The Stockings Were Hung :: Favorite Recipes

One of the things that I love about the holidays, including poor little Thanksgiving that gets skipped right over, are the favorite family recipes that get pulled out and used. Since I'm one of those people who believes that recipes are meant to be shared, not selfishly hoarded, today I'm sharing a few of my favorite recipes that have been handed down to me.

My great-grandmother's recipe for Butter Cookies was one of the things that I had to take with us when we went overseas. It just wouldn't have felt like Christmas without decorated butter cookies. As you can see in the photos, I might have been drenched in sweat in Indonesia, but I found a way to bring a little Christmas to the tropics! I didn't have any cookie cutters with me, so I free-hand cut all the shapes and then decorated them with a home-made icing bag. It was so hot, the icing melted rather quickly, but the general idea was still there. As the Nester is always saying, it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful!

  

Carrot Souffle is one of those recipes that has been in the family forever, but when people first hear the name or look at the mashed carrots, they (sometimes not-so) politely turn their noses up at it. However, if you can get the skeptics to at least try a "no thank you" helping, nine times out of ten they will be back up at the buffet getting a much larger second helping. Be prepared to have the recipe on hand, because people will ask for it. As the child who wanted nothing to do with any cooked vegetable, Carrot Souffle was the huge exception to my self-imposed rule. I wish I had a beautiful photo of it freshly out of the oven, but I never think to take one, so what you're left with is the leftover picture - literally.

I really, really wish I could show you pictures of the Oatmeal Pudding Cookies, but there really wouldn't be any point to it. They don't look like anything special, but the texture and taste are out of this world. If faced with a container of these cookies, I could easily eat all 5 dozen in one sitting. They are that good. Once upon a time, we were leaving on a jet plane for the other side of the world and my mother handed me a Ziploc bag of these cookies and a bag of the Ranch Oyster Crackers (recipe below) to take with us. Needless to say, I spent the next 30+ hours of travel wiping away tears and consoling myself with some oatmeal goodness and oyster cracker yumminess - WAY better than airline food. 

One more for the road? Every year on New Years Day, my mom always made Black Eyed Peas and Topping. Mom never believed in luck - good or bad - so I'm quite sure we didn't eat them to bring good luck into the new year (apparently a Southern tradition), but however it started in our family, it's another one of those traditions that has stuck. It took me a long time to finally warm up to the idea of pouring a juicy topping over my black eyed peas, but once I started, I never went back.

I could go on and on with recipes that my family begs my mom to make each year - her Cinnamon Rolls are out of this world good - but I'll stop here because I think you get the idea. What about you? Do you have any "secret" family recipes that have been handed down from one generation to the next? Do you ever share your recipes or do you like to keep them as something special to your family? If you're up for sharing, how about a little recipe swap?! {wink}

If you missed the first three posts of this eight week series, you can find the others by clicking HERE.