I AM MAKING MY LIST of foods and beverages I "gotta have" to make the holidays smell and taste right.
At the top of the list are tangerines. Christmas morning is supposed to smell like tangerines. I have great expectations for my Christmas tangerines. I think there should be a tangerine in every stocking. And every tangerine should have a flavor as sweet as your favorite Christmas memory.
Many times the tangerines I buy have a wonderful perfume, but their flavor is as mediocre as my high school math grades. I can't figure out what the secret is to picking sweet tangerines. I have tried several varieties -- clementine, Dancy, Honey. They always look promising, so orange, so bright. But, like unwrapping a Christmas present, after I peel the tangerine I am sometimes disappointed by what I find inside.
I also "gotta have" nuts at Christmas. Mainly I crave walnuts and peanuts, but a filbert or two and some stray pecans are always welcome. These nuts have to be in bowls and stuffed in stockings, and their shells have to show up underneath the sofa cushions. That's the nut tradition I come from.
When I was a kid growing up in the Midwest, the arrival of Christmas peanuts was an especially joyful occasion for me. Bags of peanuts were part of the annual Knights of Columbus Christmas party thrown for us by our dads at their clubhouse. At that party we got to play pool, to drink great amounts of soda pop and to eat mounds of fresh-roasted peanuts. Moreover, this libertine behavior took place a day or two before we would get out of school for Christmas vacation. The event made such an impression on me that years later, when I eat fresh roasted peanuts, I feel that happy days are ahead.
My kids, who grew up in Baltimore, "gotta have" the fresh-roasted peanuts sold at the A. D. Konstant & Son stand outside Lexington Market. It is a seasonal request I am happy to indulge. For me, a trip to Lexington Market or any of Baltimore's various indoor markets is a sensual delight. The air is filled with the sounds and aromas of merchants selling foodstuffs. And at Christmas, when the shoppers are bundled up in thick coats and steam is rising off the hot peanuts, the scene at the Konstant stand strikes me as something right out of Charles Dickens.
