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one holiday tradition that I love is going to the Christmas tree farm and drinking apple cider and watching my dad cut it down.  Ok...that was when I was a little girl.  Now that my dad is gone I had to replace that tradition with going with my hubby on Christmas eve to look at all the christmas lights.  One holiday tradition that I hated and was so glad when I grew up that I didn’t have to do this anymore was when I was little my mom would make us wait to open presents till after she woke up (usually around 9 or 10am) and she made breakfast and we all had to eat.  TOOK FOREVER!  I swore I’d never do that to my kids...so far so good.

Ok...my security word was physical69...that’s just dirty lol

We don’t have a lot of traditions, I realized as I am thinking about them.  One that I love is Ham Buns.  It isn’t a holiday in our family without Ham Buns.  Ham Buns are basically dough wrapped around chopped ham and then baked.  They are so good, they are practically currency in our family.  My mom doesn’t cook much anymore, since she had her stroke, and somehow I’ve become appointed Ham Bun Maker.  I don’t mind doing it, but I know at least 2 of my siblings know how to make them too, and they never do.  I’ll have to look at that.

April, my parents made us wait until everyone was up for presents too!  In fact, I wasn’t even allowed in the room where the tree was (and my aunt slept in there on the sofa).  We were allowed to get our stockings, but that was it.  And we also weren’t allowed to wake my parents up - but I remember tromping up and down the stairs as loud as I could trying to get them up.  It was torture!

Oh, forgot to add - yes I got Hot Dish and loved it!  While you Minnesotans are much weirder than Wisconsites, I could still identify with a lot of the small town life.

I grew up in California and every year one of my uncles would have a party on Chritmas Eve (complete with a brown santa, which was really uncle dressed up as santa).  The tradition our family was is opening one gift on Christmas Eve before the party and then coming home after midnight to open the rest.  Smart on my parent’s part because they got to sleep in late while we woke up early and got to play with our toys.  My sister and I have since married and our husbands think it is the strangest tradition, but every Christmas Eve we sleep over at either her or my house and everyone opens a gift.  Then at midnight, we wake the kids up and tell them Santa just dropped the gifts off and let them open them up.  My sister’s in laws think it is strange also, but they’ve gotten used to it.

My family never really had bery many traditions. On Christmas morning the first person up(as long as it’s after 5:30 a.m.) usually wakes everyone else up, we never had to wait, except once we were awake our parents kept us in one room until the had the video camera ready and coffee turned on. My parents divorced and remarried so things changed. I lived with my dad and my step-mom and she is a nurse so every other Christmas she had to work, so it was not uncommon to open presents on the 23rd or 24th. Some years we had parties at the house for friends and family. Anyways, we let our children dictate when we get up on Christmas and keep them all together while one of us grabs the video camera and turns on the coffee. So we usually get up really early on Christmas, hubby complains, and I have to remind him that he went to bed at a decent hour and I’m the one who was finishing everything up and have only had 2 hours of sleep.

One of my favorite things about Christmas was that my two brothers and I would always find a new pair of pajamas on our beds on Christmas Eve.  I loved wearing new pajamas that night and of course in the Christmas morning pictures there was not a ratty pair of pajamas to be seen.

My Thanksgiving tradition was watching the Macy’s parade.  It was always on tv in our house growing up and it’s always on tv in my house now.  When my husband was alive we would stuff the turkey together while watching the parade.  Both of my parents have died and my brothers are all in other states so now my tradition is to volunteer at the hospital for a few hours, come home to watch the parade then have dinner (which must include candied sweet potatoes) with neighbors. 

Our childhood Christmas tradition was church on Christmas Eve after which we could open one small present.  The rest of the presents were opened Christmas morning as soon as we were all awake.

My adult Christmas tradition takes place the second Saturday of December when I host my annual Candy Day.  This will be the 23rd year.  The husbands of the women who attend all agree this is their favorite holiday tradition! 

