On St. Lucy's Day, December 13, light comes to the dark days with bright saffron-colored Lucia Buns, shaped to make the traditional oxen, cats, and chariots. Last year I did not make them for the first time in more than thirty years, and they were missed. It's especially pleasant to make them if the day is dark and gray. Although we're not Swedish, it's a tradition we've followed for many years. (We skipped the part of having a little girl bring us buns in the morning wearing a crown of lighted candles.)

The only cookies that must always be made are Almond Crescents, from a barely legible note I made while watching Julia Child make them, and Victorian Currant Cakes, delicately flavored with brandy, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I also often make Cranberry Orange Cookies and a German bar cookie with nuts.

But the best of Christmas baking is the Dresden Stollen we have every Christmas morning. Paula Peck's recipe with my changes; the most important change was to use glacé apricots for the candied fruit. Often I was up late Christmas Eve dusting powdered vanilla sugar over the Stollen, but now that we have Christmas with my daughter's family I have to make them ahead of time. The little girls remember the Christmas morning tradition from year to year, and often talk about it.

My only must have is toffee bars. We make a few batches in December and the first batch will be made tomorrow and we will enjoy them as we decorate the tree. They probably won't last till Monday!

I always make a couple batches of scrabble too. I need to stop by the store on the way home from work to pick up all of the chex mix, pretzels, and mixed nuts.

Lasagna. That's the only thing I bake for Christmas.

I don't do the baking like I used to but I still try to make DH's favorite coconut macaroons. Also sis's favorite, bread pudding, and my favorites pecan pie, Almond Crescents. I also try to make the Canadian Pork Pies, everyone's favorite. Other than that I sometimes do something like the thumbprint cookies and pumpkin pie but if I don't it's no biggie.

So interesting to see the different things people enjoy = )

Are Almond Crescents the ones rolled in powdered sugar? My mom used to make those.

And those toffee bars seem like the same ones I've made - decadent and addictive!

And I love coconut macaroons, and now I recall I made raspberry thumbprint cookies last year. They were so good, and fairly easy too.

Hmm, now you all are giving me ideas...

I used to bake when the kids were little, but being in our 60s and a bit overweight, I figure we don't need it. Especially with so many relatives with diabetes! Also, we can get a few treats at Xmas parties.

Our now go to for our small Xmas get togethers is crab, a salad with greens and herbs(for the vinegrette) from our small garden and french bread. There may be a pumpkin and a peach (we now have a very prolific tree!) pie snuck in there somewhere!

Definitely my shortbread, sugar cookies and fudge. Yes...toffee bars are amazing!

Hey, LoneJack, welcome to the dark side. (grin) It's nice to see you over here from Harvest!

I have some traditional things I must make, including Grandma's Chewy Molasses Cookies, which is a big favorite for some other members of the Cooking Forum too. I also make sugar cookie cut outs and the grandkids come over for an afternoon of frosting and sprinkling, with lunch and hot chocolate, it's one of my favorite days out of the entire holiday season. My favorites are Diane's fig filled cucciadati and the almond paste based neopolitan cookies, but the kids don't really like those, so sometimes I make them and sometimes not. I make at least three kinds of fudge and AnnT's Brandied Cherry Balls, which have become a tradition in my family. I make a maraschino cherry shortbread which has become a favorite of my stepson, so now those are tradition too.

I do always make something new, and sometimes it makes it into the regular rotation, sometimes not.

Christmas dinner varies. I usually have the standards, like ham or turkey, potatoes of some type, fruit salad, vegetables, homemade rolls, various desserts. One year we had cioppino and this year we're having tenderloin. Last year I made homemade pasta for lasagna and we had moose loin, the year before that we had a 7 rib standing rib roast and yorkshire puddings. So, you'll never know what strikes me and as long as I have the traditional Thanksgiving dinner the kids will let me play with Christmas. That includes dessert, which can be anything from tiramisu to maple-pear cobbler.

Annie

I tend to change things up a lot, except the cookies. When I was a kid and we made cookies by the gross, and had a lot more functions and a lot more people, we made a lot of Scottish shortbread cut shapes and chocolate chip drops. There were also the Moravian ginger (molasses) cookies and apple spice cookies, and then whatever anyone felt like baking. All were wrapped individually in plastic wrap and tied with a bow. Nowadays it's just the chocolate chips made by the family expert, and a single batch of the Moravian ginger cookies. No one is eating that many sweets anymore.

My go-to, recurring deserts, besides the cookies, for Fall are pumpkin and chocolate marble cake and fig pie. I was going to make the former, then thought I'd make Martha's pumpkin crumble (I think it was Martha's), then I ended up with two bum feet, and am going for the pie in the freezer. :) Before I got hurt, I was also thinking of mini-pumpkin cheesecakes with a spiced crumble or graham cracker crust. Most years I make a new kind of fried dessert, but I just can't this year. I was thinking churros (fried choux paste rolled in cinnamon sugar).

I did force myself to make a batch of sweet potato and red onion latkes and some nice applesauce. I would have liked to have spiced it but some don't like that, and I was in no mood to make two. I was also going to make a single batch of killer potato latkes, and started weighing out ingredients, but I couldn't stand standing any longer.

Luckily, I'm not making more of the party food this year.

plllog, I agree guacamole should be fairly simple. I have to say, some pretty good guac is made at our house (mostly by DH). I cringe when I see people add things like mayo. WHY??? We're lucky to have a Hass tree in our backyard, along with family in Fallbrook with trees.

Our family was super-traditional at thanksgiving, but not so much at Christmas.

We always had oyster stew on Christmas Eve, from the days when that was a fast day in the pre-Vatican II church, and popovers for breakfast on Christmas day, and a bottle of Chateau d'Yquem later on, before it became so outrageously expensive (ETA and it's never stored correctly in any of the wine stores around here, either).

But the main course for Christmas dinner could/can be just about anything, and the cookies varied from year to year, too. If I'm home alone on Christmas Eve between gigs, I still make a bowl of oyster stew.

Chloebud, when I first heard of someone putting mayonnaise in guacamole I just about fell over. Best I can figure from people's answers on why is that it started in parts of the country where avocados were scarce, expensive, and not very good by our standards. Probably rocks to survive shipping. The mayo started as an extender and fatty repair for the inferior avocado flesh that probably had to be mashed to death just to soften it, and also likely stringy and mealy. Y'know, the ones the dogs won't even eat. But mushed up enough, and smoothed out with mayonnaise, it would taste fairly avocado-y. Then people got used to that's what it should be like, and that's the way they like it even when they can get better avocados. Some people definitely like it that way, though I've tasted it and just can't go there.

OTOH, I do like Israeli style eggplant with mayonnaise salad. I wouldn't like people to serve it calling it baba ghanouj, which it is not, though a close cousin. People in that situation have been known to tear at the hair and wail! Baba ghanouj is eggplant and techinah salad with lots of garlic. Eggplant with mayonnaise is pretty much the same thing with a tablespoon or two of mayonnaise in it (i.e., not much) and maybe not as much garlic. The mayo transforms it to a different flavor that benefits from all the flavoring in the mayo, and also smooths out the garlic. It's a remarkably different flavor, and works better in thin amounts, like mayo itself, than whopping great wads. But then you find versions where there's practically no techinah and a whole lot of mayonnaise, and it's pretty much inedible even for those who were expecting and like mayonnaise.

I planted a few avocado trees when I was a toddler (i.e. took the pits and pushed them into the ground). They produced big avocadoes, but they weren't very good, and between the squirrels and the birds, we didn't get many of them. :) OTOH, I have a lovely lemon tree. I might ask Santa for a dwarf Mexican lime tree.

Writersblock, cat gut and gigs? Be you a harpist?

I always bake potica. Potica is essentially a walnut struedel using a yeast dough. It's one of the many nutrolls of eastern Europe. My particular potica is Slovenian in origin via northern Minnesota. I also always bake at least 9 kinds of Christmas cookies because I have this ridiculous notion that a proper holiday cookie tray should have at least that many kinds of cookies on it. And holiday cookies are fussy little cookies, not cookie jar cookies like my usual chocolate chip or oatmeal. I pay for this prejudice about cookie trays by spending many nights cursing over putzy little cookies. The cookie tray always includes chocolate crinkles, teacakes/wedding cakes, raspberry ribbons, jam filled almond thumbprints, pecan-praline cookies, pecan tassies, two kinds of shortbread, jam-filled brown butter cookies, and one or two more wildcards - sometimes ginger cutouts, sometimes another butter cookie. I often, but not always, make pizzelles as well. Alas, they're the potato chip of the cookie world. Nobody ever eats just one ... or two for that matter.

