Holidays in the Valley : Taste of Tradition : Food: Dishes from the old country, no matter where that is, can help re-create the special holidays of the past.

Most days were pretty chaotic around my house when we were growing up. The six of us kids were always shooting out of the house like skeet targets, and my mother must have given up hope pretty fast of ever seeing us at the dinner table at one time.

Dinner, as a result, was a stew or casserole in a large pot on the stove. We simply helped ourselves whenever we had time, with an equally simple rule of thumb for servings: First come, first served; second come, no get.

But Christmas was different.

On Christmas Eve morning, my mother rose early and padded downstairs into the kitchen before any of us were awake to begin the meal that probably would be served on countless tables in Germany, thousands of miles away:

There would be Schnitzel and Schinken and Bratkartoffeln. And Enten and Rotkohl and Spaezle . And then, stuffed with the veal, ham, roast potatoes, duck, cabbage and noodles, all of us would eat still more.

Bunte Teller --plates heaped with candy and oranges and then covered with pretty cloths--would appear on the table as soon as it grew dark. In boxes, sent over from our cousins overseas, there would be packages of marzipan--almond candy molded into pigs, fruits and vegetables.

There would be Lebkuchen, literally “life cake,” covered in chocolate and wrapped in cellophane. And always, without fail, there would be heaps of German cookies in tins, which released a waft of almonds, cinnamon and hazelnuts as soon as we lifted the lids.

Today, with children of my own, it’s hard to imagine Christmas without all of those things. Passed down through generations, they are more than just morsels for the mouth: They recall a heritage and a connection to my ancestors’ homeland. Something important would be missing if they couldn’t be passed on.

“These are traditions, and people feel they have to have them,” says Lola Bozian, who moved from her home in Sweden 34 years ago and still serves up a traditional Swedish meal, down to the last meatball, each and every Christmas.

“It’s how you were brought up. People from Turkey or Mexico or Poland want it that way too,” she says. “It’s more than just food. If you have it on your table, it means something special. This is how you know that now it really is Christmas.”

The problem, of course, is that this is America. Delicacies from other countries aren’t always so easy to find. Not unless you know where to look.

To make your holiday food shopping around the San Fernando Valley a bit easier--even if the food you seek came from the other side of the world--here are a few suggestions:

LEBANESE

Ghevont Kichian remembers Christmases in Lebanon as a time when his family would travel to a house in the mountains and celebrate with just about every kind of food imaginable.

“My grandfather had five daughters and five boys, and all of them had three or four kids, so it was a very big family,” Kichian recalls. “We’d go up into the country house, and it was cold with a little snow. The women all got together and cooked, and the men just sat and relaxed. Everything you wanted was on the table.”

Appetizers included meaza, made from garbanzo beans and cream, and an eggplant dip called babaganough or moutabbel. Another appetizer, called basterma , tasted like pastrami with a garlic stuffing and was served alongside a sausage appetizer called sougouk. The women also prepared chikeofte, which was cracked wheat with raw beef.

“The main course was grape leaves stuffed with meatballs, called koubbet. We always had chicken and rice, shish kebab, an Arabic or Greek salad, and tabbouleh. That was probably the most important part of the dinner. It’s made of parsley, green onions, tomato, lemon, pepper and cracked wheat. It’s traditional in Lebanon.”

Dessert, he said, consisted of that strictly Lebanese delicacy: apple pie. It was followed by a liquor called arack, similar to vodka and drunk on ice. “We’d drink beer and scotch too, or whatever,” Kichian said.

Today, Kichian offers all of those traditional foods at his store, Leon’s Grocery and Deli, 14102 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys.

The store also carries some Armenian, Mexican, Israeli and Arabic food products. Some foods must be ordered a week in advance. For information, call (818) 787-8910.

GERMAN

German Cold Cuts International in Woodland Hills has a lot more than meats prepared to meet the strictest German’s palate.

It also carries just about any food item a person of Teutonic leanings could hope for:

Foods such as traditional German cookies: Pfeffernuss, Aniseplattchen, Springele and Lebkuchen .

Foods such as Stollen , a sweet bread similar to fruitcake but much lighter;

Drink mixes such as the makings for Feuerzuckerhuette, a sweet, hot wine, often prepared with brandy;

And marzipan--almond-paste delicacies in hundreds of different shapes and sizes.

People longing for the taste of Quark, similar to yogurt but with the consistency of sour cream, will find it at the store as well.

There also is a wide selection of Advent calendars.

The store is at 6019 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Woodland Hills. Call (818) 883-8051.

JORDANIAN

In Jordan, says Haitham Sweis, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without stuffed grape leaves, chicken with lamb’s meat and desserts of baklava and kadaifi, a dough covered with nuts, cheese and syrup.

“The grape leaves are filled with rice, squash and meat, which is the traditional dinner,” says Sweis, owner of Sweis International Deli in Van Nuys.

“The table is covered with appetizers too, so there is a big choice,” he says.

The delicatessen offers a wide variety of already prepared Christmas foods from Jordan.

It also carries foods from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Italy, France and Bulgaria.

“We also carry traditional liquors, like iraq, which is a kind of liquor from grapes and anise that we drink at Christmas,” he says. “We also have many traditional cookies.”

Sweis’ store can be found at 6809 Hazeltine Ave., Van Nuys. Call (818) 785-8193.

ARMENIAN

“There are Armenians all over the world. Historically, they adapted to other cultures, so everyone has something different at Christmastime,” says Sona Chelebian, co-owner of the Tarzana Armenian Grocery and Deli.

