The Holiday season rocks, if for only this one reason:

We get to eat tourtiere! If this word means nothing to you, then it is likely that you were not raised in the snowy land called Quebec, the province that keeps threatening to take its ball and go home (Mom! Canada's oppressing me again, make it stop!). Considering the site stats, it is highly probable that you are reading this with a furrowed brow and a new window opened to a web dictionary. Don't bother, I'm about to get teach-y.

Tourtiere is a very traditional Quebecois dish. It's basically a meat pie, sometimes made with pork, sometimes ground beef. Originally, the filling was tourte (carrier pigeon, or so I'm told) but my people liked the pie so much that we made the bird extinct. Maybe it wasn't all our fault, but as the shake'n'bake ad says "we helped!". So, that's sad and shameful, but let's try to move on.

Tourtiere is eaten at various times of the year, but the most authentic is to have it after midnight mass during Reveillons. "Reveille" means "to wake", and is when Quebecois people open their gifts (which is pretty awesome when you are a kid...nap for an hour after church and then get to stuff yourself and open presents in the middle of the night).

Some of us used to find it very hard to be vegetarian at this time of year, since the traditional diet eschews all representatives from the vegetable kingdom, except for cameos by the potato, which manages to just barely keep vegetable status by sneaking under everyone's radar. Food is central in our culture, so not being able to partake in, basically, anything really makes one feel as though they are on the outside. This is where having a vegetarian mom kicks ass. This brilliant woman set to work on making a vegetarian version of our favourite dish, which is now easier since fake meats are everywhere. The result is so good and authentic-tasting, that my meat-eating grandparents wolfed it and wouldn't believe it wasn't "normal". And tonight, that is what we are eating. I will try to post a recipe later, in the meantime, joyeux noel if you celebrate, bonnes vacances if you don't.