Log In | Register
I admit that I happily partake in celebrating Christmas, one of the most beautiful Holidays our nation has, I am far from doing it in a traditional sort of way. That is to say that we do have some Christmas traditions, but they are far and away from the traditional fare. While taking the notion of eat, drink and be merry to the heart, we, as a family, do try to avoid the commoner formality of the ham and eggnog meal. Gluevine sounds delicious, and we had it in Germany a couple of years ago. Every little city center built up to celebrate Christmas, with their own variation of the drink and wurst, and smiling happy faces, serving alcohol to able bodied adults, minors and seniors alike. However sometimes, like this year, the family gathers at home around the table, and shares the joy and impatience of the meal and the year in the togetherness of the blood-bond, that runs deeper than a formality of a calendar-proscribed cheer, and wider than a smile of a happy drunk.
Having said all of that, I admit that my family, in its entirety, is a demanding assembly of food connoisseurs of all walks of life, wolfing for one thing, and one thing only - world class food. I am happy to report that while I do my fair share around the kitchen (the flowerless chocolate torte today was all mine), my wife will give any chef a good run for their money. Today we had a tight menu of your basic deviled eggs, lightly smoked sturgeon and buckwheat-stuffed duck, with the aforementioned flowerless chocolate raspberry torte, with the chocolate rum sauce. The food was accompanied by the the freshly squeezed pomegranate juice (a messy but worthy affair) and quince juice with pulp, that is nothing if not rare in this day and age, as well this latitude and longitude.
If you think that my goal is conveying the message that I am a food snob trying to raise a litter of my rightful descendant food snobs, you are not wrong. Having said that, the purpose of this article is not to show off (at least not the only purpose), but to encourage you to share tasty and uncommon recipes that are appropriate for making one's life a thing worth living. In other words, while the birth of Jesus, as it is celebrated in the Winter Solstice, is a great celebration of faith for some, and cheer for others, it is still a great cause for gluttony; it is in the name of that cause that I call of the fellow gourmets to share. Please tell me what turns you on on this longest of the winter nights.
