Food holidays

As an American, I'm always happy to celebrate Thanksgiving, our premier "food holiday." It is probably the one holiday we have in the USA with its own special foods: turkey stuffed with (usually) a traditional mix of bread and herbs, which absorbs juices from the turkey to get its own special flavor, and cranberry sauce (my personal favorite!) My family, when I was a child growing up, always had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, though for some reason my mother seemed to believe that the candied sweet potatoes were a favorite of mine, though in fact I barely tolerated them. The stuffing and cranberry sauce were my treat, though I enjoyed the turkey too, as long as I got the white meat, and usually I had no problem getting it.

I had a friend (still have him, but we live hundreds of miles apart, so I have much less contact with him) who didn't much like turkey. I understand that his family had unconventional Thanksgiving meals with something other than turkey featured. It would seem weird to me, but for him, it was better that way.

Besides being an American, I'm Jewish, and we are just finishing up one of our own holidays, that also has food associated with it: Chanukah. (You'll see a lot of other spellings, but this is the one I prefer.) Apparently, different groups of Jews have different traditional Chanukah foods, but they all have in common that they are fried in oil to commemorate the oil lamp that burned for eight days with one day's supply of oil. In my culture (deriving from northeastern Europe), the traditional Chanukah food is a pancake made from shredded potatoes (the pancakes are called latkes in Yiddish, my ancestors' native language). I love them. (Other groups of Jews have their own traditions; I understand one group serves a sort of jelly doughnut. It probably tastes good — I've never tried them, so I don't know for sure — but it wouldn't mean Chanukah to me.)

I got most of my holiday foods this year, though for some reason when I had turkey and stuffing from Whole Foods on their prepared food bar, there was no cranberry sauce, just some sort of cranberry-orange relish, and I'm no great fan of oranges, so I passed on that). At the Old Country Buffet, where I actually ate on Thanksgiving Day, they did have the cranberry sauce, so I was happy. Whole Foods did a strange variation on latkes for Chanukah, though. They served latkes with spinach and feta cheese on their prepared food bar, though I could taste the spinach but not the feta cheese. Not really that traditional, but I have to admit they tasted good. But I sort of miss the old-fashioned kind of latkes. (The hash browns at Blue Pearl Buffet are so similar to latkes that they will have to serve as my near-substitute. But even they aren't quite right.)

But now the two food holidays are over, and it's back to everyday. (Passover is also a food holiday, but that's many months off.)