I drove 600 miles from Delaware to South Carolina, starting in the early a.m. hours on Christmas Eve. Within the first few hours of being in town, I made a bee line to the best Southern Indian restaurant in the US - Touch of India. It truly is Indian home-cooking. This picture of my plate piled with buffet helpings does the flavor of the food no justice. Everything is super fresh and layered with complex flavors. A new location is under construction and should be open later in 2007. The restaurant doesn't have a site, but be sure to find this place if you're ever in town. Touch of India is one of maybe two reasons to stop in Columbia, SC.
Christmas Eve evening is spent at my Dad's house. Drinks flow at his place. The first thing he offered me was fresh pineapple soaked in coconut rum. He was so pleased with this "recipe" that was recently passed to him. He had never heard of coconut rum. I popped a handful of these to get me in the mood. Did the job. Tasty, too.
The champaign flowed.
Our Christmas Eve tradition is to eat an informal spread of hor'dourves - cheese, sausage, olives, dates, grapes, nuts, etc. This tradition was started by my granddad over 60 years ago. At Christmas he would splurge and order a large box of assorted cheeses and sausages from Wisconsin.
We finish with a slice of pecan torte. The torte is made with only 2 tablespoons of flour; pecans are ground into flour and make up the bulk of the cake. The story goes that this 200 year-old, family recipe was given to my grandmother in the '50's by a neighbor and Hungarian refugee as a gift of gratitude. We only eat it once a year - Christmas Eve.
Woke up Christmas morning and watched my dad make biscuits for breakfast. I'll share the secret to light biscuits once I try it out for myself.
Off to Mom's house for Christmas where I had the traditional dinner. Nothing fancy, but all good. Stuffing, sweet potato soufflé, green beans, squash casserole, rice and giblet gravy. (She subbed mushrooms for giblets in my gravy.) Cranberry sauce and rolls didn't make it on the plate in time - I got camera happy. 
Then off to Charleston, SC to visit my sister. I always disregarded palm trees when I lived in a place that had them. Now, I miss palm trees.
Sat by myself, read the paper, and had a "veggie" plate at Hominy Grill in Charleston : Grits, mac and cheese, corn bread, yams, and cucumber salad.
Before I headed back for Delaware, I made sure to pick up some things...like a crap load of wine. PA wine and liquor stores are all state run, so the selection is not great. Almost all the wines I see at home are unavailable in PA. (If you're wondering why I even care about PA liquor laws, DE is so small, I might as well live in PA.)
Let's not forget the mayonnaise! I picked up six, 32 ounce jars. That's twelve pounds! I'm hoping not to go through it all in one year. I just got some back up in case I don't make it back for Christmas next year.
...and some barbecue sauce. Strange color, I know. Mustard-based barbecue sauce, or "Carolina Gold", is one of the four types of barbecue sauce in SC - mustard, vinegar, heavy tomato, and light tomato. I grew up with mustard-based sauce, so... You can't get it anywhere else.
Finally, some artichoke relish and assorted chutneys. I'm talking about Jerusalem artichokes, not globe artichokes. So very good, but artichoke relish is also unavailable in DE/PA.That's my Christmas food foray. Now onto my New Years diet - it includes a real estate dispute. It's enough to make me cry, and I have. I'll either be too frazzled to write or will be writing incessantly to take my mind off matters. Please excuse me, either way.
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