Holiday Food Traditions

Eating what your ancestors grew...

December holidays are all about food traditions, and those very food traditions are all based around what was grown and stored by our grandparents, and great-grandparents…before supermarkets made produce from around the world available for our otherwise snowbound holiday tables.

There are few places in the world where you can harvest fresh food around the winter solstice.

Festival food in December is rich food, comfort food, but it’s also storage food. Meat fattened up all summer long, root cellar vegetables and cold hardy fruits like persimmons, apples, quince, and cranberries, finished off with pastries made from oilseeds and nuts, like almonds, walnuts, and poppyseed.

Our roast goose carved for the table.

What exactly you’re eating this time of year likely has a lot to do with where your grandparents or great-grandparents came from. Traditions from the old world, and old world agriculture, follow us even today when you could have fruit from the tropics on your table if you so chose.

Think about that as you sit down to your holiday meal this week. Where did this meal come from, and what would putting this meal on the table have looked like 100 years ago? When would you have started planning?

Something as simple as the poppyseed in Oma’s famous strudel would have been planted last March, well before the last frost, even up here in Vermont.

Our own homegrown poppy seeds.

If you’re eating beef, that cow would have been tended for at least 18 months (and likely several years) before you’d see your holiday roast beef. Even something like turkey takes many months of planning and care.

The potatoes needed to be hoed, the pumpkins watered all summer long, and the cranberries carefully picked right before the first frost.

This feast would have been months in the making, every day a few small steps toward that goal…and then every bit at your table infused with meaning, effort, and love.

Roast goose breast, fried brussels sprouts and herb mashed potatoes.

Things You Might Need This Week

• How to Build an Easy DIY Buffet Table ~ These simple plans will let you build a sideboard buffet table in less than a day. If you’re having extra people over this holiday season, there’s still time to quickly build in a bit more space to accommodate all those extra tasty dishes.

• How to Roast a Goose ~ Still looking for something to take center stage on your holiday table? A roast goose used to be the norm, and it’s darn delicious.

• 30+ Ways to Preserve Eggs ~ For most people, chickens aren’t laying this time of year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have homegrown eggs for your holiday baking. There are all manner of egg preservation methods, including packing eggs in limewater which will keep them good as new for a year or more…but really that’s not required. Unwashed eggs will keep for 3-4 months in a cool place, and we’ve kept ours in our cool-ish basement for many months without issue. Cool, but not cold, is key, and they must be unwashed farm-fresh eggs.

• 21+ Norwegian Christmas Cookies ~ Most European countries have traditional holiday cookies, but the Norwegians take it especially seriously. Their tradition says that no holiday table is complete until it has at least 7 different types of Christmas cookies, to signify abundance and ring in the season. It’s not any particular 7 and there are all manner of types to choose from…they don’t even have to be Norwegian really…any festive Christmas cookie recipe from anywhere around the world will do, provided you really go all out and make enough types.

• Oma’s Poppyseed Strudel ~ This year we grew poppyseed so we could make my grandmother’s special German Mohnstrudel. Poppyseeds are a rich part of the food traditions in most European countries and are incredibly nutritious.

Things I’m Loving

This past week, I put together a whole page of product recommendations and coupon codes to share with you. It’s all my favorite homesteading & preparedness supplies, and I talked many of the companies into giving y’all discounts with custom coupon codes just for being a subscriber to Practical Self Reliance.

You can find the complete list of product recommendations and subscriber coupon codes here.

These will probably be the most useful to you this week (affiliate links):

• D’artagnan is having a 25% off everything end-of-the-year sale, and we stocked up on duck meat to take us through the winter. I also got a fresh lamb belly to try my hand at making lamb bacon too. They ship everything overnight, so there’s still plenty of time to get something nice for your holiday table.

• Harvest Right Freeze Dryers ~ Home freeze drying is becoming more popular every year, as it’s a great way to preserve food without added sugar.  You can freeze dry almost anything, and the food is just like fresh made when rehydrated. They don’t do coupon codes, but they’re currently running their once-a-year holiday sale with $500 off a freeze dryer and free shipping.

• Valley Food Storage is running a sale with up to 50% of their emergency food kits, including some of their most popular options, like their family survival kit. They’re my favorite emergency food supplier, and I’ve tried them all. Use the code “SelfReliance” to get an extra 10% off.

• Berkey Water Filters are hands down the best anywhere, and they’re running a holiday sale with discounts on almost everything. Use the code “SelfReliance” you’ll get 10% off of your order.

• The Herbal Academy’s holiday sale includes 30% off all courses. I love the herbal academy, and at this point, I’ve taken just about every one of their courses, and I have all of their course textbooks.

• Masterclass is running a 2-for-1 deal on course subscriptions, so you can get a membership for yourself and gift one for free at the same time. They have courses across dozens of topics, including quite a few courses that are really spectacular for homesteaders. I’ve taken their Wilderness Survival Course taught by Airforce SERE instructor Jessie Krebs, and I really loved how she broke everything down into short, manageable lessons.  I learned emergency signaling and practical applications for basic survival knots… along with countless other things.  Her lessons gave me hours of quality time with my husband last winter, and plenty to think about. I’m currently taking their Bread Baking course with Apollonia Poilâne, and watching the lessons with my daughter.  They’re engaging enough for me as an adult, and experienced bread baker, but accessible enough that my 7-year-old loves them too. 

Share Your Holiday Traditions

What’s on your table this holiday season? What are you most excited to share with your friends and family? And what are you making, giving, and doing to show those you love that you care?

Leave me a note in the comments, I’d love to hear about it!

(Comments only, please. Emails tend to get lost in my inbox, and as much as I’d love to get back to each and everyone, my screen time is very limited…and things fall through the cracks, and emails get buried in my inbox. If you comment here, they’re all in one place, and it’s much easier to get back to every single one.)

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance