Last minute English Christmas!
 

Just found out that my niece's boyfriend, who is from Bristol, will be joining us for Christmas dinner and I would like to have at least one English tradition (either food or drink) to surprise him with. Thought of Christmas Crackers, are they common throughout England? Any ideas would be most welcome! Merry Christmas to all and thanks!

Christmas Crackets - if you mean the things that go bang and have a paper hat, joke and toy in the middle. Yes absolutely! EVERYONE has crackers at Christmas, it's practically the law over here.

If you are talking about some type of cookie/biscuit, then no.

Foodwise, Christmas pudding, mince pies but I don't know how easy they are to get over there. Sprouts are very traditional which is odd as few people really like them, it's just one of those things you have to get regardless!

I meant Christmas Crackers not crackets, sorry. They aren't food or drink though.

Yes, I realized I kind of mixed up my request...definitely will get the crackers, when do you do them, before dinner after? Do they come filled? Any other things I could have around that he would be delighted to see?

Gotta top this, want to get actual traditions, sometimes the internet is not exactly accurate! Any ideas flanneruk?

lvillinois:

Our Christmas dinner in not complete without yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes.

Where are you from lvillinois (Illinois perhaps)? Don't sell your own traditions short, he will enjoy them as a visitor. I know I did my first Christmas away from the UK.

Sandy

English Christmas Pudding
Mince Pies
Cider -- the alcoholic kind (I ordered apple cider at a Christmas Market and was surprised!)
We've been to a couple of traditional Christmas parties since arriving in the UK and these were the staples.
Good Luck!

Sandy,
Thanks for the help! Found a recipe for Yorkshire pudding that seems doable and am also using some of Nigella Lawson's ideas for dinner. We are in Illinois and have loads of our own traditions, some Irish, some German, now want to add English to make him feel at home!

Someone posted this website for Christmas crackers. I've ordered some and they arrived and look good. But I don't think you have time to get them for Christmas Day now.
http://www.oldenglishcrackers.com/

oddly enough, Costco has the crackers!

OK ...have the food down, what would he like to see as a traditional decoration...or are most of our decorations taken from the English anyway!

I see crackers for sale just about everywhere in the US these days. Yes, I noticed them at Costco too -- really big ones. And they have them at William's Sonoma, and at WalMart, and at CVS pharmacy, and at Publix supermarkets here in Florida. As I said -- just about everywhere.

I bet that all families are different, but we pull the crackers after the pudding has come into the room and while the flames are dying down.
Paper hats are donned and stupid jokes are read out while people are eating their pud.
By that stage enough wine has been drunk to make people uninhibited enough to wear a paper hat.

I had them at Christmas a couple of years ago, no one knew what to do with them! At least we'll have a Brit with us to show us how this year!

Decor ideas???

Isn't it too late for me to make the pudding, doesn't it have to sit for several months?

However, we know how to drink the wine to make the crackers fun!

lvillinois:

Our daughter is a graduate of the University of Illinois. Very proud of her.

My recipe for yorkshire pudding: In a 425 oven, heat fat till it sizzles, in a shallow pan about 9"x9" or proper yorkshire tin if you have it. Fat MUST be very hot.

Sift 1 cup flour and 1/2 teaspoon salt and add to 2 unbeaten eggs, 1 cup milk. Beat till it's barely smooth, then pour it into the sizzling fat in the pan. Bake in that same 425 oven till it's puffed and brown, from 30 t0 40 minutes.
Enjoy.

Must tell you when our daughter-in-law joined the family she couldn't wait to have the yorkshire pudding because of how our son spoke about this treat. Not sure what she expected but she couldn't quite understand what all the fuss was about!

Growing up our house had those silly steamers strung about the ceiling. That probably isn't done any more. We did have a live tree but that may have changed as well. MissPrism would know.

Do report back how this all works out.

Sandy

We always have a real tree, but I think that the artificial ones are gaining ground.

I live in Illinois(Chicago suburb) and the crackers are always at all TJ Maxx,Marshalls and Tuesday mornings-completely filled and ready to go.Our family always has an English Christmas to honor my side of the family and I always make a crown roast of pork or roast beef with yorkshire pudding. The crown roast(can get at any grocery store already strung with the foil tips) looks great in pictures with the cracker hats on! Have fun-

I grew up in England, and we never had Yorkshire pudding on Christmas day, because we had turkey. YP goes with roast beef which we had on Christmas Eve. (The day before that was ham.) Our Christmas meal started with smoked salmon, and then went on to turkey, stuffing, baby chipolata sausages wrapped in bacon, roast potatoes, brussels sprouts and another green veg. Dessert, was, of course Christmas pudding (from the batch made the year before). I always thought the best part of the pudding was the rum butter served with it. I believe we opened the crackers before the meal, but the adults had already had mixed drinks in the middle of the morning when we opened presents.

Christmas cake and mince pies were for "tea".

Never heard of yorkshire pudding for Christmas dinner (but why not if you enjoy it). Turkey is the most common choice in UK for Christmas Day although a few people prefer goose or duck.

We pull our Christmas crackers after the main course, usually (like MissPrism) after the pud has been placed on the table. Silly hats must be worn by all, and everybody must read out their joke.

We have always pulled out crackers before the meal, after saying grace.

For the first time in my life, we are having roast beef this Christmas. Therefore, we will also have Yorkshire Pudding. Until now, we have had mostly turkey, occasionally goose. I'm just sick of turkey now. Roast potatoes are always correct, though.

Christmas pudding is not loved by all, even all Brits. I'm making Delia's Little Souffle Mincemeat Puddings this year. I always have trifle as a back-up.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2vkage

Crackers for sure - and as others say they can be bought <u>everywhere</u>. Which I find strange - I have crackers every year but it seems none of my friends have ever heard of/used them before popping them at my house. So why are they on sale everywhere from Costco to Macy's to Nordstorm to Walmart to Cost Plus to Target to Trader Joe's???

Cider and crackers will be more than enough since your own traditions will be just as enjoyable for him as what he's used to back home. I'd skip the Yorkshire Pud etc unless you are having Prime rib for dinner. Doesn't go well w/ turkey or ham.

Re cider. I have never in my life (and I also grew up in the UK) had cider with Christmas dinner. It's not a requirement, not a tradition. On the other hand, here in the US, my kids drink Martinelli's sparkling cider. Wine would be the preferred drink for adults.

Oh - I didn't mean serving cider during the meal (but that would be OK)

I meant having cider on hand w/ other beverages for pre/post festivities.

And my point is that cider isn't the omnipresent drink some in the US seem to think it is. He'd be more likely (much!) to have a beer.

If there's only one Briton there, you pull the crackers when he's used to pulling them. People do it at it at different times, but the most common time is when you sit down to the meal. Understand why: unflattering paper hats are part of the filling, <b> and you all have to wear &quot;your&quot; hat for the rest of the meal </b>. It's essential to read the jokes out, too.

The only other standard British routines are:

- (though never in any part of the flannerclan) watching the Queen's speech after the meal. Can you get it on the internet? Is the BBC doing a podcast?
- Christmas pud. Unfashionable, but if Costco have got it, serve it.
- a sprig of holly on the pud, which is brought to the table whole, with brandy or rum poured over and then set light to. Worth the few dollars a factory-made pud would cost, just for the visuial effect, even of it all feels a bit heavy to actually eat
- Brussels sprouts with the main course. Almost everyone loathes them. That's part of the ritual.
- Mince pies

Err, that's it. Everything else is a family quirk (like yorkshire pud, which with turkey sounds just barmy) or you do it in America anyway.

Cider belongs to an altogether different British Christmas ritual which may be tougher for Americans to deal with.

Traditionally, families use Christmas to get kids used to drinking. There's a well established repertoire of drinks kids sneak (part of the ritual often is that the kids think the grownups don't know) that are pretty alcoholic, but kids can cope with. Cider (real cider: the stuff that's twice as strong as beer), sherry (sweet sherry, not the chilled dry finos you find in posh tapas bars), a bizarre thing called Snowballs that's based on advocaat, Babycham, Britain's very
own contribution to drink horror stories. Or port (again: thick, room-temperasture, red port).

And that's the only role cider plays, except in the really seedy bits of inner city Bristol and its yokelest surrounding villages, where the real hard-core boozers pop off to the pub after Christmas dinner to get seriously tanked on it - because you get more alcohol to the pound from cider than from other drinks.

flanner, regrettably, Costco in the US does not have Christmas pud, and we don't have M&amp;S. Also regrettably, in many parts of the US, holly is hard to find.

My Brussels Sprouts with smoky bacon (actually thick pancetta) and walnuts and sour cream will make a believer out of almost anyone -- I hope.

The point about crackers is they give tipsy aunts something to do, and then to wear. They have hats and little toys in them as well as excruciating jokes (personal favourite this year: &quot;what's a specimen&quot;? &quot;An Italian astronaut&quot;).

They are dead easy to open up and you can replace the gifts with trinkets of your choice (NB whatever you do - don't get the lad from Bristol to bring them over on the 'plane - they set the explosive detectors off (yes really)

Yorkies with turkey: What fresh yankee madness is this?

