Culinary Christmas - December 14: Wassail, Wassail All Over the Town

Featured Foods: Wassail

Wassail is both a noun and a verb. "First and foremost wassailing is an ancient southern English tradition that is performed with the intention of ensuring a good crop of cider apples for the next year's harvest. It also refers to both the salute 'Waes Hail', meaning litereally 'good health' or 'be you healthy'. The drink of wassail is a hot mulled cider traditionally drunk as an integral part of the wassail ceremony."

Today's beverage-ladden contribution of Wassail, Wassail All Over the Town joins our Culinary Christmas theme during the 25 Days. It's sung by The New Christy Minstrels, an American folk music group that has been around since the early 1960s. Kenny Rogers was actually part of the group for a short time.

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Continuing a yearly Christmas tradition here on SteveandAmySly.com as well as the TannerWorld Junction discussion forums…

A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on December 9, 1965, as the very first Peanuts television special. It's no surprise that it continues to air today!

"Linus, I wish I had some Charlie Brown audio!"

This special came to be thanks to none other than Coca-Cola, which approached the creators of a Charles Schultz documentary called A Boy Named Charlie Brown about doing a Peanuts Christmas special. While this documentary never aired on TV, it featured work from folks we now associate closely with Charlie Brown television specials… produced by Lee Mendelson, animation by Bill Melendez, and music by Vince Guaraldi. So ironically it was commercialism which brought the special to air!

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Culinary Christmas - December 13: Baby, It's Cold Outside

Featured Foods: Swiss Kriss, drink of wine

It's another Monday during Steve's 25 Days of Christmas Music… welcome back! Our Culinary Christmas celebration brings us two "firsts" today. The first "first" is the use of a song that we've previously featured, but this time around it appears again in a "remixed" form. And oddly, the second "first" is that the song mentions a laxative, which I'm going to include as a food item during this 25 Days.

Back in 2008 during our Dueling December Ditties, we featured a version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" sung by Louis Armstrong & Velma Middleton. Today we're back with the same performers, but this time they anchor Baby, It's Cold Outside (Mulato Beat Remix). Someone dropped some beats on the original tune and edited it to give it a different flair, which I find a nice diversion every now and then.

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Culinary Christmas - December 12: Santa's Coffee

Featured Foods: Coffee

Here's an oldie from 1960. Yup, someone actually wrote a song called Santa's Coffee. In this case, it's performed by a child vocalist, Billy Beau.

Now, it would seem that coffee is a much better beverage for the jolly old man, after all he's putting in some long hours on Christmas Eve. Can milk really give you the kind of buzz you need for all that work?

However, there's still the issue of where the bathroom is located on his sleigh…

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Culinary Christmas - December 11: Christmas Cookies & Holiday Hearts

Featured Foods: Christmas cookies, holiday hearts

It's all about food today with our song, Christmas Cookies and Holiday Hearts by The Caroleer Singers and Orchestra. It completely fits our Culinary Christmas theme except for one thing…

What in the world is a "holiday heart"?

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Culinary Christmas - December 10: The Nutcracker Suite

Featured Foods: Nuts, sugar plums

We now happen upon one of the few instrumental tunes featured during this year's Culinary Christmas. It's The Nutcracker Suite by the Appalachian Christmas Quartet. Given that this is based on "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy", the way I see it, we get both nuts and sugar plums out of this song that has no words.

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Today is my Dad's 63rd birthday.  Last year, we had the fortunate opportunity to spend a week at Walt Disney World during the holidays and celebrated his birthday on Disney's BoardWalk. (Note the unique Disney trash can in the background of this video!)

If you recall, back in 2009 Disney was running their "What will you celebrate?" promotion where you got free admission to the theme parks on your birthday.  Since we already had park tickets, they offered Dad other benefits.  We chose the "Birthday Fastpass"

Dad shows off his Fasspass Birthday Card

This allowed the birthday recipient and 5 other guests to get what was basically a universal Fastpass to any attraction, selected from pre-defined groups at each park.

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Culinary Christmas - December 9: The Christmas Song

Featured Foods: Chestnuts, turkey, Hoffman Beverages, danish

In the mid-1980s, during his stint on Saturday Night Live, Billy Crystal recorded this version of The Christmas Song featuring many impersonations that he used on the show, including Sammy Davis Jr., Fernando, Howard Cosell, Joe Franklin, and Muhammad Ali. It all seems quite dated now, but hey, at least he mentioned a couple of food items, namely "chestnuts roasting on an open fire!"

Other than that, I personally find this song very annoying. Do you?

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Culinary Christmas - December 8: You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

Featured Foods: Banana, garlic, tomato, 3-decker sauerkraut & toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce

I'm a big fan of PBS. I believe that we still need a non-profit television network in this country. After all, would a commercial television network give us a theme song as cool as this?

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? was a game show on PBS that ran from 1991-1996 that produced 296 episodes. It was based on a popular computer game series from Brøderbund Software that taught geography. The original prompted many spinoffs, including Where in the USA…, Where in Europe…, and Where in Time…. As the son of a librarian, I played these games a lot on those Apple II computers. The formula was eventually ported to television in the hopes of improving education of geography to a mass audience. I loved the show!

One of the distinctive elements of the game show was the "in house band", performed by a cappella group Rockapella, who performed "clues" for the contestants, as well as belted out the show's catchy theme song. We revisit the same group as they perform their own rendition of You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.

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Culinary Christmas - December 7: I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas

Featured Foods: Vegetables

You'd think that with my affinity for things like "The Hippo Song" that I would have featured today's Steve's 25 Days of Christmas Music tune a lot earlier… but alas, I haven't. I'll even let you in on a little secret. Up until Thanksgiving of this year, I had never heard this song. I know, it's crazy given the extensive Christmas music collection we have.

During our Culinary Christmas celebration, we're trying to be as open as possible to include all the different types of food and drink. Today, we even accommodate those weirdos who refuse to eat meat. Because as sung by Gayla Peevey during I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas, "Mom says the hippo would eat me up, but then // Teacher says a hippo is a vegetarian." So there you go. Personally, I think you may be better off throwing the whole hippo onto the fire and cookin' him up!

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