Garden Grazing: Escargots

December 19, 2007

Back when my plans for Christmas Eve crab were threatened by some dumb-ass humans, I decided to resurrect a Christmas Eve tradition from my childhood: snails. That's right, people, I grew up a picky eater in Minnesota where I gagged on string beans, yet I ate snails.

There's no explanation, but where my mom failed with wild rice, succatash, and scalloped potatoes, she succeeded with hot, buttery, garlicky gastropods. As much as my sister and I loved escargots, we never asked for it any time of the year other than Christmas Eve. It was tradition and we loved our Christmas Eve traditions.

We sat on the floor in front of the fire and ate our Christmas Eve dinner from the coffee table. We felt elegant, grown up, and quite worldly as we carefully applied the escargots pincers to the natural shells and pulled out the butter-soaked meats with tiny forks. Small and soft rounds of baguette were used to wipe the plates clean and stuffed into the shells to soak up every possible spot of garlic butter.

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