Oh, almost forgot.  Yes, Connie, I have my copy of HOT DISH and started reading it last night. 

My m-i-l tried to take the Thanksgiving turkey away one year and was met with a near mutiny.  Replacing the Thanksgiving turkey with a mere turkey breast!!  No one eats the dark meat was her argument.  So, to prove their point the boys kept the dark meat dish near her and kept asking her for it again and again.  They are such little boys with their mommy!

I adore famiily traditions.  Every single last one of them from the Nativity scene that takes up a whole corner of my mother’s family room to the 13 fishes on Christmas Eve.  Even better is creating our own with my little family like singing Happy Birthday Jesus Christmas morning before a single present is opened.

Every Christmas Eve, my dad dresses up like Santa Claus and runs around outside jingling jingle bells while we’re reading “Twas the Night Before X-mas” to the kids.  As soon as they here to bells, they go nuts and run to the window. Dad usually waves at them and makes a big show of showing them his bag full of toys (a pillow case full of blankets).  Shortly thereafter, my son starts screaming for everyone to go to bed, “RIGHT NOW!” because Santa won’t come into your house until you’re asleep, you know. 

And here’s a tradition I’d like to change: we always seem to commemorate Thanksgiving Day by acknowledging who in the family is the first to let out the dredded turkey fart....sometimes it’s the cat, but more times than not, it’s they that bear chest hair. 

WE ARE SICK AND WRONG.

PJ- your posts warm my heart. I adore your dog, too!
Santa, we do the b-day cake for Jesus too..the kids love it.
Coming from an Italian family on T-giving we are food-blimps. We do the turkey + goodies, but we also do (did) homemade pizza, lasagna and canoli’s. I miss those days.
Being a military family, we have had to develop mobile traditions, always a real tree (even in Japan), home made deco’s for it, no tasteful silver/white/gold Martha tree for us! Lots of pictures. Church on Christmas eve, and now I come prepared when we sing “Silent Night” holding candles, I always cry..getting sentimental, I guess.

GUILT doesn’t work, Connie.  Not one bit.

Oh, who’m I kidding?  In fact, Guilt is pretty much my family’s main Thanksgiving tradition.  This year we’re going to my brother’s in Long Island, and he called me on my cell phone three weeks in advance to make sure I brought the soda for Thanksgiving dinner.  That’s right, three bottles of soda.  And guess who’s in the doghouse if I bring the caffeinated Coke instead of caffeine-free?

(Pouting) :( I don’t wanna go, Mom.

Mike
Hurrying out to go buy HOT DISH, along with 3 bottles of caffeine-free Coke

Connie!  Is corn pudding that yukky?  I cut out a recipe in my newspaper that’s from the Barefoot Contessa and I was all prepared to add it to our Thanksgiving table this year.  There are no Ritz, but hey, with my family that would probably be a plus.

I asked Son 2 what his fave part of the meal was, hoping to get insight into why we go through all the elaborate side dishes.  He responded, “The turkey.” So I still don’t know why we do all the elaborate side dishes.  And the only one who eats the pumpkin pie is me, my sister-in-law, and my niece.  All the guys go for the apple pie and the chocolate chip cookies.

Oh, and I have HOT DISH!

Thank you Ms. Mary.  I adore her too. 

We do the candles at Christmas Eve service and I learned a long time ago to carry tissues.  I’ve always been a watering bucket.

A tradition I love: my sisters, my mom and I (and now our little ones) get together with my grandmother to make homemade noodles or dumplings for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We usually alternate between the two because some of the family wants noodles and some want dumplings.  We have a grand time and make a big production of getting much flour upon one another with lots of pictures.  My grandmother has always made the dough and we did all the cutting but she has been teaching us the whole process so that we can pass the recipe down.  This was my great-grandmother’s recipe.

We also have the yearly family poker game among the adults later on after everyone’s stomachs have settled which is usually a blast and can get rather competitive.

