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There is something so sacred about food during the holidays. The taste of your grandma's casserole or your aunt's monkey bread, or your mom's Christmas Eve dinner. It can fill your heart and mind with so many wonderful feelings and memories. Food represents so much more than just a meal. It represents feelings of nostalgia and it represents just the most important parts of the holiday season, which is bringing people together around the table in love. I'm so excited just to have a little bit of fun on this episode and encourage you just to think about the food that you are having in your family over this holiday season.

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I gotta start out with this quote from J.R.R. Tolkien. It's great. He says, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” I love that so much. Is there really anything better than food and cheer and song? I don't think so.

That's why I'm gonna host a caroling night with food and hopefully a lot of cheer and we're all gonna sing songs together because I feel like that is the good stuff of the holidays. And today I just wanna talk about food and why it's so important and why it's worth planning for. It is the work and play of the holidays, because food takes a lot of work.

You have to plan, you have to figure out who's cooking what, who's gonna bring what, and then you have to go to the store and go shopping for all the different ingredients. Then you have to spend time in the kitchen making it just for an hour of enjoyment. But it's worth it. It's so worth it.

There are several reasons why I love food around the holidays and consider this a pep talk before, if maybe you're someone who doesn't love to cook, consider this your pep talk. It's worth it. It's gonna be, it's gonna be worth it, okay? Because it's, food around the holidays is so much more than just cooking and just preparing a meal. Cooking together leads to conversation. Think about memories that you have in the kitchen as a kid, maybe with your mom or a family member, and you're just talking. You might not remember what you talked about, but you remember the time spent. You remember that your relationship feels stronger. There's a lot of time that you have to spend in the kitchen when you're cooking. Cooking leads to conversation, which is such a gift.

Food also tells a story about your family's heritage. I guarantee there's a few dishes in your menu lineup that have a story attached to it, or maybe they just make you think of one person. My mind immediately goes to Mama Dot's broccoli casserole. It is so symbolic to me and all my cousins of just the quintessential Mama dish. She would bake it every Christmas and Thanksgiving and it just tasted so good and it just sounds so weird. Just tasted like Mama Dot. You know what I mean? It's like, Mama Dot was my grandma, by the way, and it was delicious. I loved it as a kid. What kid loves broccoli casserole? I don't know, but I did. And it just makes me think of her.

So food really tells a story about your family. And I don't know, maybe there's certain dishes that are like attached to certain people because they love to cook those things and bring them, and I just think that's so special. Food creates a really unique space for family traditions. And whether that's baking a certain kind of cookie together every year, whether it's building a gingerbread house and then eating some of the candy off of it, whether it's just preparing a meal together on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, it doesn't matter as long as you're doing it together.

And every family has their own rhythm, their own traditions, and that's what makes it beautiful and good. But food is kind, you know, you gotta eat. It's a required part of the holidays 'cause everyone has to eat. Why not make them so special? Why not light a candle? Why not put on Christmas music and invite your most loved people in and make it a tradition?

Of course, taste and smell bolster our memories more than anything else. We've all been there where we smell something and it just takes us back to a certain place and time in our life. It's amazing how God has created our minds to work like that. I think it's a beautiful gift and I think that that's why food is so special, because the smells of certain dishes can take us right back to other special memories and times in our life.

I read in this survey that people took that 83% of people have traditions that are surrounded around food. Food plays a huge role in holiday traditions. And so whether it's creating a new dish and you're doing it with your family or whether you're repeating an old dish, it, it just is what embodies like family traditions, and this was one of the interesting things that it said. Flavors and spices that evoke feelings of holiday nostalgia and comfort the most are cinnamon, pumpkin, peppermint, cocoa, and nutmeg. I don't know about you, but just listing off those flavors and spices make me so happy because I'm just so happy to cook with those things and to smell them because of how they make me feel.

Lastly, food brings us together. It's the thing, it's the thing that brings us together. We get to share meals together. We get to sit around a table with candles and eat good food. And whether you're using real plates or paper plates and whether your house is a mess or whether it's perfect, it doesn't matter. You're sitting there together enjoying a conversation and a meal with the people that you love most, that you don't get to see a lot, and that's beautiful. Food does that.

So before you get overwhelmed with all of the meal planning, I just want you to take a moment, even just now as you're listening to this podcast, just to get excited. Like what are the things, what are the meals, the desserts, the sides, the breakfasts that make you think “this feels like Christmas?” And just like take a second and think about that and let that and those feelings and those memories drive you to go home and make a list of things that you really want to make this Christmas. And that's the first step. Okay? Getting practical here. Make a list of the dishes or beverages or sides or desserts or whatever that you want to be sure you make this holiday season.

