Preparing for a Traditional British Christmas in America

Christmas Dinner (don't click the link until after
 Christmas; it's from a diet website!)

This Christmas my husband's parents are coming to stay in San Francisco and I will be hosting the Christmas celebrations in our apartment. I absolutely love hosting and dream of the day when we have a large house with several bedrooms (for our guests to stay over in) and a large dining table (big enough to seat an entire dinner party. Unfortunately we actually live in a 1 bedroom apartment and my husband really doesn't share my love of hosting so I don't get to do it very often.

Of course this means that when I do get to do it I absolutely go to town on it (though always with a strict budget - as cheap as possible - imposed by my husband). This Christmas will be no exception and I've already started planning.

It's a good job I've already started planning because it turns out sourcing traditional British Christmas fare is not always easy in the United States. From what I can gather Americans don't have a national traditional Christmas dish. The roast turkey Brits are familiar with is reserved for Thanksgiving (with some alterations/additions) and the Christmas meal is often a tradition only within each family unit, if at all. Families seem to choose a dish that is a family favourite and it may or may not be the same dish every year.

Christmas Pudding

Not only do they not have the same traditional meal, a lot of our traditional dishes aren't even eaten over here at all. Pudding to an American is what we would call Angel Delight and they assume Mince Pies are a savoury main course so I knew that I was going to be making a lot of things from scratch.

However, I did not realise that even the ingredients might be hard to come by. I've no plans to go to a specialised cook shop and I was expecting my local Safeway to have most things and I was planning to get the rest from Whole Foods.

My first problem - Mixed Spice. Simply doesn't exist so I looked it up on Wikipedia (I love Wikipedia) and found out that I can probably use Pumpkin Spice as a substitute.

Next up - Suet. Couldn't see any, even in Whole Foods. I didn't even find any lard. In the end I found 'Shortening' which is some sort of vegetable-based substitute, though the internet presented me with worrying rumours about it not being a 1:1 substitution.

I knew Whole Foods did Candied Peel!

Candied Peel or Mixed Peel. I know I've seen this in Whole Foods but it certainly wasn't there when I looked yesterday. I'm guessing its seasonal only and not there yet so I've found a recipe to make my own.

A more basic problem - Pudding Basin. Since Americans don't have puddings they also don't have pudding basins. Fortunately Amazon came to the rescue on this one, though I imagine I'm paying over the odds for one.

There are other things that I haven't even looked for yet but my occasional quick glances have not found. Marzipan, for example... must ask an American if they have it and where I can get it from.

Anyway I'm getting close to sourcing all the ingredients I need, which is a good thing since the Christmas Pudding and Christmas Cake ideally need to be made 2 months in advance to allow plenty of time to add brandy. I had no idea, before I started this, that so many traditional Christmas items have so much alcohol in! I will be posting the finished results of my attempts and the recipes as and when I get around to making them.