{Our} Home for the Holidays: Terry's Fish Feast

I want to start by saying thanks to Amy for letting me contribute to her {Our} Home for the Holidays series.  I have been following along and there are so many fabulous ideas and traditions that I know I will definitely being adding some to our own Christmas celebrations. In the house where I grew up, Christmas Eve wasn't very momentous.  Christmas Day? Absolutely.  But Christmas Eve? Not so much. When I married and began to spend Christmas Eve at my mother-in-law's home, things changed.  Big time!

Christmas Eve is a big deal in the Italian culture.  In southern Italy, it is called the Feast of the Seven Fishes and represents a partial fast (no meat is served) as acknowledgement of the wait (or vigil, as in Vigilia) for the birth of Christ. We start with a course of pasta with fish sauce and Parmesan cheese on top.  This is a great start, but be warned, you do NOT, I repeat DO NOT, want to fill up on this course.  There is oh so much more food to come. (Yes, that is definitely a warning coming from experience.) Next up is the main spread and typically includes breaded shrimp, shrimp in butter and lemon, breaded white fish, baked white fish, calamari, polipo (octopus in lemon sauce), and mussels.  This is just the fish/seafood portion.

There are also a hundred side dishes.  Okay, okay, not quite a hundred, it just seems that way.  Some of my favourites are dandelion greens, artichoke salad, cucumber/tomato salad, steamed green beans, brussels sprouts, mushrooms with peas, and a green salad.  There are often more sides, but those are the staples each year.

 I haven't even gotten to dessert yet, have I?  Well, with the dessert course comes a humungous fruit platter (cantaloupe, grapes, strawberries, figs, sometimes persimmons).  Alongside the fruit, there is tiramisu, fig-stuffed cookies, lemon cake, and cannoli.  I eat until I can't eat anymore (and then I eat a little bit more),...and it's wonderful.

In the past, the preparation of this huge feast fell solely on my mother-in-law's shoulders, but this year we are each going to make a couple of dishes to celebrate the holiday.  (As a non-Italian gal, I consider it a huge honour to be allowed to contribute).  The two dishes that I am currently leaning towards are both from Epicurious:  Calamari salad and Salt cod with tomatoes and capers.

I foresee a lot of Christmas leftovers in my future (again) this year.  Buon Natale (Merry Christmas).