Writersblock, cat gut and gigs? Be you a harpist?

Used to be, till the nerve damage from pernicious anemia.

They produced big avocadoes, but they weren't very good, and between the squirrels and the birds, we didn't get many of them.

When I was in grade school I did that with a FL avocado. Got a 40-ft tree that produced exactly one avocado, which was enormous, over five lbs, and then decided it had done its reproductive duty and never made another one. Our old house sold recently and I saw the tree is still in the back yard. I bet all the people who've owned the house since have waited eagerly for the fruit every year, till they finally twigged that there just won't be any.

This has reminded me that the first time I ever had guacamole was in a 'cooking class' at a summer camp in the late 1960s, and it definitely had mayo - and we ate it with potato chips. This was likely because there was no such thing as tortilla chips in bags to be had in our podunk town, although Fritos were around. I have some old cookbooks that say to serve with potato chips too.

I don't mash when I make guac now, just use a small knife to slash the avos up in the bowl until they're in tiny pieces that smooth out slightly when I stir in the seasoning - lime juice, salt and maybe a tiny bit of minced fresh garlic.

Had to look up potica , and now I want to try making it. It looks so yummy; I love walnuts!

"Chloebud, when I first heard of someone putting mayonnaise in guacamole I just about fell over."

I know! The taste focus needs to be on the avocado. I'm very happy with our tree, especially with the crazy price of avocados these days. :-O

Personally, I don't know when guac got so fancy. When I was a kid, both in FL and AZ it was avocados, lime juice, maybe a little onion. The results were different because the avocados were, but the basic recipe was the same.

Great looking tree, chloebud!

Agreed! Gorgeous tree! I forget the name of my trees. The avocadoes had lighter green, smoother skin than Hass, but not the ones we often see in stores nowadays.

Writersblock, too funny about your tree's one avocado. I wonder if it just wasn't happy with self pollination. As I understand it, it's better to have several trees on different schedules that can pollinate each other.

Hm.... Guacamole as in mashed avocado is technically a sauce. By the time you add a little onion, it's a salad! Notice, I didn't mention my own particular ingredients, other than the tomato (which really is optional, though the acid is also good for the color), because there are so many different ingredients and tilts that can make good guacamole.

The fancification, I think, came from the curbside ... er... tableside theatre in some restaurant which caught on and spread. That's also the horrible start of using a molcajete in the U.S. For the theatre. Ugh. I don't know anyone who uses one who didn't get the idea from the whole curbside thing. "Real" people use a fork, wire utensil (like my masher), or knife. Thin stuff. Not a big old pestle that gets rock in your food. Well, not the restaurant style ones, which are fake, but people hanker for using the "real" "not for use with food" rock ones.

Mine also has garlic, onion, S&P and salsa picante, in addition to the lime juice and tomato, but it's not chunky, just slightly lumpy.

I wonder if it just wasn't happy with self pollination. As I understand it, it's better to have several trees on different schedules that can pollinate each other.

There must have been at least forty other trees in a quarter mile radius, so it didn't even have that excuse. :)

marymd7, that is the cookie baking I wish I did every year, but never do. Your assortment sounds wonderful. I often get to have Potica (they just call it walnut roll) at a friend's holiday party, from the recipe of her husband's Slovak family. Their recipe is huge, and makes walnut rolls for the whole family.

Wow, chloebud, that's quite a tree!

writersblock, I think my peach trees are similar. We got a few peaches one year, then none for 10 years. Last year, they were loaded with peaches, just as Elery was saying that we might as well just cut them both down. Maybe they heard us.....

Annie

Maybe we should have threatened it, annie, or tried the whacking with a rolled-up newspaper, but I don't think that one had been invented yet back then.

l really like to read about all the cookies and treats people are baking for the holidays. While I would like to eat them, I no longer bake them. That said there is still one baking ritual that is expected of me by my husband and grown up sons. Mince pies... on Christmas Eve.

I make them according to the (non) recipe my old MIL introduced to her family, whereby the flakey pastry is made with butter and lard. The little pies are extra small (men tend to pop the whole thing into their mouth) using the smallest indented cupcake pan. They have a plain top and a bottom with about a teaspoon of Robertson’s Fruit Mince in each. Make about 4 dozen.