WARNING: NOT FOR THE WEAK STOMACHED OR IF YOU ARE EATING, YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP OVER THIS PART.....

One event that happens every Thanksgiving and/or Christmas: at some point during our meal, my uncle will look around the table, elbow the person next to him, and say “Umm-umm, better than eating boogers and snot.” (yuck)

And yes, though it totally grosses me out, it has become a tradition of sorts, and I know there will come a day when I will miss it.

(And JPerry, you’re not alone.)

A tradition I could do without: the fighting over the TV for the parades, football games, annual showing of Gone With the Wind and all those good shows that they show on Thanksgiving day.

Susan H

We have a Christmas tradition of opening gifts to each other Christmas Eve night instead of in the morning.  We also go to candle light service at our church.  We then have the whole family over Christmas morning for breakfast nice and early.  Later on in the afternoon we take naps and watch movies.  I love our Christmas.  It is always relaxing and we really don’t have anywhere to rush to.  This year we are planning to go to the movies.  That is something our family and friends do every couple of years.  We spend most of Christmas Eve celebrating; not so much Christmas Day.  I love it.

I love most of our Christmas traditions--decorating the tree with mismatched ornaments, some of which go back to my own childhood; driving around town to check out all the Christmas decorations; baking with my grandmother’s recipes; reading only Christmas stories as bedtime stories from the Friday after Thanksgiving until December 25;getting out all the Christmas angels and placing them EVERYWHERE with the collection my mother started, my sister and I continued, and my seven-year-old grandniece is beginning; seeing at least one Nutcracker performance, one Christmas pageant with kids as the stars, and one Christmas contata;staying up til the wee hours on Christmas Eve to do last minute wrapping, put toys together, and fill stockings. The Grands have two stockings--one at their home that Santa Claus fills and one at our house because we can’t bear to give up the fun of filling stockings.

I grew up knowing that every Christmas Eve dinner would be at my paternal grandmother’s home with a huge, boisterous family gathering and tons of gifts, every Christmas morning with my parents and my sister and brother with Santa’s surprises and family gifts, and every Christmas Day with my maternal grandparents and a smaller, quieter celebration with the Christmas story from Luke and a mostly tone-deaf family chorus of “Silent Night,” and more food than even my brother and male cousins could eat. When my nephews were small, we all gathered at my mothers from Christmas Eve through Christmas Day dinner. Now three of our boys are married
men with their own families and in-laws’ traditions to accommodate, the traditions we still honor are dearer than ever. And, Avery, Christmas pjs are part of our Christmas tradition too, a practice now extending to the third generation.

Well, unlike traditional family gatherings at Thanksgiving/Christmas, etc.  My family consists of 2 parents, 3 brothers and myself.  That’s all......nobody comes over, we don’t go over to anyone else’s house.  Ever since my grandparents passed away when I was 11 yrs old, it’s just been the 6 of us.

You would think a family of 6 on any Holiday would be a snap............um, no.

See, my mother wanted us all to feel special, despite our small numbers......SO SHE MAKES A DESSERT FOR EACH ONE OF US EVERY YEAR.

Homemade, mind you......

1) Apple Pie - Brother 1, ...2) Lemon Meringue Pie - Father, ....3) Pecan Pie - Brother 2, ...4) Blueberry Cheesecake - Brother 3, ...5) Coconut Cream Pie - ME, ...6) Pumpkin Roll - Mom

YUP.......6 Desserts for a family of 6!!!!!!!!

Mom has been doing this for 10 YEARS!

Every year all the dishes turn out spendidly, Turkey, side dishes, the irresistable canned cranberry sauce.  But wtihout a fault, every year, the disaster is the rolls........either they are awful or they burn or we don’t make enough.......they are a saga on their own.

Hehe, this year Mom went on and on how we are all doing so well in our diets and eating plans (we’ve all lost a total of 41 lbs in one month!!!!!!!!!!! Woohoo!) that she has resolved to making only 2 desserts, including the store packated Pumpkin Spice Pecan Bread (Williams-Sonoma).

