The Festive Table: Recipes and Stories for Creating Your Own Holiday Traditions

Suggesting that holiday tradition is what one makes of it, Lundy (Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken) promotes the concept of adding one's own dimension to holiday fare. In the chatty text accompanying this collection of menus and recipes, she writes of friends who have improvised on family celebrations for festive meals, leading to some innovative and unusual twists for such holidays as Passover, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Kwanzaa and lesser-known ones to Americans such as Persian New Year. She offers a Chicken Soup with Tangerine-Zest Wontons for Rosh Hashanah, Blessed Salmon stuffed (with artichoke hearts, scallions, mushrooms and herbs) and grilled for Easter and Cajun Roast Pork with Eggplant-Rice Dressing for Thanksgiving. This paean to holiday meals as social celebrations featuring people from different cultures and customs is a pleasure to read. As they are intended to, the recipes, although sometimes of uneven quality (e.g., the size of eggs to use is sometimes stipulated, sometimes not), are likely to spark readers to try variations of their own. (Oct.)