Brandy (of Nutmeg Nanny) and I started this throughout-the-year holiday cooking event!   The event is called “All Through the Year Cheer…Cooking with Faith and Nutmeg Nanny” (thanks to Brandy for the adorable name!). 

 

What It’s All About:  Brandy and I both have a love for the holidays.  Our favorite time of year lasts from early fall straight through until New Year’s Day.  But for us, the holidays are more than just the actual day of the holiday itself…it’s everything leading up to that day, all the glitter and glow of the preparation, planning, and festivities. 

 

Where the Idea Came From:  A while ago, on Brandy’s blog, she mentioned that she had started looking for new Christmas cookie recipes.  I was so excited (I was happy to learn that mid-summer I wasn’t the only one who was thinking about Christmas!), so I emailed Brandy asking her if she would be interested in doing some kind of Christmas cookie recipe event with me.  Brandy agreed, and she and I decided to carry out our idea through holidays year round.

 

What We’ll Be Doing:  2-4 weeks before a holiday, Brandy and I will make an announcement on All Through the Year Cheer, as well as on both of our individual blogs; from that time until the holiday, we will post recipes related to the upcoming holiday. 

 

How Can You Participate?:  A few days before the holiday, Brandy and I will post a MckLinkly list on All Through the Year Cheer, asking people to submit their own holiday recipes…all you have to do is enter the link to your recipe in the list.  Or if you prefer, you can email us (allthroughtheyearcheer@hotmail.com) your recipe along with a photo of the finished product.  If you have a blog, please mention and link back to All Though the Year Cheer in your post.

 

You don’t need a blog to be able to submit a recipe!  You can just email us and we’ll include your recipe in the round-up. 

 

Your holiday recipe can be for any type of dish that you feel is related to that holiday.  The day after your recipe submissions we’ll post the round-up along with the winner.  Brandy and I will be reviewing the recipes and selecting a winner who will receive a small prize!

  

Holidays We’ll Be Celebrating: 

New Year’s Day (January 1^st)

Valentine’s Day (February 14^th)

April Fool’s Day (April 1^st)

Easter Sunday (First Sunday after first full moon during spring)

Memorial Day (Last Monday in May)

Independence Day (July 4)

Labor Day (First Monday in September)

Halloween (October 31^st)

Thanksgiving Day (Fourth Thursday in November)

Christmas Day (December 25^th)

Eid al-Fitr (Date varies)

Hanukkah* (Date varies)

 

*For Hanukkah, Brandy and I were both interested in celebrating it, but neither of us had any recipes or knowledge of Hanukah customs.  Chaya (of Sweet and Savory Says It All) has kindly agreed to host Hanukah for this year!  Please see her blog for more information on this.

 

For more information, please check out All Through the Year Cheer!

A Few of My Family’s Holiday Traditions:  Since I was a child, my sister and I always loved helping my mom in the kitchen cooking holiday foods.  Like so many homes, the kitchen was the heart of ours.  Our kitchen was warm and cozy, decorated in sunflowers and soft yellows and browns, and there were always delicious smells wafting from it.  For Thanksgiving, of course we made a turkey dinner with gravy, complete with walnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, green bean casserole, homemade white and oatmeal breads, and then deep dish apple and pumpkin pies for dessert. 

 

The day after Thanksgiving my mom, sister, and I (and this year my niece too – she just turned 6 and is ready for shopping days with the girls!) wake up early to brave the mad rush of “Black Friday” and go Christmas shopping.  After that we go to my parents’ house and get my mom’s Christmas decorations out of the attic…I am not exaggerating, she has about 12 large boxes full.  Then we haul them downstairs and spend the afternoon taking down my mom’s year-round décor and putting up the Christmas trimmings (everything except the tree).  Two weeks before Christmas we all go out to dinner and then to pick out a tree together.  We usually go to a tree nursery, but we actually have gone out to the country to cut down our own in the past.  Then we go back to my parents’ house and decorate the tree with the smell of pine in the air (nothing makes the house smell better than a fresh Christmas tree!), while watching It’s a Wonderful Life.

 

For Christmas supper we have a huge meal similar to Thanksgiving, but usually with a different roasted meat like chicken or roast beef, and fewer embellishments to the meal.  One of my favorite holiday meals is our Christmas Eve feast…we have a spread of hors d’oeuvres and appetizers like canapés, a cheese, cracker, and sausage platter, a crudités platter, fresh bread with some type of dip (like spinach and artichoke dip with fresh bread, rye dip, or fondue), and all manner of delicious morsels that comprise our very own tapas meal.

 

Christmas baking is one of our most special traditions.  After all, we get to make special cookies that we look forward to making all year!  While doing our Christmas baking my mom always has Christmas carols playing.  We all sing along, drink mulled cider, peppermint hot cocoa, or eggnog, and admire my mom’s twinkling Christmas lights.  My mom’s Christmas cookie repertoire includes Hello Dollies, Russian Tea Cakes (also called Mexican Wedding Cakes or Butterballs), Schnecken (a German cinnamon pastry with a sour cream based dough), and Christmas Cutouts with Vanilla Frosting.  These cookies are all fantastically delicious, but year after year you start to want to try a few new ones.  And so, the idea for our holiday recipe event was born!