Elegant, Easy Brunch: Croque Madame

 Every year my parents host a big party on Christmas day, which always involves my mom cooking enough food to feed a small army. On top of all the normal festivities, this year my grandma and uncle came from Venezuela to spend the holiday with us. So the day after Christmas, we had a full house of people with a long morning of cleaning up and packing ahead of us all, with everyone feeling a bit lazy from the previous day's exertions. With Greg as my sous chef, I took on the task of making family brunch. On the menu, Croque Madame.

Christmas Cookie Multiplication

I have baked and eaten A LOT of cookies over the last two weeks.  In addition to all of the indulgences that normally go with this time of year, I participated in two cookie exchanges last week – one with my class and one with my book club.

 

My class's cookies, pic courtesy of my friend Leticia.

If you’ve been wishing for a group of x-mas elves to help you create a plethora of holiday goodies, this is the next best thing. The way a cookie exchange works is that each participant bakes a batch of cookies, then all of the cookies are pooled together and redistributed so that everyone gets to take home a wonderful assortment of homemade treats.

It’s so much fun to see all the different things that your friends have baked, and then you have a variety of delicious baked goods to enjoy and to offer guests that might drop by. My book club had a party to exchange our cookies, and then later that week I served the cookies to visiting friends.  Basically, this practice creates a chain of deliciousness and happy memories.

I thought I’d pass on a little of this holiday decadence through these pictures, on this Christmas day when I am feeling so lucky and thankful for all of the wonderful people in my life -- my family and friends, including all of those that  baked and ate these cookies.

Happy Holidays!

Click here for the recipe for my chocolate chip cookies. They're awesome.

Thanksgiving in California Wine Country

Wine is a big deal at our family’s Thanksgivings.

We spend Thanksgivings with Greg’s family (my fam gets X-mas) and every other year we head out to Santa Rosa for Thanksgiving at my sister-in-law's house. This is always a big, festive event, which in my mind is set apart from other Thanksgiving celebrations by two factors in particular: pie and wine.