Is there an unusual dish that is always featured at your family's Christmas dinner?

Mirliton dressing.... First time I ever had it was in New Orleans. A cajun man I came to adore (named Mista Mike) brought it to a company pot luck. I had never even HEARD of a mirliton before so I was a bit skeptical about that first bite. Once I put that in my mouth, I couldn't get enough. So I got a recipe from him. Several months later I went to the store and couldn't find a mirliton. Had no clue what it looked like but I looked alllllll over that store for a mirliton. Turns out you can only get them certain times of the year and I was too late. Now I know I can only get them around the holidays so every year, without fail, mirliton dressing.

I have a new one I started last year and I bought some as I was allowed one as a taste test, and that was Balsamic Pickled Baby Onions which have an incredible taste to me.

One of my other favourites is a parsnip and carrot mash a ratio of 75%-25% in favour of the parsnip. Mum made it about 50/50 and several of the others called it 'baby food'.

I believe it is quite popular in either Ireland or Northern England but I could be wrong on that one

Hman

We always have my grandmother's recipe for winter fruit salad as the dessert along with cookies. Even her great grandchildren make it for their families because it's a family tradition that everyone enjoys! Here's the recipe for the dressing. It's basically like a pineapple curd until the whipped cream and marshmallows are added.

Cook together:

1 egg

½ C sugar

2 T corn starch

2 T lemon juice

¾ C juice from canned pineapple

Mix in:

½ pint whipping cream – whipped (can use 4 oz of frozen whipped topping)

¼ lb (2 cups) small marshmallows

serve over mixture of apricots, pineapple, bananas, grapes, pears, etc.

considering which you're having ham you're able to have some style of candy potato casserole, ideally one with loads of butter brown sugar and marshmallows. attempt some corn dish to boot, the two a casserole or sparkling frozen kernels, continually extra desirable with butter of direction. i stumble on Christmas dinner the time to pile on the butter because of fact the the remainder of the 300 and sixty 5 days that's an entire no no lol.

A few years ago I made a batch of Mama Stambergs Cranberry relish. It was such a hit that i get asked to bring it to a lot of things. It has onions, cranberries and horseradish in it. you can get the recipe online and if you listen to NPR you will probably hear the recipe several times a day. It is the single most requested thing on NPR. Try it. It is Pepto pink ande good good good.

When my grandmother and great aunt were still alive, we always had to have a cheese grits casserole.

Christmas Eve and Day have moved to the home of our cousins. With one cousin via marriage being from Brazil, that always makes for something interesting in the casserole dish; I think that was the first time I heard my oldest nephew ask a rather blunt question. "What the hell is this?" Turns out to have been butternut squash with brown sugar and a marshmallow topping.

The other cousin started a tradition that all of have regretted at some point or another. She decorates the table with those foil wrapped chocolate golden coins and foil wrapped chocolate footballs. It really looked neat, at least until the kids saw it, I now hate the practice. 5 candy hyped kids at Christmas is a bit of a handful, particularly so when you're supposed to be the one keeping an eye on them. My neice asked to sit in my lap so she could loot the table.

JJ Watt of the Houston Texans probably doesn't hit a quarterback as hard as those kids trample me when I open the door for them at Christmas. My cousins wonder how my wine glass got broken and the contents of it wound up on the cieling. And of course, I get grumbled at about it for the rest of the year; One kid forgot he'd stuffed his pants pockets with chocolate and they went through the dryer, another stashed them beside his bed and weren't found until Thanksgiving, the neice put them in her purse and left it in the car until someone tracked down the reason the car was full of ants, two brothers got into a fight divvying up the loot. Somehow, all of this is my fault.

What I always look forward to, and the cousin seldom fails to deliver on Christmas Day is the prime rib. I think, with Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve past, the last thing he wants or suspects any of us to want to eat is turkey or ham. Crusted with rock salt and roasted perfectly every time. Even when I can't be there, I have my parents bring home several slices of it for me to pick up on my way home from work.

The prime rib alone makes up for hyperactive kids, souped up with chocolate, and the blame I get for a problem someone else caused all year long.

Another one from the Brazilian cousin is brand of rum from her home town. She's proud of the fact that it's used for everything from starting cold engines to stretching shoe leather and reviving coma patients. I think they don't even bother with refining the sugar cane pressings, they just take them and distill them. A glass or two of that and you don't even remember that the kids knocked a few of your ribs loose on the way to the table to score chocolates. At least not until morning, anyway.

D

My Dad(who's past) always had to have Oyster Stew Christmas Eve. That is the Norwegian tradition. I hated it. You always got that gritty taste left in your mouth. It also smelled bad too. Along with his Leudefiske too. That smell could have woken the Dead! lol.