The Christmas tradition of having fruit cake should be put to rest

This is one of those things that are not worth having around for the sake of tradition.

It weighs obscenely more than a normal cake should. That in itself is gross. No one really likes it. It tastes awful. I don't care anymore whether or not someone spent hours making it from scratch. I refuse to take another bite out of this atrocity for another Christmas (of course I would put it differently & more politely to the cook). It's ability to clog the body's system in an unnatural way far outweighs any nutritional value it may have.

So there you have it, my rant about fruit cake (or Christmas cake).

Let's kill this tradition while we have the chance. I'm gonna for my own sanity. (I'm visualizing shooting up one of these cakes)

I actually like it...but then again I have psychological problems to begin with so don't go by my judgement.

I like fruitcake/christmas cake too, except when it has too much citron on it.

guess I'm just fruity, maybe that explains my obsession with Froot Loop cereal with no milk.

I share your disatisfaction with the Yuletide brick of love...

I never actually tried fruitcake until about 2 years ago, due to its horrid reputation as a tasty morsel of chewy and fruity cement....and I must agree it's right up there with liver on my list....

I must admit that my best friend's mother makes hers from scratch, and it's excellent....I'll actually eat it and enjoy myself - lol - but the stuff you buy in the stores?! Blah!

Back in 1983 when I was first married, I decided to cook my own Christmas fruit cake.

So off I wander and collect the various ingredients. All except one - and that the most important - Brandy.

Whistling happily I set to work mixing the ingredients - and then realised to my horror ... no drink !!!

But help was at hand, for deep in the recesses of Pisky's drink cabinet was a bottle of Single Malt Scotch (I believe it was Glenmorangie).

Into the cake mix went some Scotch ... then some more ... and finally some more (for the road or the pixies depending on your inclination).

And wasn't that one hell of a cake

My ex-wife's Grandfather, a hard drinking sailor from WW2 even asked for more - we gave him some to take home. Best not to eat and drive after all

never actually tried fruitcake until about 2 years ago, due to its horrid reputation as a tasty morsel of chewy and fruity cement....

LMAO Enron, I love your way with words, well described too. I like the "lite" variety as long as i have plenty of xmas alcohol to wash it down.

LOL. I guess some of you have tolerant digestive systems for all that dried fruit.

And if not, the key to increasing your tolerance level is the hard liquor (winks at Pisky). LOL.

Christmas traditions take us back to preindustrial mores, values, and even tastes!

The thing about fruitcake is that you don't have to refrigerate the genuine article. This is a reason it was so popular before 1930! It was the first mail order Christmas gift. My brother, who doesn't like it, refers to it as "pemmican for dessert." (Doesn't like pemmican, either.)

Pies were originally made that way, too. A real pie can be left on the counter, or in an actual pie-safe. No one today understands the advanced technology of pie safes, because none of our foods are worth saving. They are a bunch of splenda-filled, xantham gum and corrob-bean extract saturated tripe that you'd need to order from Union Carbide if it didn't already come shrink-wrapped in the "frozen desert" of your super-grocer's frozen aisle.

People eat gawdawful crap full of chemicals, and then wonder why they are depressed and obese.

My great-grandfather lived to be 99, and he had a glass of beer, a slice of pie, and a cigar before bed. Some stuff, even if it's "bad" for you, fills you with life. Convenience drains the value from life.

That is the reason why we are so depressed, repressed, and oppressed.

We are being ruled by the power of "Conveniarchy," the absolute rule of convenience.

Ponder it, and DESPAIR!

:shk:

Give me a fruitcake and i will know you hate me.:shk:

ugh

Originally posted by dgtempe

Give me a fruitcake and i will know you hate me.:shk:

Not even Pisky's special 40% proof 'Pixyland special' ?

Originally posted by Pisky

Originally posted by dgtempe

Give me a fruitcake and i will know you hate me.:shk:

Not even Pisky's special 40% proof 'Pixyland special' ?

LOL...yours sounds moist and drenched in the good spirits of Christmas, i would be glad to taste yours. It's that dried stuff that gets to me.

I'm always in the mood for something Pisky!

