"Traditional" holiday stuffs

Ahh, there's nothing like the holidays. There's food here, food there and cookies, cookies, pies! Easy there. 

It's definitely not my favorite time of year, food-wise. Yeah, I said it. In true American fashion, holiday feasts have been heavily commercialized, mass produced and reduced to a catchy tune and a set of instructions in the back of a box. I don't like it.

Stores sell pumpkin pies, cooked and ready to unwrap. They have bread rolls that can keep on the shelf for three weeks before using. They have canned yams next to the marshmallows and brown sugar. There's pineapples next to the ham. Boxes of stuffing surrounded by canned gravy.

These quick fixes are pretty good, but you can't taste the love behind all the salt and sugar added to every single item. You can't taste the creativity from the can. I can taste laziness and preservatives. 

Let me tell you about my family before I go on. My grandma has worked in a kitchen all her life. My mom has worked in a kitchen all her life, even as a pastry chef. My dad has worked with food for more than two decades. We know food.
From the start of my life we have never had packaged cookies, pre-made pastries, bread that pops out of a can (gross). We never had pre-made meals, easy bakes, just-add-water, frozen microwave stuff. One reason is that we really couldn't afford that kind of stuff and secondly, we already know how to make it. Why buy it when you can make it? It makes the most sense.

I have eaten all these kinds of foods before, Hamburger Helper, Hot Pockets, Tony's, and they just aren't wholly satisfying. To me, it's like I can taste the machinery that made it. To me it's like cheating; it's super salty and sugary it's just not good — but it's delicious. That's how these holiday meals are.

It's unfathomable to buy a pumpkin pie when you can make it from a real pumpkin. You can spend the night making yeast rolls instead of buying a pale bag of rolls from the store.

So what did we have at our Thanksgiving dinner?

• Turkey ... just a plain turkey
• Homemade turkey gravy
• Homemade cranberry sauce that I made
• Homemade mashed potatoes
• Homemade corn bread stuffing. Mom made the cornbread
• Ham ... just a ham with pineapples
• Homemade twice-baked sweet potatoes that I made with pecans
• Homemade pumpkin pie that my mom made with real pumpkin
• Homemade pumpkin cake that I made
• Homemade tortillas from grama
• And someone was in charge of bringing bread rolls and they got the ugly pale ones they sell at the store for $1. I didn't have any of these and they looked like they burned easily.

It was a pretty good dinner. I think the thing I also don't like about these holiday dinners are that people make things at different times. The food ends up on the buffet line cold or lukewarm. We eat on flimsy paper plates with plastic ware. I don't like that. Is that how everyone does Thanksgiving? The whole family? Uncles, aunts, grandparents and a bunch of kids? That's how we do it.

But it has a Disney ending. After the sweat, tears and disappointment of eating this special meal with a sharp spoon on an uncomfortable and cold folding chair, it's so fun to be with family. 

So for the next holiday meal, learn how to make buttery yeast rolls and make that pie from scratch. Make it a time to show your family what your cooking's made out of. It tastes so much better because it has so much or your time, effort and love baked right into it.

Mmm, it looks like we're going to have a Mexican Christmas dinner.