Time to pull out the faded and stained old handwritten recipes or notes, favorite cookbooks, and share with friends who really want to offer our best dishes to family and friends for Christmas. This time of year I especially try to remember the two women who taught me to cook, and to love cooking. My husband’s paternal grandmother, and his mother taught me with encouragement, kindness, joy and pride in the making of simple meals for big families. They taught me how to make good, nourishing meals from simple, cheap ingredients. They taught me to cook with love. I was a really slow student, but fortunately God gave me such good teachers that even I learned to cook well. Eventually.

Please share old family favorites, new discoveries, and memories, of course. I especially love it when we get recipes from different parts of the country, and our international readers. Zurich Mike, where are you? Being, as we say here in the South, of a certain age, I am steeped in old Southern recipes and cooking methods, but I have loved getting new ideas and recipes from our readers in Texas and Louisiana who do meals with boldness and heat, our coastal friends who share the best seafood recipes, our Northern friends who give us so many good stew and roast and vegetables recipes. Midwesterners just seem to do such a great job with family meals and especially winter vegetables, and no telling what you might get from out west and the West Coast, but the ideas and recipes are always wonderful.

Has your Christmas dinner always been old family favorites, the traditional holiday meal, or something unique to your family? Ours has kind of been both. We still serve the favorite ham and breads and desserts, but we’ve changed things, especially the sides, and added some delicious smoked roasts or a lamb shoulder.

When my kids were young we always tried to go to Midnight Mass, and afterwards we came home, opened presents, and then, in the wee hours of Christmas morning, had ham and eggs, biscuits and gravy. Although we had Christmas dinner with family the next day, our family’s breakfast was what cemented in my sons’ minds as our traditional Christmas meal. When grandchildren came along and it was time for us to let that go, my daughters in law and I fought a real battle against the men who really, really did not want to give that up, but it was not possible to drag babies to Midnight Mass and our house in the middle of the night.

So many wonderful things get shared among family and friends when breaking bread together. Memories are made that become lifelong treasures, the laughter, love, and especially in our wild family, the loud stories, kids yelling with joy and excitement (and sometimes anger too!) are just as important as the foods we share. We strive to make each year the best, most wonderful, happy Christmas ever.

 

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