With a Christmas dinner menu of Glazed Ham, Roast Yams with Pears and Bourbon, and apple pie for dessert, the question of what to drink naturally arises. If you live in or near the apple-growing regions of the northern United States or Canada, you are poised to experience what I think must be the Next Big Thing in the world of drink: high-quality, artisan hard apple cider, whose delicacy, complexity, and overall deliciousness can easily measure up to fine wine. I’m not talking about anything that comes in a 6-pack, or that has flavors added—I am talking about nothing but the juice of fine apples, preferably from a blend of apple varieties (including bitter or sour ones you wouldn’t want to eat or cook with), fermented into a dry, effervescent, yeasty brew with an alcohol content somewhere between beer and wine, in a 750-ml bottle with a cork, with a soft, delicate apple aroma evoking cold winters. (more…)
Having decided to center my Texas-inflected Christmas dinner around a big glazed ham, the other dishes fell into place: with Texas ham, there must be corn, there must be greens, there must be yams, and amidst all that richness, my California sensibilities say, there must be a good wintry salad. I whipped up a cornbread dressing (what most people would call “stuffing”) made with Louisiana stone-ground yellow cornmeal, sautéed deep-green kale with bacon, and tossed a refreshing chicory salad with pecans. 
What to have for Christmas dinner? Thanks to deeply-ingrained nineteenth-century holiday traditions, most of us expect Big Meat--a grand centerpiece roast beef, turkey, or ham. Many Southern families are content to repeat the tried-and-true Thanksgiving menu, which in my Texas family meant turkey, giblet gravy, canned cranberry sauce (whole-berry, not jellied), cornbread dressing (we never called it “stuffing,” and it never contained bread), mashed potatoes, pickled peaches, pumpkin pie and mincemeat pie. When my mother was growing up, she says, “We always had turkey for Thanksgiving, but Christmas was up to Mama. Sometimes it was ham; sometimes turkey. The most memorable Christmas menu was the year Mama cooked a turkey breast in champagne—a recipe she found in the Dallas News, probably. She was so excited about that, and it was delicious.”
