There are certain holiday foods that grab a hold of us (traditionally speaking) and won't let go. They form a habit out of our favorite recipes and if they're missing from the feast, well something just doesn't feel right. It might be a particular cranberry sauce that graces your Christmas table or potato latkes for Chanukah, cooked just the way your grandmother used to make them.
I'm like this about two foods at the Winter holidays - cranberry sauce and yams. I have made my yams the same way for 25 years. It's an uneventful but satisfying concoction involving butter, brown sugar, bourbon and cream. It's not that I don't enjoy other cooks yam creations when I'm a guest in their homes for the holidays, but my yams - in my humble opinion - are still the best.
And let's face it, how much can you really do with a yam? Variations on a standard theme almost always turn out to be related. So at last weeks Christmas dinner, where I dinned in someone else's house, I took my customary scoop of the yam dish from the buffet table. I was pleased that they were part of the meal, but had no great expectations. After all these were not "my yams."
