Non-traditional groceries for Christmas.

[oldandslow]

Our daughter took over the Christmas Eve family gathering two years to take the load off of us meaning mostly my wife that's chief cook and bottle washer. I just dry dishes and carry out trash. It was a good move on the daughter's part and last night we had chile, smoked ribs , one rack hot and one rack sweet. plus appropiate fixin's. Of course my wife couldn't sit idly by and made pies. Today is our turn and Grandma is working on her flat enchiladas right now and the wrecking crew just walked in the door. That group would be our grand daughter, hubby, and their three daughters. The others should be be here shortly. We are missing our son and his two boys this year. One was exposed to covid earlier this week by a co-worker that tested positive, told no one, and just kept on coming to work and the other two by association.

[BUGEYE]

We didn’t have our usual ham, potato salad, etc, etc.
We had chicken and homemade noodles.
I usually fix the noodles when we have’em but our daughter showed up so I sat in a chair and talked her thru the process.
We just might have chili next year, that sounded good.

[Ranger99]

No family gathering here 
Some of the relatives decided
that the risk of spreading the
china flu would take precedence
over everything else.
So, I have me a beef patty made up
and I'm going to have my first
Christmas hamburger and some
fried taters.

I went by the cemetery and carried
some Christmasy flowers and had
to put up with a large group of border
jumpers blocking the lanes and playing
their noise at a loud volume and much
beer guzzling and picnicking.
It's truly a shame that folks can't behave
in some kind of dignified manner in
a place where you're expected to show
some restraint and dignity and respect
other people's right to not be subjected
to a wild din
If I had it, I'd bet a hundred dollar bill
that there'll be beer cans and bottles
 and paper plates everywhere  tomorrow.
I've picked em up before even though
the cemetery has employees paid to
keep everything cleaned up and maintained

[Lloyd Smale]

just the wife myself and my son and a small turkey. I remember dad telling us christmas at his house meant a venison roast. He said that was usually a once or twice a year treat. They about lived on venison and wild game but he said his dad ground up most of it into burger because he refused to trim and waste. Guess raising 11 kids on a small subsistence farm taught you to be frugal. His dad took sharp metal to both his left arm and leg and they weren't of much use so with not even a high school diploma there wasnt many jobs open to him. Dad was the youngest and said by the time he was 10 the boys did the farming because his dad just couldnt do any manual labor. Lots of that back then. People today are so spoiled. We eat like the rich did at the turn of the century. Heck even if they had a walmart grocery store back then nobody could afford to buy store food. Traditional holiday meals were what ever animal was nearest to death at the time.

[Bob Riebe]

Neither of my grandparents were really hard-up but things such as eggs, canned beef, canned chicken, milk came from the farm if times got tuff along with other canned items each had in a genuine cellar.
One grandfather up to the seventies got up every winter morning to go into the basement and fire up the furnace with corn cobs, wood and coal even though his one arm was paralyzed from the wrist up.
I remember as a boy watching him lift and toss milk cans into a four foot high cold water tub with one hand and one arm.

[Dee]

My first remembrance of a home was a 2 room shotgun house, with a bare lightbulb in the ceiling of each room. They worked when weather hadn't knock the lines down.
It was just me, and mom and dad.
Across the dam of a pond dug with a horse drawn Fresno was a 5 room house where my grandfather, grandmother, and dads 3 little  brothers lived.
It had 5 lightbulbs.
We had no plumbing, just a bucket on the end of a well rope.
Raised everything we ate except, coffee, flour, salt, pepper, and sugar.
One old car between everybody, an old John Deere "poppin johnny", a Minneapolis Moline with a hand crank on the front,  and a matched team of  bay geldings named "Slim and Shorty".
Dad had a paint mare appropriately name "ole paint" that everybody rode if needing to go into town during wet weather.

Everybody ate good, and I learned at a real early age how to "chop cotton" and "hoe corn".

You didn't call the sheriff, cause nobody had a phone, and there wasn't much stealing cause thieves didn't last long.

Now at age 71, and 75, myself and Linda are moving to a county that has maybe 20,000 folks in the whole county, but most of both sides of the family less than 40 minutes away, that'll come at a dead run if we call.

Big mule deer, whitetail, turkeys, and antelope. There's more than a few rattlers laying around, a dammed up canyon full of water, and fish, and Mexican food on every block.

We can't wait to get away from Dallas, and everything its sending to my old hometown.

[Bob Riebe]

Telephone --  I remember well the party line system they had in the country.

I was amazed at how grandma knew which ring was hers plus picking up the phone to use it and some else was talking to some one else.
Even in town, some times you would pick up the phone and there would be some from your block talking and you could hear the conversation, even though we technically did not have a party line.

Also cisterns, all farm houses had them and a huge amount of those in town had them along with open wells covered with a wood cover.

[Mule 11]

Shrimp cocktail, lasagna, breaded and plain fried deer steaks and banana cake. Six of us...

[Graybeard]

We went to Matt and Becky's house. Matt's youngest son Wyatt, his half brother Evan, Matt and Becky's young daughter Maya, our only granddaughter, and Becky's mom were there.

They had a ham, yams, dressing, mashed taters and rolls.