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Christmas Breakfast ideas

Posted in Breakfast, Christmas, Entertaining Ideas, Holiday Recipes, Holidays, tagged , , , on December 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Christmas morning the last thing you want to do is be tied down to the kitchen making breakfast. Plan ahead now and you can have a fabulous breakfast on the table with a minimal amount of effort!

So here are a few ideas…

Quick Breads

You can purchase these pre-made at stores like Costco (their apple or pumpkin bread is sooooo good), you can buy packaged mixes that are easy to whip together or make them from scratch. If you are planning to make them either from a mix of scratch, make these now so you don’t have to mess with them in the morning. If you want to be Betty Baker and go from scratch, here is a recipe for yummy banana bread.

Sweet Rolls

You can purchase pre-made sweet rolls or cinnamon rolls or whip together a batch. Just pop in the oven for a few minutes to warm and you’ve got a breakfast that everyone will enjoy. Here is a recipe for super easy cinnamon rolls that make my mouth water just thinking about them.

Casseroles

A breakfast casserole you can assemble the night before then pop in the oven to bake the next morning is ideal. They are warm and filling and will hopefully carry your starving crew through gift opening and morning festivities. Serve with a fresh fruit and it is a wonderful meal.

My favorite breakfast casserole involves ham and hashbrowns. It is so easy to make and so tasty good. Assemble the night before, set out for about 30 minutes and then bake.

Here is another recipe that is quite filling. You can use any type of meat you like, just make sure it is pre-cooked.

Ingredients

Beat eggs, then add milk and combine.

Dice up some ham (or crumble cooked bacon or sausage).

Add ham, breadcrumbs and salt to mixture.

Blend in some cheese.

Pour into greased pan, cover and refrigerate overnight.

Bake the next morning!

and enjoy!

Breakfast Bake

6 eggs

2 cups milk

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups diced cooked ham (or bacon or crumbled cooked sausage)

1 cup shredded colby jack cheese

3 cups croutons

Beat eggs and milk, add in remaining ingredients. Pour into a greased 9 x 13 inch casserole dish and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate 8 hours or overnight. Remove from fridge and let set for about 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 40 minutes or until eggs are set.

Enjoy!

Happy Holiday Entertaining and Merry Christmas!

Shanna

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Christmas Memories

Posted in Christmas, Entertaining at Home, Family, Holidays, Musings, tagged , on December 23, 2010| 2 Comments »

My sister, as a baby.

For many of us, the holiday season is much more than an opportunity to eat too much food, spend too much money and get presents (notice I did not say too many – can there be such a thing?).

The holidays are about the relationships we share with those we love. About the special feelings we keep in our hearts and the individual moments of innate sweetness that we want to remember forever.

The Christmas season always make me think of my sister. She was born with a brain tumor that continued to grow throughout her life. She also had epilepsy and never quite reached mental maturity. Five years ago, she passed away from head trauma resulting from one of her seizures.

She was 14 years old when I was born and really messed up the good thing she had going. She had been the baby of the family for all that time and liked things as they were. Along came this interloper who threw the world as she knew it into a tailspin. To say there was a bit of resentment on her part would be a mild understatement. Most of the time, I think my presence was a constant reminder that her position had been usurped.

But Christmas…Christmas, with its wonderful magical air would sweep over her with a beautiful blanket of peace and goodwill and things would be different. The desire to have fun, to be good because Santa was watching, took over.

My Dad and brothers with my sister - mid 1950s.

She would start making presents for everyone. Under different circumstances, I think she would have been a great artist. She liked to draw cartoons and did a bang up job with it. Her favorite character to draw was Snoopy. She also liked to do stitching. The last Christmas she was really with us, she stitched up two little pictures of dogs (another of her favorite things) and gave one to me and one to Hubby.

Although she wasn’t overly fond of the great outdoors, before Christmas she could be found outside attempting to build a snowman or plotting some way to bombard unsuspecting individuals with snowballs.

She would get involved with things she normally ignored the rest of the year, like baking and decorating. The decorating would nearly throw my Mom into a tailspin sometimes.

I don’t know where it came from but there was a music box – a little golden bird cage with a tiny bird inside that would tweet a holiday tune (which I can’t even remember now). She would dig through the decorations until she found it, the nostalgic aroma of bayberry wafting out of the storage box and filling the room with a scent that forevermore will bring a picture to mind of our family decking the halls, circa 1978. Once found, she would have that bird tweeting over and over until I thought my parents would throw it in a snowbank. As annoying as it was, it wasn’t Christmas until she got that music box out and played it a dozen times.

I’d like the opportunity, just once more, to watch her play that music box, to hear the bird tweet, to see the look of wonder and joy that filled her face each holiday season.

So my wish for you this holiday season is a wish that you cherish every precious moment with those you love and hold dear. Make some beautiful Christmas memories with them this year. Ones that take up a very special little corner in your heart.

