Family Foodies

Pumpkin pie is great, but sometimes we want to step outside the box and figure out another way to serve pumpkin for dessert. Never fear, I have just the recipe! (Stolen, with permission, from my mom.)

I can almost guarantee that 99% of the people you serve this to will love it. (There’s always that 1% that we hate inviting over for a meal because they’ll find a reason to not like anything.)

Okay so it’s the holiday season and shrimp and pasta aren’t normal holiday fare.

If you want my opinion, though–and I never run out of opinions–I think anything that tastes really good can be classified as holiday fare. The holidays are about celebrating, and we like to celebrate with delicious food. Therefore, in the spirit of the holiday season, I’m offering this recipe. It’s one of my favorites.

My friend Michelle is one of those people who does everything beautifully, from making crafts to cooking. She has a whimsical sense of style in her crafts and a finely-tuned sense of what goes together to make a delicious dish.

And I can’t even hate her because she’s too nice. Go figure.

Below is one of her salad recipes. This has a great little kick to it, and I have never been able to not go back for seconds!

When it comes to serving soup for the holidays, it just doesn’t get any more authentic than pumpkin soup. At first thought this may sound kind of weird to people. Pumpkin pie is how we’re usually used to eating this large member of the squash family. Sometimes we get a little fancy and have pumpkin milkshakes, pumpkin lattes, or pumpkin bread. But pumpkin soup?

Actually, it’s an elegant and delicious lead-in to a nice Christmas dinner. Seriously, you’ll impress the heck out of people with this.

When I open the menu at a restaurant I immediately look for the hors d’oeuvres. I am a huge fan of finger foods and “little” foods, and I’ll mix anything together on one plate. When it comes to hors d’oeuvres I have no sense of propriety. Mini tacos will sit happily next to won tons, and deep fried mushrooms have no qualms about sharing space with barbecued polish sausage chunks.

There is one hors d’oeuvre that my sister makes on special occasions that I have no problem calling a meal. Trust me when I say this is delicious.

I could find out the exact recipe for a Christmas confection created by the top chef to the Queen of England and stay up all night painstakingly following every step to the letter, and it still wouldn’t turn out as good as anything my mom makes at Christmas.

I’m sure it’s psychological and has to do with pleasant memories of childhood Christmases, but there we are. Mom’s goodies are the best. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I get to eat them.