Chester County Ag Notes: Christmas Traditions

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It is Christmas and food plays an important role as families come together to celebrate this wonderful holiday and important Christian festival.

Families often serve dishes relating back to the country where their families originated. Since regional dishes reflect the availability of different food ingredients produced by local farmers, there are often significant differences within countries.

These local traditions in our country of origin still influence both the timing of the meals and food that we enjoy at Christmas.

In Italy locally available fish – no meat – and vegetables are eaten on Christmas Eve. The following day the big meal starts with a variety of pasta dishes, including meat-filled tortellini and pasta in brodo, moves on to eel or now more likely to be turkey followed by the famous Italian desserts such as panettone.

Fish also plays a major role in North Germany with plenty of rivers flowing in to the North Sea and Baltic. Carp (karpfen blau), smoked eel and roast goose are traditional Christmas dishes in some areas accompanied by fried potatoes (kartoffelpuffer) and sauerkraut. Particularly in southern Germany sweet desserts such as spiced biscuits (lebkuchen) and a slice of Stollen fruit bread are popular.

In Sweden the main celebratory meal is enjoyed on Christmas Eve with dill-cured salmon (gravlax), a Christmas ham, Swedish meatballs, lye fish (lutefisk) and saffron buns (saffronsbullar) and ginger snaps (pepperkakor).

A turkey is the usual centerpiece of the Christmas day lunch In the UK and is accompanied by Brussel, sprouts, roast potatoes, cranberry sauce, nutty stuffing, and lots of tasty gravy. This is followed by Christmas pudding (full of nuts, raisins and some brandy) which usually enters flaming after being covering with brandy.

Turkey, a native bird, and potatoes and dried shrimp with seasoning (romeritos) are popular in Mexico for Christmas Day but dried salted cod with lots of vegetables (bacalao a vizcaina) is normally eaten on Christmas Eve. Hot punch (ponche navideno) is always popular.

Farmers and fishermen produce all our food and traditionally it was all produced locally or regionally. Today we enjoy a wide range of food in the United States that is largely produced within the 52 states and spend less on food as a percentage of household income than any other country.

The wide range of climatic zones allows us to grow a very wide range of crops from temperate crops, as we do in Pennsylvania, sub-tropical such as citrus and sugar cane in southern states and even pineapples in Hawaii. We are more than self-sufficient in most crops and livestock products and are major exporters – ag exports were worth $152.2 billion in 2014.

Today our Christmas food could have come from anywhere but the chances are that it was produced in the US on family owned farms. This is in contrast to our clothing, electrical and computer items, even furniture which are all or virtually all manufactured in China or another country.

Our local climate in Chester County allows us to grow fruit and vegetables, corn for animal feed, soybeans for salad oil and protein meal, wheat for baking and hay for livestock during the summer months. Mushrooms, milk and eggs are produced year round.

Luckily the sophisticated distribution systems of our retail supermarket chains allow us to enjoy fresh fruit and vegetables year round whether they come from California, Florida or outside our country.

Our 1,730 farmers in Chester County are growing the crops and raising the livestock that our climate allows and so providing us with milk and dairy products and fresh produce during the summer months.

Take a moment this Christmas to give thanks to our farmers in Chester County and throughout the nation for producing our safe and affordable food.

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Top photo credit: let’s eat via photopin (license)

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