Around the Kitchen Table: Our Favorite Holiday Food Memories + 8-Book #Giveaway!

LESLIE KARST here: At this time of year, my thoughts often turn to memories of holidays I enjoyed in the past--some from early childhood, others from just a few years back. Family and friends (some now, alas, no longer with us), winter vacations to a warmer clime, steal-a-gift games at work.  

But most of all I tend to think of the food: the potlucks with a dazzling array of shrimp, salmon mousse, triple-cream brie, and cookies of all kinds. And the holiday meals: In our home, for Christmas dinner we always enjoyed roast beef (or "beast" as my mom liked to say), Yorkshire pudding, creamed onions, sautéed green beans, and huge dollops of horseradish sauce with whipped cream. And for dessert, pumpkin and mince pie. Yes, with more whipped cream. Minus the horseradish. Though come to think of it, that might actually be rather tasty with pie...

Perhaps my most memorable holiday dish, however, was the "real" mince pie I made some years back.  "Real," meaning it contains mincemeat--beef and suet--as the pies did when they originated back in the Middle Ages. It was truly amazing. But so very rich that the whipped cream actually served to cut the fat...

Okay, fellow Kitchen-mates and readers, time to chime in with your favorite holiday food memories! And one lucky commenter will win all 8 of the books pictured below!

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: I've been thinking a lot lately about how food nurtures and creates community, and holiday gifts and gatherings are the epitome. My late mother did not enjoy cooking, but she loved to bake, and among family friends and neighbors, her plates of Christmas cookies were legendary. I still aspire to the tradition, and love sharing what I make this time of year, but you are probably not going to see me on your doorstep with a tray holding literally a dozen varieties of candy and cookies. I've shared some of her cookie recipes here, including some that took a turn on the pages of my Christmas cozies, As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles and Peppermint Barked, and last year, did a Christmas Cookie roundup post. 

Back in my single days in Seattle, I hosted an annual holiday brunch for women friends, a tradition Mr. Right and I have continued with friends of ours. I like to mix and match repeat performances and newcomers, so we typically have Omelet Muffins, sauteed potatoes, a fruit salad, and stuffed dates (if Zhamal brings them!). What tends to vary are the sweet treats: for years, I made Caramel Rolls -- you know, the gooey, buttery, sweet kind you eat once a year and that's enough! Last year's Cranberry Fig Coffee Cake was a huge hit, and it may be a repeater. Along with the coffee and champagne! 

What I most love, of course, is looking around our living and dining room and seeing a dozen of our dearest friends, sometimes more, eating, drinking, chatting, and connecting. That's the spirit of the season, and I wish it for all of you. 

KIM DAVIS: Until my early teens we lived close to my grandparents plus all six of my mother's siblings and their spouses and children, which meant every holiday had a crowd of family members gathering together to celebrate. Christmas time meant ham (not my favorite which is code for I'd nibble on some of the side dishes and skip the main) while the rest of the meal was potluck style. While I don't remember much of the savory food, the desserts were another matter! Pies, cakes, candy, cookies... my mom and aunts all tried to outdo each other, and it's no wonder I skipped the ham, only nibbled at the sides, and then headed to the dessert table! And it's no wonder I have a sweet tooth.

Skipping ahead two-and-a-half decades to my new husband, his daughter and her husband, and our Christmas meal centered on tamales. We have been fortunate to have easy access to purchasing authentic tamales and since my step daughter spent a semester in Spain during college, she has always made seafood paella as a joint main dish. Over the years as our family has grown with our two lovely granddaughters becoming young adults, we still eat tamales but it's my youngest granddaughter who has taken over the paella making. She followed in her mother's footsteps and spent a semester attending university in Spain and took some paella-making classes. Staying true to my mother's family's affinity for dessert, I'm in charge of bringing the sweets. There's always Cherry Dream Pie honoring my husband's Illinois family (a recipe passed down over the decades).

Skipping ahead two-and-a-half decades to my new husband, his daughter and her husband, and our Christmas meal centered on tamales. We have been fortunate to have easy access to purchasing authentic tamales and since my step daughter spent a semester in Spain during college, she has always made seafood paella as a joint main dish. Over the years as our family has grown with our two lovely granddaughters becoming young adults, we still eat tamales but it's my youngest granddaughter who has taken over the paella making. She followed in her mother's footsteps and spent a semester attending university in Spain and took some paella-making classes. Staying true to my mother's family's affinity for dessert, I'm in charge of bringing the sweets. There's always Cherry Dream Pie honoring my husband's Illinois family (a recipe passed down over the decades).

And Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without several kinds of cookies--especially Cinnamon Chip Biscotti!

And often pumpkin pie only because I know there will be a lot left over for my breakfast the next morning. I know how to plan ahead, lol! 

No matter how you celebrate or what you serve, may the holiday season bring joy to you and yours! 

🔔🎄🤶 ⛄

LIBBY KLEIN: I have vivid memories of Christmas cookies from when I was probably four or five years old. I think this says more about my lust for treats than it does my memory because most of my teen years have completely disappeared. Of course it probably helps that my mother made the same cookies every Christmas until I took over the baking duties. There is a soft, fig filled triangle very close to a fig newton - that was delicious. And the ubiquitous chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies. You are very familiar with my cherry cookies that I make every year. I put the recipe in Silent Nights Are Murder. Pictured below and it's on the blog here. But one memory that comes back to me every time I use a certain spice is mom's sugar cookies. They contain ground mace which is very close in smell and taste to nutmeg. Any time I put mace in a recipe it reminds me of those festive, sprinkle laden, sugar cookies. Side note: I once demonstrated a muffin recipe for a group of ladies and told them the recipe contained mace. They looked horrified and I quickly realized they thought I meant the attack spray. 

 

PEG COCHRAN/MARGARET LOUDON:  My grandmother usually cooked the turkey for Christmas dinner while my mother made the sides. And every year without fail, my grandmother would say "God sends the food, the devil sends the cook."  She would also yell at my mother to "save the potato water." Not to slight all the wonderful meals my mother, mother-in-law (and I) made over the years, two stand out in particular.  My father's side of the family is Italian and my cousin (second or once-removed, we could never decide) hosted the "feast of the seven fishes" every Christmas Eve.  My parents were always invited but after my father died, my husband and I were invited (I suspect to drive my mother there lol). There were truly seven courses of fish!  Another year my daughter's in-laws invited us for Christmas dinner and they also served the feast of the seven fishes. I do remember there was pasta with clam sauce, one of my favorites.

 I used to make a "Buche de Noel" for Christmas and one year made this Hot Chocolate Cake, a sightly different version of a rolled cake.  But the year I was writing my Writer-in-Residence series set in England, I opted for sticky toffee pudding, something my characters Penelope and Figgy would have had.  It has become a new favorite and a new tradition.

LUCY BURDETTE: Peg, I am always envious of the Italian families who have the feast of the seven fishes! Although now I realize how much work that must be...Like Libby, my main memory would have to be cookies too. My mother had a little aluminum cookie press and she made hundreds of butter cookies in different shapes, with different colors of dough. And then we covered them with sprinkles and those little silver balls that break your fillings:). 

Meanwhile, here's a recipe for my Key West-style sugar cookies. Merry Christmas season one and all--hope you're spending the day doing something you love, with people you love!

  

CLEO COYLE: For me and my husband, a game of “I Spy” always kicks off our Season’s Eatings. The mystery question is when and where will we spot that first carton of holiday eggnog. Because Christmas Cookies are also a favorite part of our holiday, Marc and I decided to put that festive flavor of eggnog into a special recipe for our Coffeehouse Mystery readers. See our recipe for EGGNOG SHORTBREAD by clicking here or on the photo below…

Cleo's Eggnog Shortbread recipe

Candy canes are another nostalgic food that Marc and I appreciate, especially because of their connection to the reason for the season. 🌟 Learn the story of how candy canes (which evoke a shepherd’s staff) came to be invented by clicking here on our recipe post where we also share our recipe for Candy Cane Frosting. We find this easy frosting is a great way to instantly turn a plain cookie, cupcake, sheet cake, or pan of brownies into a pretty-in-pink Christmas treat. Whatever your favorites for the holiday season, Marc and I hope you will eat with joy to the world! ~ Cleo

Cleo's Easy Candy Cane Frosting
for instant Christmas cheer.

MADDIE DAY: On Christmas morning, we always had homemade cinnamon rolls, scrambled eggs, and bacon, and I continued that tradition with my sons. I don't have memories of other holiday meals from when I was a child, but after my divorce, I wanted to start a new tradition with my teenage boys. That first year we three made sushi together, something I learned to do when I lived in Japan fifty years ago.

We continued that tradition for some years (but now everybody's a vegetarian, so we have to get creative in other ways).

As with others here, Christmas is really about the cookies. I have my mother's cookie cutters and cookie press, and the recipes she got from both my grandmothers. I bake gingerbread people, Red Sugar Cookies, English Butter Cookies, and of course, Mexican Bridecakes.

I'm super excited to be able to bake with my granddaughter this year. She's two and it'll be messy, but cooking with family is all about love. The mess is worth it.

ANG POMPANO: I love these stories from my Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen friends. To them, and to all of our readers, I hope your holidays are filled with good memories and good food.

I think we can all agree that holiday food has a way of lodging itself in your memory. For me, that was certainly true. Growing up, Christmas Eve with family was fun, and the food was delicious, but mostly traditional American fare, with one exception. We always had a bowl of spaghetti with olive oil and anchovies, our lone nod to our Italian heritage. Simple. No fanfare, nothing fancy. Just good, honest Italian flavor. Then I met my wife, Annette, and everything changed.
My in-laws didn’t do simple. Their Christmas Eve was a full-blown Feast of the Seven Fishes. Though in practice, it usually clocked in at ten or more varieties. The tradition came over from Amalfi, where Annette’s grandfather had been a sailor and fisherman.

Every year, it was a huge deal: a house packed with aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. What made the celebration all the more amazing was that Christmas Eve is Annette’s birthday. The legend goes that her grandfather wouldn’t let the meal begin until they heard from the hospital, but I doubt anyone was letting the fish get cold. They were probably sneaking bites behind his back.

By the time I arrived on the scene, the family celebrated both Christmas Eve and Annette’s birthday on December 24th. Instead of feeling cheated by an almost-Christmas birthday, she felt special because every year the whole family was there for her day.

And special it was. The table wasn’t just set; it was overloaded. Looking at this list now, it’s still amazing how they pulled it off: cod (baccalà), both wrapped in fried dough and served in a cold salad; calamari (squid), flounder, whiting, scallops, shrimp, stuffed clams in the half shell, crab and lobster in the tomatosauce, and eels. You heard right: my father-in-law had to have eels. The only thing they didn’t have was spaghetti with olive oil and anchovies. Go figure. And of course, there was birthday cake for Annette. It sounds like enough food for a small army, but with that many people it disappeared fast. 

Christmas Eve was happy and loud, filled with delicious dishes and old family stories told so often that eventually even I knew how they ended.
And it was perfect.

MOLLY MACRAE: My mom and her friend Charlotte started their fruit cake process long before Christmas. It involved lots of stirring, slow baking, and weeks of soaking up brandy. It was dense. It was dark. It was thick with currants and nuts. It was great stuff and I’ve never understood anyone’s aversion to it. Mom also made roll-out sugar cookie dough and turned us loose with sprinkles, colored sugar, cinnamon red hots, and silver dragees to decorate them to within an inch of their lives. Oh how we loved the silver dragees. I heard she also made rosettes, once upon a time, but quit before the last three of us were born because the cookies disappeared as soon as she made them. 

I carried on the cookie tradition with my boys and now we’ve roped the grandchildren into the fun. But as much as I like cookies, the Christmas Eve feast is my favorite holiday food memory. We had turkey with all the trimmings and side dishes up until twenty years ago. Once we even had flaming plum pudding for dessert. Now most of us are vegetarian so we tend to have a table full of colorful, flavorful roots and greens and grains. And way too many desserts. 

Beautiful chard for our dressing

Beautiful cookies for dessert

I can’t tell you what went into Mom and Charlotte’s fruit cake besides flour, eggs, currants, and nuts (and don’t forget the brandy). Not one of the six of us or Charlotte’s six kids (three girls and three boys in each family) has the recipe and I haven’t found one that sounds likely. It’s a Christmas mystery. 

 

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Christmas Mittens Murder by Maddie Day

Bulletproof Barista by Cleo Coyle

There'll Be Shell to Pay by Molly MacRae

Waters of Destruction by Leslie Karst

Frosted Yuletide Murder by Kim Davis

It's Better to Raise Tomatoes 
by Annette Pompano

Vice and Virtue by Libby Klein

As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles 
by Leslie Budewitz

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