Eddie’s food pet peeves: all that food people foist on you at this time of year

Adeline (nickname: Eddie) loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and out. Usually, that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the series Eddie’s food pet peeves you can read about the latter. This time: all that food people give you at this time of year.

I’m writing this while a candy cane has just gone missing in my cavity. At first, it was still lying potentially cozily on the table, and I thought about hanging the thing in the tree. Until I decided it would clash with the rest of my carefully selected decorations. A few small candy-cane splinters are still scattered around my laptop, a hazy reminder of what it could have been.

I’m not the type to buy candy canes myself. Nor do I voluntarily go to the bakery for Christmas stollen, I haven’t bought a chocolate letter myself in ten years, and I don’t like nougat. Take three guesses how that incredibly sweet candy cane ended up in my house: it was a gift.

An odd little dish

Why does everyone give you food at Christmas? It’s as if all the bigwigs, bosses and business contacts think: those people must be absolutely starving after a year of working. You know what? Let’s give them chocolate, crisps and stollen. And wouldn’t it be nice to add something for the pantry too, right? Yes, of course. Throw in a pack of complicated pasta and some luxury tinned tuna to rediscover at the back of the cupboard a year from now.

Finally, the person who assembled the whole thing tops it off with some crockery from the old collection and calls it a day. Which means you spend the rest of your life with one odd little dish featuring a dancing Santa Claus. But you can’t throw it away, because: it was a gift, and that would be ungrateful. Meanwhile, you open yet another bag of salty snacks in a variety no one has ever heard of.

Christmas without currant bread

I genuinely have no idea what those people do themselves at Christmas, but in our family it’s customary to eat yourself into a food coma. My strategy for getting through it is to eat as little as possible in the run-up to all those bunker-sized feasts. But then suddenly a belated chocolate letter arrives in the mailbox, decorated with a few piped white-chocolate flourishes. And your other half brings home a currant bread filled with almond paste, because “we worked together so nicely this year, here you go!”

And is it really Christmas without currant bread with carefully spread almond paste?

Sliding smoothly down the esophagus

You know what they should give you after all that eating and feasting? A gym membership. Now that would genuinely be useful. Provided they’re open, of course. I’ve always held bosses, bigwigs and business contacts who give something alcoholic in particularly high regard, by the way. It’s not difficult—just a bottle of something sparkling or a wine from a good year.

That kind of drink that slides smoothly down the esophagus and puts you in a festive mood—that’s what makes us happy. It can be paired beautifully with all those mountains of food you’re going to be served anyway. Bosses, bigwigs and business contacts, are you reading this?

PS: Also no idea what to do with a package like that, apart from being forced to eat it? Your local food bank is the perfect place to take it.

Also read:

• Eddie’s food pet peeves: flavor combinations that make absolutely no sense
• Eddie’s food pet peeves: those people who don’t like anything
• Eddie’s food pet peeves: the battle with plastic wrap