My First Strata

In The Family Stone, one of my mom's favorite movies, there's a key scene involving a strata. Sarah Jessica Parker's character makes a breakfast strata for her in-laws-to-be, and then later ends up covered in it. I came across a Nigella recipe for a strata and decided to try making it as Christmas morning breakfast for my family.

Happily, it turned out well and no one ended up wearing it. It's actually the perfect easy Christmas morning breakfast because the combination of bread, eggs, and cheese is prepared the night before (in only about 15 minutes time!), so all you need to do in the morning is bake it while you're opening presents. It's also the kind of recipe where you're pretty much an expert at it after your first try, so you can make it over and over again. Truth be told, this picture is actually of my second strata. It was in a prettier dish than the first one I made on Christmas.

Worst Book Award

I have to preface this by saying that I'm not someone who automatically disparages all chick-lit. I've certainly read and enjoyed my fair share (see here, here, and here for proof).

Now that that's out of the way, I can say that Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger is officially one of the worst book's I've ever read.

You might be wondering why the bad title and cover didn't tip me off in the first place. My thought process in picking it was a) I found the book for $1 at a church book sale; b) it said it was by the author of The Devil Wears Prada, which was a decent enough movie; and c) I thought it would be a nice, quick, light read on the heels of the sometimes heavy Little Bee, perfect for the holiday time when I was more interested in baking and watching Christmas movies than reading.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I can't remember ever disliking a book so much while I was reading it as I did with this one. Something made me stick with it to the very end, which only confirmed the bad impression that I had formed at the beginning. My biggest problem with it was that the characters were beyond stereotypical- I literally hated them during every moment of the book.

Not only does this win the award for one of my least-favorite books, but I think this post might win the award for the most scathing book review I've ever done on this blog!

The Twelfth Cookie of Christmas

Twelve Chocolate-dipped Pecan Bars

These are a Barefoot Contessa recipe. How bad could that be?

And that marks the end of the Twelve Cookies of Christmas. I tried a mix of old and new recipes, found a few new favorites (like these pecan bars, and the pumpkin cookies), but most of all I realized that the best cookies are the recipes that my family has made for years and years. I'm glad I did this little baking project, but even more glad that I now have all these cookies to eat! And, yeah, maybe give a few away too.

Merry Christmas!

The Eleventh Cookie of Christmas

Eleven Black and White Striped Cookies

Christmas Collections

It seems like collections have a way of sneaking up on you. You start out getting one or two of something, and then next thing you know, you have a full-blown collection on your hands.

My mom has a big Santa collection that we display every year.

We also display all the snow globes I collected growing up.

Now I might have unintentionally started a nativity collection. This is a ceramic set that my parents brought back from their honeymoon in Mexico.

This is a Lladro set that I got when I was in Bermuda. I like how it's three children carrying toys dressed up as the three wise men. (Those ornaments in the background are from the little tree my family sets up with picture frame ornaments of all of our relatives.)

And this is one I was just given this year- the Peanuts characters dressed up from the play in A Charlie Brown Christmas. I really like Sally as the Angel and Snoopy as the sheep!