A Holiday Food & Drink Ritual

Most of the time food and drink are just the stuff of everyday meals – most of the time as energizing comfort food to keep up going through busy days, and at other times as rare treats to be savored and analyzed.

Then there are food and drink combinations that through the years become seasonal rituals.

For my family, these include:

• Caviar on toast points with Champagne on New Year’s Eve. This became a standard for my wife and me after we decided to stay at home one New Year’s Eve when there was a snowstorm howling outside. We lit a fire and got out the Champagne flutes. Who needs fireworks?
• Foraged mushrooms with pasta or eggs in the spring. My favorite kinds of mushrooms are those that have never been domesticated – morels and chanterelles. When we lived in the country, we would do our own foraging, but these days a local mushrooms house has these treasures flown in from gathers in the woods of the West Coast. They are pricy but a sure sign that spring and fresh produce, either foraged or farm-grown, is on the way.
• Apple pie and fresh-brewed coffee in the fall. Although there are earlier varieties, we wait until September to visit our local orchard to get Winesaps, not the most-popular apples these days but a sentimental favorite. The only question when we get home with a peck and a gallon of cider is whether to enjoy eating the apples raw first or waiting for the pie to come out of the oven.
• Stilton and Port for the winter holidays. I can’t remember which I fell in love with first – the drink or the cheese. Stilton, like caviar, morels and Champagne, is also expensive, and the “rounds” of the English delight keep getting smaller, but there is no substitute. We order ours each year around Thanksgiving and wait for it to be delivered to our doorstep, this season from Williams Sonoma. There are only six licensed dairies producing authentic Stilton, as it holds Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status, limiting production to Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, England. Stilton is best-enjoyed by using a special Stilton spoon (the English have a utensil for every purpose), and we have a couple to use like miniature shovels to carve down into the creamy cheese. As a wine writer, I’ve had the opportunity to visit two of the primary Port producers in the Douro – Symington’s and Taylor Fladgate – on multiple occasions, so I usually have a bottle of aged tawny handy – my preference to a vintage for Stilton. But Madeira is also a good alternate.

Of course, the best thing about food and drink rituals is personalizing and repeating it year after year.