PREPARING FOR XMAS TREAT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 195, 19 December 1941, Page 6

PREPARING FOR XMAS TREAT

An English carol you may be sure! For roast goose and roast beef in this country Ave often substitute turkey. English friends of mine tell me that to-day they often use turkey instead of the traditional goose. No matter how much Ave strive for novelty in our menus, at Christmas - most of us like to duplicate as nearly as possible the family dinner of our childhood with turkey and (ixin's, which include mashed potatoes, giblet .gravy, creamed onions, baked squash, and mashed turnips and cranberry jelly or sauce. Old fashioned dinners of this sort usually began with the main course, although avc find in some families tlu» traditional service of an oyster steAV at the beginning of the meal.- It was customary with some families to supplement the turkcj' Avitli a I chicken pie, and this tradition is still folloAved, by some of my friends, who admit, hoAvever. that there is usually plenty left OA*er to serve for another meal. When I had a small group at my house for Christmas dinner I used to serve a very light appetiser or - clear soup. Noav that my groulp has gradually enlarged until there are usually aboiit twenty-five guests and therefore problems of service. I luwe gone back to a duplication of the dinner—simple, but filling—Avliich was sci'A'ed in our household from the beginning of my memory. And what could be better than a AA*ellbroAvned turkey filled. Avith a dry stuffing, seasoned with onions and possibly a bit of sage? - As I have two turkeys, I sometimes vary the stuffing, using nuts or oysters, of course mixed with the bread crumbs, in one. You may if you like use one kind of stuffing ill the neck end and another in the body. There must be quantities of giblet gravy, hot, brown, and well seasoned. There must be piles of creamy mashed potatoes. With the creamed onions are sometimes vised French chestnuts. And then there must be flaming plum pudding with huge bowls of sauce. Of course there will be nuts and raisins with the coffee.

■ IM—MWWBHMMMMMMB At our house we were always given a choice dessert. Besides the pudding there were pumpkin pie and mince pic." The mince pies were made a week or so< before Christmas, put out in the ice chest, where they were allowed to cool, according to a tradition that this process improved them. Of course, they were reheated in the oven before they were used. This tradition probably originated generations ago . when huge quantities were baked in Dutch ovens, which took so long to heat that many things were baked when they were ready. Mtay jour Christmas table be crowded. Who cares about elbow room or whether china and silver match —gust so there's plenty of turkey and good checr. . NO MISTLETOE IN CHURCH • v The use of holly, ivy, and box at Ghristmastidc has lasted in an unbroken tradition tlvoi.gl: the centuries. Of all the fullctgc "available at Ghristmastidc, mistletoe alone seems by universal ngieement to be excluded from the Church. It was the sacred plant of the Druids, which may have made the Church cautious of using it; but it was also the plant which supplied the fatal shaft which slew Baldr the Beautiful, and it may thcrefore mean that out Saxon forefathers so far clung to their ancestral myths that they would not use the death symbol of Baldr at the birth of the White Christ. The secular frivolities connected with the mistletoe have no doubt had something to do with keeping it out of Church in more reeent times. It is said that there is only one instance of mistletoe being introduced in the carving of an English church, and that is on a tomb in Bristol Cathedral. The Christmas decorations must be taken down before Candelmas Day, and if but a single leaf or berry be left in a paw, someone of those who usually occupy that seat will die before another Yuletide; such at least is the belief of many, and people have been known to send their own servants to the church to sweep out their pews most carefully on Candelmas Eve.