But, like Connie mentioned, there was unrest with “why not my dessert, you ALWAYS make mine?”.  So far.......she’s up to 4!

Happy Friday everyone!

Ramona

Hot Dish?
Bought it, read it, loved it.  Sex, ice, and a butterhead...not to mention the great small-town dynamics and the poignant, awkward mother/daughter moments.

Family traditions?
Your family’s corn casserole is my family’s creamed onions.  My mother is bringing them this year, which means they must be cleared from the table and preserved in Tupperware in the fridge until the last car pulls out of the driveway...or I find them two weeks later under that leftover turkey carcass I kept meaning to turn into soup.

Favorite tradition?
They’re all coming home.  Nothing else compares.

Virginia

When I was young my family would go over to my cousins (creating a crowd of 26--4 parents, 22 kids) for Thanksgiving and then they would come to our house on Christmas Eve. 

Every year we could always count on Aunt Eva to make her famous Pea Jello.  Here’s the recipe for any of you brave enough to try it:
Orange and Lime jello mixed together
add tomato paste
when that thickens put canned peas on top.
(It looks as nasty as it sounds, and no--I never took a single bite.)

For Christmas, since we had such a large family, we could only afford to buy a Charlie Brown tree.  The last one I remember kept falling over and my dad had to tie it to the ceiling to keep it upright.

My brothers and sisters and I would always go caroling around the neighborhood and always got as good a haul as Halloween when the neighbors would give us fudge, brownies, cookies, candy canes, and hot chocolate for singing to them.  I grew up in Utah where we always seemed to have snow at that time of year and now I live in the south so it just isn’t the same to go caroling when it’s kind of warm outside.

The tradition that I love is every year I make candy. Sometimes tons, sometimes just one or two kinds. No matter what every year my son (who’s now 15) ask if he can help make candy and cookies. And he does help, even cleaning real good before and after. We’re doing candy this week end and he’s already asked if he can help. I love it.

J Perry, you are SO not alone. We never get together with my in laws and there’s not a fart or poop story. It doesn’t even have to be a holiday. Sad, isn’t it? But then again I love Kevin Smith and Adam Sandler.

Everybody who’s got Hot Dish needs to join Eloisa’s book club thread on the bulletin board. We’ve been discussing Hot Dish this month.

We don’t do anything major here for the holidays.  Working two jobs I find myself doing good to get a little cleaning done and put up a tree for Christmas.  I miss all that too. 

When we first married we had Christmas Eve dinner with my folks, sometimes a big meal, other times just a burger, depending on if we were all working or had time to cook.  Them we opened our presents from there, visisted till time to go get ready for Midnight Mass.  After church and getting the kids to bed, we would load the presents under the tree and fix the stockings.  After a couple hours sleep we would get up to see the excited little ones (my favorite part) and watch them open their presents.  We always went to DH folks for Christmas Day. He is one of 11 and I was raised as an only child so it was culture shock for me and some of my best memories.  They always have a real tree, no lights, which I thought was strange, but lots of icicles.  We would all gather in the living room after lunch and watch the kids open the presents.  It was such a fabulous sight to see the joy in everyones eyes, at even the smallest gifts.  Makes me very glad to be a part of this wonderful family and all the love they share.

Now as most of DH family has married and had kids of their own and now two families to divide their time by going to both family gatherings, we now have DH family gathering on the weekend after the big holiday whether it is Thanksgiving or Christmas.  As his parents have gotten older we divided the holidays to the various kids houses, we usually get Labor Day and have a huge happy everything party.  Our Christmas and Thanksgivings are usually fairly quiet at home on those days but we make up for it on the weekends.  Total pandamonium and I love it.

OH and I forgot to say that I do have Hot Dish.  You really didn’t think I was going to miss a SR author book did you?

