Thanksgiving marks the official start of the holiday season, and often, a season of gluttony. Thanksgiving dinner, holiday parties, family get-togethers, Christmas dinner, new-year’s eve, and New Year’s Day parties, are all occasions which fall within the season, all featuring lots of presents, merriment, and food. With so much food, there are bound to be a few recurring duds and a few recurring highlights, and those are what’s going to be recounted in this article.
Thanksgiving is a holiday ground in tradition, so chances are that every year you’re going to see more or less the same table of food, whether everyone hates a particular dish or not. While cranberry sauce has its fans, many people would argue that it’s one of the least appetizing foods on the table. Cranberry sauce is normally a jelly-like consistency, but if prepared wrong can be too loose or pasty, which makes it quite unpleasant to look at, let alone eat. Being made from a berry that almost nobody likes, you have to wonder why this sauce is such a staple to this day. Of the jellied dishes at Thanksgiving, cranberry sauce is still probably the least offensive. Jell-O molds often have similar issues, if prepared wrong you can be left with a misshapen heap of mush, only in this case the taste is often even more unpleasant. Topping all though is a slightly more obscure Thanksgiving dish – Tomato Aspic. Take the sketchy consistency of cranberry sauce and the often faulty architecture of a Jell-O mold and then combine it all with tomato. Tomato aspic is a jellied tomato mold, often served like a salad, with celery, onions, lettuce, and garlic, and it’s just as unpleasant as it sounds. While the taste isn’t always awful, it’s a really unpleasant consistency, and frankly, might as well be replaced with a regular salad.
At the same time, being a Holiday so food-centric, Thanksgiving houses quite a few pleasant dishes as well, in fact, most of the staple thanksgiving foods have a reputation for being delicious. Mashed potatoes are a must, especially if prepared right, soft and flavorful, they make a great side to a lot of the tougher main dishes served at Thanksgiving, like turkey. As an alternate meat, a spiral ham is always welcomed, as it makes for a more interesting main dish than turkey which many people find quite dull. Stuffing falls into the same category as mashed potatoes, it’s a classic side dish, only stuffing is often more savory, and is made from more ingredients, all of which mix quite well. The star of the Thanksgiving table however, comes after all of the main courses and side dishes have been cleared away. Thanksgiving dessert features pastries, pies, and muffins that aren’t made all that often before or after the holiday. While apple pie is quite common and popular through the whole fall season, but things like pecan pie and pumpkin pie, despite being delicious, are only really served around thanksgiving, making them something to look forward to.
The other half of the holiday season surround Christmas, and while it certainly isn’t as food-centric as Thanksgiving, most people do quite a lot of eating around this part of the year. In regards to the worst foods, a few Thanksgiving foods have a tendency to resurface. While not incredibly common, cranberry sauce and Jell-O molds are made around Christmas as well, and suffer from the same issues as they do in November. Honestly, most Christmas foods aren’t really that bad, a few bland dishes here and there, but for the most part it’s alright. Well, minus one thing – fruitcake. That’s not to say all fruitcake is bad, but rather very few people are willing to take the time necessary to prepare an actual fruitcake, which isn’t really what we’re talking about. We’re talking about rock hard store bought fruit cake, which tastes unpleasant and rather than being filled with fruits and nuts, is covered in weird red and green candies. While it may be nowhere near as gross as say, badly prepared tomato aspic, I’d argue that fruitcake is the worst food of the holiday season. Not because of its taste (not to say that it tastes good), but rather because unlike every other food mentioned here, you know whoever brought it put absolutely no effort into it. Even if they may be far from good foods, at least someone put time and effort into every other food listed here, the main problem with store bought fruitcake isn’t that it’s particularly bad, it’s that it’s lazy.
If you’d like to make cranberry sauce, a jell-O mold, or even tomato aspic, that’s fine. There are some people out there that like them, and at the very least you’d be upholding tradition. As long as you put effort into your contributions to the holiday table, its fine – just please, don’t bring store bought fruitcake.
