Holiday Food Traditions

There is no other time of the year where our cultural traditions are more entwined with food.  You just say the word “holidays” and you’ll get strong responses from people, a far off glance and twinkle in their eye thinking of cookies and egg nog, a groan and a belt loosening from last night’s Christmas party, or mouthwatering and talk of roasts, stuffing or pumpkin pie.

Christmas Cookies (from Wikipedia)

The holiday season is the one season where we all still hold strong to our food traditions, the baked goods your grandmother prepared, the eggnog and tree decorating tradition in your family, or hosting of a great feast (or series of feasts!) throughout the season.  I can bet that right now you are all thinking of homemade cookies and not frozen, boxed or canned dinners. It seems that this is the one season that our busy schedules, love of fast and easy food, and lack of cooking desire or skill just can’t penetrate.  In this holiday season, cooking, baking and eating survive as a celebration and as a gesture of love and friendship.  I bet that at the very least, most of you will break out an apron and make cookies this month.

Trimming Food Waste

I read this amazing book, American Wasteland by Jonathan Bloom, last year.  The book is well-researched and completely easy to read.  It looks at our entire food system - from farms and production, to packaging and shipping, grocery stores, restaurants, and your kitchen - and points highlights inefficiencies and waste in the system.  It’s astounding.  Nearly half of all the food produced in the United States is thrown away.  Half!  And think about when the waste occurs at the end of this system, for example, after the food has been grown, picked, packaged, shipped, stored, purchased, prepared and served in a restaurant or your home.  If you don’t end up eating it then, the amount of materials (fertilizers, boxes, packaging) and energy (transport, cooking, refrigeration) that are literally just being thrown away is mind-boggling.

Sometimes we do need (or want) recipes

I've said many times that this isn't a recipe blog.  There are already so many talented chefs and cooks posting tons and tons of delicious recipes online.  Developing well-tested recipes that will yield repeatable results really isn't my thing.  For me, the surprise of seeing how something turns out this time is half the fun of cooking.   However, my kitchen is still filled with recipes and cookbooks.  I love looking at recipes and use lots of recipes as the foundation or inspiration for most of what I cook (even if I don't exactly follow the directions).

My collection includes some family heirlooms, some gifts, handwritten recipes on index cards copied from friends and family, and binders full of recipes I've collected from online sites and magazines.  I've inherited my grandmother's copies of The Original Cook Book of Favorite Slavic Recipes (published by the Holy Spirit Mother's Club in the 1960s) and The Good Housekeeping Cookbook (the 1949 edition). While I might not cook from them very much, they are a lot of fun to read.  For example in the "Pointers on Marketing" section of the Good Housekeeing Cookbook it recommends that "you avoid buying more than family will eat for that meal.  It saves your time, grocer's and next customer's."  It's funny to think that your grocer would be put off by you buying too much!  It also includes recipes for things like gruel, mush, luncheon rice molds, rolled celery sandwiches, and jellied tuna sandwiches.

Squash Everywhere!

This time of year the grocery stores and markets are literally overflowing with all kinds of winter squash and pumpkins.  This is a perfect time to adapt what you buy and what you eat to what is in season.  Those crazy looking pumpkins and squash are actually edible (even delicious!) so don't be afraid to buy something and try it!

Step 2: Start Simple - Whatcha got?

Sometimes I'm inspired to prepare something involved, but we do an awful lot of  "whatchagot"  meals (soups, stews, rice dishes).

With very little time, planning or inspiration you can whip up easy whatchagot dinners if you keep some basics in your kitchen like: rice or couscous, bouillon, garlic, and carrots.

Brown and wild rice, carrots and red pepper

Asian-inspired Cold (or Hot) Noodle Salad

What I love about this salad is how versatile it is. You can make as a light dish or as a main course, you can cook your vegetables or include them raw, you can make it spicy, savory, or even a little sweet.  You can tailor the recipe easily to what is in season and readily available.  

Also it saves and travels well (hello, picnic!)  Keeping this is the house or whipping up for a pot-luck can save you from grabbing take-out or stopping off to pick-up preprepared potato salad from the grocery store.

Basic Idea:

• A noodle/pasta (buckwheat, wheat or regular pasta, whatever you choose)
• Vegetables
• Simple Asian Peanut Sauce (see below)
• Protein (Tofu or chicken) optional

The basic idea is that you make a simple sauce and toss it over cooked noodles and raw or cooked vegetables of your choice [you can add a chicken or tofu if desired] and serve.  I usually serve this chilled but could also be served warm. Very easy and very very tasty.

Adjust the amount of sauce, vegetables and noodles to your liking.

Step 1: Find your kitchen.

Cooking has really changed in our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents.  It used to be something that wasn't really thought about very much. Our grandparents mostly just prepared something for dinner that was based on what they had eaten as children, usually culturally influenced "standard" dishes.  Since the 1960s, what it meant to cook has changed dramatically.  At times it had been such a chore and women felt that they had to bear the responsibility of all of the shopping and cooking.  This burden, in a time when woman were also working, led to the idea that the quicker and the easier the meal the better.  

The dawn of the prepared foods.

What you eat (and buy) matters

We live in a world where health care costs are skyrocketing, where industrial chemicals are making their way into everything (not the least of which is breastmilk), where many of us work more, have more "stuff", but are less happy. 

We live in a world where farms, as we knew them, are disappearing,where most of our food is picked well before it is ripe and imported from all over the world, where most of us do not know the people we buy our food from, and where it is harder and harder to support a family in a rural community.  We live in a world where a large portion of our food comes out of a factory, where we can't understand the ingredient labels and where our hamburgers are made mostly from corn products.

Starting Your Rediscovery of Real Food

An easy place to start to rediscover cooking is to begin by making meals based on what you have in your house and what is in season and available at your local market.

Making meals that are as simple or complex as you'd like.  Meals that can be improvised.

Meals where the preparation is not stressful and doesn't require a lot of planning.

Getting back to simply cooking.  Simply cooking real food.

Come on in and have a seat!

My name is Julie and I invite you into my kitchen (and a corner of my life)  because food is really important to me.  Growing, buying, preparing and eating of food is fundamentally gratifying to me.  It is intrinsically linked to our cultural identity and life itself. And for some reason we seem to have become distanced from all of it.

I hope that others can discover (or rediscover) the pure pleasure and satisfaction that home cooked food can bring.