Everyone’s Christmas festivities are different and we all have different tastes and preferences in relation to foods. These could be biased by things such as our own family heritages, culture, food availability, budgets or even our hot summer Christmas days.
Some of us may be traditionalists (a turkey/ham roast lunch followed with plum pudding and warm brandy custard… accompanied with treats such as rumballs, while Christmas and almond bread) and following this tradition is a necessity even if the day is 40°C.
Other of us might follow more modern trends (such as cold ham/seafoods with salads and ice cream with chocolates) so one don’t feel like the need to have a New Year resolution to deal with the aftermath of Christmas.
Let us know what food, or foods or even ingredients (such as brandy used bring about the taste of Christmas) which you can’t miss, or have without fail, during your own celebrations.
Roast potatoes, pumpkin,and sweet potatoes with broccoli for both of us.
Neither of us are particularly fussed over turkey.
When we have Xmas lunch at my wife’s sister’s home outside Mareeba, they do a whole roast ham from the local butcher with an absolutely delicious glaze over it.
No pudding for me as I do not eat sweets and I am too full after the main course anyway, but my wife will tuck into some trifle, and we both will eat some stone fruit.
I like a traditional meal of roast Turkey and veggies and Xmas pudding with custard sauce. But if it’s a very hot day I prefer ham and salad and Icecream cake.
What I can’t go without is that special box of chocolates I’m given at Christmas. That’s what makes my day.
It would not be a fair dinkum summer Christmas celebration without fresh oysters, tiger prawns, bugs and a whole snapper to share. Ham and cold roast chicken for those still hungry or less seafood inclined.
We look forward to a great trifle or individual pass with the best a cold set fruit pudding.
Why choose just one, it’s Christmas after all!
No snow, no roast turkey, nothing that reminds us the rest of the world is suffering freezing rain under grey skies, or the blast chill of an Arctic storm. Fortunately our Santa lives at the other pole!
Hot roast chook, crispy lamb and pork however work great with roast veges and tonnes of steaming gravy work great in July holidays.
We’ve had more Christmas celebrations north of the tropic than south of it.
If only anyone could offer an assurance on any one day that the weather in Melbourne in the morning was the same in the afternoon. Up north the variable is simply a matter of how much rain might fall, cyclonic winds optional.
Please don’t get me started on Melbourne’s weather.
Yesterday was sunny and warm, I went for morning coffee and a walk, which lasted a couple of hours, with a friend in the Brighton foreshore.
Cool change in the evening, rained during the night, windy and cold all day
today.
When the hot weather will come it will
reach up to the 40’s and you just wish
you were dead
Our tradition always includes a roast turkey stuffed with a seasoned breadcrumb filling one end and a chestnut and sausage mince stuffing the other. Of course, there’s a full leg ham as well. Every member of the family contributes a salad to accompany and that’s always the fun part as everyone tries to make the year’s best salad. Who’s the judge…well the raucous lot around the table!
I love ham on the bone with cranberry jelly on a fresh bread sandwich - this always gives me Christmas feelings and happy memories of my childhood… ahh… love that fresh ham on the bone!
For me it is stonefruit and lychees. Seeing stonefruit (nectarines, peaches, apricots and cherries) and lychees in the supermarket reminds me of the festive season… and then gorging oneself on them over the Christmas period…bliss on a hot Christmas Day after the traditional Christmas lunch.
In years gone by it would have been roast turkey (either whole or a rolled roast), but today one can get turkey at any time of year so it has lost its uniqueness.
in the tropics, Great Western Sparkling Shiraz, an Australian tradition for generations of Christmas dinners, with cold turkey, mud crabs and prawns, pomegranate and candied hazel nut salad for accompaniment!
Forget all that cold climate meat and expensive seafood. You don’t need to order in advance or sit in a long queue clutching your esky.
The one food that says happy holiday is mangoes. Cheap, readily available, healthy, yummy. And did I mention flexible?
Mangoes can be part of the starter, the main course or the dessert; for the devout all three. Mangoes attract devotion from all ages. If you want happy snaps give your toddler the mango seed to chew on stripped down to nappy, in the bath or out in the yard is recommended.
Ok.
Compared to a dozen Coffin Bay oysters they may be about the same price each. One of the two certainly goes further per each and is allergy risk free.
Although the idea of pigging out on a tray of the big bowens .
I had some the other day 3 for a couple of dollars or 80 cents each (KP variety), also got Elephant variety for 3 for $1 or 46c each if purchased as singles (not as flavoursome but still juicy with a bit of tang). Our tree in a pot has about 10 on it waiting to fully ripen (Bowen Specials)…second year of actually holding mangoes so will improve further next year. Our Calypso in a pot should start next year as well, it had flowers this year for the first time but held no fruit.
I watched Rick Stein’s Food Heroes on SBS Food yesterday afternoon.
It is a 60 minute special presenting Xmas foods from all over the UK and it was fantastic.
The highlight was in the first segment when Rick took his scruffy little mutt, Chalky, to a function at which Prince Charles was a presenter, amd whilst Rick was chatting with Prince Charles in the hall, Chalky relieved himself on the floor.
.