Festive foods
Back in 2010, I blogged about the healthy foods I enjoy at this time of year: clementines and pomegranates. But the foods we associate most with Christmas tend to be ones we wouldn’t dream of consuming outside of December.
Even if we combined all the high-calorie foods from Easter, Val entine’s, Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving, we wouldn’t even come close to the sinful totals we rack up at Christmas.
Why? Because resistance is futile.
Our senses get bombarded by enticing sights, smells and tastes of the season. Advertisers tease us. Parties lure us with all sorts of temptations. Store shelves and bake sale tables are heaped with choices. Even our own family traditions drive us to get baking.
Beyond the yumminess factor, I’m guessing that we’re compelled to devour and guzzle more than our fair share because of the scarcity threat. Let’s face it, we know that if we don’t grab them while the going’s good, then we’ll have to wait another year before the following “food groups” surface again.
Egg nog and condensed milk- Christmas pudding with hard sauce, fruit cake, trifle and plum pudding
- Candy canes and bonbons (e.g., chicken bones, ribbon candy, licorice All Sorts)
- Brittle and bark
- Peanut butter balls and rum balls
- Lard-and shortening-based treats (e.g., tourtières/meat pies, pets de soeurs, mince pie)
- Macaroons, meringues, maraschinos and mousse
- Shortbread cookies, butter cookies, stained-glass cookies, icing- and sprinkle-covered cookies, icebox cookies…
- Custards, spreads, dips, sauces and fondue fountains
- Liqueur-filled chocolates (e.g., brandy beans, Kahlua truffles)
- Christmas-themed or -shaped chocolates (e.g., coins, marshmallow Santas, limited-time-only green/red Hershey’s kisses, Smarties and M&Ms)
Cream cheese-based desserts (mommy’s cherry/cream cheese/graham cracker crumb concoction)- Gingerbread houses and gingerbread people
- Specialty drinks (e.g., caramel brulée lattes, hard cider, .liqueur-infused hot cocoa, nutcracker porter, Bailey’s and coffee, peppermint twist martini, frosty noggin)
- ice cream flavours (e.g. chicken bone bark, candy cane ripple)
Sure, most of these foods are unwholesome, but when you enjoy them only once a year, I venture that these tempting foods inject the Christmas season with an added touch of
AWESOME!!!
Did I miss any of your festive food staples? Comment away below.
my mouth is watering!
ReplyDeleteI am so hungry now, and it's only 9am!
ReplyDeleteI am totally intrigued though -- what are stained glass cookies?
So, I'm dying to know which of my 15 festive food groups made you salivate the most, Shannon.
ReplyDeleteAnd Coralee, I'm pretty sure Santa doesn't care what time it is when you savour festive foods. No need to wait any later than 9 a.m. Besides that's 10 a.m. at home in NS, right?
Stained-glass cookies require two different sizes of cookie cutters. You use the larger one to shape the cookie and the smaller one to cut out a hole in the middle. Then you fill that hole with candies to melt for a translucent, stained-glass effect. Here's a link to a couple recipes: http://www.goodeatsblog.com/2008/12/stained-glass-cookies.html
http://www.marthastewart.com/319461/stained-glass-cookies
(Some people make two batches of sugar cookie dough and add different food colouring to each of the batches. They would then choose one colour for the larger cookies and remove the middles with the smaller cookie cutter. That same small cookie cutter would also be used to cut out cookies from the second colour's batch. Last step before baking is to take the small cookies and fit them into the holes you left in the larger cookies. These taste good and they're colourful, but they aren't as pretty as true stained-glass cookies.)
Thanks for the info on stained glass cookies! Never knew these existed! I will have to try them. :)
ReplyDelete