I love standing at the kitchen bench making them on Christmas Eve after a meal that usually involves seafood some how. Friends and other family sometimes pop in, maybe with a present, share a drink and a good old yarn. My fav tipple is Frangelico with lemon juice on ice. This washes down the hot mince pies quite nicely.

I used to have a bit of list I would always bake, and they were special “holiday” cookies, not your everyday oatmeal ones, this year I’ve made some fruit cake after the style of my MIL who never wrote down or shared her recipes, I usually try to make eccles cakes, thumbprints, gingerbread and butter tarts, I love mincemeat but would have to make them from scratch as I am vegetarian, shortbread is also always expected. I may make biscotti again this year as my hubby loves them and I make them with hazelnut not almond as per his preference, and possibly some cheddar biscuits that are like adult goldfish. Also spitz cookies, my inlaws like their cookies very plain and vanilla, plus the shapes are fun.

I used to make mincemeat pie every holiday especially for my dad, as that was 1 of his faves. He's been gone a long time now, and I'm the only one who likes it, so I haven't made any in years. I miss that.

I mixed store bought mincemeat with chopped apples and pears, which made it juicier and lighter. Dad always liked it with a slice of cheddar cheese.

About the only thing that I make every year now is fudge. It is the one with the Kraft marshmallow creme in the jar, but I have altered it to be dairy-free and nut-free.

Since I am on my own now, I don't cook as much as I did when kids were small and there was a family to cook for. But I still do some.....hard to break those traditions completely :-) I do make some sweet stuff for gifting.....a few cookies or breads and candies. And those tend to change up yearly. I still make mincemeat tarts every year but those are just for me - I love mincemeat and a single pie is too large but the tarts are just a bite or two and can store well, although they tend not to hang around too long :-) btw, prepared jarred mincemeat contains no 'meat' so safe for vegetarians although a lard-based crust may need some modification.

I also make a bunch of savory treats - appetizers - mushroom tarts, individual spanakopitas, sausage rolls, baked martinis (cheese balls stuffed with a green olive). These typically get taken to family dinners although I am perfectly happy making a meal of them myself when I can't be bothered to fix a proper dinner......with a glass of wine or two!

I am usually invited out to other family members for Christmas dinner but back when I cooked for my family, I made the big dinner on Christmas eve - turkey, as my SO ate no red meat - and we would have leftovers on Christmas day. And that's because we had a big brunch on Christmas day - usually strata - and with sweets and snacks during the day, no one was hungry for a big dinner. Now, I do plan a roast beef with Yorkshire pudding at some point....maybe on Christmas eve or Boxing Day. Hard to find one small enough for a single, but my butcher will do a 2 rib roast for me on request.

The one constant in my holiday repertoire is not cooked..........mandarin oranges!! I adore those things but they have to be just the right kind. No Cuties or whatever but sweet Satsuma mandarins sold with the leaves attached. My family thinks I am nuts as I eat them by the dozens during the holiday season and with a very precise method.........peeled and with all the white strings or netting carefully and very thoroughly removed. Takes a good 15 minutes to prepare each one before eating section by section. LOL!!

btw, my understanding of including mayo (and sometimes cream cheese) in guacamole was to help prevent any browning. And it does! Both my sister and I make a mean guacamole but in the more traditional manner - mashed avocado, fresh lime juice, S&P, minced garlic, a dash of hot sauce and some salsa. Doesn't tend to hang around long enough to brown :-)

Gardengal, I like the Cuties, but they have to be the clementine Cuties. I don't like the mandarins as much, they seem to be too tart for me. Most of the Cuties here will be mandarins. I only find clementines at the start of the season.

I am the only one that likes guacamole and I make the traditional one. I don't make it often, because I will devour the whole bowl (doesn't have time to brown). I use this recipe, except jalapenos instead of serrano and no garnish:

https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_guacamole/

mincemeat traditionally contains suet, suet = lard usually, also the veggie mincemeat I bought one year made me sick, if I made it myself I might avoid whatever it was (I’m senstive to food additives)

Feast of the Seven Fishes (or however as many are practical) for Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day always varied when I grew up. It depends on whose house we are at, but when we cooked it at our home it always did vary. One year it was a goose. Another suckling pig, the whole thing (which the neighbor's daughter refused to eat because it looked like the pig). One year when I was very young we went out to a Chinese restaurant (and ran into a lot of Jewish neighbors...) The day could be anything.