With Christmas Love,

Shanna

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Gingerbread Bars

Posted in Christmas, Desserts, Holiday Recipes, Holidays, tagged , , on December 22, 2010| 5 Comments »

 

gingerbread barsYears ago, I tasted gingerbread cookies and fell in love! The spices, the molasses, the soft chewiness.

Absolutely delightful.

I embarked on an adventure of finding a recipe to make my own. What I ended up with was a recipe for cut-out gingerbread cookies that was delicious but very involved and not a lot of fun to make.

Then, a few weeks ago, I attended a cookie exchange party and my tastebuds did a happy dance over some amazing gingerbread bars. I quickly abandoned plans to make my cut out gingerbread cookies and instead made the bars.

Even Hubby, who generally turns up his nose at most sweets, was impressed. Yeah, they were that good.

Ingredients

Mix flour, baking soda, salt and spices together and set aside.

Spray your pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Whip out your parchment paper (you can get it at kitchen supply stores and some grocery stores).

Line the pan with parchment then spray it with non-stick cooking spray.

Cream together sugars and the butter until pale and fluffy.

Add vanilla and molasses.

Gradually add in flour mixture.

Spread in the pan and bake for 25 minutes or until edges are golden brown.

Bars hot out of the oven. Leave in the pan until completely cool.

Frost with cream cheese frosting.

Cut into bars.

Top with pecans.

Yum!

Gingerbread Bars

2 3/4 cups flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

2 1/2 sticks butter

1 1/4 cups packed light-brown sugar

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

3 eggs

1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/3 cup unsulfured molasses

Cream Cheese Frosting

Glazed Pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 17 x 12 inch rimmed baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray. Line bottom with a piece of parchment, cut to fit. Coat parchment with spray.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt and spices.

Soften butter and then beat on medium-high speed with sugars until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add in vanilla and molasses. Reduce speed to low and gradually add in flour mixture then beat just until comvined.

Spread batter into prepared pan. It seems like you won’t have enough batter to fill the pan, but you will, keep spreading. Bake until edges are set and golden, about 25 minutes. Let cool completely in pan.

Remove from pan, frost with cream cheese frosting and cut into 2-inch squares. Top each square with a glazed pecan.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 box powdered sugar

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 tsp. vanilla

Combine all ingredients until smooth and creamy.

Enjoy!

Happy Holiday Entertaining!

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How to Create a Holiday Buffet

Posted in Christmas, Dishes and Serving Pieces, entertain, Entertaining at Home, Holidays, tagged , , , on December 21, 2010| 1 Comment »

So, you’ve got a houseful of guests arriving and are starting to go into panic mode because you want everything to be beautiful and wonderful and perfect!

Take a deep breath and relax! Remember, the most important thing about upcoming gatherings is building relationships not worrying about dust bunnies.

There are some simple things you can do now to help ease your stress load later this week.

If you will be serving your meal buffet style, here is an easy step-by-step guide to setting up a buffet table. And you can set it up now! No need to wait until the last-minute.

Start with a blank table. Get it positioned where you’d like to have your buffet. If you want the buffet to run down both sides of a table, make sure there is plenty of room for guests to get completely around it. I like to push my table against the wall because it gives me the opportunity to be a bit more creative with how I design the buffet.

Drape your table with a neutral cloth. You can use white or cream, but I like black best. It makes the colors on the table pop and come to life. It also hides spills and stains so your guests won’t worry because they can’t see it!  I use sheets a lot because they are inexpensive, easy care and come in a variety of sizes. Please ignore the fact I did not iron the wrinkles out of this sheet before putting on the table! Promise you will not tell my mother! Please!

Next, you want to add height to your table. Focus the tallest point off-center. I like to put it off to one side and create a bit of a “waterfall” effect. By that, I mean that your height is at the back and on one side and the height decreases as you come toward the other side and to the front. You want the highest point to be where  you will place your centerpiece. Think about what serving pieces you want to use and place height accordingly. For example, you wouldn’t place a huge platter on a small box. If you don’t have sturdy boxes, you can use stacks of books or even cooking pots turned upside down. As you can see, I’ve even used a little storage crate.

You are going to cover up your height elements (boxes) with another cloth that matches your base cloth. Hello beautiful black drape! Don’t worry about making it perfectly smooth. It won’t be. Embrace the lumps and wrinkles and give them a bit of a  fluff to look artistic.

Here is where your colors are going to start to pop. Choose a third cloth that goes with your theme, scheme or matches your serving pieces. The table I’m doing today is heavy on red with some cream accents, so I went with a traditional holiday plaid. You want to drape this casually over the table.

And the next thing you know, you’ve got a beautiful buffet ready to greet your guests. Go ahead and position all your serving pieces, tweak them to just how you like them and leave them there until you are ready to fill them with food. If there is a possibility you will forget what food goes in which serving dish, label them with sticky notes. You can get this table set up now and save yourself oodles of time the day your company is arriving. Just drape the entire table with another sheet to keep any dust (or kiddie fingers) from landing on the dishes.

Wasn’t that easy?

Now, go out there and create your own beautiful holiday buffet table!

Happy Holiday Entertaining!

Shanna

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