At our family gatherings there are certain dishes that are traditional to eat. At the Parke Family Christmas parties it is always dessert- Granny Parke's Pineapple Fluff and Peanut Brittle Dessert. The second takes a little getting used to, the first, if made right (read- not made by me), is a little scoop of heaven. The rest of the meal can change yearly, but dessert should remain the same. It just isn't Christmas with out ingesting calories in those forms.
On my side of the family, the traditional dishes debut at Thanksgiving and make an encore appearance for Christmas dinner. The only problem is we have 2 Thanksgiving dinners by celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving in October and American Thanksgiving in November, so by the time we have Christmas dinner in December, I am ready to retire the Green Bean Casserole and Sweet Potato Casserole recipes' for another 9 months.
Except this year.
I'll tell you that leftovers are good, but not that good. Bleck!
By the time that planning our American Thanksgiving dinner came around I didn't even want to think about green beans, sweet potatoes, or casseroles in general, let alone eat any of them. So I just said, "NO" to more tradition. This year we would just make do with candied yams and cooked carrots on Thanksgiving.
When I told Richard about the lack of traditional dishes at this years dinner he was appalled. I like to make my hubby happy, so I relented and agreed to make a small green bean casserole. Then on Thanksgiving morning, I was on the phone with my mom she mentioned how disappointed my brother, Nate, was that we weren't having the Sweet Potato casserole...
On Tuesday, I ate the last helping of sweet potato casserole for lunch all in the name of blessed tradition. It's not gone, I just can not bear to eat another bite. It is sitting in my fridge waiting it's journey to the trash can or disposal since it's week expiry date is up. No one else has had any and the date today is December 2nd with our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, with the traditional dishes looming only a mere 22 days away...
Here's to hoping Christmas comes slowly...very, very slowly.
5 comments:
And to those of us without any left overs...... I say I miss em! Well, not the sweet potatoes. Never could get myself to like those.... but! Stuffing, potatoes, rolls, turkey, YES YES YES!
Which is why I am cooking a turkey tomorrow. When you have Thanksgiving at someone elses house and you don't have left overs...... it just aint fittin' I tell ya!
That's just it Rach, I only got the 2 dishes. No turkey. No potatoes. No stuffing. You only bring home what you take and those are always my assignments. Maybe Christmas will be better because I do the whole thing so we will have leftovers of EVERYTHING!
Sweet potatoes? Not my cup of tea, either. But here's to traditions and leftovers in general.
I love the shots with the turkey legs. Your boys crack me up sometimes.
You should have "traded" with others. When we have a family dinner and there is leftovers we take a little of the other people's leftovers and give them some of ours.
I agree with needing leftovers, which is why I made a turkey the day after Thanksgiving.
Left overs - I used to love them, till the reality of middle age and calories hit me full force. I didn't even mind eating the same lunch for a week. Two weeks, I don't know if I could do. And cooking is hard enough without the boredom element entering in. We don't do Christmas dinner. I have never been interested in spending hours in the kitchen on that day - we do breakfast though - no leftovers from that -
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