Celebratory Food

            My family is huge and very into big celebrations like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July and birthdays. Each kid in my family was born either on, or near a holiday and our celebrations are filled with different foods corresponding to the event and time of year. For example, Thanksgiving consists of staple foods like turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cornbread and cranberries. Christmas usually entails ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, eggnog, and a lot of pies, cookies and ice cream. My birthday is two days before Christmas and that is a special meal based around what I enjoy eating most – seafood. King crab legs are my absolute favorite food and therefore every year on my birthday that is our main course. On my brothers birthday (St. Patrick’s Day) we have traditional Irish food such as Corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots. On the fourth of

July we tend to lean towards more barbeque foods like burgers, chicken, shish kabobs, pulled pork, etc.

            Dishes seen in other countries like Mexico for Christmas are tamales, romeritos—which are small green leaves, potatoes and “shrimp bread”, soup, and ponche (to drink) which usually is a hot sweet drink with rum or tequila. The United Kingdom has many staple foods for Christmas such as brandy butter, ham, roast duck, roast goose, roast pheasant, trifle, and chocolate Yule log and Dundee cake.

One thing I noticed about American meals is that everything is separated. Either separately served course by course of everything is served at once but placed on separate areas on the plate.  

Another thing I noticed is that meat is a big part of celebratory meals. I don’t think I have any celebrations with my family where the main part of the meal isn’t meat or fish. Also, no one in my family is vegetarian. Lastly, dessert also is a huge part of celebrations whether its birthday cakes, pies, ice cream, homemade cookies or other pastries –we LOVE our sweets.