Category / Holidays

by Stacy

On the Second (and Third and Fourth) Day of Christmas…

Image shows the perpetual “winter wonderland” sparkling white sand dunes and cobalt blue sky of White Sands National Park in New Mexico.

My One Spoon Cooking buddy, Michele, asked for suggestions on low-spoon yet festive ways to feed visiting family in the stretch between Christmas and New Year’s. Here are a few, in no particular order:

Think laterally. Rather than making a meal festive by doing more than you normally would, do something different. Holidays are “set apart” from ordinary days—they can feel special and memorable if you do something surprising, with an intentional break from routine. The difference doesn’t have to be jarring—a different roast of coffee could do the trick. It only needs to be enough to waken people to the present moment.

When it comes to leftovers, avoid even thinking the word “just,” as in, “We’re just having…” “Just” instantly takes the sparkle out of food. Leftovers are low-spoon mini-feasts. Mix and match them so the meals aren’t entirely predictable, and so they feel like you have given them fresh, loving attention.

Plan some participatory meals: build-your-own tacos, sandwiches, mini-pizzas (pizza IS a party, amiright??), or sundaes. Provide an unusual (store bought) sauce, spread, or topping amid the old stand-bys: roasted red pepper spread, black olive tapenade, chutney, chipotle mayonnaise, etc.

At least in theory, the point of holiday gatherings is to connect with people you love—to make people feel special and cared for. You can do that in a lot of ways that don’t involve extra cooking. Never underestimate the power of a pretty tablecloth, e.g., to say, “This gathering of people matters.”

An odd but true fact: Velvety, puréed soups are more luxurious and festive than chunky ones. Most vegetable or bean soups will work—you don’t need a special recipe—as long as the blended colors are somewhat appealing. Immersion blenders are great for this.

Sprinkle colorful and/or flavorful doodads over simple dishes: dried cranberries, orange zest, pomegranate seeds, toasted or sugared nuts, croutons. Doodads should not be underestimated any more than tablecloths.

Flavored, roasted nuts are good to set out between meals. My favorite to make: Toast pecan halves for 10-12 minutes at 350F (or in a moderate oven), giving them a good shake halfway through. Toss them immediately with olive oil, minced fresh rosemary, and salt. (They should sizzle when the oil hits them.) Spread them out to cool.

Another strange but true fact: you can make a meal feel like a party simply by serving dip in small bowls scattered hither and yon. The dip can be savory, for veggies and tortilla chips, or sweet for fruit. Jazz up a simple sweet dip (e.g., Greek yogurt or cashew cream and your sweetener of choice) with herbal teas*: open the sachet of tea, and mix the dry contents to taste with the yogurt. Two of my favorites for this are Celestial Seasonings’ Bengal Spice (for those outside the US, chai spices minus the black tea) and Jammin’ Lemon Ginger (lemon and erm, ginger, among other things). Good with apple slices.

A permission slip if needed: If your people expect you to provide the hoopla of a “traditional” experience because they value certain foods or activities more than they do your health and well-being, then you are officially excused from feeling festive. Take care of yourself.

And don’t forget that this isn’t a performance. It’s a gathering of humans you love. You will all remember the gathering’s flavors of love, whether given or withheld, more than you will the food.

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* By herbal tea, I mean “tea” with no actual tea leaves—just dried herbs and spices.

by Stacy

Managing Holiday Meals: Upsizing

Every Thanksgiving I plan a “simple” holiday meal only to crash halfway through cooking it, because it wasn’t quite simple enough.

I’m tempted to skip the celebration, but holidays matter, just like good meals matter, even to solo cooks, the housebound, the ill. They remind us what we value; they allow us to share in our culture’s observances; they give us a chance to enjoy beautiful, once-a-year rituals.

But they’re a heck of a lot of work.

I normally downsize holidays: take the full, overwhelming shebang and reduce it to what I hope will be a manageable level with simpler recipes, fewer dishes, and more storebought items. But really, downsizing has never quite worked. Whatever I do is still more than I would typically do in a day–just washing the dishes, let alone cooking the meal. I end up overly tired and wondering whether next year I’ll even bother.

Downsizing also has negative undertones. You downsize by subtracting from something larger, and that can make me feel a little deprived–like what I’m doing is “less than” or second best, not what I would do if I were healthy. It can foreground the losses of illness.

This year I’m going to experiment with upsizing instead. I will add just one thing to my regular fare to give my meals the flavor of holiday. For 2019 that one thing will be cranberry sauce. (In fact, I’m not really doing any extra cooking–in my normal menu rotation, Wednesday is already sauce-making day.)

I might make a traditional sauce, or this Cuban-influenced one with cocoa, orange, and lime; or a family-favorite “salsa” with dried cranberries, orange, pecans, and red chile powder. They are all good on everything from oatmeal to sandwiches to baked apples. I might just eat cranberry sauce at all three meals, because if I’m going to do such a simple thing, I can go over the top with it.

That’s the thing about upsizing, about addition: you feel like you’re going over the top. Upsizing focuses on gain rather than loss, on the plenty you have rather than what you are missing, on abundance rather than scarcity. What you do is “more than;” it is extra, bonus, gratuitous.

And that sense of gift, of gratuity, is a first big step toward gratitude.