Connie, I bought Hot Dish this past weekend, and I am STILL trying to find time to read it. I can guarantee you that at some point this weekend, I’ll get it read. But even without reading it, I’d like to second Beth in saying that you Minnesotans are so weird. I mean, it’s not like us Iowans have any strange butter rituals. Oh, wait…

My family has a few things we do every year, but nothing I’d really call true traditions. We decorate the tree together in a most haphazard way. We wait for everyone to be up before opening presents on Christmas morning, then we get together with my mom’s side of the family for lunch and stay until evening. The one thing that never fails to amaze me is my grandmother’s gift giving. She gives something to EVERYone. All forty-ish people on that side of the family receive a gift. This is especially amazing to me because she is a farmer who makes pretty much no money, and yet she still does this every year.

Oh, and we always go to the candle light service on Christmas Eve!

First, let’s get something clear here: The Outlands (aka Wisc, and IA) grow far weirder people than here in Civilized Minnesota,the cultureal hub of the tundra.

Brownone, that’s a sweet, sweet custom.
PJ-- I think it’s great you volunteer.
Sanata-- sigh. Yes, to my regret I have learned that holiday dinners are the one time that breasts don’t cut it
JPerry—yes, you are sick and wrong. I never emit ...airy scents. Shuddup Xtina!

Mike-- throw a fox in the henhouse. Bring FOUR cans of POP (you, easterner!)

Christie, dear-- I have seen pictures of lovely golden brown corn pudding that is golden and cripsy on top and soft and buttery looking inside. So apparently not all corn casseroles are doomed. Of course, I suspect they’ve been photoshopped.

Susan H-- join Jperry in the sick and wrong corner. Although the noodles sounded good. For about 5 seconds.

Wow, Janga, you ahve some beautiful traditions. I gave up the cookie baking about two years ago when i realized I was stuffing down as much uncooked batter as I was baking.

Ramona-- your POOR MOM. She’s going to make a huge pie error sometime soon. I can feel it. I swear my mother got Christmas Dementia years before it extended to the other 364 days, just so I’d have to take over duties.

Thanks, Virgina! Good luck on those onions.
Billie, the Utah snow sounds lovely-- the jeoo, not so much.
Kim, you join the others in the fart and snot corner.

Bookstore Deb--I secretly like the pandemonium but I don;t want to encourage the idea. We’re now startring to have babies show up for the holidays so we’ve added wails to the symphony of noise. hope you like the book!

Blueskies-- how do I get on Granny’s list?

I forgot to say, Connie, that I did finish Hot Dish. I loved it, and I have announced my affections on two bulletin boards. Pssst--I think your Lutheran ladies have some Southern Baptist sisters.

By the way, even though I adored Hot Dish and am eager for the next “new genre” book with your name on it, I still have not given up on reading Giles’s story. I remember your words on the subject in a certain AAR interview.

As a kid, my sisters and I would always get 1 apple and 1 orange in our Christmas stocking.  Both were HUGE!  However, I hated apples so I would always trade my apple for my sis’s orange.  Finally, when I was 10 or so, I just started getting 2 oranges.

The other thing I could always count on in my stocking was new socks and underwear.  This is the one that my DH just doesn’t understand.  He thinks this is the worst gift that could ever be in a stocking.  I buy them every year for him just because. 

For non-holiday traditions, my favorite was the “sick kid” ritual.  Whenever any of us kids was sick, Daddy would bring home a new coloring book and new crayons just for the sickie.  We would also receive our own special carton of sherbet (in my case, orange; my sis preferred lime).  When I was 18 and had my wisdom teeth out, Daddy came home with my coloring book, crayons, and sherbet.  He passed away 6 years ago and I still miss him terribly.

The other tradition in my house was singing “Happy Birthday” to Dad.  We was a New Year’s baby (born 54 seconds after midnight on Jan 1) so as soon as the ball would drop in time square, we would sing to Dad.  When I was older, Dad would already be in bed asleep but that did not stop the singing!!

Thanks for stirring up some great memories today!!

