Well friends, we’ve covered advent, music, and movies/TV–but we here at F5 HQ would be remiss if we did not acknowledge that quintessential holiday topic… fooooooooood.

1. Favorite cookie/candy/baked good without which, it’s just not Christmas.

That’s a toss-up … it’s either plum pudding for dessert at Christmas dinner, or candy cane bread for Christmas breakfast.  See below for the plum pudding.  The candy cane bread is a recipe from my mother-in-law.  It’s a sweet-ish bread dough made with sourcream that is rolled out into a rectangle.  One then slices 1″ strips at an angle into the long sides of the rectangle, leaving a 3″ wide swath uncut in the middle.  Into the middle you lay a mixture of chopped dried apricots and chopped maraschino cherries.  Next braid the half inch strips over the apricot/cherry mixture.  Shape the log into a candy cane.  Bake.  Warm up and serve for Christmas breakfast with scrambled eggs and bacon.  Yum!
2. Do you do a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, both, or neither? (Optional: with whom will you gather around the table this year?)

Not on Christmas Eve.  Sometimes on Christmas day.  This year we are having Christmas Day with friends in what has become a standing tradition.  We spend the day in our pajamas.  We relax and play with whatever new toys we wish.  We eat whatever foods we want … whether or not they are sanctioned “dinner” foods.  The meal is concocted out of whatever foods the gathered friends have all desired and/or brought.  It’s a real potluck.  You can even eat dessert first if you wish.  Even if you’re a kid.

3. Evaluate one or more of the holiday beverage trifecta: hot chocolate, wassail, egg nog.

What?! No mulled cider … what about cider?  Okay.  I’ll go for egg nog.  I don’t count hot chocolate that’s more of an all winter treat.  I love egg nog.  I’m becoming partial to organic egg nog.  Just a small glass a day.  Tonight I’m going to add rum.  Yum.

4. Candy canes: do you like all the new-fangled flavors or are you a peppermint purist?

New flavors?  There are new flavors?  When did this happen? 😉

5. Have you ever actually had figgy pudding? And is it really so good that people will refuse to leave until they are served it?

Not only have I had figgy pudding … I actually make it.  Well, I usually do.  I haven’t the past couple of years because I’ve managed to be sick at the wrong time of year.  I have my Welsh great, great grandmother’s plum pudding recipe that I make every fall right around Thanksgiving.  It’s quite delicious.  But it is an acquired taste.  It’s also lots of fun to light it with brandy. 😉
I don’t think it’s the taste that people are clamouring for in the song.  It’s that it’s quite rich.  In the days when the song was written, only the very wealthy could have afforded figgy pudding … so I have to wonder … it might have been a protest song of sorts.  Hmmm ….