I agree about the Queen. Surely the BBC is doing a live feed? If not probably a canadian station?

BBC world service will certainly carry it on shortwave and by internet feed - its at 3pm GMT.

I think that the OP said that her family didn't know what you actually do with crackers.
I suppose that it isn't obvious unless you have the tradition.
Two people take an end of the cracker each and pull. You get a mini-explosion, the cracker splits in half and a small gift and a rolled-up paper hat fall out.
The silly joke is usually between the two pieces of paper inside.
If a cracker joke causes a laugh instead of a groan, it isn't a proper cracker joke

Last Minute Christmas Puddings...

These really work, are very easy, I've madse them several times. You can also make it as one large pudding, in which case steam for 2 hours on the hob/in the oven, and reheat for 25-30m as directions.


http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/m...s,1696,RC.html

Have a great Christmas!

A Christmas cake (round and decorated with white icing--not frosting--and assorted decorations) would be very nice.

Our favorite drink at Christmas in England was a black velvet, a mix of champagne and Guinness stout!

Note that the Christmas cake should be a dense, rich fruit cake - there should be recipes around on the web. The one time I made one in the US I had trouble coming up with the dried fruit etc., but my local stores seem to be stocking more of that kind of stuff these days. I also wound up making the marzipan layer under the icing from scratch.... Likely easier to just buy mince pies, I think I saw some in Trader Joes the other day, or maybe Southern Seasons!

NeoPat - I love brussels sprouts just barely cooked (I used to eat them raw as a kid) but yours do sound delish.....

I love brussels sprouts just barely cooked&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

I hope you don't smoke.

You guys are great!!! Thanks for the recipes, I'll see what I still have time for....we're having beef so the York. Pud is a definite...we always have a real tree, and we're all goofy enough to love the crackers, now what can I set fire to if I don't have pudding.....

Oh my gosh, all this talk of an English Christmas almost had me weeping. It's part of my life's ritual to try and replicate Christmases past.

We also opened crackers after the main course - roast pots, turkey, chippolatas, brussels sprouts (still love them) corn, ham, beef (Mum didn't eat poultry), bread sauce, and all the other trimmings. We used to have such a large turkey that my mother would cook it on Christmas Eve in the afternoon, while she turned the lights off in the kitchen, light candles, marzipanned and iced the Christmas cake, stuck little snow baby ornaments on it and listened to the Lessons and Carols from King's on the Beeb.

Our meal always ended with lots of goodies - clementines, turkish delight, dates, nuts, crystalized fruits, stem ginger, fruit slices, etc., and we would spend a long time chatting and enjoying that part of the meal. Christmas pudding was eaten but just a small slice and my mother always made mince pies and a very large sherry trifle that we would have for supper and Boxing Day (12/26) together with all the other left overs.

Yes, silly hats are meant to be left on and we also used to swap the toys. Such sweet memories. Getting mildly tanked on Stone's Ginger Wine or watching my sister disappear under the table after a port and lemon are my favorite memories. Watching the telly later....Morcombe and Wise Christmas Show and/or panto being our favorites!

If you really want to make him feel at home extend the holiday through Dec 26th (which we know as Boxing Day from old traditions long died out)and beyond to the New Year. The holiday in Britain has long been a 2 week orgy of overeating and drinking for as many people as possible, as opposed to what I understand happens in the US, where it largely finishes after Dec 25th. It is important here to try out as many exotic and fat-rich foods that you never consider for the other 50 weeks of the year washed down with strange spirits that you don't actually like and make you feel awful.

The icing on the cake is to get as many members of your family, particularly ones you don't get on with, in as small a space as possible and wait for the arguments and tantrums. Copious amounts of alcohol helps move this forward.

If this sounds cynical it comes with 50+ years of experience! Two of the best Christmases I ever spent were while working in the Middle East, in the sun with just my immediate family, short and sweet.

I'm sure he'll enjoy your/an American Christmas, no problems.

Best Wishes to all.

Yes, definitely see whether your public radio station will be carrying the Kings College service! Much better listening than the Queen's speech. Mine isn't carrying it this year, but I'm thinking I may be able to get it from the Beeb's web site.

Brussels sprouts can be delectable in a sauce of mustard diluted with cream..perhaps bacon bits as well. They're also good in brown butter with toasted hazelnuts.

Then there's the cold version with the sprouts steeped in a tomato and garlic sauce, a fine little appetizer.

NeoPatrick- Could you post your recipe for me? That sounds like something I would like to try! Thanks.