Food, Glorious Food

Christmas celebrations in our family features a meal of biblical proportions. There's always a huge turkey, homemade noodles, dressing, green bean casserole, crisp garden salad, sweet potatoes, several varieties of pies and my mother's heavenly fudge.

But in Regency times when A CHRISTMAS BALL is set, roast beef and venison were the main course of the dinner. Of course there might also be goose, capon, pheasant, bustard, swan and/or peacock!

But the real treat of the Regency Christmas meal was the pudding.

A pudding needed to be started before the first Sunday of Advent in order to be considered a true Christmas pudding. It was thought to improve with time. The recipe called for a mixture of thirteen ingredients (to represent Christ and the twelve apostles) which was boiled in a pudding cloth. Usual ingredients included suet, brown sugar, raisins, currants, citron, lemon and orange peels, spices, crumbs, flour, eggs, milk and brandy.

Other Christmas deserts included gingerbread, butter shortbread, trifle and syllabub (a milk, brandy and wine concoction which might be drunk or later whipped, gelled and eaten.) Children delighted in sugar plums and ginger nuts.

What special treats will your family enjoy this Christmas?

If you'd like to learn more about a Regency Christmas, visit my website and follow the bouncing Christmas ball!

PS. If you're in New England, you can see me on Saturday from noon to 4 pm at Well Read Books, 37 Plaistow RD, Plaistow, NH! I'll be signing copies of my books, alongside my critique partner Ashlyn Chase, just in time for all the romance readers on your list. If you're not able to make it, you can still get autographed books at THE BOOK OASIS. They'll ship anywhere! Merry Christmas!

Today is my last day at Chicks of Characterization and it's Friday, my regular posting day for The Chatelaines. Hope to see you there!

Sisterhood of the Early-Rising Moms . . .

Like many of you, I was up at O-dark:30 this morning to get a jump on the Thanksgiving meal. Usually, I put the turkey in the night before and I wake several times to check that the bird hasn't cooked dry. This year, our main meal is going to be this evening to accomodate our youngest daughter's work schedule, so I managed a full night's sleep.

But I was still awake before dawn--making cinnamon rolls for breakfast, getting the bird ready to go into the oven and rolling out my homemade noodles. I'm in a different kitchen this year--a much smaller one in our condo (we just moved into the unit in June), but it'll do for our little celebration. As the aroma of the cinnamon rolls mingled with the freshly brewed coffee, it felt like home. It was a lovely, quiet time.

And I thought about all the other moms who were up doing the same special things to show their families how much they love them with special food. As I rolled out the noodles, I thought of my mother, who handed down this family recipe to me. I thought of my grandmother, who's gone now, as I used the crocheted hotpad she made for me to remove the rolls from the oven. So many years of the family gathering around different tables. I thought of my sisters ( I have 3). One will be with my parents for Thanksgiving as will our oldest daughter, but I wondered how many people my other sisters would feed at their celebrations today.

In the stillness of the early morning, it was as if all those special women in my life were suddenly very close to me. And I'm so thankful for all of them. They loved me with food, which maybe isn't the best way to show it, but their love has made a such a difference in my life. I hope you have some of those women in your life, too.

I'd share my noodle recipe, but it's the infuriating kind. The kind I used to hate when I first learned to cook. There is no exact measuring of the ingredients. It's thrown together with hope and love. And each time, my DH declares my noodles a revelation, even if they aren't the best batch I've done. Guess he figures even less than perfect noodles are better than no noodles.

So how about you? What special foods say love to your family?