Christmas

Still looking for the perfect Christmas gift that is easy, inexpensive, and loved by all?

Your problem is solved: give the gift of fudge! That's right. Mix up a few batches, pop them in some festive foil baking cups, and nestle them in decorative tissue paper and tins. Then kick back with a hot chocolate and enjoy your favorite Christmas movies while everybody else kills themselves looking for a parking space at the mall.

No baking is required. None. Zip. It can be made ahead and refrigerated, so it saves you time. Plus, each batch costs only a few dollars and can be made in less than 10 minutes.

Jeff and I have been starving ourselves for the past few days. Well, not actually starving. We did have our morning coffee. Oh, and I sneaked in a couple of double chocolate pomegranate cookies yesterday. But those don't count. I was recipe testing.

Why are we starving ourselves? Because on Christmas Eve night, we will be enjoying a traditional Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. That means fried calamari, fried smelts, and crab cakes. Snail salad, bacala (a dried, salted fish), and shrimp cocktail. (Those are just the starters.) Then comes the pasta. Two types of pasta, actually -- one with mixed seafood including shrimp, scallops, and lobster; the other with olive oil, clam sauce, and parsley. Then we'll finish with jumbo stuffed shrimp and garlicky broccoli rabe.

From the Huffington Post

When you think of Christmas dinner, what's on the table? Maybe a standing rib roast? A turkey with all the trimmings? Maybe a ham? For us, and for lots of excitable eaters across the Southwest, we also think of tamales. This traditional Mexican comfort food, eaten for breakfast or dinner (or anything in between really), is a cornmeal dumpling, stuffed with other goodies and steamed in a corn husk.

The most traditional tamales are stuffed with pork simmered for hours in a red chile sauce, green chiles and cheese or chicken with salsa verde. But we've also enjoyed sweet dessert tamales filled with raisins and pineapple on occasion. We want to warn you: you'd be hard-pressed to find a tamales recipe that isn't a bit of a project. Simmering pork requires time.

Blending the masa harina with the -- ahem -- lard (or whichever fat you decide to use) takes patience. Filling the corn husks with the right amount of filling takes practice and a willingness to mess up a few times.

But the result is completely worth it. Tamales are some of the heartiest, most comforting winter fare we can think of. Whether they're brand new to your family and friends, or a long-lost tradition, we really think 2012 is the tamale's year. Happy holidays and don't overfill your corn husks!

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No one wants a face full of snow. But that’s what I had all too often growing up in those brutal Chicago winters. I always seemed to be in the middle of a blizzard walking against gale force winds – which is why I spent more time walking backwards than I did forward.

And no one wants to step into slush. But when I did, my mother would put my shoes in the oven. Usually about thirty minutes too long. My shoes would come out smoking and ruined, which was not unlike many of our family dinners.

And no one wants to be a poster child for static electricity. But the winter air was so dry that my hair repelled my brush, my pants clung to my socks, and touching anything would send enough voltage through me to light up Soldier Field.

Those were not a few of my favorite things. So when Christmas vacation would approach, I was pretty much champing at the bit to get out of Dodge.

But it never happened.