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I first made white turkey chili after Thanksgiving this year, in an attempt to use up our pounds and pounds of leftover bird. The recipe was immediately declared a new all-time favorite and will now hold a place in our annual holiday rotation! If you are looking for the perfect day-after-Christmas recipe, your search stops here.
Do you remember Mother's Circus Animal Cookies, those completely amazing pink and white frosted cookies of your youth. (Wait, how old are you?)
I LOVED those preservative-laden treats, so much so that I cried when they went out of business, cheered with glee when they returned, and pouted when they didn't sell them in Georgia. I took matters in my own hands and decided to make my own. Even better, I dressed them up in holiday clothes—now they're almost too cute to eat! (Almost.)
Hop on over to Cooking Channel to get my recipe for Christmas Circus Cookies.
I like to keep a few delicious recipes in my back pocket for holiday gift giving, like fluffy vanilla marshmallows paired with hot cocoa mix, espresso-spiked mocha truffle peanut butter blossoms, or homemade sweet & salty caramel corn.
These toffee-chocolate chip shortbread bars are the newest addition to that go-to list. Consider them the perfect "anti" Christmas cookie—meaning no rolling, sprinkling, or glazing required. Just lots of rich, buttery flavor and a heaping dose of love.
I am terribly embarrassed to admit that my Amazon cookbook wishlist contains 149 items. No small feat, considering the number I already own. Yet I continue to buy them, and still, I never seem to have enough. My mother calls it an addiction; Walt sees them as a pesky nuisance slowly taking over our house. Personally, I see the collection as an opportunity to learn and read, cook and grow. (And last time I checked, nobody judged doctors or lawyers for having too many medical journals or case studies lying around.)
For lovers of the written (food) word, December brings hundreds of new offerings just in time for the receiving giving season. Sadly, nobody seems to want to buy me a cookbook out of fear that I may already own it. I guess I can see where they're coming from, but it means my Amazon Prime account stays pretty active.
In the spirit of Christmas, I thought I'd tell you about a few new cookbooks worthy of giving. Ones that, in fact, I have already gifted myself. The first up, Around the Southern Table, is the latest from Athens, Georgia-based cookbook author Rebecca Lang. Lang paired up with the experts at Southern Living to produce what I think is her best book yet.
Lang's approach to Southern cooking is modern yet approachable; her recipes are precise and impeccably written. To be honest, I don't think I could have written a better cookbook myself. Around the Southern Table is packed with classic, seasonal dishes using fresh ingredients and no funky additives or cans of crap. It's the type of Southern cooking that I like to rally behind. It's what Southern cooking was meant to be.
If the other recipes are as good as this Vidalia Spread (and I'm sure they will be!), my copy will be dogeared and splattered for years to come. Go ahead and save yourself some trouble—buy two copies of Around the Southern Table. One for your favorite cook, and the other for yourself. You know you deserve it...
I finally tackled a recipe I've been meaning to recreate for years: from-scratch green bean casserole (over at The Kitchn.) As if fresh green beans bathed in a creamy, dreamy mushroom béchamel wasn't enough, I topped it off with grated sharp cheddar and crispy beer-battered Vidalia onions. Campbell's, eat your little heart out!
