Feast

I loved holidays as a child, even though they never met my Norman Rockwell expectations. By a mile. But to me, regardless, they meant togetherness, family, comfort, fun, and food.

Sometimes we'd go to my grandma's and so they would all cook...whatever they'd cook. My dad stayed home cause he's like that. Grown ups would try and get me to eat yams with marshmallows. Those same grown ups enjoyed wine and White Russians and I would get sprite in a wine glass.

Other times, it was at home and we'd invite my dad's best friend (may he R.i.P.) and his son over for a feast.

And other times it was just us, mom, and, and I. Once we just ate cold canned soup because a storm had knocked out the power and the pipes had frozen, and the gas pilot went out and no one wanted to dig through three feet of snow to get under the house and light it.

Our feasts were generally the same foods, either well done prime rib or ham (two foods I hated), green beans stewed in broth and bacon, a simple red leaf lettuce salad, pumpkin pie, mashed red potatoes, gravy, stuffing. Along those lines, lets forget the year my mom went through a cilantro obsession and we ended up with baked stove top speckled with cilantro. If I were super lucky and begged and begged, my mom would add to the feast, Yorkshire puddings. Simple dough puffs cooked in cast iron, floating in beef drippings...you could stuff them with meat, stuffing, whatever was at hand. I could eat a dozen in one sitting but no on ever let me.

Now, I have my own family and my husband's and we have feasts too. A variety of prime rib, duck, or turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, two kinda of stuffing, pumpkin pie or bread pudding, from scratch green bean casserole or creamed spinach, butterscotch yams, corn, and rolls. (Those rolls do no justice in comparison to Yorkshire pudding an instead just piss me off). Everyone spades over place settings and where to sit and I down a glass of wine to survive. Someone always yells and complains and curses. I get stuck with more dishes than a restaurant, which I hate yet its also kind of zen to scour pans after the holiday rush.

What are your holidays like?