Holiday Cooking Blogger Style!

Well it's that time of year again and I'm so thrilled that the wonderful lady at "Overwhelmed with Joy" is hosting this again.

Last year I shared a couple of recipes from my Portuguese Culture, they were some of the most common Holiday meals served during Christmas.

We don't have Thanksgiving in Portugal so Christmas is pretty much the biggest family get together, there's tons of food everywhere and family and huge christmas trees surrounded by an ocean of gifts. Yes, when you have a huge family it literally takes over the living room, but it's so much fun.

So I'm sharing a few more recipes with you AND giving you the link to my Holiday Cooking Blogger Style First Edition last year in case you missed it and want the recipes that were shared there.

Rabanadas - Portuguese Christmas "French Toast"

* 1 baguette loaf of bread
* 1 egg
* 200 ml (3/4 cup) milk
* Olive oil
* Sugar and cinnamon

Cut a baguette into 1 cm (1/2") thick rounds; remove the crusts; dip into an egg beaten with milk - 1 egg to approximately 200 ml (3/4 c.) milk.
Fry in hot olive oil in a skillet for a few seconds on each side drain; sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

The next recipe is one that we had many times for Christmas Eve, it's like a bread but stuffed with ham and bacon or sometimes even Chourico........it's SO good.

Bola de Carne - Meat Bread

Ingredients
6 eggs beaten
½ glass of vegetebale oil
pinch of salt
1 lb of flour
2 package of dry east ( Dissolved in warm water)
1 “chourico” (chourizo from Spain or Italy can serve the propose) sliced
¼ of smoked ham cut in pieces


Beat the egg together with the yeast and oil. Mix with the flour and salt.
Knead and place in a greased bowl to rise. This makes a moist sticky dough.
Put in a greased bowl turn to coat and cover. Let it rise to double, about 2 hours.
Traditionally the meat is spread in a single layer in the middle of the loaf. I prefer to mix it throughout the loaf .
Prepare you bread pans and divide the dough in two pieces.
Mix the meats in the dough and place in the loaf pans to rise a second time.
Let rises for about 1/2 hour and then bake in a preheated 450 deg. Oven for 30 to 40 minutes.

And lastly here is a soup that I think every portuguese person knows.......it's sooooo good and I remember eating it many times during the holidays. My greatgrandmother used to make it and it was to die for.......rich and filling and just wonderful.

CALDO VERDE - PORTUGUESE KALE SOUP

Serves 4

½ lb of shredded kale
1 lb of potatoes
1 small chourico sliced (a good hard smoky sausage can be used
even pepperoni in a pinch)
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
pinch of salt

Peel the potatoes and heat in a quart of water with the garlic and chourico. When the potatoes are well cooked make a puree and continue to heat. Meanwhile wash the shredded kale and add to the puree and boil. Add half the olive oil and cook the kale. When ready to serve season to taste. Add the remaining olive oil (use as much as you like) and serve with the bread.

There's a WHOLE LOTTA COOKING going on....

First thing, before you even go any further, if you haven't already done so, I suggest you RUN, not walk, RUN RUN over to "Overwhelmed with Joy". She is hosting the "Holiday Cooking, Blogger Style" recipe exchange today.

Go share some of your favorite recipes or be prepared to be overwhelmed by food. Yes, I made the mistake of visiting some of the blogs before breakfast and now I'm just starving, salivating and hallucinating the holiday table filled with all that yummy food.

So here, I am looking out for you, here's a cup of coffee and some bacon and eggs, oh and toast, this way you won't be affected as badly as I was.

I've been sitting here getting prepared for the recipes, trying to figure out how to save them all, and there's so many that I'm overwhelmed with joy (literally). So I made a folder in my Bookmarks called "Holiday Cooking" and I'm saving all the links there, later during the week, I'll go through and individually copy them, print them out etc. I figure with so many great dishes to try I will probably have enough to make my own little cookbook....how neat huh???

With all this Holiday talk it got me thinking about my family traditions. Reading about some of the other ladies' traditions also brought back great memories from my childhood and it got me wondering if maybe we could have a Holiday Tradition Day, maybe November 1st???

We could all share our family traditions, different heritages and beliefs, it would be really neat to see how everyone celebrates their holidays. It would be a great place to also get some ideas for those that want to start their own but don't quite know what works for their family. So what do you think, will you join me on November 1st for some Family Holiday Traditions???

It won't be hard, and nothing that you have to really prepare for, just help me spread the word (if you wish of course), use the banner above and then on the 1st of November, I will put up a Mr. Linky and we can all share our traditions. See??? Not hard at all :)

The kids were really disappointed about the Pumpkin Farm, but we told them that there is still one weekend before Halloween, after daddy gets back, so we're planning on going then. Because we couldn't go, we decided to go get a few Halloween Decorations and let them do what they wanted. So this is what we have going on so far:

Just excuse the leaves in front of the door, I haven't swept those up yet or put away the hose. Hubby and I are going to put all the summer stuff away this saturday, so that he'll help me before he leaves.

I also picked up a wonderful candle called "Pumpkin Pie"....OH.MY.WORD!!! It's just amazing, makes me crave pie all day long. Although now that I think about it, I don't know if that's a good thing, since the potpourri you see on the top picture is called Pumpkin Pie Spice and THAT alone makes me gain 2 pounds everytime I walk in the kitchen.

Woke up this morning to cloudy skies and really cold temperatures. You know it's dark outside when your children ask you on the way to school, "why are we up already, isn't it still night time?", you look at the clock in the car and it says 8:15 am. Oh Glorious Fall!!!!

As I was driving back home I couldn't help but to ooohhh and aahhhh at the trees that abound our neighborhoods. There's orange, green, yellow, brown and a beautiful pinkish red.
Here's an example...I took the picture two weeks ago and then this morning again, look at the difference, how beautiful :)

Well it's lunch time for Nicholas, so I better get moving. Don't forget again, go on over to "Overwhelmed with Joy" for the Holiday recipe exchange, and also don't forget to check Laura's blog for her Menu Plan Monday.