I have fond memories of the relish dish at our holiday dinners. This is the pickles, olives, maybe celery sticks, little treats that we didn't have on a daily basis. It gets passed around the table and people put their selections on their bread plate.

This is what would be on my relish tray; not all of the these listed, I would pick maybe four or five at the most, and although you could drain them well so their juices don't run together and put more than one kind per compartment maybe you want to use as many as your divided glass relish dish will hold. Mr. Troutbend's family is very picky about things running together, so I wouldn't attempt it.

Black olives, pitted. My cousins taught us about putting one on the end of each finger and sucking them off. I went home with a college boyfriend for T-day one year and that was all his little sister ate, but his mother wasn't a very good cook, either. You can serve ones with pits, but there are disposal issues.

Green olives, stuffed with pimientos. Remember when they came impaled on the branches of a plastic tree inside the skinny bottle? Maybe they still do, some of them.

I might combine the well-drained olive types in one compartment of the dish, or maybe even have their own separate dish if there were olive lovers at the table and we needed 5 or 10 per person to cover all the fingertips. Most of the Troutbends don't like olives, so this mixing would not be a problem at one of their family dinners.

Watermelon pickles. I only like the Old South brand, and don't know if there are any other brands. My mother tried making them one year, and they weren't very good. Her idea was to dice the rind small so the flavor could get into it better, and it wasn't a success.

Spiced crabapple rings. For many years these showed up on your plate at banquets as a garnish, but I don't think I've seen one in a long time. They come in red and green, in case someone wants to get cute around Christmas time.

Sweet gherkins. Those little tiny sweet pickles, not your trendy French cornichons, which are little, but not sweet.

Pickled beets. I would use small whole ones, and with all or most of the above, don't know if I'd use them at all. These are easy to make a can at a time or you can buy them pickled.

Bread and Butter pickles. These are a sweet pickle, but not the same as sliced sweet pickles. It's easy to make homemade ones, and that would be a nice touch. They are a year-round pickle to me, so I might not use them at all, unless like I said, they are homemade.

Celery sticks stuffed with cream cheese combined with pimiento and crushed pineapple. This is the only raw vegetable I'd have on the dish. See below.

All this would go onto one of those glass divided dishes to be passed around the table with a cocktail fork for serving.



To me, a relish tray is not the same thing as crudites (croo-di-tays). Crudites is assorted, cut up, raw vegetables to go with dip because potato chips have too much fat according to some people. They forget that dip can be fattening, too.

This kind of assortment is more for putting out before the meal or instead of the meal (with other finger foods) than passing at the table, because I don't know about you, but I don't want to hear a lot of raw veggies crunching in those hollow heads like Mr. Troutbend has; it's like eating next to a goat, and he does chew with his mouth shut, he just has an echo chamber inside his head.

And if there is stuffing and gravy and potatoes and cranberry sauce, I don't want to fill up on raw carrots and broccoli at the dinner table unless I've picked that day of all days to cut down on calories, and if that was the case, I had better not be making people with normal appetites feel awkward about it, just keep my food issues to myself.

In the market yesterday I saw a made-up crudite platter for $14.99 and it didn't have a lot of vegetables on it, maybe enough for six dainty people, if that. That's a lot to pay for washing and preparing, but I didn't go price the individual vegetables, so maybe it was a fair price after all. I suppose people with jobs would be glad for the convenience.