The Perfect Holiday Recipe
Southwest Virginia Offers A Spectrum of Seasonal Celebrations

Written by Sarah Cox
Photography by Doug Miller

The winter holidays begin with Thanksgiving and end with New Year’s Day, and in between are crammed as many traditions as there are people—in the Roanoke Valley MSA, that’s 235,932. Southwest Virginia has become a teeming metropolis as diverse as any: we have Jews and Christians, Somalians and Haitians, Hispanics and Bosnians; we have those who look forward to Kwanzaa after Christmas and those who celebrate the giving season by volunteering in a community soup kitchen.

And while everyone’s “holiday recipe” is unique, food, community, and family togetherness make a common theme. As M.F.K. Fisher wrote, “Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.” These profiles offer a small cross section of the spectrum of holiday traditions. Welcome, then, to an intimate peek at your neighbors’ holiday tables.

A Honduran Holiday
While the malls and area stores emphasize the gift-giving aspect of the holiday, in the Cubas household the importance is most certainly not placed on exchanging presents. Margareta Cubas and her three children, Cesar (22), David (17) and Valeria (14), who moved from New Orleans to Roanoke five years ago, celebrate the holiday with a Honduran flair. Margareta Cubas, born in Honduras, moved to New Orleans in 1981 when she was 21 years old. There, as well as in Roanoke, Christmas centered on family and friends, especially the Christmas La Posada. It’s a big dramatization, she says, when people come to her home to eat, share gifts of food, sing Christmas songs, and do the rosary together. “Then, we have tamales, torregas [a bread dish similar to French toast using cinnamon sticks and homemade syrup], homemade eggnog and tacos. Food is important, because it is like a fiesta—a get together—so we cook to welcome our friends,’’ Cubas says. In Louisiana, the family enjoyed a lunch of baked pork. “That was done the Cuban way, buried underground and then baked.’’ While Cubas is not digging holes in her Roanoke backyard, she carries on the customs of her country and her family. “A lot of people in my country make a big, beautiful nativity scene, like a village,’’ she says. She displays her collection of nativity figures garnered from gifts her mother gave her over the years.

A New Homeland
Kounte Alassani will not be celebrating Christmas in the style to which he is accustomed, but he is slowly getting used to the ways of his new country. Alassani is from Togo, in West Africa near Ghana, where he was an environmental lawyer and a professor of law at the University of Lome. “Here, I’m working at Walgreens and teaching French and Latin at Community High School,’’ he says. He moved to the United States on January 8 of this year, having won a visa lottery; his wife, Samah Akpeni, is in New Jersey with her brother, while Alassani is trying to establish roots in Roanoke.

A Togan Christmas, Alassani explains, involves the entire village. “It’s a very large community, and not limited. The concept of family is different than here. You have your cousins, your brothers, your aunts, and you go to the village to celebrate with the other families.’’ In the village, there is much drinking, eating, and dancing to celebrate Christmas. The feasts feature rice, fufu (pounded yam or cassavas root, with peanuts), fish, goat and guinea fowl. To drink, there’s beer and sogebi, made from the palm tree, as well as tchoukoutou, another drink made from millet.

The Hanukkah Miracle
Amanda Winter’s family celebrates Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday that falls on December 15 this year. Winter emphasizes that it is a not a major Jewish holiday, which is a mistake that many Christians make because it happens to be celebrated around the same time as Christmas. “It’s about the Jews winning the war against the oppression of the Romans,’’ she explains. Winter, who is 22 and a graduate of the University of Tennessee, says her family’s celebration centers around food and the lighting of the Menorahs. A Menorah holds nine candles; the one in the center is used to light, on successive nights, the other eight which represent the eight nights that the Jews had enough oil to light their lamps. Winter says this is called the Hanukkah miracle because the Jews started out with only enough oil for one night. Her sister, Nora, says Hanukkah at their house always smells of good herbs and spices used to cook beef brisket, yeast donuts, (sufhaniyot in Hebrew) and latkes, or potato pancakes. While gift-giving is not a central theme of Hanukkah, some traditional children’s presents are gelt, or chocolate-wrapped coins, and dreidels, or four-sided spinning tops.