Then you're gonna need to get those recipes out and you're gonna need to write down all the ingredients. And this is a little bit of the tedious part. This is the work part of the work and play. Play comes later. You're going to eat it all. It's gonna be delicious, but you gotta work for it.

So write down all of the ingredients. Make a master list. Go ahead and build that list out on Aldi or wherever you're shopping and place that order like let's get it done. Let's have these things frozen or in your pantry or in your spice drawer ready to go ahead of time and then plan time in your calendar. This is the last thing. Plan time in your actual calendar to make it, because these things take time.

And while you're doing that, plan to invite someone in, even if it's your two-year-old for five minutes. Just invite someone in. Let it be something that can very simply be a new tradition for your family or repeating an old tradition where you're cooking together in the kitchen. Light a candle, let's play some music. Let's make it special for you and your family and let the play part of this begin while you're cooking, while you're baking. Don't let stress overtake you. Let it be sweet because that really is where the magic of the holiday season starts to happen, is before you ever sit down at the meal, while you're preparing it with your family. I'm gonna share some of my fun dishes with you just for fun, just because you're probably like, I don't know, you probably never had these things. Maybe you've had like one or two of them. Maybe they'll spark a memory for you. But it's literally just for fun that I wanna share some of my favorite holiday foods.

Okay, first already shared Mama Dot's, broccoli casserole. It just tastes like our family being together. Second is my mom's butterfingers. There are these cookies, like Christmas cookies that I would make with her. And my mind immediately goes back to my hands being covered in flour and mushing up butter together. And the texture of that and the memory of that, doing that with her as well as her five day coconut cake that she made every Christmas Eve.

She started it five days ahead of time before Christmas Eve, but we knew not to touch the cake in the fridge for five whole days because it was Jesus' birthday cake. And we ate it every Christmas Eve. And of course, her Cornish hens on Christmas Eve too.

My meemaw’s apple cranberry casserole, oh, this one's good. It's like chopped-up apples and cranberries. That's like the bottom layer with some cinnamon and sugar. And then the top layer is oats melted with butter and brown sugar. I mean, it's like a dessert, but we serve this, it's like in casserole dish, we serve it with our Turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing, and it is the best, the best cranberry flavor on the plate. That is included in my download on Patreon, along with a few others. I'll try to remember all the ones I included.

But that recipe so good is from my, my grandma on my other side, on my dad's side, we've got the Christmas morning cream cheese Danish, which is from my sister's mother-in-law. I had it at my sister's house one time and was like, what is this? I need this. And we make it every Christmas morning, delicious. We make our bacon-wrapped goat cheese-filled dates from Shauna Niequist’s book Bread and Wine and eggnog. Okay? Don't diss eggnog until you've tried this eggnog. People. I hated eggnog my whole life.

And then about 10 years ago, I went to my friend Stephanie's house and she made me real eggnog and I was like, what is real eggnog? She was like, oh, it's got heavy cream and raw eggs and nutmeg and sugar and it's good. It, I mean, splash of alcohol, I think maybe rum. I don't know. It is. Oh my goodness, it's so good.

So just, okay, let me think of the ones. If you're part of my Patreon, you get my four favorites. You get all the recipes, you get the apple cranberry casserole, you get the eggnog recipe, you get the cream cheese Danish, and I think there's one more. Oh, the Shauna Niequist bacon wrapped goat cheese filled dates. That's like my favorite Christmas appetizer. It's delicious.

So, and on that note, I'm just gonna share, I love this quote from Shaniqua's book, Bread and Wine, she says, “But entertaining. It's not a sport or a competition, it's an act of love. If you let it be. You can twist it and turn it into anything you want. A way to show off your house, a way to compete with your friends, a way to earn love and approve. Or you can decide that every time you open your door. It's an act of love, not performance or competition or striving. You can decide that every time people gather around your table, your goal is nourishment, not neurotic proving. You can decide.” I love that. The focus is on love and nourishment.

That's so beautiful. So I hope you take that with you as you prepare for food this holiday season.

Thanks for listening to episode 216 of Work and Play with Nancy Ray. Everything I've mentioned today can be found in the show notes at nancyray.com/podcast/216. And I'm also over at Instagram @NancyRay. You can follow me there.

Julia Child said,