A spread from the neighborhood deli always seemed like the best possible Christmas meal probably because its the one Ive been eating most of my life. Turns out its quite a present from my parents to the rest of the family: I called the Philadelphia deli where they buy the to-go meal, and learned that Nova Scotia salmon sells for $31 per pound. (Astounded, I called the deli in our old neighborhood, where it runs $37 a pound.)

No wonder my mother polices our Nova intake.

It was not, however, the price of smoked fish that got me thinking about alternate Christmas meals. I found my fantasy meal in a toy store, when Karen Williams-Fox, owner of Woodbury Mountain Toys in Montpelier, described her familys Christmas dinner.

She is one of seven people whose Christmas meals, and holiday food memories, we share with readers today.

Merry Christmas! Eat up!

Christmas cookies and a secret Caesar salad ingredient

Karen Williams-Fox, 47, lives in Cabot and has two children who have left for greater climes: Her daughter Morgan, 22, lives in London; Cassidy, her 19-year-old son, lives in New York City.

When the children were young, a family tradition sprang up baking Christmas cookies.

Using recipes from her family and her husbands, the family would make several kinds of cookies, including Venetian lace cookies and Buckeyes. They would prepare plates of sweets for friends and neighbors, an annual baking project that transpired over many days.

On Christmas, the Williams-Fox family will eat their traditional holiday meal: prime rib, Caesar salad, double-baked stuffed potatoes, and pecan pie.

Williams-Fox says her children think the Caesar salad is the best theyve ever eaten. A secret is they remain steadfast in their use of raw egg to make the salad, cracked over the dressed romaine with fresh-squeezed lemon juice at the very end.

The ingredients in the dressing are Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, vinegar, garlic, chopped anchovies and crumbled blue cheese.

When the kids come home, Williams-Fox said, thats what they want to eat.

Based on business at the toy store in the days before Christmas, Williams-Fox suspects many families will be playing board games together over the holidays.

People are looking for things to do together, she said. It seems like they want a lot of family time.

Hot board games: Apples to Apples and Qwirkle, according to Williams-Fox.

The perfect roast

Molly Stevens is a food writer and cooking teacher who lives in Williston. She will be in Buffalo, N.Y., for Christmas with her family, where a baton of sorts (an edible one) is being passed today.

Stevens wrote an e-mail about her familys Christmas dinner:

When my family gathers for Christmas, we really gather. Some years, we number as many as 65. Other years, its 35 or so. Regardless, its always a hoard and too much for any one person to cook for, so we organize a sort of potluck. Various relations pitch in by bringing casseroles and salads as well as the requisite holiday ham and turkey and plenty of desserts, but my father has always trumped all our efforts with his glorious prime rib.

For as long as anyone can remember, Dad has been in charge of the roast beef. He begins a few weeks prior by calling his buddy in the meat-packing business to order a full 7-rib roast. Two days before Christmas, he picks up the 20-pound beast and then, on Christmas morning, he gets up at 6 a.m., hoists the prime rib into the extra-large roasting pan reserved for this sole purpose and rubs the meat with salt, pepper and rosemary. Ive tried to get him to tell me how long he roasts it, but all hell tell me is that he leaves it until it looks pretty good. He doesnt bother with a meat thermometer and never seems to remember year to year what oven temperature he uses, but somehow the meat is always perfect bloody near the bone, rosy and juicy throughout, with some well-done bits on the outside for those few who prefer it that way and ready to take its place at the head of the carving board.

My father turned 83 a few months ago, and for the first time ever, hes asked me to take charge of the roast beef. Of course, I accepted, but I made him promise to be there on Christmas morning to keep an eye on me although Im hoping he wont think Im cheating when I pull out my instant-read meat thermometer.

A grape toss for the kids

Vivian Weston and her husband, Kenneth, own a cut-your-own Christmas tree farm in Bristol, where they have lived since 1960.

At Carlstrom Road Trees, the Westons grow a hillside of tannenbaums, and sell a couple of hundred a year.

Vivian, who is 76, grew up in a large family in Coleraine, Mass., the Call family. Her father ran a two-pump gas station there for 50 years.

The Call Christmas celebration was held in a church to accommodate the large family.

She recalls that Christmas was the only day of the year the family had grapes. So the kids had a grape fight.

