed salads, chocolate, coconut, lemon cream pies.

Our holidays aren't complete without too much food and champagne, my mother accidentally burning, stabbing, or tripping me, and homemade rolls forgotten in the oven until the meal's over.

Pretzel salad, a dessert made by my grandmother. It involves Jello, whipped cream, and a pretzel crust. Delicious. I want some right now.

Howard just reminded me of corn pudding, another dish made by my grandmother. Took awhile to grow on me, but now I really like it.

Our Thanksgiving dinners required roast turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, mashed rutabagas, jellied cranberry sauce, candied yams, fresh apple cider, pumpkin pie and whipped cream. Appetizers were always Ritz crackers topped with anchovy paste and the same crackers topped with rolled anchovies stuffed with capers.

Mashed rutabagas! My English hubby makes those, too. As well as mashed parsnips, and brussels sprouts. For him, Christmas dinner must have these ingredients, as Boxing Day (the day after Christmas where people in the service industry such as postmen, milkmen, and the like get "boxes" of tips for a holiday bonus) requires the dish known as Bubble and Squeak. This consists of a revolting mash of fried leftover vegetables, which doesn't make the required squeaking noise unless it contains brussels sprouts. Unfortunately, that also causes it to emit a fragrance not very dissimilar from farts.

Turkey deboned and stuffed with a cornbread sage and pecan stuffing braised (and then browned), giblet gravy, corn pudding, creamed pearl onions and peas, collards with country ham, cranberry orange relish (fresh), mashed potatoes, and a small dish of curried pumpkin. For the ending, anything but pumpkin pie-- usually a choc and pecan one.

For Thanksgiving, pumpkin cranberry bread and pumpkin soup---delicious! For Christmas, red velvet cake, so festive with the red cake and white cream cheesee frosting.

The holidays aren't the holidays without a bread stuffing made with Bell's Seasonings - baked inside the bird, of course - and figgie pudding. The figgie pudding is from a family recipe that's over 100 years old (I've even bought the URL www.figgiepudding.com and hope to someday sell it via the web.....any venture capitalists out there interested?....

Scalloped Oysters.

My Thanksgiving table need mashed turnips and/or rutabagas and creamed onions in order to feel complete.

My grandmother died about four years ago and then my mother's extended family stopped getting together. So we've been making new traditions since then. Last year we even went out for Thanksgiving dinner!

We've been getting together at my mother's for Christmas Eve (although my sister and I do the cooking) and trying different main dishes every year. We've done kabobs, stuffed salmon, lasagna and blue marlin steaks. I don't know what we're doing this year, but I'm open to suggestions! And it wouldn't be complete without a Buche de Noel for dessert.

Christmas day is at my sister's. She does a traditional English dinner with turkey substituted for the goose. Roasted potatoes, brussels sprouts, several other vegetable sides, steamed pudding, mince pies.

For Christmas day dinner, we always do a bone in ham, skin removed and the fat sliced in small squares that hold the combination orange marmalade glaze, honey, brown sugar, pineapple and other spices that brown nicely. Mom who lives next door always makes home made rolls, cole slaw, green beans and a Jello salad with fruit and cottage cheese and little marshmellow in it. Always pecan pie, ice cream and coffee.

I like the ham while it is still hot. After dinner, I use the electric knife to slice the ham an put portions in zip-lock bags to freeze. Mom uses the bone for soup beans and when she does not do that, I hang the bone up by my bird feeder and the birds clean the bone in just a few days.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Jennie...
Your mention of creamed onions reminded me of the dish of creamed/scalloped onions that my grandmother brought each year. I wouldn't touch 'em with a 10 foot pole, but each year she brought them. It was the only time she ever made them, and I never knew of anyone else who ever made them. Thanks for a great memory.

My mother was very tradtional when it came to holiday meals. Thanksgiving was turkey. It was virtually the only time of the year she would cook one. She also made the most wonderful pumpkin pie. She was a very good cook and baker. However, pumpkin pies were for Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving ONLY,[I don't know where she got her rule book] so that's the only time of the year I got her nice pumpkin pie. For Christmas and Easter it was a semi-bonless ham, baked potatoes and peas. Never varied ever.

quote:

Originally posted by 4fish

Christmas day is at my sister's. She does a traditional English dinner with turkey substituted for the goose.

Actually, when my (now) husband first came over and had his first Christmas dinner at my mother's house, she said something like, "I suppose you're used to goose instead of turkey." He answered that no, in fact, it was traditional to serve turkey for Christmas dinner in England, and that it was really the fault of Charles Dickens that we have this misconception that they always have goose. Mind you, turkeys are New World, so at some point it seems the tradition must have changed. When that occurred is just a guess. Most likely in the early-mid 20th century. Post Dickens, at any rate.

At my parents house, Christmas Day supper would not be complete without carrot and raisin salad and brocolli with buttered bread crumbs.

Christmas eve dinner at my mom's always started with a very traditional shrimp cocktail. We always had deviled eggs. And pork tenderloin. Toll-house cookies are always for dessert, usually also with some delicious candies she would buy from the farmer's market.

The pork tenderloin always made delicous leftover sandwiches, of course. And now that I've remembered all this, I could really really eat one right now!

Yum!
Meowzart

Christmas eve at our house is always chili, tamales, cornbread, tortillas, and queso, with cookies for dessert.

My mother makes a pot of beans for those who like beans in their chili.

My tortured-soul, Scandinavian kin would say (pickled) herring but I would have to say my late grandmother's corn pudding (now proudly made by my eleven-year-old daughter).

Jennie, like you, with us (and with most people I know) Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were always about identical - turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, also sweet potatoes, English peas or an English pea-asparagus casserole; cranberry sauce, relish, or jelly; celery-pickles-olives from a cut glass dish, usually a fruit or some jello type salad (would vary). When one aunt was living her contribution would always be from scratch macaroni and cheese and creamed pearl onions; when another aunt was living her contribution was always the most delicious totally-from-scratch coconut cake which ever existed. Other desserts were usually pumpkin and perhaps some other pie. One former traditional, must have, Christmas dish which died out a number of years ago, perhaps with my grandmother and her generation, was ambrosia. That was no real loss to me, for I never thought it was tasty enough to justify all the work involved in readying the coconut and oranges to combine with the pineapple. I noticed several people mentioned turnips and/or rutabagas, and I know several families who always included those in their holiday meals. While we had turnips at times during the winter, it was usually with some type pork and never at holidays. This topic brings back good memories.

Back when my Mom was a bit younger and healthier and did all the cooking, We had lasagna and trimmings along with all the usual stuff. Actually two meals on the table, an American one and an Italian one.
The best was the Bragiolli. To have that return to the holiday spread would be grand.

Christmas Eve with Italian grandparents.......the possibilities were endless: squid, shrimp, lobster, smelts, baccala, oysters, mussels, clams, fish. Then there were the gnocchi, ravioli, polenta. Nona always made a hazlenut torte that my mother finally was able to duplicate about 10 years ago, Nona is long gone and the recipe was never written down. Somewhere around midnight, gramps would close the pocket doors in the music room (where the piano was) and light the candles on the tree....yes! real candles, not lights. Then the whole happy brood would gather around the tree and sing Christmas carols with either my cousin David or myself playing the piano. Christmas Day Nona would make both turkey and bone-in ham with all the fixins'.....but Christmas Eve was special.