I have to side with the defense on this. I think dr. strangecraft summed it up very well. Its good to see someone write about those days. Most people these days can't fathom there ever was a society before the 90s. I was born in the 60s but fortunatly, my dear departed grandmother told me how life in the 30s and 40s was in the US and it gave me a great respect for what her generation lived through. Some traditions are more than that and most have their founding in neccesity.

I haven't had fruitcake in years, b ut I remember eating it with my Grandma, and it wasn't that bad. She absolutely loved it, and her homemade stuff was 10 times better than the storebought crap.
Maybe I'll have to have some to bring back memories of old times.

Originally posted by parrhesia
I haven't had fruitcake in years, b ut I remember eating it with my Grandma, and it wasn't that bad. She absolutely loved it, and her homemade stuff was 10 times better than the storebought crap.
Maybe I'll have to have some to bring back memories of old times.

I agree. Matter of fact, the best fruitcakes in the world are made right down here in Texas. The Corsicana bakery in Corsicana, Texas. I love 'em but I have to watch out because they're extremely rich.

Peace

I can't say I've ever had fruit cake, it's certainly not a tradition with my family.

In the UK having sprouts with your Christmas meal seems to be a tradition though, even though no one likes them.
It reminds me of that Bottom episode:

Richie: Now you do the decorations and I'll do the sprouts
Eddie: Ohhhhh...not sprouts! I hate sprouts!
Richie: Don't be stupid Eddie no one likes sprouts...
Eddie: Well then WHY are we having them then???
Richie: BECAUSE IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by astrocreep

Its good to see someone write about those days. Most people these days can't fathom there ever was a society before the 90s. . . . Some traditions are more than that and most have their founding in neccesity.

You are almost begging to hear my "Food Faddism" theory of social history. I get an OCD shiver when I think about how all-encompassing it is.

The theory arises from a dialectic between my mother and father. He liked pineapple upside-down cake. She didn't. He was always pestering her to make some. She said that if she went to the trouble of making a homemade cake, she wouldn't sully it with pineapples. She was of German descent, and had no pastry use for pineapples.

My father would patiently explain that before refrigeration in homes, tropical fruit was extremely rare. Many boys from his town in Indiana during WWII never got home for the duration of the war. The closest they could get was the possession of Hawaii. So when on leave there, they'd mail as many pineapples home as possible using the navy's then excellent postal service. (military personell got "above-first-class" postal priveleges during the war.)

Being invited over to someone's house for a pineapple upside down cake in 1943 was a celebration. Even if you didn't know where there son was, at least you knew he'd been alive a couple of weeks ago, and on leave in paradisical Hawaii!

(He also has a thing for tropical shirts. But that's another thread.)

See, food, all of it, has a meaning; it's symbolic of plenitude at identity. You don't eat ham at Thanksgiving because Germans eat ham. You have an (american) Turkey. (assuming you're american, for this argument).

Before world war II, most hamburgers were served in the US with a layer of sauerkraut. That ground to a halt in December of 1941. The lettuce and tomato was sending a message, striking a blow for liberty against the insidious hun.

Irish in America make a HUGE deal out of St. Patrick's day; usually serving steamed cabbage and corned beef. Irishfolk have told me that those two dishes are not particularly irish, and sound more like german-jewish fare than anything irish. Probably, it's what the Kosher Deli's of New York decided was "the thing" for March 17.

Chop Suey anyone?

Cranberries are another example. In the 1990's, they started putting these acrid little pellets in everything, even the muffins! The producers had found a way to make em cheap, and were dumping them on the market. So marketers told women that cranberry juice (mixed 1 to 3 with sugar) was good for them. Yes, Cranberries were the "trash fruit" of the millenium.

Before that, it was the Kiwi.

In the 70's, it was strawberries.

The late 60's was the Day of the Pineapple.

I sniff current trends in the direction of mango for "most ubiquitious fruit of 2005."

Wow, thats a good bit of trivia. But, how'd ya know about the mango? I got one ripening on my kitchen window sill.

My family always had cabbage on New Years Day because they said if you eat cabbage, you would have plenty of money that year. My family came from Germany (Saarbrucken) in the 1700s (to get away from the French) and I guess thats a tradition thats survived all those generations.

Cranberries, "trash fruit" of the millenium?

I love cabbage too, all year round. I know there are some mythologies out there about food. Hey, if cabbage is considered a 'cash' crop, I'm all for it.