Just for fun this morning, I ran a little EYB search (Occasion:
Christmas; Course: Main Course) to see what holiday proteins
our cookbooks feature. The results read like some kind of
crazy, carnivorous 12 Days of Christmas (I know I'm leaving out our
vegetarian friends here):
- 85 beef joints
- 82 whole turkeys
- 81 pork joint
- 77 whole ducks or geese
- 62 hams, cooked or not
- 43 roast chickens
- 24 lamb roasts
When I stepped back in the holiday menu to check, I saw there
were 876 Christmas recipes to 45 Hannukah recipes, which pretty
accurately reflects the somewhat goy-oriented state of cookbook
publishing.
My own holiday meat of choice this year is going to be a roast
goose (a somewhat fetishistic object for me, as detailed in A Spoonful of
Promises). That's Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve I'm
going to my cousin's house, where my contribution to the
pan-Chinese feast will be some kind of pork belly, probably
red-cooked.
On both New Year's Eve and Day, dumplings will be on the menu at
the households of two different sets of friends, neither of them
Chinese. Go figure! I'm just happy I won't be the only
one folding and wrapping my way through a hangover, the way it used
to be years ago before we knew many people here.
At some point this week I'll also be "secretly" making my
husband his
chocolate-covered orange rinds, which are a sort of private
joke within the family because the whole thing is so not a secret.
I even put them in the same candy tin every year. I wrap the
tin before putting it under the tree, but it still rattles in an
obvious, familiar way if you pick it up.
What's your holiday food tradition? What food is it not
Christmas without? Are you hosting or bringing? And while
we're at it, what's your favorite day-after remedy?
