A festive meal for every holiday

table set for another festive celebration

A moveable feast

Readers of The Rockettman blog understand that food and wine have always been central to our lifestyle.  With even more time available in retirement (aka, the ‘relaunch’ years), we now are able to expand the holiday culinary calendar over multiple events that celebrate the cultures and cuisines that have been part of our life over the years.  This goes beyond the year-end holidays that represent benchmark culinary celebrations in the USA, but rather, spans the entirety of the year - including some outlier commemorative events that we have come to apprecate during our time living abroad.

stuffed lobster tail for the New Year

New Year’s Eve feast

We have celebrated New Year’s Eve at home for as long as I can remember.  In fact, I think it is fair to say that other than celebrating with very close neighbors, only once in 30 years have we left our home to celebrate New Year's Eve.  I suspect I do not need to expand on why this is….other than, we simply love to cook at home.  Our year-end celebratory meals have taken many forms, but usually involve seafood dishes the generally favor lobster.  A preferred dish is lobster meat poached in butter. This dish is as sublime as dining gets in my opinion.

traditional haggis for Burns Night with a 'dram' of whisky to follow

Burns Night feast

Burns Night is a celebration of Scotland’s own ‘National Bard’, Robert Burns, to whom many pay homage on the 25th of January each year.  My wife was born in Scotland and also attended University there, so it seems fitting to include this peculiar holiday into our calendar of feasts. And I do not mind at all, because the traditional Burns Night supper comprises an iconic Scottish dish called haggis, which is accompanied by ‘neeps’ (turnips) and ‘tatties’ (potatoes).  Translation: haggis is sheep's offal combined with oatmeal, onions, spices and seasoning, and stuffed into the sheep’s stomach. The haggis is generally paired with cooked turnips and potatoes.  A 'peaty' single malt scotch whisky is dribbled (or doused) over this dish before eating!

homemade dumplings for Lunar New Year

Chinese New Year feast

We have been fortunate to visit Hong Kong many times over the past 30 years, but also enjoyed spending six months there on a teaching assignment in 2019.  That experience taught us quite a lot about Chinese cuisine and it has seriously rubbed off on us. We are now more aware of the burgeoning Asian community in our own backyard, as evidenced by the many shopping plazas in Northern Virginia oriented to that customer demographic. This has inspired us to experiment with dishes remembered from our days in Hong Kong.  As such, the Lunar New Year has been incorporated into our culinary calendar, which we generally celebrate by serving homemade dumplings and Peking Duck. 

strawberry alfredo al fresco

Valentine’s Day feast

This is another holiday for which we have not left the house in many years for the reasons previously mentioned in connection with New Year’s Eve - we believe that this holiday is best celebrated at home.  We also prefer to keep this celebration simple - but will always work together to produce a creative dinner. It used to be that we would surprise each other with a secret dish, but now we plot the menu together in a coordinated way.  Strawberry Alfredo Pasta or a nice steak dinner will often feature for Valentine’s Day (as will flowers and chocolate).

A festive meal for every holiday blog post continues shortly as A meal to celebrate every holiday. Bon appétit!