The holiday eats we serve on plates and on TV, year after year
The festive season arrives every 12 months, along with its accompanying festive food stories
Christmas comes but once a year and so do its signature foods.
The turkey, the trimmings, as well as the holiday's more divisive offerings — such as fruitcake.
And while these foods are served once a year with regularity, so are the annual stories about those foods.
Here, the CBC Archives website offers you a taste of some of those seasonal stories about festive eats.
Delivering a dandy dinde
The people serving turkeys for a festive dinner know what's involved in getting a turkey to the table — a roasting process and an equally important carving process.
Back in 1962, Peter Whittall, also known as Mr. Fix-It, had practical tips to share with CBC viewers on how to carve a turkey correctly.
His pro tips included making sure you didn't give away choice cuts to kids who wouldn't appreciate them and how to do the slicing in the first place.
What's good for cooking goose
If turkey isn't cutting it when it comes to Christmas fowl for the table, there is another option: goose.
As Mme. Jehane Benoît told her dinner guests on a Christmas Eve edition of CBCs Take 30 in 1969, the secret to making goose involved an unusual implement: a knitting needle.
The chef and cookbook author said the main challenge when roasting goose was the fat it produced. A knitting needle was perfect for removing that fat.
"Be careful because it splurts," she said. "You push it into each leg, and under each wing. And all the fat comes out."
A good ham, not a gift ham
Ham often makes an appearance on dinner tables during festive feasts.
Less often, it makes an appearance under a Christmas tree.
Though, there was that one time a Midday guest shared a story in 1993 about a ham he'd once given as a gift, which he said was not well-received by his girlfriend at the time.
'Gourmet on the go'
Of course, not everyone likes to cook. That can be true on Dec. 25 or at any other time of year.
Hence the appeal of what reporter Chris Henry described as "festive gourmet takeout food," which seemed to be gaining popularity in the Toronto area in 1987.
A man wearing an ascot succinctly summed up the appeal of these pre-made meals.
"When you get it, you just shove it in the oven," he said.
The cost of fruitcake-making
Whether you personally love it or hate it, fruitcake is a holiday staple for some.
And back in 1978, CBC's Marketplace reported that the cost of making that holiday staple was skyrocketing due to inflation.
"The cost of ingredients for a fruitcake are going up almost daily," host Joan Watson warned the presumed fruitcake-making viewers at home.
"So, the faster you bake it, the better off you'll be."
Choosing the right chestnuts
If you want to roast chestnuts by an open fire, you want to roast them right.
And you also want to roast, boil or purée decent chestnuts — and that's where Pete Luckett was there to help.
The Maritime green grocer and frequent Midday contributor advised viewers in 1985 to ensure the chestnuts they bought from the store were firm at the time of purchase.
Because that was the best way to avoid seeing mould on the inside.
"Chestnuts have an awful habit of turning blue mould very quickly and they don't have the shelf life that the other nuts, you know, do have," he explained.
