Christmas is one week away.  I am sure you have certain foods, events, and customs that you associate with your Christmas celebration (if you celebrate). To me, Christmas is all about the ducks!

Cold Duck and Roasted Duck that is!

Now, if you have never tasted Cold Duck, you don't know what you are missing. This is by far one of the tastiest cheap wines on the market. I don't even think it is real wine, its more like Christmas in a bottle with bubbles.. I may prefer a nice dry Chianti when I am drinking "real" wine, but at Christmas it has to be Cold Duck.

I don't know when I first started associating Christmas festivities with Cold Duck.  I grew up in a home that didn't drink alcohol so it wasn't there. But, somewhere along the line I started enjoying Cold Duck when it was time to decorate the Christmas tree. It must have been in the early years of my marriage because I seem to remember both the tree and the bottle of Cold Duck fitting on the table top. I also seem to remember a plastic seagull as the topper to the tree because it was the only thing I could find in the apartment that looked good. Of course, that was through the eyes of Cold Duck!

Decorating the Christmas tree and you must have a glass of Cold Duck!  Wrapping Christmas presents and you must have a glass of Cold Duck!

When my children grew up, they too wanted to have a taste of Cold Duck. My son thought it was disgusting. When my daughter was old enough, she liked her taste of Cold Duck. She thought she had arrived when she was finally old enough to legally have her own glass of Cold Duck when we decorated the tree. 

The other starring duck is roasted duck.  I grew up in the south.  Our family tradition was to have ham on Christmas Day. My father was a big hunter. But he never went duck hunting. I didn't even eat a duck until I was married. It was at a Chinese restaurant, so I am not even sure that counts as duck. So, why do I love duck? Its just one of those things that evolved. Once, when we still lived in Texas and the children were small, I thought why not try a duck instead of the same old ham we have every year.  So I bought a duck, roasted it and everyone thought it was tasty. It could have been a tradition. But it didn't have a chance. Change was in the air.

The next year we moved to Florida, we spent Christmas Day every year with another southern family and it was back to ham. It was good, but it wasn't duck! That started a tradition where our two families spent almost every holiday together.  It worked well, I liked to cook and her family liked to eat. Unfortunately, divorce split the other family up. People were scattered. Hearts broken and lives really messed up. I miss those Christmas Day get-togethers, but if there was one sliver of a silver lining it was we were back to the duck!

It might sound morbid, but my kids (who were in those pre-teen and teen age years) began the tradition of naming the duck every year. We don't name our chickens before we roast them. I don't know why they thought they needed to name the duck, but they did.  I like to stuff the duck with oranges, apples, celery and onion. Prick the skin all over so the fat escapes and the skin is crispy.  Yummy!

By the way, we never drink Cold Duck with our roasted duck. Don't know why. Guess it just wouldn't be ducky.

Til Next Time!

Cheryl
The Allergy Store