A neighbor back when I was in my early-mid 20s would always invite my family over for dried out brisket, boiled Brussels sprouts (I intensely disliked them), and some sort of over-sweet nut laden dessert that I also disliked. The only redeeming feature of her standard Christmas fare was the Brie ball heated in a warm dough crust. There was one year I had to go in for surgery the day after Christmas, and was told I could only have clear fluids on Christmas. This was perfectly fine for me... I had chicken broth, water, tea, and one glass of white wine (clear, right?) while everyone else suffered through the brisket.

Back after Mom had passed, Dad and I spent Christmas a few years later down in Virginia with his girlfriend. A hunter neighbor had dropped off some bear meat. I volunteered to try my hand at braising it low and slow in tomato.... (I found a likely recipe on the Internet) his girlfriend made a roast leg of lamb just in case... there were four of us there (her son from her first marriage as well). We ate and loved the bear, all of us … had the lamb the next day or two.

Now I've been going to a friend's in CT, the last few years - she always serves roast beef, carrots, (nicely cooked) Brussels sprouts, a potato dish, and we all bring appetizers.

Growing up, Mom and I would make cookies, which always included our standby butterfingers (some with pecans or walnuts, some without), and "decorator cookies" which were a Swedish recipe we could roll and cut out and, well, decorate. These days I just don't bake desserts unless required for a bake sale or for certain houseguests. (I bought baked goods for my last visitors here, and in the summer I like picking up ice cream... I'm just not a sweet tooth and rather put my primary efforts into the appetizers, mains and sides.)

So, neither my own family nor myself are traditionalists on Christmas. We were on Thanksgiving... that one did have to have the turkey and stuffing and the green bean casserole (although everything else could vary). X-mas Eve wasn't originally seafood, but somewhere in the late 80s when he discovered this, we did have seafood each subsequent year, but not always the same dishes. He was never keen on making the same recipe twice, though easy things like smoked salmon and tuna sashimi would always appear.

We never had a New Year's food tradition. I've taken up the black eyed pea thing on my own, however.

mincemeat traditionally contains suet, suet = lard

FWIW, I was watching an episode of Townsend's 18th Century Cooking on youtube where they made a mincemeat recipe that called for suet and they substituted frozen veg shortening, grated.

But actually not very many commercially-available mincemeats in the US still contain suet or beef. I think Bordens condensed does, but it should be pretty easy to find a meat-free one if you read the labels in the store.

"But actually not very many commercially-available mincemeats in the US still contain suet or beef"

Oddly, none of the imported brands I am familiar with do :-) Neither Robertson's or Crosse and Blackwell do, although one lists vegetable 'suet' and goes on to explain that is palm oil, sunflower oil and rice flour. Bordens/Nonesuch is the only brand I am familiar with that does contain beef suet and I find that to be the least satisfactory tasting of any of the brands available here!

I find that to be the least satisfactory tasting of any of the brands available here!

For the jarred, I totally agree. I do have a great fruitcake recipe, though, that uses the brick.

ok, the last time I went looking for it still did, but even Peek Freans have made the switch now, palm instead of lard, but as it happens, I get sick from palm so that might explain why I felt ill...

I don't have a tradition because every holiday season is different. Sometimes I am traveling, sometimes not, sometimes parties, sometimes subdued. We are traveling this year so I'm thinking about maybe doing some preserves/jams/chutney if there's time. I also really struggle since I am having weight issues and so many others are too, I hate to add to the difficulties. And yet I get so nostalgic for the way mom used to go all out - making chex mix, penuche, having parties with shrimp cocktail and cheesecake.

I've only made it once, and that was a long time ago... Is there a reason for not just making the filling yourself? I mean, I understand canned convenience, or liking a particular brand, and I once had an epic fail trying to make my own poppyseed filling, but making mincemeat is pretty easy, and gives you control over the ingredients. What am I missing?

nobody likes it but me (and maybe my dad), that’s a whole lot of extra work, and a lot of food that could spoil, when I already have a lot on my plate (and often I am the one who is cooking the whole darn dinner too, turkey, gravy and all

J Williams, I have a really nice recipe for pear based mincemeat, from my old Farm Journal cookbook. I can it when I have lots of pears, but a smaller batch could be made for fresh use if you are interested. I like it far better than I like the commercial mincemeats and I can control the ingredients. It contains no suet or meat at all.

