Low Mileage Food

There’s a variety of beliefs in my family, all the way from the ardently religious to the not so much.  Christmas is, of course, an important religious for many in my family, but it’s also a huge family and cultural and food day for the rest of us.

Christmas is my dad’s family’s holiday (growing up, it was always spent with his family, and Thanksgiving, most years, with my mom’s up in Baltimore).  We live in an area populated by his family (when I started teaching at the local community college, I had to call to get one of my accounts set up.  They asked for my last name, and I chuckled and gave it to them.  They responded with “… Er, there’s 14 of you in there.  What’s your first name?”  It’s not quite of the Smith and Jones variety, but around here, it’s close.)

Christmas lunch is at my great-aunts’ house, and dinner is usually at my parents’, but this year, we rotated to an aunt and uncle’s house who just moved home after four decades elsewhere; they say they have some hosting to make up for.  Both meals are huge potluck affairs, and family occasions are one of those times when I put aside my food sensibilities in favor of being grateful for what my family is sharing with us.

That being said, our contributions are mainly local and organic, and I wanted to share what I’m cooking up for family meals this week are our Dark Days entry for the week.

For lunch, we brought:

• a cheese ball:  local cheddar, organic walnuts, organic spices purchased at the co-op (non-organic cream cheese; the co-op only carries it in tubs, and I don’t like buying multiple plastic tubs of it around holiday time.  Target only had non-organic cream cheese.  At some point, you have to weigh the environmental cost of the gas to go hit another store for one thing versus the non-organic item.  If I’d been thinking, I’d have gotten the cream cheese early in the week); non-organic cream cheese.  [This didn’t get eaten very much; because of the Worchestershire sauce and the white cheddar, it ended up a grayish color, and I think folks just couldn’t identify it.  Next year, I either label things, or make more readily identifiable food.]
• mashed potatoes & gravy: organic potatoes, organic butter, local flour (for the roux), organic broth, local milk [I made the potatoes the day before, and they just didn’t hold up well to a night in the fridge; they were tasty, but not very mashed, even with reheating.]
• monkey bread:  local flour, organic sugar and salt, non-local yeast, organic butter [Noms.]
• pumpkin bread:  organic pumpkin, local flour, organic butter, organic sugar, organic spices [I liked this, but only about half the loaf got taken, and I have another loaf which has gone into our freezer,]

For dinner, we’ll be bringing:

• cheese enchiladas, based loosely on this recipe:  local cheese, homemade tortillas (local flour, co-op purchased oil, local milk), non-local sauce [2/3 of the pan got eaten at dinner, which was impressive with the other food out; we killed the rest with dinner last night.]
• sausage balls:  local cheese, local sausage, local milk, local flour [These vanished, as they always do.]
• cheese crackers:  local cheese, local flour, local milk [I ended up not baking these up; we had enough food already.  The dough is still in the fridge, so we’ll have to bake these up today.]

There was a definite cheese theme this year.

Merry Christmas to those that do, in whatever form, and merry days to those that don’t!