cosmolinguist | Marzipan is a terrible thing to do to delicious almonds

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.

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Also the pannetone!

Marzipan is foul. I'm also not keen on icing so I often strip icing/marzipan off fruit cake and just eat the cake. I can ALWAYS find someone who wants the bits I hate. Weirdly I didn't like fruitcake/Xmas cake/mince pies as a child but I do like them occasionally now. Meringues I can eat if its on its own but not IN something slimy like trifle (which is revolting).

Picking the bits you like for the win. I never had "traditional" English Christmas dinner when growing up cos Mum doesn't like cooking/eating turkey and it wasn't from her (Scottish) family tradition anyway (her dad worked on Christmas day cos it was not a big deal, they did Hogmanay as a bigger thing). We had all sorts of random food, and by the 90s we had vegetarians so Mum did things like big veggie curries and a collection of random mains to let people choose from. Mum refused to do 'stress' which is fair play to her really. In my teens we did massive church Christmas which I quite liked even tho I despised the evangelicals as it broke up the day, there was usually some interesting randoms there and I liked the principle of it. I could read my book if people tried to proselytize at me!

I haven't heard of scalloped corn before, Google suggests interesting recipes.

Annoyingly lactose intolerance affects what I can eat these days *scowl* so I shouldn't have Baileys or equivalent even tho I really like it (and sometimes have it anyway cos fuckit). Rum in hot chocolate sounds very nice.

That sounds like a well-enjoyed meal.

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!

Ah yes, I should've known better than to try to make a list because I was certain to forget something.

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!

If you like meringues and it’s not sugar that’s the problem, vegan meringues with aquafaba are decent. Time of chickpea water, into a VERY clean bowl, whisk until frothy and then add icing sugar a bit at a time until you get stiff peaks. Some people add a pinch of tartare to help. You *can* flavour them but you can’t put any oil into them without risk of collapse (and there’s no saving them). Then they get dolloped (or piped, if that’s your thing) onto trays and cooked very slowly. I dehydrate mine because it has the right temperature for that- otherwise the recommendation is oven with a wooden stick in the door opening.

They are a good alternative to the egg white version as far as I’m concerned :)

I've helped make vegan meringues, which is fun, but I still don't like to eat them. :) It's a texture thing for me I think.

Ah fair enough :)

I don’t like the big meringues - they’re too much. But the small ones I like enough to make them about once a year…

...is that it can be fashioned and colored to look like anything -- the first sushi I ever saw was in a marzipan collection.

Growing up our nutty treat was halvah -- toasted sesame seeds plus sugar syrup plus flavorings (pistachio, chocolate and such).

Splashed out on some organic double chocolate halva for my own pleasure and oh my goodness it was as creamy and rich as the pots-de-crème I can no longer eat.

Hot chocolate plus rum sounds delicious.

Also the pumpkin pie!

We all forgot about the pumpkin pie.

Marzipan is a terrible thing to do to delicious almonds

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