Holiday Thoughts

[talon]

We eat plainly most of the year, but for holidays and special events, we go for the delish.

And we ignore the vasty vasty "thou shalt not" people, the ones who proclaim that butter, eggs, sugar, bacon, cream, salt, and other such things will kill us because, if you think about it, everything has the potential to kill us. The mere act of being born is a death sentence. No matter what we do, in the end, we will die. Eat "healthy"[1] and exercise [2] and die anyway. Eat "unhealthy" [1] and don't exercise, and die anyway. You're going to die. Period. Thing is, the way things are going, you're just as likely to die of a "healthy" diet as a diet that isn't "healthy".

My suggestion is to mix it up. Don't eat fancy on a daily basis. Eat simply. Eat real food. Eat moderately. Don't stress about eating a lot of variety as long as you eat real food simply prepared in modest amounts. Then, go wild on holidays and special occasions. Birthdays, July 4th, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, plus whatever religious holidays you celebrate. For me, that's Halloween, Cookie Day, Founder's Day, and House Day, plus I celebrate a few holidays of friends: Diwali, Chanukah, Christmas, New Year's, Midsummer, Lupercalia, Lammas. Some of these are intensely food oriented holidays, and some are activity holidays, a few are both.

Therefore, around my house, holidays are filled with an abundance of fancy food that we'd never bother with the rest of the year. Most of it is seasonal, but as it's a holiday, sometimes, we choose to have foods that aren't seasonal just because we can.

Thanksgiving, for example, is the next up holiday. There will be appetizers (a bread cornucopia filled with lightly steamed or raw vegetables and surrounded by dips served out of vegetable containers), a soup, the main entrée of an herb and fruit brined and beer-grilled turkey with a buttery rich gravy from the pan drippings, the Brussels sprouts and baby carrots will be roasted and soaked in a butter pecan sauce, we'll put cream cheese as well as butter in the mashed potatoes to make them extra festive, the yams will be the stuffing will be filled with richness, there will be three kinds of cranberry sauce at least one of which will be molded into a turkey shape, we'll have a creamed corn and lima bean succotash, a mixed green salad topped with fruit and nuts, an ambrosia salad, 5 kinds of fancily decorated pies, 3 kinds of fancily iced cakes, pumpkin brownies, a corn pudding, cranberry cider, apple cider, spiced tea, iced tea, feather rolls, herb butter, flower butter, and seasonally decorated sugar cookies.

The next holiday up is Cookie Day. From December 1st to December 11th, we fast from all cookies, then on December 12th, that's all we eat all day long. Shortbread cookies, savory cheese cookies, fruit-filled cookies, green tea cookies, biscotti, stained glass cookies, gingerbread cookies, macaroons, spice cookies, pfeffernuesse, zimtsterne, bath olivers, leckerli, hazelnut lebkuchen, honeycakes, kourabiedes, krumkake, peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chip, pizzelle, Moravian spice, Russian/Mexican teacakes, speculaas, springerle, stroopwaffeln, snickerdoodles, linzer torten, boortsog, biscochitoes, alfajors, Florentines, tuxedo cookies, Wookie Cookies, snowfire drops, lavender lemon cookies, lemon drops, thumbprint cookies, mandelbrot, sables, buckeyes, lady locks, lemon bars, dream bars, spritz cookies, red velvet cookies, cornbread cookies, rosemary and olive cookies, sundried tomato and cheese drops, jalapeno lemon boats, pork empanaditas, onion crisps, parmesan and thyme rounds, cocoa pecan garlic bites, and more. Yes, believe it or not, more.

Next up is the plethora of winter holidays - Solstice, Christmas, Chanukah, Midwinter, Saturnalia, Twelfth Night, Kwanzaa, and more. Very few people celebrate all of them; most only celebrate one. This means cider, eggnog, more cookies, cakes, sweet breads, fancy sandwiches, fancy appetizers, roast duck or goose, baked apples, and other such treats, and fancified vegetables, and more pies.

Then New Year's, which is thankfully a holiday composed mostly of alcoholic drinks and appetizers - we're beginning to get a bit bloated with all the holiday treats just past, but honestly, the time to indulge in such rich foods is in the winter when we need the extra calories to stay warm and shovel snow and slide on the ice, especially if we're being energy conscious and not keeping our homes heated too warmly.

We get a respite on such intense food holidays with Valentine's Day being a day mostly for cookies and candies eaten lightly, and Easter/Ostara/Spring Equinox, which is mostly eggs and braised rabbits, and MayDay which is mostly Mai Wine and the first strawberries. Memorial Day is picnic fare, as is Midsummer Day, July 4th, and Labor Day. Lammas is a grain holiday - bread and beer.

Halloween kicks off the winter gorging festivals again, with spooky treats, pumpkin based foods, caramel popcorn, cotton candy, graveyard cakes, cookies, and other spectacle foods.

It sounds like a lot of food, and lot of calories and a lot of indulgence, but really, when each of these happens on but one day, and you indulge in such extravagant foods a mere 15 days out of 365, that leaves 350 days of the year to eat spartanly, eat moderately, eat plain and simple fare. Placed into that kind of perspective, why not indulge and eat decadently on your chosen holidays? Pick 15-20 days out of the year where you eat special food, and then don't eat them the rest of the year, at least not prepared as extravagantly as you did for the holidays.

By reserving the extravagant fare for just a few days out of the year, those foods become special and beloved, and you anticipate them eagerly instead of going "ho-hum, another figgy pudding".

For some holidays, like Cookie Day and Lammas, a specific food is featured and we gorge on that one dish (cookies, fresh baked bread) on that day until we groan, then eat them sparingly the rest of the year. That's kind of the point of a holiday, being able to eat your favorite, highly anticipated food freely and without guilt. The rest of the year, indulging in them rightfully induces a slight sense of guilt because after all, this is holiday fare, not din ordinaire.

Most days, the food consists of casseroles, sandwiches, soups, fritattas - what could be considered "peasant fare". That makes the fancy holiday foods that much more special and delicious.

So, those are my thoughts on holiday food. No dieting on the holiday, eat sensibly the rest of the year. No guilt, all pleasure.

[1] In quote marks because no one really knows for sure what is healthy and what isn't. Witness the professor who did a Twinkie Diet and lost weight and lowered his cholesterol. For him, it worked. For you, it might not. Healthy food is a very individualized thing and we should not ever try to control or dictate what food others eat.
[2] And again, that's a matter for individuals, not something we should try to control for others.