The beef brisket recipe derives from her father’s late mother, who was from Poland. For the latkes, she refers to the child’s cookbook, The Jewish Kids Catalog, written and illustrated by Chaya M. Burstein. “The brisket we make at every Jewish holiday where there is a big dinner at home, and the latkes are special for Hanukkah,’’ she says.

Serving the Soul
While some ring in the holidays with songs, cheerful drinks, good food, friends and family, Linda Cannon is slicing, dicing and mustering her volunteers in preparation for the Roanoke Area Ministries (RAM) House lunch, which is served not only on Christmas, but 365 days a year. This RAM House kitchen manager is a Roanoke County deputy sheriff in the evening, but by day she works six hours cooking lunch to serve the 50 to 150 people daily. Many of the volunteers have been with RAM House as long as it’s been around, since 1987. (The RAM organization has been assisting the needy in several capacities since 1971).

Cannon says it’s those volunteers—her “steadies”—that hold down the fort. Electricians, computer experts, business professionals, retirees; all cook and labor for those who are less fortunate than themselves. “We have a cachĂ© of volunteers, every day of the week, and they are all steady. These are the backbone
They find a way to get something we need—they say, ‘All you need to do is but to ask,’ and I do.’’

On the other side of the counter are the guests; some are regulars who have spent the night at the Rescue Mission or eat dinner at the Salvation Army and come to RAM house for a hot lunch. Many are homeless. “It’s sad, and it’s heartbreaking. Some you recognize, and some you’ve never seen before. And, on occasion, you might see small children. It’s a good day, and it’s a sad day, but it does my heart good to know that we are here and can help in any way we can. We give them words of encouragement and a hot meal. That says a lot,’’ says Cannon.

Cannon cooks whatever is in the cupboard for the holidays, but usually in that assortment is a ham or pot roast “with all the fixin’s, stewed apples, sweet potatoes, green beans, macaroni and cheese, and pies and cakes that the volunteers have baked.’’ One of Linda’s favorite dishes is her famous bread pudding, which she makes to use up stale donuts.

A Christmas Compromise
Christmas at this writer’s house has settled into a tradition of our own, whittled like a piece of seasoned locust from my husband’s Southern roots and my own transient ones. The kids know that Santa prefers a glass of bourbon with the homemade cookies; they know they are obligated to show off years of piano lessons with carols; they know that when they wake up on Christmas morning, their stockings will be filled—we’ve had to resort to back-up stockings to accommodate for Santa’s enthusiasm.

My husband’s family yelled “Christmas gift!” first thing and looked for the orange in the toe of their stocking. They had a bird on their cedar Christmas tree for good luck, and ate Christmas soup, a tomato-based seafood dish, the night before. In our family, we always had an elaborate breakfast. I remember gazing at the gifts under the tree, which couldn’t be opened until after we’d eaten. So now, to relieve the painful waiting, we all happily bring our stockings to the table and open them as we stuff ourselves. A good compromise, as is our entire day. And now the holiday is wholly ours, and our children will go forth someday and insist on carrying these traditions with them.

If they do, they will carry the recipe for stollen (a pastry), my dad’s really great Bloody Marys, venison sausage, smoked trout, homemade cinnamon rolls, a fruitcake that’s been soaking in dark rum for a month, and French roast coffee and oranges for breakfast. For dinner, we skip the turkey and serve an herbed standing rib roast, at least one pie—usually two, sometimes a cheesecake—and some rich red wine. Christmas day is spent lazing around and avoiding the camera as we pull the Hugh Hefner routine and hang out in our pajamas, warming ourselves by the fire and listening to Ella Fitzgerald belt out Christmas favorites.

Posted: December 1st, 2006 under Taste of the City.
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~Sarah Cox loves to eat and write about food—probably in that order. She believes that most good cooking is the result of excellent ingredients, a dollop of wine and some Miles Davis in the background. This is while her daughter emails her from UVA with a grammar question, and her son’s drum tempo shakes the floor, thus helping reduce the red sauce. Sarah has eaten in working men’s cafes in Tehran, coffee shops in Salzburg, beer halls in Munich, and train stations in Copenhagen, but she likes her mom’s cherry pie best of all. She is a graduate of The University of Virginia and the Hollins Masters program in Writing. She can be contacted in care of City Magazine at 540.345.6300 or contact@citymagazineonline.com.