Christmas Food and Recipes

Web Sites

• BBC Food: Christmas
  This British site includes recipes for turkey and goose, Edible gifts, Christmas lunch, Festive baking, Veggie Christmas, Vegan Christmas.
  • Victorian Farm Christmas
    Victorian Farm Christmas looks into the lives of 19th century farmers and shows you how to make traditional gifts, food, games and decorations.
• Better Homes & Garden: Christmas
  Includes gifts and decorations as well as food and entertaining.
• Chestnuts Online
  Allen Creek Farm raises chestnuts and offers a bunch of recipes for using this classic Christmas nut.
• Cooking Light: Holidays & Occasions
  Are you afraid you're going to gain too much weight over the holidays? Cooking Light magazine offers "lightened" alternatives.
• Cookies
  Check out these favorites for Christmas.
  • Epicurious: 25 Days of Christmas Cookies
  • Food Network: 12 Days of Cookies (2011)
  • Huffington Post Kitchen Daily: Christmas Cookie Recipes: Top 10 Classics
  • Leite's Culinaria: C is for Christmas Cookies (2010)
  • New York Times: Readers' Holiday Cookies and Recipes (2009)
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: From Arlene's oven: Our expert baker's annual roundup of holiday cookie recipes (2011)
  • Saveur Cookie Advent Calendar (2011)
• Epicurious: Christmas
  This website offers articles and recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines.
  • Christmas Recipes
• Feast of the Seven Fishes
  Learn about the Feast of the 7 Fishes that many Italians in Pittsburgh have on Christmas Eve.
  • Epicurious: An Italian Christmas Eve Menu
  • Epicurious: Mario Batali's Feast of the Seven Fishes
    Wow! You can watch a video to prepare for the Italian Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes!
  • Italy: Sicilian Culture: Christmas Eve Fish Dinner
  • StephenCooks: Christmas Eve Menu - The Feast of the Seven Fishes
  • Saveur: A Feast of Seven Fishes
• Food Network Holiday Central: Christmas
  Recipes for fruitcake, Struffoli, Christmas duck and Christmas goose, plum pudding...
• Land O'Lakes
  This butter manufacturer offers 402 recipes for Christmas.
• Mexico Connect: Christmas
  Articles about Christmas in Mexico, where food plays a big part.
• Pillsbury.com: Christmas
  Christmas cookies and sweet breads and cakes.
• Saveur: Best Hot Drinks
  Hot drinks for a cold season, including spiced wine, hot chocolate, mulled apple cider, Tom and Jerry, hot toddy, Glögg...
• Saveur: Fruitcakes
  Americans might make fun of fruitcakes, especially those from aunts, but how can anything soaked in rum be bad?? (The Saveur recipes tend to be light.)
• Saveur: Holiday Cookies and Candies
  Spice cookies, gingerbread snaps, German butter cookies, and even one made from Cap'N Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch and Rice Krispies (horrors!! and from Saveur!).
• Sustainable Table: Sustainable Holidays
  Learn how to make your own eggnog, holiday wreath, Christmas ham or goose.
• What's Cooking America: Making Tamales
  Folks from the Southwest can tell you that one of the most wonderful dishes at Christmas are the tamales that Mexican-Americans traditionally cook for Christmas. This article by Cynthia Pineda will guide you through the process, helping you pick the ingredients.
• VegKitchen with Nava Atlas: A Colorful Vegan Christmas
  Includes recipes for appetizers, soups, salads, hearty main dishes, seasonal side dishes, and desserts.
• Wigilia: Twelve-Dish Christmas Eve Supper
  • Polish American Journal: Christmas Traditions & Customs
    Including Wigilia Recipes featuring lots of herring, mushrooms and beets.
  
  
  • Polish Women’s Alliance of America: Wigilia Recipes
    "Tradition calls for twelve courses to be served during Wigilia. All the dishes are meatless and should be made from foods that come from the four corners of the earth: forest, sea, field, and orchard." These recipes are based on root vegetables, dried mushrooms and dried fruits, potatoes and cabbage, local fish, and flour-based pastries and dishes, such as kluski and pierogi.
  
  
  • Wikipedia: Twelve-dish Christmas Eve supper
    "A twelve-dish Christmas Eve supper is traditionally prepared in many Eastern European cultures, uncluding Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian. The meal (Polish: Wigilia or wieczerza wigilijna, Ukrainian: Sviata vecheria, Lithuanian: Kucios) consists of twelve meatless dishes representing the twelve Apostles or twelve months of the year."

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Pittsburgh Region

• Moon woman keeps Serbian Orthodox Christmas customs alive
  An article from the Thursday, January 7, 2010, issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the Serbian traditions followed by Mim Bizic, whose website offers more information on Christmas customs.
• Family's traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes celebrates Christmas Eve vigil
  An article from the Monday, December 19, 2005, issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Virginia Phillips about the Italian traditional meatless Christmas Eve meal of seven fishes.
• "Christmas Eve feast of the fishes"
  A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from Monday, December 20, 1999 describing the Italian tradition that is still observed by many Italian-American families in Pittsburgh.
• Slovenians have kept to roots of Christmas
  An article from the Thursday, December 21, 2000, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about Slovenian Christmas traditions, some of which are followed here in Pittsburgh. Included are recipes for Potica (nut roll) and Holiday Raisin Bread (Sarkelj).

Last updated Wednesday December 14 2011.