I am taking a nutrition class. every couple weeks the instructor gives us these journal topics to write about just to give us some easy busy work to boost our grades. This week the question was about holidays and tradition. Here is what I gave to the instructor: I usually find myself surrounded by people who abide by the stereotypical American traditions. You know, turkey for Thanksgiving, ham and hard-boiled eggs for Easter. For Christmas it tends to vary, but whatever we eat, it is usually a lot. We make a lot of desserts, like pies and cupcakes, around the Christmas season. In my family, there are no "set" traditions. As I grow older, nothing is "integral" to a holiday. It's just that I usually get invited to a dinner somewhere and it usually includes a meat entree and a couple of side dishes. I really enjoy having mashed potatoes during any holiday. Here is a cool tradition that I took part in one year: Tamales. I think it is a Mexican tradition for certain families. We made many, many tamales on Thanksgiving day. My aunt is married to a man from Mexico and they get together and make a bunch of tamales together as a family, they give them away as gifts. Making that many tamales is no easy task. People have their own preferences and systems for making them. They can have jalepenos and cheese, or some kind of meat. Alcohol and good hearty meals are associated with the Fourth of July and St. Patricks day. I can't remember a Fourth of July when the people around me weren't celebrating with alcohol. There were a few years when we carved pumpkins, but my mom was never big on Halloween so I would not call that an integral tradition. In Pueblo, Colorado, there is an annual chili festival. It is tradition for my boyfriends grandpa to go there every year, stock up on green chilis, eat green chili wraps, and have a drink. You can eat green chilis all day long. Food is just a good way to celebrate. It's awesome. I wish everyone could have a quality meal on every holiday. It's a way to get together and enjoy everything and be greatful for it. I really appreciate the food and traditions of the holidays. They really make me realize how prosperous we are. Even in countries were food is not so plentiful, people celebrate and go through rites of passage with certain traditional foods. But I left out 4:20, which is my favorite holiday and the best holiday to feast your heart out.
Devote hours analysing food's appearance, procastinating over its texture, savouring its scent, ceaselessly mixing, matching and melding it with any number of unlikely ingredients, painstakingly devising new ways of preparing it, and devoting hours to crafting it to create culinary excellence for the guests. It is often the simplest dishes that are the most memorable...like caviar,lobsters and oysters au natural.
