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.

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.