Christmas Food

I'm starved, hence a post about Christmas food. Okay, I'm always starved or hungry or eating which is why I am huge right now, or at least I feel huge right now! I'm also writing a list of all the yummies I want to fix over Christmas. Then I'm going on a diet.

Anyway, Christmas food. The best kind of food ever. I have so many memories associate with food and the holidays.

On Christmas morning we had a traditional brunch meal. Mom ALWAYS made the staples- bacon/ cheese casserole. My son eats almost a whole one all by himself. She also made a hash brown casserole, like the one they sell at Cracker Barrel- also some of the best food on the face of the earth. We had juice and coffee. We also had fruit salad, which can change continents yearly, but still a fruit salad of some sort. Once we even had fruit slush which we all loved, but I don't think that made the holiday menu again- it got deregulated to a lesser holiday, something like a Memorial Day picnic food. I might have to bring that back- okay, adding that to the aforementioned list! I will be recreating this meal on Christmas day, of course! And since I love you all, if you click right here it will take you to an old post I wrote that includes the recipe. I know, ya'll are probably tired of me praising this casserole but I can't help it. It. is. that. GOOD!

Then there's the sweet bread. This is the only reason to have breakfast/ brunch on Christmas morning in my family, in my opinion. This must occur before gifts are unceremoniously ripped open. This is the true meaning of Christmas...Okay, not really, but this is seriously the world's most perfect food. Without a doubt. This is most perfect coffee cake in all of history. Jesus could come to Earth and eat this cake and know it was better and more miraculous than walking on water. He would've fed this with the fish instead of loaves- the story would be "fish and coffee cake." Sour cream coffee cake. It's so good I could eat a whole one by myself. And if you think I'm kidding, well...I wish but no. I LOVE this stuff. I look forward to it all year. This is the most moist cake ever. It is the perfect blend of cinnamon and goodness and just...Heaven on a plate. I swear to God if I had to pick between a lifetime of going without chocolate or the coffee cake, I would put Hershey's out of business. It is a true toss up between coffee cake and sex as to which is better and I think coffee cake wins. Seriously, this is some fabulous baked goods. Momma made it in a special pan with a hole in it- not a mere bunt pan but some other special coffee cake baking dish. And it MUST be served on the cut glass crystal pedestal cake plate that is never used the rest of the year. This pan and this plate enhance the taste and enjoyability of the sour cream coffee cake as a whole. I dig this coffee cake. You know when you were a kid and said "if you love it so much why doncha marry it?" Well, show me where to sign... Bliss. True bliss. I love Mac more, but barely... And now I have this recipe and I can make it myself. I've done it and it turned out just like mom's! And since I love you all, and since I've written about this food before, you can click here to go back to an old post for the recipe!

We always had special foods like munchies and appetizers on the day when we would decorate the house. Why did those taste better when eaten with an associated activity like decorating trees? Once, I ate little hot dogs in sauce at a Super Bowl party and they just tasted wrong, like I violated the Christmas Food treaty or something.

My Grandma F (the good grandmother) always made a tureen of wassail to drink. It was sooooooo good. I think it was because it was in a tureen. How often do you ever really get any sort of food out of a container called a tureen? Doesn't that just class it up some how? And calling is wassail- rather than hot apple juice? Com'on ya gotta love it! A tureen of wassail- how cool is that? And served in special matching cups, to boot! She always had cheese and crackers too. There was an orange cheese spread that I loved. It was an unnatural shade of orange- almost a day-glo orange that isn't really in the color spectrum at all. I loved this cheese and again, we only had it at Christmas time. I remember a few years ago I went to the market with my mom (obviously when she was still alive) and we were reminiscing about the cheese at Grandma F's (yeah I loving reflected back on a past cheese experience- how weird is THAT?!). Since she passed away, there was no more orange cheese spread. I was laughing about how I always craved it around Christmas. And you know what? My mom, being the all knowing goddess about these types of things because she was just that sort of super prepared person, told me it was right there in the store. In a normal store- a mortal Kroger's!We just went right up to a display and there it was. It came in a JAR! Cheese in a jar is just unnatural, I realize, but this stuff was 1980's Frankie Says Orange so how natural could it be to start with? It is Kraft pimento Cheese spread. That's all it was. And for years I thought my Grandma F had the market cornered on some special Christmas Cheese from a special Christmas Cheese Store. Wonders never cease!

My mom also had an amazing cookie recipe for cut out holiday cookies. The kind you roll out and use cookie cutters and stuff? I love these as well. One year mom made a huge batch of these and they were on a pretty lil' holiday plate on the coffee table. The family adjourns to the dining room for brunch on Christmas morning (or as I like to call it "Sour Cream Coffee Cake TIME"!) . After the meal we return back to the living room and the entire plate of cookies is gone. Now this wasn't a cute little "Santa must've eaten the cookies" thing. This was a "where the Hell did all the cookies go" thing!?! Come to find out the dog liked the cookies too, to the tune of an entire plate full. The coffee table with the cookies in the middle of an empty room and just at her eye level proved to be too much temptation and she polished off the whole thing. Whilst Bro and I debated killing the animal, dad help her flee to the backyard for her safety. Mom, however, being the brilliant woman she is, pulled another bag of cookies from her hiding place and we again had cookies. Bro and I guarded them, almost smacking Daddy-O's hand as he tried to pilfer one-oops!

I must mention the pumpkin roll. About 15 years ago, I guess, mom found this at a bazaar or at a bake sale or something and we all thought we had died and gone to pumpkin heaven. It was cold bread or something like that with cream cheese frosting all in a roll, then chilled and sliced. This was some awesome stuff. We loved it so much that the next year mom called people in town until she got the recipe out of some woman. Bro and I were ready to kick some tail if this chick wouldn't have freed the recipe. So needless to say, we add pumpkin roll to the ever growing list of foods I forever associate with Christmas. (An aside: I love cream cheese frosting. The world is good when there's cream cheese frosting. There would be no wars if we covered all soldiers in the world in cream cheese frosting. Hand me cream cheese frosting and I promise to love you forever...or until the frosting runs out...! Life is better overall with cream cheese frosting!).

Yes, I realize this is mostly sweet yummys. Yes, I realize it's a lot of calories and junk, but it's Christmas. And I like it. I love it. I want some more of it. One side of my family is from the south and food goes with everything- funerals, celebration, surgeries, stopping by while on a Sunday drive, you name it, we eat regardless of the event- have gall bladder surgery and the family has a carry in (and ya'll get something covered in mushroom soup, in addition to a jello-mold with fruit in it!). So it goes to show that at Christmas time we are so gonna indulge and pig out. It's part of my heritage and cul-ture! And I love food. So hand me the sour cream coffee cake and nobody gets hurt!

Maggie