Holiday Goodness

There are three things that I aboslutely love to eat this time of year because, well, they're good! And also because you can't get them any other time of year. Tasting them is like eating happiness. They mean Thanksgiving and Christmas, presents, family, snow, decorations and everything lovely about the holidays. One smell, and I'm in heaven...

1) Peppermint stick ice cream. I don't know how many years I have been enjoying this seasonal ice cream. Many. I prefer Farrs, which has little crunchy green and red bits of peppermint candy in a cool pink mint ice cream. When I was pregnant with Daphne during the holidays, I subsisted primarly on this ice cream because it didn't make me sick. My one problem is that I never remember to stock up on it. One day in December I'll go to the store and it will simply be gone. And then I'll franticly try another store. Gone. And then I'll know for sure that the holiday season is over. This year I SWEAR I'm going to dump all the Lean Cuisines and chicken nuggets out of my freezer and stock-pile peppermint stick ice cream.

2) Eggnog. This is an interesting item because it's not like I drink a lot of it. I can only drink maybe 1/3 cup at a sitting. And I often go the whole holiday without finishing up a quart of it. But it wouldn't be Christmas without some rich eggnog coating the lining of my stomach like fattening, nutmeggy Pepto-Bismol.

3) Fresh cranberry sauce. I am a big believer in homemade cranberry sauce. As a kid, we'd go to my grandparents' house in North Carolina either for Thanksgiving or Christmas. And it was always the job of us kids to sort out the bag of cranberries, separating the bad ones out from the good so my grandmother could make that beautiful, tart, ruby red cranberry sauce. She always served it in a cut-crystal bowl. It really completes the holiday meal.

I also have to give an honorary mention to Meier's sparkeling grape juice. Even though you can find it year-round, in our family we never had Thanksgving or Christmas dinner without some sparkling Cold Duck, sparkling Burgundy, or sparkling Pink Catawba by Meier's. It's way more delicious than that crappy Martinelli's. Granted, it gives you terrible gas, but that's part of the holidays too, right? No? Oh, must just by my family.

(If you thought I was going to say something about pumkpin pie, sorry to disappoint you. That stuff is revolting! BLECH. Every year my mom makes pumpkin chiffon pie. And every year she ASSURES me that it is delicious. And every year she tries to make me eat some. Sometimes I appease her by taking a bite, sometimes I don't. But every year the one thing that never changes? Pumpkin pie is disgusting. Now make me a pecan pie and we can talk.)

What about you? What foods are the taste of the holidays for you and yours?