Marzipan is a terrible thing to do to delicious almonds

[cosmolinguist]

I think this is the fourth year that D and I have made Christmas dinner together, and it's always so fun and good and fancy enough to feel special without being stressful, I love it. I love him.

This year we had * a turkey crown with stuffing already in it * a small piece of pork * roasted sweet potatoes, carrots and parsnips * scalloped corn (my Minnesota contribution! Christmas celebrations at home always include it so I make it for my British family because they like it too) * Brussels sprouts fried with veggie bacon and chestnuts

Then for dessert, Christmas pudding (which I still am not tempted by but which actually smelled nice this time, a first for me!), apple strudel and/or maple nut roulade (which I like the taste of but meringue continues to be Not A Food for me). With custard or cream.

I didn't have any of that (I continue to be wary of British Christmas desserts and repeatedly asked D warily "does that have marzipan in it??") but I did make myself a hot chocolate with chocolate rum in it.

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

I like regular icing but not royal icing. But I don't like fruitcake of any kind anyway (I like fruit but tend to struggle with dried fruit as an ingredient in sweet things; I like it in savory food fine!) so it's easy for me to just ignore the whole thing as it's all cursed. As is trifle, you're so right there. :)

Scalloped corn is my contribution to the festive menu; my family need to have it at thanksgiving and Christmas; it was the only vegetable my cousin would eat when we were kids (or maybe it still is, for all I know, heh) and it's a favorite with a lot of the family except for people like my mom who hate it. But my mom doesn't like dairy of any kind so never likes creamed vegetables which this is based on.

Our house has a range of milks (including goat milk for Gary! who also couldn't have much lactose :) but this "his milk" was such a treat for him and really helped get some calories into him when he wasn't very interested in eating): cow, soy, oat, occasionally almond but not any more I think, and I feel fortunate that I can have any of them and none seem to affect my taste buds or digestion in a negative way!

[barakta]

Royal icing has egg white in it and a nasty brittle texture. I don't mind normal icing as long as there's not too much of it. I don't like those cupcake things cos they're 90% sickly icing and hardly any cake *blech*. I suspect it's as much a texture as a too-sweet thing.

Dried fruit is indeed weird and I don't like some of it outside of fruitcake, orange peel is especially horrid, I hate orange marmalade (but like Robinsons lime and lemon marmalade)... I like sultanas but they're dangerously addictive and suddenly you've eaten a tonne of sugar and feel yuck.

Interesting about your mum and dairy, can imagine that's tricky for her as it's in everything. I must admit the idea of dairy and veg is a weird combo, cauliflour cheese being Definitely Weird even if I like it. I suspect you North Americans are more adventurous with corn than we are in the UK where it tends to only be corn as in the little nodules rather than ground or anything else. I don't have it in the house as partner has smell-of-corn trauma from a former housemate who burned it every day in a student house...

Lots of milks there! I never managed to tolerate goat milk lactosewise although I didn't hate the smell/taste like some people do. I also can't have soya milk as for some reason it makes me retch... I never liked the taste pre-lactose intolerance illness so I don't know if it always made me unwell. Of course soya milk is the default "non dairy milk" in many places... Weirdly I'm OK with soy(a) in food, so I really don't know what that is about other than Bodies Gonna Weird. Thankfully hospitals round here do oat as their backup to dairy milk, probably cos dairy/soy combined intolerance is quite common so when I forgot my milk during my last hospital stay I managed with oatmilk tea cos TEA is essential to survival!