Much Maligned Christmas Accoutrements

[ButchEire]

Every year growing up, we'd receive a homemade fruitcake from cousins in Ireland. These were, and are, like no fruitcake you will ever buy in the states, because they soaked it in pure Irish whiskey for weeks (perhaps months) before packaging it off to us. I'd regularly get loopy as a child, from eating said fruitcake, which was more like pieces of fruit and nuts barely pasted together with bits of dough. Dense is an understatement.

[LeftWriteFemme]

I don't care what anyone says or thinks about Peeps these are my new holiday tradition.
If you haven't yet, please try these peppermint peeps!!!

[Cin]

Originally Posted by LeftWriteFemme

I don't care what anyone says or thinks about Peeps these are my new holiday tradition.
If you haven't yet, please try these peppermint peeps!!!

Peppermint peeps. Yay!

I haven't seen these around yet. Awesome. I love peeps. Sometimes I put them in the microwave.

[Cin]

Another thing about Christmas is Christmas music. Which I love. And I can't wait to start listening to it. So I have to take some of the blame for what happens. I start hearing it in malls right after Thanksgiving and then as soon as December rolls around I find myself listening to stuff online. By the time it's a week before Christmas I've had it with Christmas music.

[ButchEire]

*Looks at watch*
Hmm, that looks to be just about...

NOW!

*runs*

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

By the time it's a week before Christmas I've had it with Christmas music.

[Dean Thoreau]

claxton fruitcake dark is the best.
sugar plum wine is great to wash down the fruitcake with
gingerbread houses dont get delcious till the week before easter....u need at least an inch of dust on them
my gran daughter just handed me two cookies she made..with so much frosting and red and green sprinkles that the sugar high should last till july.
real peppermint candy canes are the only kind to have.....and they have no expiration date....so u can eat them and the leftovers use year after year....
I love xmast crap food......and the best fruitcake i ever had was when some of my old parishoners gave me some they had soaked in brandy.......for a year or so i think....I dont remember much from that xmas eve till about umm good friday
Ok I need to go now,,,sugar plum wine...heritage winery new jersey......only way to eat sugarplums

[Cin]

Tinsel is somewhat problematic. It’s not so much that I don’t like it. It’s more that not everyone can be trusted to use it properly. I think you need to be tad OCD in order to decorate a tree with tinsel. Often people just clump the shit on. That’s not acceptable. My mother always put the tinsel on one strand at a time. I don’t have the perseverance to do it exactly like that, at least not a whole package, but I do it as singularly as I can. To me that’s the only way it looks good. I’ve never been with anyone who had the patience to do this. People seem to think if you put a clump on the end of a branch it’s adequate. Clumping tinsel is an incompetent way to decorate a tree. It just doesn’t look good. No matter that it’s a pain in the ass you have to take it a couple of strands at a time. Either one should use tinsel correctly or one should just eliminate it from the repertoire.

And if you have pets you might want to just forget tinsel altogether. It’s bad enough that one ends up finding this stuff clinging to furniture and out of the way places way past July, but if your pet eats it you will pulling it out of their ass for months. Nothing more delightful than a strand of tinsel sticking out your Fluffy’s A-hole.

[The JD]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

Peppermint peeps. Yay!

I haven't seen these around yet. Awesome. I love peeps. Sometimes I put them in the microwave.

Oooh, check out the "scientific" research on Peeps: http://www.peepresearch.org/ Be sure to click on Fear Response for the experiments on Peeps in microwaves...

[Kobi]

I love homemade dark fruitcake - is more cake-like than regular fruit cake. Pop in the toaster or oven to warm it, spread a healthy dose of cream cheese, top with another warmed slice and devour.

I also like jellied cranberry sauce. Good on Kobi sandwiches - whole grain toasted bread with little cream cheese on it, some fresh sliced turkey breast, and top with thinly sliced room temperature cranberry sauce. Flavors blend well.

The whole berry cranberry sauce, to me, looks like something that belongs in an emesis basin.

[willow]

I love fruit cake. My fruit is soaked in brandy not whiskey. Cake baked weeks in advance and 'fed' a teaspoon of brandy every week to keep it moist. Iced with a layer each of apricot jam, marzipan and royal icing (icing sugar, egg white and lemon juice) and decorated with a penguin scene because I wuvs penguns.



Really not the worlds no.1 cranberry fan but I do like a tiny bit of the jellied kind on my turkey and am especially partial to a little spread on the bread when having the obligatory boxing day 'turkey dinner' sandwich.

The other Christmasy sweet stuff I can take or leave. My Christmas night chill time snack/supper will be a small mixed cheese board, crackers and fruit.

[Greyson]

I love mincemeat pie. My father loved this pie and every year at our big Christmas Eve dinner at his house, we had mincemeat pie. I did have to learn to acquire a taste for this pie when I was a child but once I did.

I have been unable to find a mincemeat pie for most of my adult life. Then this year, I befriended my personal trainer who is an only child and his parents had him late in life. His father was a professional baker and my friend/trainer bakes home made pies for the holidays. My twin sister and I enjoyed mincemeat pie with our Thanksgiving dinner. Again for Christmas dinner I will savour mincemeat pie.

I do have a question, why is this pie called mincemeat? There is no meat in this pie. It is all fruit.

[1QuirkyKiwi]

Originally Posted by Greyson

I love mincemeat pie. My father loved this pie and every year at our big Christmas Eve dinner at his house, we had mincemeat pie. I did have to learn to acquire a taste for this pie when I was a child but once I did.

I have been unable to find a mincemeat pie for most of my adult life. Then this year, I befriended my personal trainer who is an only child and his parents had him late in life. His father was a professional baker and my friend/trainer bakes home made pies for the holidays. My twin sister and I enjoyed mincemeat pie with our Thanksgiving dinner. Again for Christmas dinner I will savour mincemeat pie.

I do have a question, why is this pie called mincemeat? There is no meat in this pie. It is all fruit.

Mincemeat is a mixture of chopped dried fruit, alcohol and spices, and vegetable shortening….originally, in medieval times mincemeat always contained meat. In the UK, NZ and Autralia they are called Mince pies. I'll have one small one every few years, lol!