Christmas Food Traditions

HOLIDAY TRADITIONS

Christmas traditions don't have to be the expected ones with family that some people look forward to and others dread each year.

For myself, I didn't grow up with Christmas traditions because we didn't celebrate Christmas or many other holidays either.  At Christmas time we just sat around the house and ate whatever there was and watched TV.  My family were never into the big holiday things but I kind of feel like I missed out on the magic and the creativity and the memories of the excitement of the things you only do during the Holiday times.

Since my parents have passed and I am estranged from my brother and don't celebrate holidays with any of my other remaining relatives my Holiday traditions are now spent with my friends.

I have a few different groups of friends so I do things differently with all of them.

For the past 3 years I have tried to organize a gift exchange and dinner with my Food Blogger friends.  This year was the most successful one yet.  With the weather being perfect and no snow storm to get in the way and a location that was central for everyone to get to, this year everyone I invited was able to make it out to the dinner.  Some were late but everyone was there to eat, drink and exchange fun gifts.  We met up at the Keg in North York because my friends come from Markham, Maple, Thornhill, downtown Toronto and the Scarborough Bluffs area.  It was a challenge to find a place that would be able to seat 7 of us and still be able to have it quiet enough to talk.  The Keg fit the bill for location and comfort.  Although it's a bit pricey and they had an even bigger party than ours so our food took a long time but we still had a great time catching up and doing our Secret/not so secret Santa exchange.

Another tradition that I spend with friends is actually hosted by one of my film festival friends who hosts an Open House at her home just before Christmas.  Some of my Tiff Entourage team meet up at her house and enjoy the usually Potluck kind of snacks while we mingle with her other friends.

And what I hope to be a new and long lasting tradition was started last year at my house with my friend Adam, his husband and at the time his 3 year old daughter and their friend also joined us for Ugly Sweater and Christmas cookie decorating.  His daughter has grown to love baking things and we thought it would be fun to decorate cookies.  This year some of his other friends wanted to join the party so we had to move it from my tiny apartment to his house and we invited a couple more of his friends and I invited my friend, her husband and her 3 year old son.

 

This time we added 2 Gingerbread Houses for decorating,  one bought by me was a traditional one and the other bought by Adam was a Hanukkah House which had blue and gold decorations.  It's a good thing we had 2 because we broke one of the pieces on my house so it wouldn't stay together.  Oh well.   We had lots to decorate.

I pre-made dough and some Ugly Sweater cookies.  We were going to have the kids and adults cut out cookies to bake but that didn't happen.  The kids were happily playing downstairs with lego and all kinds of other toys while the serious adult decorators proceeded to have an Ugly Sweater decorating contest.  Unfortunately I didn't win but we let the kids decide and there was a tie between 2 cookies.  I hope to make this a new annual tradition until the kids are sick of doing it and the adults don't have the energy to decorate cookies anymore.  It was a huge messy success and I hope it makes a lot of memories for the kids and the adults.

So you see you can choose whatever tradition you like and with whomever you wish to do it with.  It doesn't have to be opening presents with family on Christmas day or dreading the family dinner.

Create your own new traditions with the people you love doing the things you love to do with them.

Cooks the Books Competition

Taste Canada presented Cooks the Books Student Chef Battle
at Mildred's Temple Kitchen on October 18, 2018.

www.tastecanada.org

#cooksthebooks

Part of the Taste Canada Awards is the Student Chef Battle that happens before the awards where students from 9 teams from various cooking schools battle against each other and our judged by some Food Industry pros. 

PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS:

Assiniboine Community College – Brandon, Manitoba
Centennial College – Toronto, Ontario
Conestoga College – Kitchener, Ontario
Fanshawe College – London, Ontario
Liaison College of Culinary Arts – Kitchener, Ontario
Liaison College of Culinary Arts – Toronto, Ontario
Thistletown Collegiate High School – Toronto, Ontario

The Judges were: Cookbook authors Christine Tizzard and Dennis Prescott and recipe developers Annabelle Waugh and Jennifer Emilson

Although I wasn't a judge an didn't get a chance to taste any of the dishes they were impressive creations that can stand up to most of the best restaurants in Toronto.

The Winners were:

The Silver Medal was awarded to  Celina do Souto and Sydney Lutz from Conestoga College (Kitchener, Ontario) for their Braised Beef Cheeks with Roasted Squash & Maple Milk Foam recipe.  

The Gold Medal was awarded to Jessi Coulter & Kaitlin McCarthy from Assiniboine Community College (Brandon, Manitoba) for their Cast Iron Seared Hudson River Arctic Char with Smoked Maple Birch Glaze, on Heritage Grain recipe. 

Whole Life Expo 2018

 http://www.wholelifeexpo.ca/

Nov 9-11 Metro Toronto Convention Centre

This week I spent a Sunday afternoon wandering around the Metro Toronto Convention Centre checking out all of the booths and talks at the Whole Life Expo.

I have been to this show in the past and it's a great place to check out new things in Healthy living and listing to expert speakers like Doctors, nutritionists, Chiropractors and more.

 I sat in on a few talks like the one above with Dr. Levine who talked about many different health care issues and had tips on how to deal with certain conditions.  Dr. Levine runs the practice Vita Health a clinic with Chiropractors, physiotherapists and other health care practitioners. 

Another talk I sat in on talked about the benefits of magnetic jewellery and other products and they had a draw and gave away free bracelets to the attendees.  I got the pretty bracelet above.  Nice bonus for listening to an informative talk.

I have been to many shows and have seen many health care products so I was looking for things I haven't seen before.  The 3 products above are things that are new and pretty amazing.

The box of Mocha is my new favourite thing.  It's Mocha coffee packets that you just add water and it takes like your favourite coffee shop fancy coffee.  It tastes really good but it doesn't have the bad effects of drinking the regular coffees and has healthy Reishi mushroom as one of the ingredients.  It's PH balancing and for me I can skip the dairy and other coffee effects.  A box of 15 was $35.  I have been drinking them at work.  Great way to skip the coffee lineups.

I also bought the Flora Apple Cider vinegar with Elderberry.  Apple Cider vinegar is already a great healthy product but they have added antioxidant elderberry to it and additional a boost of flavour.  Great for salad dressings.

With a spin of a wheel I won the Peanut butter cup chocolate with no actual nuts.  I haven't tried it yet but this would be great for kids in schools since it's peanut free.

The booths were filled with Samples, information and deals.  I got my posture and alignment measured at the Vita Health booth and they had a special of a $50 for a full consultation so I decided to book a visit to their clinic because I was already planning on going to a Chiropractor this week so I visited their Yonge and St. Clair location and walked into the very serene space above and had a consult with one of their very nice young Chiropractors.  I will go back next week for the results of the different scans that they were able to do.  Trying to work on my health before the New Year's resolutions this year.

For more information about the products listed and a full vendor and speaker list please visit the Whole Life Expo website at  http://www.wholelifeexpo.ca/

The festival is produced by Vitality magazine so you can find a lot of this information in their magazine as well.