J Perry Stone said… “we always seem to commemorate Thanksgiving Day by acknowledging who in the family is the first to let out the dredded turkey fart....”

HOLY SMOKES! J. PERRY STONE IS REALLY CONNIE BROCKWAY!

I should have suspected something like this ...

We don’t have many traditions in our family. We buy our Christmas tree (real) 2 weeks before Christmas (hello, needles anyone?) and we open one gift Christmas Eve. That’s it. We spent so many holidays around the country (Dh was in Military until 3 years ago) that we were used to spending the Holidays with just ourselves or maybe friends every now and then, that the In-Laws are driving us nuts now that we’ve moved back home. They make plans without consulting us and this year we put our foot down. Thanksgiving at our house, just us, but they are visiting after (instead of us having to travel to 2 or 3 different places) and Christmas will be spent at home too. But, I’m sure they’ll show up!

I don’t know about you all, but I am STARVING after reading about the food!!! Thanks a lot!

Becasue we lived in Texas, far away from family, and there were only our two daughters, Scott and I, we ended up having Thanksgiving dinner alone a lot. And we love it. The girls started cooking right away—stirring the pumpkin pie filling, making the fruit salad which mostly consists of opening cans (don’t ask), but now they could do the whole thing by themselves. But as it is, we cook and Scott cleans up. Then we play cards, not poker, but progressive rummy or pinochle, or Trivial Pursuit.

Connie said “Susan H-- join Jperry in the sick and wrong corner. Although the noodles sounded good. For about 5 seconds.”

Hey, ask and ye shall receive.....

I forgot, we did start a new tradition in our family.  On Thanksgiving Eve, we deep fry several cajun turkeys (one for the dinner and several for later and for friends, etc).  They are awesome!  So now on Thanksgiving, we have the traditional baked turkey and the fried cajun turkey.  Want to guess which one is gone first? 

We use the “Bob & Tom” recipe:

http://www.bobandtom.com/frames/fried_turkey.htm

For Thanksgiving when I was a kid, mother would start cooking as soon as she got up and the house would smell wonderful.  My favorite was the fruit salad and would always manage to put the bowl right by me!!  As I got older and my siblings started getting married and bringing the significant others, they would help with the fruit salad.  Almost as much fruit went into us as into the fruit salad.  What I remember most was mother making the pie crust from scratch.  I still don’t know how to do it.  She was one of those cooks that did it by eye and feel!  How am I supposed to measure that?!?  lol

For Christmas, we weren’t allowed to open the presents before everyone got up but ‘Santa’ always left a few unopened for us and we occupied ourselves until mother and daddy got up.  As we got older, all the presents got wrapped but were never put under the tree until after we’d gone to bed.  No matter what the age, there were always ‘Santa’ presents.

Now that I have my own kids, I’ve followed some of the same tradtions, but with my own special touch.  Since I’m a single mom working two jobs, I usually work right up until Thanksgiving and Christmas and have little time to prepare.

The Thanksgiving ‘tradition’ I started several years ago, was to get up and have a nice breakfast and watch the Macy’s parade.  Then we usually watch ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ or another holiday movie.  Then we go out to eat and to a movie that evening.  No kitchen to clean and everybody gets what they want, I love it!!

For Christmas, we always go to a local tree farm and get a real tree.  This we do as a family, even now that the kids are in college.  Then we decorate it.  That brings back the most memories for me because I have alot of my mothers decorations.  One night we usually go driving around and look at all the Christmas lights.  On Christmas Eve, we usually watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and then after the kids go to bed, I put out the ‘Santa’ presents.  In my house, you still have to believe in Santa to get a present.  When my kids asked me if there was a Santa, I told them YES, of course there was a Santa.  Santa might not be a person, but he represented the spirit of Christmas. 

Oh, and I forgot, while growing up on Thanksgiving and Christmas evenings we would all gather round the dining room table and play board games.  The games got more sophiticated the older we got but the rivalries always stayed the same.  lol

Connie, this was a great topic for a blog.  Brings back so many memories. 

