Top Picks: Alsion’s Festive Flavour Faves

By: Aashi and Syona

The holidays bring about special foods that bring people together, strengthen bonds, and have a spot reserved in our hearts. This season, we wanted to compare Alsion students’ favorite dishes and desserts to see which ones come out on top.

The holidays are an exciting time filled with celebrations, spending time with family, and, most importantly, food. Food is an essential aspect of culture; recipes passed down from generation to generation preserve traditions, while cooking and eating together can help strengthen bonds within families. This is especially prevalent during the holiday season when there are several shared meals and celebrations. 

With that in mind, Alsion students’ top holiday food is cookies. Who doesn’t enjoy a nice warm cookie, especially during the colder months? The students of Alsion sure do, with over 30% of the responses to our holiday dishes questionnaire being cookies. Eating sugar cookies is a great way to get into the holiday spirit. Both hot cocoa and its derivative, chocolate, were tied for second place with more than 25% of support from students. One respondent shared that they like to “make homemade whipped cream and add marshmallows to my hot cocoa.” which is a fun way to spice up hot chocolate. 

Over the holidays, cooking is predominantly done by parents. But what about the foods kids get to cook, either as a way of aiding their parents, or as a separate activity? 55% of the students make their own dishes while the other 45% explained that although they don’t get to whip up their own dish, they help with various tasks such as cutting up ingredients. 100% of the respondents who stated cookies as their favorite holiday dessert also described the joy of making them from scratch. Making and decorating them only adds to the fun, and that seems to be something that Alsion students agree with. On the other hand, close to 40% of the students who manage their own dishes make mashed potatoes. Quite a few people also make their own pecan and pumpkin pies.  

The festive foods you might find in each household differ for good reasons. Namely, cultural differences, and family tradition. As a byproduct of the Alsion community’s diversity, a plethora of unique foods show up in this survey—namely, green bean casserole, tamales, cheesecake, and noodle kugel were mentioned.

All in all, the holiday season at Alsion is a time of joy, traditions, and culinary delights. As highlighted by the students’ survey, we, as a community vote cookies as the supreme holiday treat, and especially enjoy making them from scratch. Our diverse culinary spread shows the importance of family traditions, and shared experiences. Whether it’s contributing to the preparation of festive feasts or mastering mashed potatoes, students at Alsion find joy in the culinary traditions that make up the holidays. By looking through the survey, it becomes evident that food nourishes the bonds that ties us together during this special time of year.