I don't count calories at home because I always lose track

Snow days are for making snow angels and pear-shaped snow people, for sipping enough hot chocolate to max out until the next snow day, and for sifting through the ol' excessively unedited holiday photo albums (digital luxury breeds laziness!). As is often the case, the most prominent character of this holiday’s family album is the food itself.

We express our love in calories at the White house. Growing up, Mom made Chicken Marsala and Dad made everything else. I'd mentally snap photos of Mom's beautiful table arrangements with their garden-cut flowers, candles and laced linens so I could replicate the exact spread when my parents would come over to the place I didn't have yet. Morgan and I were trained at an early age to set the table and clean up, and I’d perch myself at the end of the shiny granite countertop as Dad cooked, in hopes that he’d notice my availability and assign a task. I’d usually end up de-veining the shrimp or snapping the ends off string beans. But sometimes he’d let me into the kitchen to wisk or chop or fetch the herbs from the backyard.

Hanging out with Dad in the kitchen continues to be one of my favorite aspects of going home. He can reduce a bag of onions into a zillion perfectly square pieces and not shed a tear in less time than a Porsche can go from zero to 60. Yep, I'm pretty sure I'll be a fossil by the time I find a guy half as great as my dad.

Food is the only thing that brings our entire family together in one place and one time, the foundational element to all serious and nonsensical discussions, and that’s probably, at the most basic level, why I like it so much.

A short montage of winter dinners at the White House,

where we exceed the Daily Value of love in a mid-morning snack.

Love and calories from Courtney White on Vimeo.

Allow me to introduce you to this year’s holiday Food Olympics. The first featured dish is chicken tangine, a rich braised chicken stew with apricots and every vegetable imaginable. Mom's hair had soaked up the spices when she came outside to greet me, and a more potent pool of spicy scent streamed outside when I flung open the front door; the stew had been bubbling for hours. Inspired by the traditional tangine of Morocco, it marries the most unlikely combination of ingredients, surprising with new flavors in every bite. I helped McKenzie finish hers, justifying a couple extra calories on account that I'd kick her seven-year-old butt in soccer the next day.

I might not have splurged on seconds if I’d known that Pompano Pecan came next. Don't be mislead by the name; enough butter goes into this dish to qualify Pompano and pecan as condiments. Dad actually used a different, meatier fish this year.

On Christmas Eve, we drank Chateau Chateau and another wine I drank too much of to remember, and Dad prepared a spread of six decadent cheeses, among them a blue cheese for Mom, the ripest, creamiest Pierre Robert, and Mom's other favorite, formaggio al tartufo. Cheese was enjoyed with fig compote and a Pan e’Dolce Ciabatta loaf whose flour coat snowed on every surface over which it traveled (don't wear black on wine & cheese night, or lean over your plate like it’s a trough to avoid a dusting). For dessert: a slice of deceptively light but caloric-full almond cake with orange zest. Might as well repent for all my sins at once and admit that I helped Santa trim the edges off of his slice, too.

That night I went to bed with an octomom-sized food baby.

On Christmas morning, Dad brought out the Panettone loaf. I doubt anyone was hungry, but it’s only human to find the waft of freshly baked bread irresistible. Later Dad made chili, but I saved myself for the shrimp and grits (even my grandpa forgets Dad's a Yankee with this dish).

Following bananas foster, I waddled outside to my Mini, which felt smaller than I’d remembered, and drove back to Atlanta. I dreamed of the next night we’d all be back at the wooden wagon axle dinner table again…just enough time to work off those tangine seconds.