--dorothy

Well, this is gonna be my 1st Thanksgiving ever! So let’s see how it goes...! I wonder if there’s another country outside from the US that celebrates Thanksgiving or something similar...?

This year is a perfect time to start new traditions.  Welcome to the U.S. Silvana!  One year we had a family who just moved here from Hungary over for Thanksgiving dinner, their first.  Their little boy was about 8 years old and apparently his class had celebrated Thanksgiving in school.  He came with a mental check list of everything that should be included in a Thanksgiving dinner.  Turkey - check, stuffing - check, pumpkin pie - check, etc.  My mother heard him in the kitchen “inspecting” the meal.  She was so relieved that we had everything on his list.  They were such a charming family and he was so earnest in his interest about the menu that we all wanted to make that dinner special for them.  To this day it ranks as one of our best Thanksgiving days.

Our traditions are about like everyone else’s.

For Thanksgiving we gather at my husband’s sister’s house.  The men for the past four or five years have started a tradition of getting together Thanksgiving morning and deep frying turkeys while drinking a beer or two.  I am required by the laws of tradition to make broccoli casserole.  I am also cullinarily challenged and that is about the only “hot dish” I make and make well so that could be why said casserole is the only thing I make they are willing to eat. 

For Christmas we usually just wing it other than our trip to church on Christmas Eve.

New Year’s there is always a party at a family member’s house and we usually play games until midnight.  There is the obligitory game of Nertz.  (Nertz - a card game much like solitaire in how it is played only with several decks of cards, it moves much faster and is played as a group)

My other family tradition used to come in the spring.  Every year for Easter my Mamaw made a dozen chocolate chip cookies for every one of her children and grandchildren and their spouses.  It ended up being 25 to 30 dozen by the time she included Grandaddy and a few extra for guests.  I always loved it because I got a dozen cookies that I didn’t have to share with anybody because they all got some too!  That is the one tradition I really want to pass on to my family someday.

Rhonda, my grandma has done something similar. She’s made “Cookies in a jar” for all her grand- and great-grandkids. It’s wonderful, especially for college students because they’re a snap to mix up and bake and you don’t have to buy huge bags of flour and such that you KNOW will never get used. It doesn’t hurt that they’re delicious either.

Connie - if you want on “Granny’s list,” the easiest way would be to marry one of the available men. But seing as how neither of us live in Utah… I guess you could always try to sweet talk her. 

Okay first off “pea jello” ewwwww that is just sooooo wrong lol.

I love traditions but it so hard when they have to be changed. For the first year my mom won’t be doing the dinner because there’s just too many of us now. This is also the first year my oldest daughter will be spending Christmas eve and day with her significant other’s family.  I have started two traditions - one is having a tree trimming party and dinner for some friends and family and the other is reading “The Littlest Angel” to my two girls while I end up sobbing - I guess that one will have to wait ‘til next year lol.

Connie, I’m replying to an older post by copying the thread here…

http://www.squawkradio.com/index.php/sblog/the_squawk_weekly_update

Keira Soleore said…
Connie, apologies for not replying sooner. I didn’t check in here for a few days. You know, I cannot remember where I found it on the ‘net. All I can recall is that I went looking for a squawking chicken after I signed up here. And there was that hopping chicken, and since I didn’t see a copyright, I simply, er, stole it. You are welcome to it/him/her. --Keira
11/18 at 12:51 AM

Connie Brockway said…
Thanks, you guys!
Froggie when it comes to a choice between HOT DISH and hot dish, I too would go with the hot dish ;>
Thank you, Santa.
I gotta ask Keira, where did you get your avatar. I love him! I want him! (her?)
11/13 at 12:45 PM

Keira Soleore said…
Christina: I really enjoyed the video, especially the moment where the hero fades into the villain. Oee, the eyes--very nicely done.
Connie: WOW! Woman’s World. WOW! Just can’t think of any other word. WOW!
11/12 at 08:26 PM

AnneriAilin said…
What I remember most was mother making the pie crust from scratch.  I still don’t know how to do it.  She was one of those cooks that did it by eye and feel!  How am I supposed to measure that?!?

