I am comparing Christmas past to Christmas present. We are fortunate enough to have large family Christmas gatherings on both sides of my family at both of our parents houses. My parents have five kids, all married, with kids, the kids now have kids which means we still have little ones running around. That makes the magic real. Mikes folks have five boys, all married with kids who are mostly young adults now. This is cool too because we talk a lot about mostly our Anthony and his cousin Alex and how they were such little stinkers and it’s a lot of laughing.
Both sets of parents provide the venues and their traditional foods from when they were kids. In the moment, I am in the kitchen contributing the cabbage and noodles with bacon grease and bacon crumbles for the pot luck at my mom’s house. The findings on my mother’s table still include all of the things that are bad for you to eat. My mother still makes three kinds of home made pierogies, my dad smokes keilbasa a month before Christmas Eve, there is smoked ham and macaroni salad, there are dips of sour cream and cream cheese, there are sweet breads to counter the hot horseradish that is also home made and lots and lots of cookies and sweet chex mix and the list goes on. It’s a carb lover’s dream buffet.
At our house of now two, it is a matter of dietary adjustment. WWJD? He would eat through the giant bowl of citrus cuties on the little table in the walk through room from the living room to the kitchen or He would grab a handful of toasted almonds and that is pretty much breakfast. Our son, Anthony, will come home for a night or two. I asked him if he would like anything special for Christmas morning breakfast, waffles, pancakes, again with the bacon and he says “just toast and tea”. Say no more. Old habits die hard.
When I have to fry anything, which is rare, the windows have to be open, the kitchen door cracked and the ceiling fan on super high. I just don’t like that smell. However, when the pizza shop next door fires up the oven for the morning, the air smells like garlic and that, my friends, is not altogether unpleasant.
I don’t bake for Christmas. If I bake, we eat it so what’s the point? We received a one pound box of chocolates and we mowed right through that. As we sat there staring at each other and the empty box, we realized why we keep the food part of our celebration to a simple fare. I did get a Marie Callender Dutch Apple Pie from the store and baked that yesterday. I figure of all of the sugar based items we could consume, a loverly slice of apple pie would be just fine. Hey, it’s fruit, right?
In the past for our holiday meal I have made braciole. I discovered it one year at a holiday gathering Mike and I went to many years ago. So, for the longest time our holiday meal was more Italian than Polish or Hungarian. This year, I did not have time to make it so I made turkey stuffed cabbage. Being raised in a family where women cooked traditional holiday fare, this is one of the holiday staples that would show up on the table for decades and I can make them with my eyes closed. I take points from how Mikes’ mom makes them and how my mom and grandmother made them and put my own spin on the filling and voila, a more healthy pig in the blanket. Ground turkey and brown rice. The flavor comes from the cabbage so it totally works. There will be mashed potatoes with that and that will be the splurge.
The gifty thing. We still buy gifts for Anthony. When you have one kid, still working hard at work and in college, it’s pretty easy to figure out their needs, and they are basic. Online shopping was awesome. I spent very little time in any one store this holiday season and it was great. We participate in a family gift exchange and coming up with that is probably the biggest challenge the whole holiday season. Again, not a ton of stress.
I like to think that when anyone bakes, it is for the sheer enjoyment of it. Anyone who shops Black Friday or Christmas Eve, I hope they do it for the enjoyment of it. Stress really should not have any place in this, the most special of all holidays throughout the year. I think the stress that does exist may come in the realization that it is the end of another year and we are another year older. But, each day is the gift and it is up to us to make it joyful or not. So, on that note, I hope we all have a peaceful couple of days, inner peace, outer peace, piece of pie, piece of ham, piece of cake.
I have to go air out the kitchen. Peace out.
