Advent Calendar 2012 - Dec 2nd

December 2 – Holiday Foods
Did your family or ancestors serve traditional dishes for the holidays? Was there one dish that was unusual?

As my wife and I both still have parents and extended family alive and close by, we virtually always spend major holidays with them, and usually with each side.  Two holiday dinners for the price of one! 

My family usually had one of several traditional meals when I was growing up.  Either the traditional turkey dinner with all of the trimmings, or else a similar dinner featuring ham.  Since we kids were somewhat picky eaters, it was just easier, as well as traditional, to go with the proven winners.

Even today my in-laws usually do the turkey dinner.  Scale it up to feed 40 or more, though.  Every sub-family brings one or more foods for the group.  Breads, vegetables, desserts, salads, etc.  The meat course is provided by the parents. 

My parents have done some different things in the past few years, in part because there are now so many grandkids that their tiny house gets overcrowded, and it's not very well set up for cooking and feeding the multitudes.  Sometimes we do have the turkey dinner, with some concessions to the kids like macaroni and cheese.  Sometimes we'll all meet at a local buffet restaurant.  Plenty of variety that way.  We have even on an occasion or two got a room at a local hotel, then had the holiday meal there.


What are your holiday meal traditions?  You can share your story by following the link below - you don't even have to have your own blog!


The Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories (ACCM) allows you to share your family’s holiday history 24 different ways during 24 days in December! Learn more at http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com.



This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2012 by Daniel G. Dillman

Advent Calendar - December 2, Holiday Foods

December 2 – Holiday Foods
Did your family or ancestors serve traditional dishes for the holidays? Was there one dish that was unusual?

My brothers and I were rather picky eaters, and I was quite stubborn about what I would eat.   On more than one occasion, I outlasted my mother's willpower in refusing to eat things I didn't want.  For that reason, we had a fairly limited repertoire of foods that we had on a regular basis. 

I really don't remember if we had a particular meal every Christmas.  I know we had turkey dinners more than once, and probably beef roast or ham other years.  Usually that was accompanied by mashed potatoes or white rice, gravy, corn and bread or buns of some sort.  On several occasions, there was also stuffing and sweet potatoes and such, which I never paid attention to, as I did not like those. There were usually cookies and pie for desserts.
 


This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Thanksgiving

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2011) that invite genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants. You do not have to be a blogger to participate. If you do not have a genealogy blog, write down your memories on your computer, or simply record them on paper and keep them with your files.

• Week 48. Thanksgiving. What was on your family’s Thanksgiving table? Do you serve the same dishes now as your family served in the past?

With bot my parents and my in-laws being local to me, I usually end up with two Thanksgiving Day dinners, which might explain why my pants are a bit tight lately...

This year, we spent Thanksgiving at my in-laws, a large family that has a very traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner.  We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes & gravy, sweet potatoes, corn, cranberries, dinner rolls, coleslaw and more, all served buffet style to accommodate the 40+ people who typically show up at these family dinners.  Another tradition in this family is having finger jello - jello that has extra gelatin so it's very firm, and can be picked up and held in the fingers of small children in squares or whatever shape someone chooses to cut.  I don't remember a major family meal without it!

This has been the Thanksgiving Dinner in that family as long as I have been around, currently 29 years.


This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Least Favorite Foods

Week 39: Least Favorite Foods. What was your least favorite food from your childhood? Did your parents make you eat it anyway? Do you still dislike the same food today? How have your tastes changed since your youth?


Easy.  Liver.  Mom made it once, forced me to try it.  She got it back.  It's the only thing I ever ate that I disliked so hard I threw up.  Mind, I've always been a picky eater, but I usually was stubborn enough that I resisted most foods that I didn't want.  I don't remember why I actually knuckled under and tried the liver. 

In my defense, that liver was bad enough my mom agreed, and she didn't eat it either!


This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman

52 Weeks of Personal genealogy - Week 5, Favorite Foods

I remember meals when I was growing up to be a mix of midwestern meat & potatoes type meals, with an injection of southern style cooking.  My father is from near Huron, South Dakota, thus the meat & potatoes.  My mother is from Louisiana, whence the southern style.   I was a very picky eater as a child, and stubborn, to boot!  My poor mother ended up cooking what I'm sure she felt was bland, repetitive meals that I would eat, as I was able to out-stubborn her in refusing to eat things I didn't like (or thought I didn't like).  It turns out there is some basis for me and other picky eaters - see this somewhat technical article on Supertasters at Wikipedia and this one at CNN.  What I find interesting is that each article talks about foods that supertasters find repulsive, and I like some of what's on each list, but don't like much of what's on most of the lists.  Odd, and I digress.

My favorite food was (and still is) beef steak.  Preferably grilled.  My father likes to grill a steak into shoe leather, and I grew up eating steaks cooked this way.  Only after I got older, moved out on my own and started grilling my own steaks did I realize what I had been missing!  I still don't go less than a medium by choice, but at that point they are still juicy and flavorful.  And I've grown used to family comments about the meat still mooing at me when I cut into it.  

I've enlarged the range of foods I eat as I've grown older and tried new things, though most people would still call me a picky eater.  One thing I've also acquired is heartburn, with several notable triggers.  Unfortunately, some of those triggers are things I like to eat!  I don't see how that's fair, whoever decided to invent heartburn!

What are your favorite foods?  Are you a Supertaster?  Discuss in the comments below!