Holiday Meals

I’m baaaaaaaack. I know, I know, you’re all so excited that “Holly” is posting two days in a row this weekend. I do it because I love you all.

That’s a lie. I do it because I have a freakin’ BUSY week, so I’m writing on the weekends so that I can do my actual homework during the week. Fun, right? But you can go with my first answer if it makes you feel better.

Anyway, because my whole house smells like latkes and applesauce for our Hanukkah party next weekend, I decided to write about what my family eats on each holiday. So, here it goes:

Easter: Easter’s our first big family gathering/meal in the year. On Easter, we usually have some kind of ham, be it fresh or smoked. I don’t know why it’s our tradition, or how it came to be, but it’s delicious and consistent. At every family gathering, we also have corn casserole, which is this awesome corn dish with like 6 ingredients. It’s my favorite dish, so you’ll see it’s a staple.

Birthdays: Next up are birthdays. Yes, I know that birthdays are not technically holidays, but they’re family get-togethers where we eat lots of food and celebrate, and that’s close enough to a holiday for me. Since my and my brother’s birthdays are in the summer, we often have big barbeques with sesame skirt steak, balsamic-mustard-garlic chicken, some kind of summery salad, and yes, corn casserole. My family and I have also recently become obsessed with getting an ice cream cake from Häagen Dazs that has a layer of cookie dough, a layer of dulce de leche, the chocolate crumbly things in the middle, and a chocolate shell over the outside. It’s AMAZING. 1000000/10, would recommend.

Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving is a holiday that’s mostly about food. Yeah, it’s “significance” is all about friendship and rainbows between the Native Americans and the pilgrims (before the pilgrims killed the NAs and stole their land, but whatever), but in modern life, it’s become about what kind of stuffing everybody makes, and how each person seasons their turkey. At our house, we do a classic turkey, stuffing (YUM), mashed potatoes (sometimes even homemade!), canned cranberry sauce (I know, we’re uncultured swines, but it’s SO GOOD), and you guessed it, corn casserole. Hearty, carb-tastic goodness. Calories don’t count on holidays, guys!

Hanukkah: For many years now, we’ve hosted a Hanukkah party (because, if you’ve read our blog since the beginning, you’ll know we’re a mixed-faith family). It’s a fun time to see all my Jewish cousins, as well as my “1% Jewish-but-born-and-raised-Catholic” grandma, who loves that joke a lot. Since it’s Hanukkah, we do latkes, and we pair those with homemade applesauce (which is what my house smells like right now). We also do the previously mentioned fan-favorite “balsamic-mustard-garlic” chicken, and the sesame skirt steak as well. They’re good for most occasions, and we obviously couldn’t do ham or pork for Hanukkah because JEWS. But it’s awesome. Good stuff.

Christmas: For our last family gathering, we do something kind of unique. Every year for a while now, we’ve made Sauerbraten, which is this super vinegar-y beef that’s cooked for a whole day. We also make kartuffel gloesse, which are German potato dumplings (forgive me if I misspelled them – even if they’re spelled right, spell check will say they’re wrong). And because it would be wrong not to end my post with this, on Christmas we also eat corn casserole. Shocker.

--Holly