Chelebian’s parents are from a small village in Syria, and many of the town’s residents were vegetarians. As a result, she says, holiday food was generally no richer or heavier than other days of the year.

Well, most of it anyway. Christmas dinners at the Chelebian household typically included rich, sweet pastries such as baklava, and plenty of choereg-- which is like a twisted egg bread that is very sweet.

Main courses included bourekis, which is dough that is stuffed with meat, potato, chicken, cheese or spinach.

“Many Armenians also make rice with chicken in it, and then top it with dates, raisins and pine nuts sauteed in butter,” she says, “They’ll have Russian brioshki --dough that is made with yogurt instead of yeast, fried and then filled with assorted things--and black Russian caviar.”

The store carries plenty of those items, as well as dried fruits dipped in chocolate for dessert.

Caviar must be ordered at least one week in advance, so call early.

The store is at 18598 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana. Call (818) 881-6278.

MEXICAN

Christmas is a bit different in Mexico, says Fernando Garcia, co-owner of La Mexican Market in San Fernando. For the nine days before the celebrated birthday of Christ, the streets are filled with children. “It’s a pilgrimage,” he says.

During Las Posadas, or the processions, children bear a manger on a small platform and go from house to house, singing. The song asks permission to come in, but all but the last house turns them away. At the appointed house, he says, the children are allowed to enter. There, a great party begins.

In terms of food, that means a few special things.

“The main thing, really, is tamales,” Garcia says. “They eat it all year long, but especially then. Also, they eat a lot of menudo, which is beef tripe. That’s the very big thing. They’ll make sweet potatoes, and the rest are things you have here, like turkeys and hams.”

For dessert, he says, there are pastries galore. “ Bunuelos are very popular,” he says. “It’s something made out of flour dough and brown sugar. They also make a turnover with apples and sweet potatoes, called empanadas. “

La Mexican Market doesn’t make these items--you may have to do that yourself. But if Mexican-made ingredients are what you’re looking for, you’ll find plenty here.

The store is at 451 Kalisher St., San Fernando. Call (818) 365-9957.

SWEDISH

The IKEA Scandinavian furniture store in Burbank also has a bistro filled with foods usually found only in Sweden. Lola Bozian, who moved from her distant homeland 34 years ago and now works at the store, says she can find everything she needs to prepare a traditional, Swedish dinner for Christmas.

“You’ve heard of smorgasbords. Well, we invented them,” she says with a trace of pride. “We put everything out for Christmas. I mean everything.”

What, exactly, does everything include?

For starters, she says, there is the salt-petered ham. “If you don’t have that, it’s not Christmas.” Then there is lutfish, a white fish that is placed in lye and then hung out to dry during the summer. “Then, they cook it very carefully at Christmas and serve it with a white sauce. It’s like Jell-O.

“Actually, it’s pretty terrible,” she adds with a laugh, “but it’s lutfish. It’s traditional. You have to have it. That, and herring. You need the herring because that’s what you eat as soon as you drink schnapps.”

Also on Swedish Christmas tables are potato sausages, Swedish meatballs and a mixture of red and brown cabbage that is combined with syrup for frying.

Head cheese--two words that some people believe should not appear together in the same sentence--is a combination of veal and pork that is mixed with gelatin and spices. “Then you turn it upside down and serve it like a molded salad,” she says.

There’s also always plenty of glogg, a hot mulled wine she says is “hugely popular for cold nights.”

And what about dessert? Forget the pastry.

“If you go Swedish, rice pudding is it,” she says. “They hide one almond in the pudding, and whoever gets the almond will get married first. That’s the tradition.”

You can find these and other items--including traditional Swedish cookies and pastries--at 600 N. San Fernando Blvd., Burbank. Call (818) 841-3500, Ext. 805.

ENGLISH

Anne Buck, formerly of Oxford, England, says, “English people love their food. We appreciate it so much. Some Americans may cry our food down because it’s not heavily spiced, but we take our time. Americans seem to rush their cooking.”

For Christmas dinner, Buck, co-owner of Cambridge Cupboard in Woodland Hills, says there is even less rushing.

The traditional goose of Charles Dickens’ time has been replaced with a slow-cooked roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and “any vegetable that is in season.” In contrast to California, which has almost as many greens in December as in June, England’s winter vegetable selection is limited. “Usually it’s parsnips, turnips, green beans, Brussels sprouts or something else from the cabbage family.”

Better not fill up too much on the healthy stuff, though, because Buck says the traditional desserts are plentiful:

There is trifle, a cold dessert made with layers of sponge cake, strawberry jam, canned or fresh sliced fruit, gelatin poured over each layer and then topped with custard and whipped cream;

Plum pudding, a rich pudding cooked with rum and brandy that is mixed with fruits and served with hot custard or a sauce of rum and butter;

Mince tarts, served with cream on top or custard;

And there is the Christmas cake, a rich fruit cake with a marzipan coating and icing.

Each of those items--along with pork pies, bacon and kidney pies, Piccalilli, tinned biscuits (cookies), imported Devon cream, chocolate oranges or boxed English chocolates--can be found at this store.

It also carries Christmas crackers, or party poppers. “You cannot have an English holiday without crackers,” Buck insists. “Each one contains a paper hat, a novelty toy and a motto inside. They have a little gun powder in them, and when you pull them they bang.

“You cross arms, hold the cracker of the person sitting next to you and then everyone pulls at the same time. You are required to eat Christmas dinner with a silly little hat on.”

Cambridge Cupboard is at 21012 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills. (818) 883-1980.