Bizarre Holiday Food Traditions

[Mamaduck43]

A family tradition is the glass serving plate with three sections - - looks like a big three parted leaf....  One side has sweet gherkin pickles, the other side has dill gherkins and the center section has stuffed olives....  In fact, one of the things that I have searched yard sales for for years is duplicate dishes so that I can hand them down....  Nobody really eats the pickles - - like a pp said, they seem to be primarily for snacking - - but the spread is incomplete without the dish...  I will admit to noshing on a few of them, and my leftover turkey sandwich was graced with slices of pickle on Friday....  Mmmmmm....

[SheltieMom]

Both green bean casserole and canned cranberry sauce are staples for us. In fact, 3 years ago, we forgot to get cranberry sauce, and my oldest son (now 28) insisted on braving Walmart on Thanksgiving morning to get what was probably the last can on the shelf. The next year, he and his new bride hosted Thanksgiving for the first time. Every.single.person, including my 2 year old foster son and my son's new MIL, brought a can of cranberry sauce. It was a hoot! Last year, he still had several cans left, and this year he absolutely forbid anyone besides himself bringing some!

[Brentwood]

I think it is the difference, for some, of a canned cream soup, condensed or not, which often as thickeners, preservatives, and usually has a lot of sodium, vs. A home made cream sauce or soup.

I prefer to make things myself, in part to have to my preference, in part to "know" ingredients.  That said, sure, I will leverage some commercially available options, and did so a lot more often before I worked from home, when cooking often needed to be done in a shorter period.

I don't presume to speak for her, but I'm guessing Sharnita understands exactly what the differences/similarities are between cream soups and homemade white sauce bases, and why people might prefer a homemade base over a cream soup. I think what's not clear to her (and it's not clear to me either, though I rarely ever use a cream soup), is why canned cream soup as an ingredient would qualify as "bizarre" or "crazy".

[oz diva]

It's just that cream soup is never never never used as a base for anything in this country. If I didn't converse with Americans on a board like this, it would never occur to me to use it that way.* It's like the time I was chatting to an Indonesian friend who only ate avocado as a sweet, with condensed milk. That sounded completely crazy to me, as my eating it in salad did to her.

* and I have no intention of starting now.

[buvezdevin]

I think it is the difference, for some, of a canned cream soup, condensed or not, which often as thickeners, preservatives, and usually has a lot of sodium, vs. A home made cream sauce or soup.

I prefer to make things myself, in part to have to my preference, in part to "know" ingredients.  That said, sure, I will leverage some commercially available options, and did so a lot more often before I worked from home, when cooking often needed to be done in a shorter period.

I don't presume to speak for her, but I'm guessing Sharnita understands exactly what the differences/similarities are between cream soups and homemade white sauce bases, and why people might prefer a homemade base over a cream soup. I think what's not clear to her (and it's not clear to me either, though I rarely ever use a cream soup), is why canned cream soup as an ingredient would qualify as "bizarre" or "crazy".

Cathy, I not only love you, but I love a number of cream  based dishes.

However, in the full upthread, Sharnita asked what was used in a plain white sauce.  And, that is pretty far from suggesting that homemade vs. canned is the question.  I'm not advocating either, it's a preference, but I also understand if folks who have never made a white sauce don't see an obvious option other than canned soup.

[hannahmollysmom]

My sister brought a green bean casserole this year. I hate green beans but others ate it. We do the jelled cranberry sauce too. I hate the texture of cranberries.

My Mom was the queen of jello molds. Either Green jello with cottage cheese, pineapple and cherries mixed in or lemon jello with shredded carrots and celery. My father always insisted on having boiled onions with holiday dinners.

Actually this year I was diagnosed as diabetic 3 days before TG so I made sugar free jello with vanilla yogurt folded in. Kind of tasted and textured like a mousse and fit my diet.

My mom would also stuff dates with cream cheese and put an almond on top.

And don't get me started on her fruit cake that she made tons of and gave for gifts, and in our household, only my father ate!

[iridaceae]

It's just that cream soup is never never never used as a base for anything in this country. If I didn't converse with Americans on a board like this, it would never occur to me to use it that way.

Americans like casseroles- I would guess we are the world's leaders in casseroles- and we have a lot of recipes and we have to use that stupid soup up somehow.  In fact it seems to me that Campbells- probably the biggest soupmaker in the USA- has said that most of their soups- and certainly most of their cream soups- are used in casseroles or other dishes.

I will admit I did not grow up eating casseroles; my mother was undoubtably unaware of them or did not like them- and I eye that horrific green bean casserole sideways and refuse to eat it, but there are many that I do like. 

