The Stories Behind Every Recipe at Christmas

Christmas is a time for family, both the one you are born into and the ones you choose. Christmas at our house is a time of giving thanks, plenty, togetherness and love, and in earlier days, hordes of visitors. From mid morning to late night, we were greeting and being greeted, and sharing our safely hoarded treats with our non-christian friends.

As a military family for several generations, every Christmas could be in a different place, and the various makings of traditional treats may or may not have been available. So we began shopping and sending for foods, and storing them from October or earlier because we knew that come Christmas Day, every military friend would descend on our home en masse to wish us A Happy Christmas, and enjoy the treats that we cooked only at this time of the year. And if you were a new(ish) wife, far away from home and Mum, you learnt to depend on your friends to teach you how to cook a particular dish or treat, and how to scale it out for numbers.

Every Christmas Recipe has a name

All my recipes have a name attached to them. The name is usually the person who passed on the recipe, like Myrna’s Coconut Sweet. With just the minimum ingredients, this coconut ice is a failsafe one, that always sets, and sometimes it may be pink, or sometimes if I was distracted and burnt a couple of strands, it would be golden brown. And this recipe is from when we were in a base called Yelahanka, nestled in coconut groves and surrounded by shining pay…