Question of the Day, Friday, December 3

Winchester

In the kitchen with my cookies
Thread starter
Veteran
Joined
Aug 28, 2009
Messages
29,730
Purraise
28,024
Location
In the kitchen
Good morning! :wave3:

This question was asked on another forum and I found the answers interesting: What did your family have for Christmas dinner when you were a child? And how has that changed since you're an adult?

Mom usually roasted a turkey with all the sides for Christmas. As we all got older with our own families, the roast turkey dinner changed into a buffet with baked ham, potato salad, etc. She always did the ham, but I started making the sides and bringing them. It was too much for Mom to make it all. I'd even make dessert. My sister and I cleaned up after dinner....all she had to do was sit and supervise. It was usually a Christmas Eve thing because we had our own families and would stay at home on Christmas Day. Mom and Dad (and my paternal aunt) would visit with my sister's family in the morning and then come down to us for Christmas dinner.

At our house, Christmas dinner was usually a stuffed crown roast of pork. The usual sides. I would make something a little special for dessert.

With the Grands, Christmas dinner has turned into beef pot pie. That has become their requested dish. And what the Grands want, the Grands get. They have already put their requests in. Beef pot pie (my DIL is gluten-free, so my granddaughter and I make two batches, one with flour and one with GF flour). Applesauce, cranberry relish, freezer cabbage, and salad. Dessert is usually some kind of cheesecake for them and, for me, a white coconut cake. (One year, I did the buffet ham with picnic-type sides. They liked it, but said they missed the pot pie.)

If the kids come on Christmas Day, I'll make beef pot pie. If they visit on the weekend, then Rick and I will have a Christmas morning brunch. I'll make quiche. we'll have sticky buns, sliced ham or sausage, and a warm fruit salad. With mimosas. And we'll spend the day snacking on appetizer-type foods that I've made. I refuse to make two Christmas dinners. My mother would be appalled! But it works for us.

What do you do for Christmas dinner? What did your mom make when you were a child?
 

denice

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Feb 7, 2006
Messages
18,836
Purraise
13,144
Location
Columbus OH
We never did anything special for a Christmas meal. Neither did my ex-husbands family. We had the big meal and family get together for Thanksgiving. A few times when there was the extra money to do it I would make a standing rib roast for Christmas but it never became a tradition.
 

game misconduct

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
May 1, 2020
Messages
5,383
Purraise
19,305
Location
westcovina california
turkey,prime rib,roast beef all depended on what mom felt like making that year or what my dad asked my ma cook moms been dead since 2014so big holiday meals kinda stopped just not the samewith her gone. my baby sis will plan stuff if she feels like it luckily my mom taught her how to cook before she died so i get a taste of moms cooking now and then stille. either that or one of my cousins/aunts etc. will have a big family get together i go just to go but its not the same with mom gone i am used to spending my birthdays and holidays alone lockedin a cell. away from family and friends with only a phone call as a way to contact them.pretty much i am good with just being with anna creating more memories together :lol:like our frist x-mas eve together in our apartment our bathtub drain clogged and each time the tenenant above us used their shower our tub got filled with their dirty shower water:rolleyes3:so that was fun having to use a pot to scoop that water into the toilet the first days and nights in our new place:lol:
 
Last edited:

artiemom

Artie, my Angel; a part of my heart
Top Cat
Joined
Dec 22, 2014
Messages
11,122
Purraise
23,104
Location
near Boston
We always had ham for Christmas. Stuffed cabbage, Mashed potatoes, baked kielbasa, pineapple, green beans with browned bread crumbs, beet horseradish, and a blessed egg from my Aunt. She would take her food basket down to the Polish Church for the food to be blessed.

We always had a ton of Polish sweets! I continued the tradition, until all the Polish stores closed.
Cheese babka, love knot cookies, cheesecake, punchkies —- like jelly donuts, but better.

After my mom died, it was just my dad and me. I cut back on the food. We still had a Christmas Ham, pineapple, beet horseradish, sometimes kielbasa, and the breaded green beans.

For my Dad’s last Christmas, I ordered a beef tenderloin from the butcher. It came out so good— my dad was really sick, but he was able to enjoy it.

My mom was the baker in the family. Always had at least 6 different types of cookies. My mom would start a week before Christmas, different cookies each day!

I never did get the hang of cookies— either over or under.

Hershey kiss cookies were her specialty. As were her family famous vanilla nut cookies— complete with us shelling the walnuts and chopping them, before food processors.
I absolutely loved her Tollhouse cookies.

I kept all her recipes.. still in the keepsake wooden box, she kept them in. I would be the only one who would cherish these.


Sorry, I am just getting nostalgic with this question. I miss my mom, a lot; this time of year. And the happy memories.
 

vince

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Jul 23, 2017
Messages
2,172
Purraise
3,540
Location
metro Detroit
Our big family meal was at Thanksgiving.