Ah, yes. My mother is the same. I can never duplicate a dish after I’ve asked the “recipe” from her. There are always ingredients missing or incorrect/vague measurements. Now, my father on the hand can always be counted on for perfectly repeatable culinary successes. Phew!

Keira-who-can’t-cook-to-save-her-life-or-anyone-else’s

Connie Brockway said…
First, let’s get something clear here: The Outlands (aka Wisc, and IA) grow far weirder people than here in Civilized Minnesota, the cultural hub of the tundra.

MN = Civilized cultural hub
WI = The Outlands

Hm. I wonder how you would classify Washington state. 

smart woman your grandmother!

few things are less appetizing than lutefisk. i always become suspisious when something has to be eaten with three types of mustard, big helpings of bacon-sauce and potato and pea-stu enough to hide whatever taste the poor fish might have. not to talk about the copous amounts of beer and akevitt to wash it all down…

(used to waitress in a resturant “famed” for its lutefisk)

Keira-- What is this Washington state of which you speak? Is it like some zen level you reach when the laundry hits the rinse cycle? Becasue surely you are implying there is a geographical area...wait...wait! You’re talking about the fabled Lost State of Washingtonm, aren’t you??

Wow. But honey, it sank into the ocean loooong ago (last week) You might as well try to find Atlantis.

Christina Dodd said…

HOLY SMOKES! J. PERRY STONE IS REALLY CONNIE BROCKWAY!

I should have suspected something like this ...

Christina, I can prove I’m not Connie B (though I wouldn’t mind) because I, for one, NEVER emit airy scents

.....*I* effervesce.

I swear Connie, the more and more I’m on this site, the more I swear my dad is your long lost older brother you never knew existed.  C’mon:  Swede, arsty-fartsy (both artsy and farsty!) yanky aloofness…

Connie, you’re hilarious! I don’t have a smart comeback, even though that’s my home state that you’re saying is at the bottom of the ocean. Since I don’t seem to have gills or any other wordly breathing apparatus, I’m assuming that the state of my portion of WA is still up in the air (Say WA?); however, I’m not sure about the rest. I’am hoping Xtina’ll rise to the occasion and defend the rest of state.

I’m new here, and a habitual lurker on every other site I visit, so I’ll probably never post again...but let’s see...family traditions…
well, one of the traditions I hated that actually got better was the annual canned beets at both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. I hated them every time, and I couldn’t figure out why anyone ate them. Then my grandmother got interested in canning, and I happened to have an extra package of seeds for a new hybrid beet that I wasn’t going to plant, of course, because eww! Beets!
She planted them, and then pickled them, and had them at Thanksgiving. I gave in to the pressure to try them, and lo and behold, they were good!
She’s had that recipe on the table ever since, and they disappear instantly.
My husband has decided that all family traditions are bad, so I’ve made it my duty to go through all of the possible family traditions based on nationality and figure out the good ones so we can have some that he likes.
Lutefisk hasn’t been one, yet, but I’ve heard there are good recipes out there...and my grandmother says that when she had it (my grandfather was first generation swedish-american), it wasn’t awful.
On the other hand, I tried making gravlax last year (salmon pickled with dill...supposed to be really good), and I couldn’t hack it. There’s something in the way we’re raised now, with all the food safety precautions, that makes it nearly impossible to force oneself to eat fish that’s been sitting in the fridge for two weeks...even if it is supposed to do that
Good traditions...on Yule we always turn all the lights off when it gets dark, start a fire in the outdoor fireplace, and bring the light into the house with those foot long matches and candles. It’s really beautiful--I guess equivalent to the candles at midnight mass.

-Branwyn