Annie

sounds interesting, esp. as so few baking recipes seem to use pears

Hey Annie could it be canned to give as a Christmas gift?

Annie, I'd like your recipe too. I trust what you like. :)

I've been thinking about the "special" cookies and why I remember making so many oatmeal and apple cookies to go with the chocolate chips, shortbread and gingerbread. When we were younger, we made designed slice and bake cookies (like caning clay or glass), ball cookies, spritz cookies, thumbprints with fillings, linzer and other sandwiches, etc., etc. Why did we narrow it to what some might call ordinary rather than special cookies? Because that's what people would actually eat! We made more shortbread than people ate because they were decorated and very pretty, but the fancy cookies died of neglect and disinterest, and my mother put a moratorium on them. If at least half weren't eaten, it wasn't repeated. Nowadays, we just don't have enough cookie eaters, and there are even chocolate chips from the expert left over.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, plllog! I do love shortbread (my old boss said it was just sugar, held together with butter, LOL), but my kids really prefer chocolate chip and those flourless peanut butter cookies. They do like the peanut butter cookies baked in a mini muffin cup and then when still hot, they stick a mini Reese's cup in the middle. MmmmHmmm.

lpink, I do can it because I have pears on the trees in the fall, and they don't last until Christmas. It's actually a recipe that's meant to be canned, but it could easily be reduced and just used when made.

I do reduce the sugar, depending on the ripeness and sweetness of the pears, I add half the sugar, cook a few minutes, taste, add more sugar until it is to my liking. It does thicken as it cools, as it's actually a conserve type of mixture. I don't always have to cook the entire 40 minutes, as sometimes it reaches a suitable thickness in less time, depending on the juiciness of the pears.

I like the spicy flavor, it reminds me of mincemeat. It's good in pies but I actually like it best in filled cookies, like the filled date nut type, or in a thumbprint cookie. Bud likes a dollop of it baked in the middle of a bran muffin.

Old Time Pear Mincemeat

(Farm Journal Freezing and Canning Cookbook)

7 lbs. ripe pears

1 lemon

2 lbs. seedless raisins

6 3/4 cup sugar

1 cup vinegar

1 tbls ground cloves

1 tbls ground cinnamon

1 tbls ground allspice

1 tbls ground nutmet

1 tsp ground ginger

Cor and quarter pears. Quarter lemon, removing seeds. Chop raisins, lemons and pears (If you use the food processor be very judicious, the pears will puree easily. I leave the peels on the lemons, and I put the lemons and the raisins in the food processor, but I chop up the pears by hand so they stay in definable pieces)

combine remaining ingredients in large kettle. Add chopped fruit mixture. Bring to a boil over medium heat and simmer 40 minutes.

Pack into hot jars and process in a hot water bath 25 minutes for pints.

Annie

Will make a mincemeat pie, however only Mom and I will touch it. We count it as dessert, even though it has meat in it. Others will eat cheesecake, pecan pie or Christmas cookies. Ham will be served, funeral potatoes, fresh green beans, and fresh cranberry orange relish.

Mincemeat pie

3 cups of chuck roast, cooked fork tender

Peel from 1 1/2 oranges, flesh from 1/2 orange

2 cups raisins

1 apple diced fine

1 1lb jar of Nonesuch mince

2 cups of sweet grape wine ( Mogan David) (Grandpa made wine from his vineyard and it was a very sweet wine)

Mix all and put into a pie shell, add top crust.

Bake at 375 till bubbly. Best served warm.

My grandmother used to make a big oval dishpan full and used her own canned mincemeat. When she moved off the farm she quit making it, and Mom had to use store-bought mincemeat, and have Grandmother keep tasting it till they got the taste/recipe right.

my apple pie is typically like your pear mincemeat, it’s what I grew up with being a normal pie, the “special” cookies are what make a christmassy meal christmassy for me, esp now that I’m not eating turkey, but I have always liked them and their association with the holidays, I suspect I wasn’t a picky kid as I had no problems with things like brussels sprouts either

Thanks, Annie! That sounds amazing. Unlike any kind of mincemeat I've tasted. It reminds me a little of this small maker pear cardamom chutney that used to be sold where I shop, I bet it would be great on latkes!

Thanks, Annie! I was thinking of making a batch of little English-style mincemeat pies to take at Christmas. What a fun surprise with this filling.