Food: Holiday Horror Foods

Food Shopping
Articles
Seafood Articles

Cheeses
Chocolates, & Candy
Coffee & Tea
Desserts
Fruit
Gift Baskets
International Foods
Meats
Nuts
Seafood
Specialty Foods
Complete List
Home

Article List
Directory
Resources

Articles/Resources:
Beans
Breakfast
Budget
Cheese
Chinese
Comfort Foods
Dessert
Diet
Eating Habits
Everything Food
Fast Food
Food Gifts
Food History
Food Shopping
Food Traditions
Foods and Events
Foods and Holidays
Foods and Places
French
Fruits
Gift Baskets
Healthy Foods
Italian
Lunch
Mexican
Recipes
Restaurants
Treats
Vegetables

Archives:
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006

Have New Articles E-Mailed To You!

Holiday Horror Foods
Monday, December 18, 2006

They're the foods that we either love or hate during the holiday season. Some foods are particularly disliked by many yet they keep on being cooked or baked and wind up in some hapless person's stocking. Then there are foods that are only eaten during the holidays. There isn't anything wrong with that for instance I particularly like Christmas ham and coquito (a Puerto Rican drink whose ingredients include coconut milk, rum and condensed milk and nutmeg) but I do take issue with the turkey. We barely survived the gluttony of Thanksgiving roughly a month ago, why go through the agony all over again so soon? Anyway, the following are foods that I cannot stomach, though some of them do have their fans.

Candy canes: Yes some may wonder why I dislike this candy, it's so traditional! Part of the reason has to do with the fact that I do not like mint-tasting sweets. To me they just do not mix well and strangely I think many people feel this way otherwise the store shelves would be swarming with Peppermint Patties (a candy I rarely see or if I do it's shoved off in a forgotten corner).

Actually it's the peppermint in the candy cane that ruins it for me and it's too bad. Originally candy canes were only made out of sugar and didn't have any red stripes, although its exact origin is not clear. Although non-mint versions of the canes are available, it is hard to remove that minty stigma as far as I'm concerned whenever someone mentions this confection. But they do make nice tree decorations.

Eggnogs: It's probably that strange aftertaste that makes me not like eggnog; maybe it comes from the allspice or nutmeg. Describing that aftertaste is hard, the closest thing I can think of is that it is in the family of Pepto Bismal and the drink has the same thick consistency. The only way to make it tolerable is to add some rum to it.

It's funny how readily available this drink is today when as recently as the 19th century it was considered an item for the rich. The ingredients like milk and eggs were hard to come by, plus the factor of refrigeration did not help. It only took off here in the U.S. due to the plentiful harvests and farms that supplied the ingredients much easier. But like caviar this concoction should've stayed with the upper class.

Gingerbread: Again I'm not crazy about mixing sweet flavor with mint. The fact that gingerbread is made with ginger, a spice I'm not fond of, ruins this holiday favorite. Too bad, those gingerbread houses are truly works of art. And with those gingerbread houses, I'll give the wafer this much, they taste so bad to me that I have no desire to eat the houses, which keeps them safe when I'm around unlike other works of culinary art.

Fruitcakes: The worst culprit is of course the dreaded amalgamation of nuts, dried fruit, flour and sugar soaked in brandy or rum. It literally is the gift that keeps on giving, meaning that there are some poor saps that get it as a gift and some of those are smart enough to give it away as a gift to someone else. Maybe if the dried-out loafs were pawned off as Holiday doorstops the fruitcakes would be received better by legions.

Fruitcakes go back to ancient Rome and the Middle Ages (where the people added honey and spices to make it sweeter). But it took the addition of liqueur and sugar, which helped preserve the fruits, in the last couple of centuries to create this holiday abomination. Honestly, if the stories about fruitcakes lasting as long as twenty years are true do you want to eat something like that? Maybe if I was stuck for ages in a bomb shelter would I bother eating them. Perhaps I'll find out then if it's true that they actually improve with age. I tried doing that with wedding cake and despite having it frozen by the first anniversary it tasted old when it was thawed out. The concept of preserving the cakes goes back to 1700s Europe when after a nut harvest; the nuts were used to create fruitcakes that were then preserved for the next harvest as a good luck charm. In any case there are plenty of people to blame for this and other unpalatable dishes that we must contend with during the holiday season. At least take comfort knowing that these dreaded dishes only appear once a year. - - J.L. Soto

8:08 AM Comments:
Post a Comment

<< Home