The women were in the kitchen, making turkey, she said. And people would bring desserts.

As a child, Vivian celebrated Christmas with 50 or more first cousins, many of whom were throwing grapes.

Reveillon in Vermont

Janet Shepard Manny, 56, grew up in St. Albans and Colchester, with her three siblings.

She lives in Colchester and is a registered nurse at Fletcher Allen Health Care.

My mother is French-Canadian, and she always wanted her children to experience the reveillon, which was a tradition in my mothers family.

A reveillon is a long dinner that is celebrated on Christmas Eve, after the midnight Mass. The name of this dinner is based on the word reveil (meaning waking) because it involves staying awake until midnight and beyond.

The food at reveillons is generally the luxurious feast you would serve on Christmas Day, which might be turkey or roast beef. In Quebec, reveillons always include tourtiere, which is a delicious meat pie made with pork and seasonings.

We started our reveillon in the late afternoon with a platter of delicious shrimp cocktail, a variety of cheeses, pressed pork and small pork meatballs, called boulettes, served in brown gravy. For dessert, we had a choice of several pies.

After opening our gifts in the evening, we put on boots, warm coats, hats and mittens and walked to church.

I am so grateful that my mother (Lucy Shepard) shared this tradition with us!

Dutch sweets and plum pudding

Looking for a holiday food connection to the Dutch heritage of her husbands family, Sue Roediger of Westford discovered olie bolen.

The sweets are fried doughnuts made with raisins or currants, and rolled in cinnamon sugar.

Roediger, 59, is a retired teacher who makes the doughnuts ahead of time, freezes them and sends them as gift. They are easily reheated on Christmas morning, when she serves them, Roediger said.

She also resurrected a food tradition from her family: plum pudding with hard sauce. Roedigers mother made it for her family when the kids were growing up in New Jersey. She served it for dessert with Christmas dinner.

After a plum pudding dry spell, Roediger has been making it for the past 15 or 20 years, she said.

Its a steamed pudding that cooks for three hours on the stove. She sends plum pudding to friends and family, and has given pudding molds to the foodie people in her family.

Sharing tapas with family

The tradition that Beth Glaspie of Essex Junction most looks forward to is her Christmas Eve tapas dinner, celebrated with her family. She is a part-time proofreader with one daughter.

Id rather focus on food, Glaspie said. Its less about the gifts than it is about being together.

Glaspie sent an e-mail about her tapas tradition:

Going back about 10 years, my extended family created a new tradition that could almost be said to have been based on gluttony. It used to be that a holiday dinner for us would begin with a late afternoon cocktail hour: hors doeuvres with wine coolers, mulled cider, eggnog, the usual.

Inevitably, we all would gorge ourselves on the appetizers, not knowing when enough was enough, and then be way too full for the wonderful dinner.

Then one year, as we sat around the table looking at our Christmas-themed paper plates piled with used toothpicks and unfinished dollops of dips, not even wanting to think about eating dinner, somebody said, Hey, we should just have appetizers for dinner next time! And so, Christmas Eve tapas dinner was born.

Throughout the year, as I try a new dish, Ill think, This would be great for Christmas Eve! and I start The List and stow it in the December page of my planner. I am always adding to The List. By the time December comes, my tapas menu is at least halfway complete.

Even now, weeks before Christmas, I get excited at the prospect of spending the days leading up to the 24th in the kitchen doing the prep work marinating, freezing, preparing the make-aheads.

Last year I served indescribably delicious grilled marinated vegetables. … One year I included a trio of spreads roasted red pepper, white bean humus and a spinach concoction (for the green component). Since the appetizers comprise the meal, they can and should be more substantial than the standard cheese-and-cracker plate and veggie platter. …

The diners always find old favorites on the table, but each Christmas Eve brings something new to the spread as well, such as this years roasted pumpkin fondue and balsamic baby back ribs.

Of course, I do not accomplish this single-handedly. My daughter often helps with the make-aheads. On Christmas Eve, anyone within earshot of the kitchen becomes my sous-chef. …

While this was not a tradition for us when I was growing up, weve done this now for enough years that my daughter can consider it a Christmas family tradition. And traditions that involve food are the most delicious kind.

Contact Sally Pollak at spollak@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com or 660-1859.