Incidentally, upon seeing gravlaks mentioned I decided to get some. Unfortunately Trader Joe’s didn’t have any dill gravlaks, nor Knäckebrot. Looks as if a trip to Ikea is in order.
Or you could just make some yourself. I’ve never tried to make it myself, but it look simple enough if you can get good fresh salmon.
Regarding fruitcakes I’ve heard there are these monks somewhere in the Midwest who make them every year for the Christmas season, and they’re supposed to be very good. If somebody offers you fruitcake which they say they got from monks somewhere in the MIdwest, it might behoove you to try some.
Other than the more ordinary, bad fruitcakes, I can’t think of any traditional holiday food that I don’t like.
I loathe the cranberry sauce that comes in a can – jellied horror, in the shape of the can. Years ago we encountered cranberry relish at – Disney World, of all places. It was woonderful! We got the recipe and make it ourselves every year for Thanksgiving, and we look forward to it!
I’m not a big fan of pumpkin pie, but I can tolerate it. MilliCal *loves[/io] pumpkin pie.
the holiday foods I hate are the traditional Polish ones we got at Christmas time – Pickled herring in onions, sauerkraut pierogis, and especially, mostly borscht, which in our house wasn’t a clear ruby-red beet soup, but a pastel pink confection, apparently with the sour cream already stirred in and many unexplained lumps, which I think were dried and not completely reconstituted mushrooms.
Bleccch!
Every bleeding Christmas we used to go to the in-laws.
Every bleeding Christmas it was the same…roast goose 
I used to like roast goose but after dutifully scoffing the greasy buggers for 9 years on the trot I hate the frigging bird witha vengeance.
I dare say cooked properly it would have been OK but the Mil hadn’t the foggiest idea. F’rinstance she never placed the goose on a rack so the fat could drain off.
No! straight into the roasting surrounded by spuds and parsnips which greedily lapped up the fat meaning that the whole meal tasted like FAT
Bollocks.
i’ll go you one better. or is it worse? my mother had a sorta similiar but probably way more ancient recipe: green jello, sour cream AND pecans. :eek:
i kid you not.
horrid horrid horrid!
did i mention horrid?
it looks like something a cat wouldv’e yacked up (and this was *years * before we ever got our first cat).
she couldn’t understand why my sister and i refused to go anywhere near the stuff.
first off, raisins and nuts should NEVER EVER appear in any kind of food for any reason. nuts belong in a container that you open and eat from separately
(dive master does not understand this, but he has learned to accept it)
eeww… ack!! gag!!! i’m grossed out just remembering it and i never had so much as a spoonful of it!!
Creamed corn, and anything containing creamed corn. The texture of creamed corn is like vomit.
Lima beans also have a disgusting texture, and taste disgusting to boot.
Brussels sprouts can be good, but most people cook them too long, so they taste like ass and have a yucky mushy texture.
I have horrible memories of the cherry-glazed ham that my grandmother used to make for holidays. It was ham with globs of gross cherry jelly on it, and all of us kids hated it. I don’t like ham anyway, so it was double yuck for me.
My mom’s parents (both of Swedish ancestry) threatened us with lutefisk a few times, but we never actually had it. I thought it was like the lump of coal in the stocking- a threat used to make kids behave, but you never hear of anyone actually eating lutefisk or actually only getting a lump of coal for Christmas. (Maybe for Swedes it is just a threat, but leave it to Norwegians to actually try to eat the stuff… 
)
Green bean casserole is the only thing worth eating in a typical Thanksgiving meal.
I won’t eat turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberries, pumpkin pie or pecan pie.
I’ll eat mashed potatoes provided they’re stiff enough. I can’t stand them when you can eat them with a straw.
Rolls are fine, but they’re just rolls.
I’m just glad that there’s usually enough people that we need a ham and a turkey. It’s not unknown for me to leave Thanksgiving dinner and pull into McDonalds because I couldn’t find enough to eat.
Now the good meal is my family’s traditional Christmas Eve. Shrimp cocktail, shrimp scampi, crab legs and wild rice pilaf.
This one used to be a staple in my family’s holiday dinners:
Chitlin’s.
Thank the good lord that it has FINALLY fallen out of favor with the new generation of holiday dinner hosts. The smell alone used to drive me out of the room.
My parents always insist on buying truckloads of dates, and stuffing them with almonds. Dates are just the work of the devil, IMO. Horrible, sticky, sickly pieces of palm excrement.
You’re probably thinking of Springerle - light tan, usually rectangular and flat. Pfefferneusse are dark brown round lumps dusted with powdered sugar and shouldn’t be hard as rocks.
I’m not a monk, but I am from the Midwest and just last night made three of "The Other Master’s free-range fruitcakes.
Mr. brown says they look just like big cockroaches or waterbugs to him, and he refuses to touch them.
Me, I like a big medjool date stuffed with a large walnut half.
My Dad made a dish almost exactly like this one for Thanksgiving this year (there were also crushed pecans on the top). It was absolutely delicious. I don’t really understand all the hate for sweet potatoes in this thread. I know there are a lot of Alton Brown fans on this board, and I even saw him make a mashed sweet potato dish recently.
No idea why I’m so defensive over sweet potatoes.
I’m not a big fan of stuffing. Bunch of soggy-ass bread crumbs, if you ask me.
Spectre of Pithecanthropus, I think The Abbey of Gethsemani is who you’re looking for. We’ve been getting their fruitcake for a few years now, and they are to other fruitcakes what Morton’s of Chicago is to Ponderosa Steakhouse. BTW, this was Thomas Merton’s community.
And as to the OP, I have pretty broad tastes, but can’t stand green bean casserole, sweet potatoes in any form, or canned cranberry sauce.
For you UK Dopers; is this stuff good tasting? It is a staple in Victorian Christmas dinners (even Bob Crachet’s wife managed to make one). What does it taste like? How hard are they to make at home?
We must be related.
Each and every Christmas my mum would buy dates, only at Christmas, never any other time.
Which was just as well seeing as how nobody ever ate the slimy bloody 'orrible things.
Nowadays I think for plum pudding read Xmas pudding.
Just as heavy and twice as nice 
Those (like me) who don’t care for regular fruitcake might be happier with a Pannetone. They are really quite good, but lighter in texture, softer and not terribly sweet or overpowering.
Fresh cranberry salad made with other fruits and some gelatin is quite nice and refreshing, and tastes nothing like the nasty sauce from the can.
I never eat giblets or lima beans, and I can’t imagine why oysters would be needed for stuffing.
What’s worse is that I usually ended up with the job of stuffing the damn things with almonds. Apparently if she asked my sister to do it then she’d end up eating loads of them, as she likes them.
Right, and that would be and because…? :dubious: