I need a forum to post longer on topics, but in a way that is also condensed to a single page. So here we go!!
Mi Familia
To begin, I wanted to write a little how-to guide for my boyfriend centered around Christmas with my family. I come from a mixed family, so Christmas is a longer celebration for me, with a lot of traditions and traditional foods. Although we don't fully 100% stick to the traditions of our cultures, there is still enough to warrant some prep and explanation. So I'm going to just start from scratch, beginning with a Mexican Christmas Eve.
Mexicans typically celebrate Christmas at midnight, something I guess that began with Catholicism and attending midnight mass. Some families do that too, but we don't. We also don't celebrate Las Posadas nor do we eat Rosca de Reyes. We do stay up until midnight, with family, and pass out gifts then. And this is what we eat during the holidays, some interchangeably with New Years:
- Pan Dulce- this is more a normal breakfast or snack that we have with coffee, but it turns out a lot of people don't know much about it. Check out this guide.
- Coffee! With some cinnamon maybe? Enough Said.
- Pozole- Like a soup/stew made with hominy, and eaten with tostadas, cabbage, and radish.
- Tamales- These are often made in bunches, over a few days, and frozen for many meals in the months to come. Mexican tamales are normally wrapped with corn husks, although the closer you get to Central America the more you'll see the banana leaves used to wrap them. They are made with corn meal (masa) and a meat or veggie inside, and then steamed for hours. Few are sweet but mostly just to be eaten as a meal.
- Chompurrado- This one is a little hard to explain, but it's like a thick hot chocolate kind of drink, without the chocolate... check it out here.
- Buñuelos- These mostly would come out on New Years for us, but it's still a holiday treat. It is almost like a fried flour tortilla, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.
Mi Familgia
Italians also attend midnight mass, but everything is more low-key Christmas Eve, with a family celebration on Christmas Day. There aren't many things we would do food wise, that was specific to Christmas but more specific to celebrations in general. Italian food traditionally takes time and care to make, and involves many many specific ingredients. So let's separate it first by categories:
Sweets:
- Cannoli- "Leave the gun- take the cannoli." World famous, hands down the BEST thing ever invented, but also something that has to be made correctly, or not at all.
- Pizzelle- A flat anise cookie, that I need to learn the recipe for.
- "Black Magic"
- "Grandma's Cookies"
Pasta, Meats, Cheese, Bread, Olives.... etc.
Drinks- Wine and Coffee. Need I say more?
