Christmas dinner with my family has come and gone.  Not without a "situation" – don’t ask, and yes, I lost it and was a be-atch.  Not going there now, ‘cuz I’m still stewing  and in danger of going off on a fruitless rant…

The dinner itself was a reflection of the family, a snapshot in food.

My family's holiday dinners used to be luxurious in sweets and fats, laden with glistening goodies.  We talked about them while we prepared yesterday’s meal, reminiscing about the ghosts of Christmas dinners past.

Enormous turkeys, bigger than the family dog, almost too big for the oven.  Salty, smoky ham, the old-fashioned kind, rind and all.  Sweet potatoes, swimming in real butter and brown sugar; cranberry-marshmallow salad, Grandma Rosie’s hard rolls.  Real honest-to-goodness fudge, the kind cooked over the stove and fussed with until creamy and unctuously good.

Nut-laden fruitcakes, and those little cookies my mom made that were like bite-sized fruitcakes.  Tin Lizzies, they were called – just enough batter to hold pecans and fruit together.  They called for candied citron and cherries, a box each of Muscat, golden and regular raisins, all soaked overnight in enough bourbon to cover (about 750 ml – Mom disputes this amount, but I distinctly remember seeing a whole bottle emptied into the soaking bowl less a small taste for Mom).

Brings back memories of other foods that were cooked regularly during the holidays, just as decadently rich.  Like homemade Sour Cream doughnuts, the kind that required a goodly warm oven for a rise before deep-frying.  Potato sweet bread made with leftover mashed potatoes from Christmas Eve dinner and served warm from the oven on Christmas morning, or perhaps a Pao Doce.  Returning from Midnight mass, having a small sampling of a strawberry liqueur or a tiny glass of bubbly, fruity champagne with a nibble of some sort (Mom was smart about this, as it help settle us down and get us into bed after all the hubbub of Christmas Eve).

Now a couple decades have come and gone since the last Christmas my family was all together.  I’ve enjoyed Christmas dinners with other families – a former significant other was German-Polish, introducing me to new cultures and customs.  The Polish side of his family would have an enormous Christmas Eve feast after mass, staying up until four in the morning.  Pierogies filled with cheese and onions and potatoes, sometimes with pork; chicken soup loaded with egg noodles and butter dumplings; a great boiled-and-baked ham with mountains of potatoes.  Kolacky – cookies made with rich cream cheese dough, filled with apple or berry filling, served at the end with coffee.  The German side of the family would have a midday Christmas feast after their Lutheran morning service.  We’d have ham and turkey with all kinds of potatoes, birocks filled with cabbage and onions and meat.  For dessert, all kinds of gooey pies or a healthy helping of ice cream with an intoxicating smothering of rumtopf.

That significant other is long-ago history, but I sure do miss his family gatherings.  They certainly could put on a feed.

Now my family is older, with many more demands for health-conscious cooking.  One sister-in-law is a diabetic; a number of family members are watching either their fat intake or cholesterol.  Christmas dinner’s just not what it once was, all golden and moist and richly lush.

But I think we managed to navigate this treacherous pass and cook up something that looked like a holiday feast.  We had a ham, which unlike the hams of the past, was more sweet than salty, very lean yet very moist (a good thing, pork is just not what it was in the past, no longer as loaded with nitrates and much leaner).  Turkey breast, gently roasted after a massage with olive oil, garlic and herbes de provence; pilaf of whole grains, nutty and fragrant.  German potatoes salad, our one vice – Mom had a hankering for them, sweet and sour, tossed with our usually forbidden bacon.  Another nod to the past with green bean casserole, which I will not cook except for this special occasion; I cleaned up its act and made it with fresh green beans (not canned) and low-fat milk.  A big tossed salad of romaine garnished with shreds of red cabbage and julienned carrots, into which I snuck baby spinach (Mom was surprised, she actually ate it although she’s not much on spinach).  Whole wheat rolls, sans real butter.  A low-fat Maui onion dip for the crudités, smoked whitefish sausage and olives to start, with angel food cake and vanilla-laced peaches for dessert.

Respectably safe feasting, not a lick of butter or cheese to be had.  We didn’t stint on the Gewurztraminer.

Still, I do wish I could have had a big piece of fudge.

5:10:43 PM    comment []