Like trimming the tree, hanging the mistletoe or countless other holiday traditions, many of us still put out holiday dishes without ever asking, “why?” Well, maybe after seeing what goes into those seasonal treats, you’ll think twice about what you serve.
A four-and-a-half star recipe from allrecipes.com says the two main ingredients in eggnog are six eggs and a quart of milk. If dishing up Rocky Balboa’s favorite workout drink to your guest isn’t gross enough, imagine gulping some down after it’s been sitting in the punch bowl all night. No wonder people started adding alcohol.
Mincemeat pie is another highly rated holiday tradition on the Allrecipes Web site, which is apparently where taste buds go to die. It calls for cooked beef, chopped apples, raisins, pickle juice, pineapple juice and an orange all to be stuffed into a steaming pile of pie. Yummy.
Then comes the shining star atop the Christmas tree of holiday foods: the fruitcake. According to Peggy Trowbridge Filippone at about.com, an ingredient that is commonly substituted for dried fruit is citron, a pretty name for the rinds or peels of citrus fruits. So, basically, the parts of the orange and lemon that everyone throws away are baked right into a big loaf along with nuts and raisins. This just goes to show that sometimes a bad reputation is rightly deserved.
So, if you’d rather spend the holidays with your family instead of barfing in the bathroom, this year might be a good time to break tradition.
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