No one wants a face full of snow. But that’s what I had all too often
growing up in those brutal Chicago winters. I always seemed to be in
the middle of a blizzard walking against gale force winds – which is
why I spent more time walking backwards than I did forward.
And no one wants to step into slush. But when I did, my mother would
put my shoes in the oven. Usually about thirty minutes too long. My
shoes would come out smoking and ruined, which was not unlike many of
our family dinners.
And no one wants to be a poster child for static electricity. But the
winter air was so dry that my hair repelled my brush, my pants clung to
my socks, and touching anything would send enough voltage through me to
light up Soldier Field.
Those were not a few of my favorite things.
So when Christmas vacation would approach, I was pretty much champing at the bit to get out of Dodge.
But it never happened.
Christmas
Christmas
Saved by Pierogi
Though everyone thinks their family is odd, mine was definitely unique, at least in my neighborhood. Both my parents are only children, which made holiday celebrations a little somber since there were no siblings or cousins to play with or share the scrutiny of my grandparents’ expectations.
Plus, my mother is French and my father is Polish, which, in those days (the early 60s) was quite a bone of contention with both sides. It was true love (43 years and counting), so they decided to allow their “crazy” kids to get hitched, but none of them were ever truly happy about it.
The fact that my parents had four kids in 6 years alleviated a little of the enmity and focused their parents' attention on us.
Being a male-dominated world back then, we always went to my Polish grandparents house for Christmas Eve. It was all adults. My siblings and I were the only kids. Since we spent every day of our lives together, we were uninterested and incapable of entertaining each other. We were also expected to behave like little ladies and gentlemen. Not hard since there wasn’t much to play with at my grandparents house. My French grandmother bitched about it every year and often threatened not to attend – even though she couldn’t cook and had no room to host an event.
Quick Italian Tuna and Olive Pasta
When I was a kid growing up in Rhode Island, I never could understand all the fuss some families made about Christmas Day dinner. It always seemed weird to me. After all, who could eat a huge ham or turkey dinner after a gargantuan Christmas Eve feast?
Of course, when I got a little older, I realized that not everyone celebrated the Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. I thought that was weird too.
Turns out it's not weird at all. The Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes, is celebrated primarily among southern Italians. And Rhode Island, the state with the highest percentage of Italians, is home to many southern Italians.
This centuries-old feast celebrated on Christmas Eve has its roots in Medieval Italy and the Roman Catholic tradition of abstinence. When Catholics abstained from meat on holy days, they typically ate fish. Why seven types of fish? Historians believe it may be symbolic of Roman Catholicism's seven sacraments. Why Christmas Eve? Because Catholics would await the stroke of midnight, which was the time for the birth of the baby Jesus. That also explains why so many Italians attend midnight mass on Christmas Eve.
Of course, it's not always easy staying awake after savoring a seafood dinner of epic proportions. Though most families enjoy classic southern Italian dishes such as fried smelts and linguine with white clam sauce, many families (like my husband's) have their own specialties, such as Gram's stuffed squid in tomato sauce.
In Season - Candy Canes
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Legend has it that in 1670, the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany handed out sugar sticks among his young singers to keep them quiet during the long Living Creche ceremony. In honor of the occasion, he had the candies bent into shepherds' crooks. In 1847, a German-Swedish immigrant named August Imgard of Wooster, Ohio, decorated a small blue spruce with paper ornaments and candy canes. It wasn't until the turn of the century that the red and white stripes and peppermint flavors became the norm. In the 1920s, Bob McCormack began making candy canes as special Christmas treats for his children, friends and local shopkeepers in Albany, Georgia. It was a laborious process – pulling, twisting, cutting and bending the candy by hand. It could only be done on a local scale. In the 1950s, Bob's brother-in-law, Gregory Keller, a Catholic priest, invented a machine to automate candy cane production. Packaging innovations by the younger McCormacks made it possible to transport the delicate canes on a large scale. Although modern technology has made candy canes accessible and plentiful, they've not lost their purity and simplicity as a traditional holiday food. |
Don't Forget Christmas Day Breakfast
Jeff and I have been starving ourselves for the past few days. Well, not actually starving. We did have our morning coffee. Oh, and I sneaked in a couple of double chocolate pomegranate cookies yesterday. But those don't count. I was recipe testing.
Why are we starving ourselves? Because on Christmas Eve night, we will be enjoying a traditional Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. That means fried calamari, fried smelts, and crab cakes. Snail salad, bacala (a dried, salted fish), and shrimp cocktail. (Those are just the starters.) Then comes the pasta. Two types of pasta, actually -- one with mixed seafood including shrimp, scallops, and lobster; the other with olive oil, clam sauce, and parsley. Then we'll finish with jumbo stuffed shrimp and garlicky broccoli rabe.
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