I seem to remember making the rounds of family gatherings on Christmas or the day after, and it was mostly buffet-style, with no particular theme. However, it seemed that just about all of them had chrusciki (angel wings). Grandma, who never did the buffet routine, always had a little dish of food blessed by the parish priest and she always got a butter lamb (blessed by the priest, too) that was sold by one of the food companies in Hamtramck (yeah, I'm of Polish descent, too). I remember the beet chrzan (horseradish), but I didn't like it when I was a kid.

Grandma made some kind of real sour white soup out of the broth from boiling the fresh kielbasa. Family members would cut up the blessed foods (mostly sausage and eggs) and would put them in the soup and would eat it with locally-made hard rye bread. I thought the stuff was vile. Still remember the bad taste.

Should add that Grandpa did a routine every year, drinking a cup of coffee like his father did: Grandma would get out the remaining old, old cups out of the back of the cupboard (which were very heavy and large--I think Grandma just kept them around for this one use every year). He'd fix the coffee up to his liking, then pour it in the saucer and would slurp it down. I have heard that coffee used to be drunk that way, mostly by immigrants who didn't know what the saucer was for.

I keep editing as I remember the little things we used to take for granted every holiday. This thread is good, making me remember those times.
 
Last edited:

susanm9006

Willow
Top Cat
Joined
Feb 20, 2011
Messages
13,152
Purraise
30,219
Location
Minnesota
Growing up we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at my maternal Sicilian grandparents house. Christmas started for us after midnight mass. When we came back my grandfather would make fried sausages and potatoes. For dinner that day it would always be my grandmother’s out of this world delicious homemade ravioli and a baked ham.

Now I have my son and his gf over for Christmas Eve dinner and usually it is either some pasta dish or pizza. Christmas Day used to be at my sisters but that tradition was interrupted by her son’s death and COVID.
 

denice

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Feb 7, 2006
Messages
18,836
Purraise
13,144
Location
Columbus OH
My ex was from Youngstown and Kolachi nut rolls were the big thing there. Everyone made them. They even have a bakery there that sells them online. They are good.

Buy Nut Rolls Online | Kolachi, Beigli, Povitica
Cookies

My mother-in-law always made the individual cookies instead of the rolls that are sliced. I think she did it that way because it didn't take as many nuts. My in-laws grew up poor in West Virginia as well as having personal memories of the Great Depression so they were frugal even after they no longer needed to be that frugal.
 

Kat0121

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Messages
15,036
Purraise
20,362
Location
Sunny Florida
Christmas dinner when I was a kid was pretty much thanksgiving 2.0. The same stuff. With DH, DD and me it was sometimes turkey, sometimes ham and sometimes prime rib depending on what DH wanted. Same with sides. Whatever he had a craving for.

With DD and me it was whatever she felt like having. Usually nothing too fancy. Now that it's me and the cats I usually roast a turkey thigh or grill a steak that the cats and I will share. A simple side for me like a baked potato and salad or a veggie.
 

neely

May the purr be with you
Veteran
Joined
Dec 22, 2005
Messages
19,635
Purraise
47,800
What did your family have for Christmas dinner when you were a child? And how has that changed since you're an adult?
I can sum that up in two easy sentences. 😉 As a child it was meat/poultry and as an adult it's non-meat/veggies with rice or pasta.
What I remember most is the desserts since my mom had a sweet tooth and so do I. 😁
 

MoochNNoodles

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Apr 30, 2005
Messages
36,646
Purraise
23,465
Location
Where my cats are
Gram usually made Manicotti and a ham.

Mom and I try to make Christmas a little simpler these days. She's done crown roasts and things in the past; but now we've found we want to spend time with the kids enjoying their new gifts instead of spending hours in the kitchen. Last year Mom did 2 crock pot lasagnas. One was Buffalo chicken and it was amazing! She's done stuffed shells too. Usually I do some side dishes and the pies. We haven't decided for this year yet.
 

NY cat man

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Aug 6, 2018
Messages
7,033
Purraise
21,284
We had ham. Christmas and Easter were the only times of the year when we had it. My mother made it with a brown sugar glaze, and pineapple slices held in place with cloves. Now, since there is only Michele and me- plus the cats, of course- we don't do anything special.
 

lizzie

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Sep 29, 2002
Messages
3,468
Purraise
15,335
Location
missouri
For as long as I can remember,Christmas was always spent at my Grandparents house.They were my Mom's parents,and there was a bunch of us...aunts and uncles and cousins.Some people brought a dish or 2,but Gramma always did a big ham and a venison roast.Grandpa and some of the uncles were avid hunters,as was my Dad,so whoever got the nicest deer provided the roast.I ate it...Mom always told me it was roast beef...boy was I upset when I found out the truth!Ha!Anyway,there was always a ton of food and desserts.She passed away when I was 15,and after that my Aunt always had Grandpa at her house,and we never went (my aunt carol was a real pain to say the least,and she and my Mom didn't get along for years...another long story) and had a very nice dinner that Mom made...roast pork,an eye round of beef...along those lines .I always have a tendency to cook way too much,but I always plan on sending enough home with our son and daughter in law that they can have a couple of meals worth.That's my story!
 
Top