Christmas Dinner: The Fish vs. The Bird

What better place to start this blog than with the ultimate in cross-cultural living: what to do at Christmas time. For the last 6 years (minus 1) I have had the opportunity to eat traditional Slovak style Christmas Dinner...and you know what...it doesn't get better with age.

To start we have a special soup (because in Slovakia you always have soup with lunch). Now it's not so special in the sense that you can only afford to have it once a year or it's made out of the golden eggs of a magical talking duck. It's more like special needs or special sauce at McDonalds; you don't know what's in it and frankly you don't want to know. The only difference is this is what's in the soup:

• Mushrooms
• Cabbage
• Milk
• Slovak Secrets...

I'll let you imagine what it smells like, and tastes like.

Then we move onto the main meal, the magical Christmas fish. Now this has always confused me but for a land locked nation like Slovakia why would fish be the choice for Christmas? Needless to say the past few years have been none too fantastic with this bony, fried fish. Along with the fish goes another typical Slovak treat: potato salad? Believe it or not, what most of us in North America would bring to a BBQ or picnic is part of the Christmas meal.

All I can say is over the last few years they've made chicken and mashed potatoes for me. And I've even got my little niece to join in on the conspiracy...she likes the chicken as well (with a good helping of potato salad).

So this year, my incredible wife decided it was time to tackle the Turkey dinner...much to my delight and everyone else's suspicion. I can honestly say that this was the first time in the history of Babka's (great grandmas) house that a bird of this size was ever cooked, especially on Christmas. Anna fretted for a week or so, checking the internet hourly to get recipes and learn how to cook the bird. She checked British, American and Canadian sites to see how it should be done. She even got up at 8:00am to start preparing and cooking the bird.

So let's do a quick rundown of what was on the menu:

• One 3 kg (approximately 7 pound) turkey which proved to be more than enough for a Canadian and 7 Slovaks and our half and half daughter.
• Roasted potatoes, carrots and parsnips
• Stove top stuffing. Yes the freeze dried goodness made it into the lineup, a sin in a house where everything is made from scratch. Babka asked a few times what it was (you should have seen the horror a few months ago when I introduced Kraft Dinner...)
• Corn
• Mashed Potatoes
• Apple Cider/Thyme/Red Wine Gravy which was also the marinade for the turkey (and the award for the best gravy at Christmas time goes to this fine concoction)
• A beautiful bottle of Mission Hill Pinot Blanc (2005)

I was in heaven and was scarfing down the meal while everyone else was looking at it gingerly, asking what it was and complaining that turkey legs are too big. I'm proud to say that Anna's first Christmas turkey was a huge success in my books but here's how others responded:

• Mato (15 year old nephew): he didn't even sit at the table as he is the world's pickiest eater. Unless it's pasta, halushky, fried cheese, fries or mushroom and corn pizza it ain't going in him.
• Mia (2.5 year old daughter): ate a piece of a parsnip and a two millimetre shaving of turkey after threats of no chocolate or toys for the day.
• Petka (10 year old niece): she does whatever we tell her so she tried everything but I think she'll stick with Slovak as was witnessed by the huge amounts of left over potato salad she ate
• Richard (brother in law): ate everything and seemed to like it, even had a bit of a second plate.
• Evka (sister in law): ate everything and seemed to like it.
• Mamicka (mother in law): refused to take a whole turkey leg because it was too big, seemed a bit offended when I said, "Finally a real Christmas dinner..." but we made up at the end.
• Babka (grandmother in law): seemed to like everything except for the Stove Top Stuffing...her loss was my gain.
• Anna (wife): ate everything, less stressed as I kept telling her how good it was.
• Me: two plate fulls, two glasses of wine and a big turkey nap coming up...very content and have now made a Husband Mandate that every 26th of December shall now be known as Canadian Christmas (it would be the 25th but usually everyone goes to church and we have so much left over from the day before that it just doesn't make sense....have you ever tried having a leftover fried fish, potato salad and turkey sandwich? It just isn't kosher)

One final note, the fish this year was different and actually pretty good...no bones and it tasted like Captain Highliner fish sticks so I think I'll give it a go next year, though I will be counting down the days until Canadian Christmas and turkey.