[Kess]

I wonder if the difference is in the name "casserole"?  Will pop over to TAKE to ask...

We have pancakes (as in English pancakes, the large thin ones made of flour, egg and milk and fried, more similar to crepes than what I think the Americans call pancakes) for breakfast.  Because one Shrove Tuesday as a small child I asked if we were having pancakes.  On being told no, I asked when we could have them, and was told Christmas day.  Imagine my Dad's surprise when 9 or 10 months later on Christmas Eve I reminded him we were having pancakes the next day.  He had to go and buy plain flour from the only shop that was open, but he did it with good grace and it became a tradition.  It is great as it's a nice hearty breakfast to tide you over until Christmas dinner which is later than lunch would normally be.

[magdalena]

Growing up, my mom would make a really traditional Christmas meal - traditional Finnish that is, with a proper Christmas ham, lots of casseroles (carrot, swede, potato and liver, at the very least), carelian meat stew, carelian rice pastries, sweet, spicy bread, home made cheese, lutefisk, hering salad and lots more.
And, pasta and tiny meatballs. Not traditional at all, but my favorite food and mom wanted each of us to have his/her favorite there (my sister's was liver casserole, my mom and brother were nuts about lutefisk and dad was in heaven with the Carelian stuff) so we'd always have pasta and tiny meatballs. A few years ago I told mom we could leave those off the menu, as i was big now and enjoyed the more traditional food.
My nieces and nephew heard that and rebelled. For them, pasta and tiny meatballs are traditional Christmas food 

[veryfluffy]

In my family's culture, it is traditional to eat fish on Christmas Eve -- specifically carp. The problem was that no one in my family has ever been that keen on fish, and particularly not carp. (And where I grew up, in Canada, I don't think it is even possible to buy -- carp except maybe koi for your pond.) So one year we decided to have some fish that we all do like: smoked salmon. Served with fresh bagels and cream cheese. So now the Christmas Eve tradition is bagels, lox and cream cheese.

DH has happily embraced this tradition. Of course, it is almost impossible to get a decent bagel in the UK, where I live now, so I have learned to make my own -- DH loves them. He doesn't like smoked salmon, so we usually do it with prawns or crabmeat instead though.

[Sharnita]

I gusee for me the definition of "bizarre" is different.  Casseroles with cream soup/white sauce/tomato base - matters of taste.  One or the other does not make it "bizarre".  Now if you told me the base was the sweat of a young warthog - bizarre.  Cranberry jelly in log, slices or sqished up - style choices.  I don't quite see the "bizarre" in it.  Maybe if you made people eat it by sipping it through a straw?

Force feeding somebody a prune comes the closest IMO, mostly because I imagine an internal monolouge "You will be regular in the coming year." 

[poundcake]

Poundcake, I may have to kill you. I just spent $17 on iTunes, downloading Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics (the South Park Christmas Album - not for the faint hearted. Very explicit, most of the songs have been rewritten South Park style), but why is that poundcake's fault?

One of the songs is Eric Cartman singing about a Swiss Colony Beef Log, and how that's what Christmas is all about.

I'd never even *heard* of the thing until that song, and now I really want to try one!

*superhero pose* My job is done here!

[Bethalize]

Orange and lemon slices. Imagine a jelly sweet. Now make it much less chewy, more solid. Make it look like a slice of orange or lemon. Now cover in sugar.

It's the sort of thing we used to eat in the seventies when there wasn't anything else. I buy them for my husband. They have to sit there, it's tradition. Someone might eat one, but that's their own silly fault.

[mechtilde]

^ I actually like those...

[weeblewobble]

It's just that cream soup is never never never used as a base for anything in this country. If I didn't converse with Americans on a board like this, it would never occur to me to use it that way.

Americans like casseroles- I would guess we are the world's leaders in casseroles- and we have a lot of recipes and we have to use that stupid soup up somehow.  In fact it seems to me that Campbells- probably the biggest soupmaker in the USA- has said that most of their soups- and certainly most of their cream soups- are used in casseroles or other dishes.

I will admit I did not grow up eating casseroles; my mother was undoubtably unaware of them or did not like them- and I eye that horrific green bean casserole sideways and refuse to eat it, but there are many that I do like.

It goes back to the 50s. Food manufacturers flooded the market with recipes based on their products - Campbell's Soup, Knox Gelatin, Jell-O, etc.- showing housewives how to be the 'ideal' elegant entertainer by setting a table full of these delicacies.*  The baby boomer generation became accustomed to having these dishes, they became traditional at holiday and everyday meals, and the casserole became king.

*My mom's personal "favorite" was vegetable Jell-O, a vegetable broth flavored jello that my grand added carrots, olives and other veggies to before molding.