Thursday, October 04, 2018

Christmas 2018 with Southern Living Inspired Ideas for Holiday Cooking and Decorating

Christmas with Southern Living 2018: Inspired Ideas for Holiday Cooking and Decorating is a wonderful, traditional book for decades good companion of thousand of people with its advice, all dedicated at the arrival of Christmas and at the best, possible celebration of this feast for your family. 
In this edition, that you can also of course present to one of your best friend, because elegant and a real treasure, we will meet decorations and recipes for creative new inspiring ideas for this Christmas; decorations will be a homage to Scotland at first; the warm of Christmas is symbolized through wood and symbols taken from the woodland. Cone, pine comes, will be an important decoration to add to your gift, but you can use them, a personal suggestion, also as beautiful place cards if you paint them in gold, red, silver, blue; they will add an element of rusticity and real connection with nature and trees;  Christmas is also symbolized by the Christmas's tree. In particular if you live in a city they will make the difference.
While warm blankets and a good fireplace will be romantic companions of these cold and magical days, succulent recipes will start to let you appreciate a possible menu for, not just the day of Christmas, but also for the days before the arrival of this big, important holiday.
A German punch with apples, cherry, honey, hibiscus and more, a traditional panzanella, prepared with bread and many veggies for a taste of freshness during the darkest moment of the year; this dish is traditionally, a summer bread salad, appreciated in Italy in particular. If you love pear and you want to prepare something delicious, goes for the pear-chestnut galette with brown-butter caramel sauce.
Maybe the most important part of the arrival of Christmas are parties.
Many ideas for an elegant house, special places where to keep sweet treats for your guests, I suggest you from all these recipes the honey-walnut crackers and fire-balls.
The arrival of Christmas means holly and ivy, enchantment and renewal, regeneration and magic but also decorations in grade to give to the house a "countryside's touch" and a true Christmas's spirit   with a lot of succulent dishes.
All from the profound South of the USA, you will find a wonderful recipe for a great Eggnog, a Southern Pecan Soup, Brown Butter-Garlic Mashed Potatoes, a Christmas Pudding with Brandy Sauce but also, a brown butter-roaster branzino, a delicious turkey's recipe, a pistachio and Parmesan crusted lamb rack. If you want to try a wonderful dish plenty of proteins and good in every moment of the year, you can try farro and wild mushroom casserole, cast-iron cipollini onions with maple and sherry, root vegetable ratatouille, or winter baked beans.
We all know that desserts are a special part of Christmas; substantially the one in grade to let us gain some weight during the holidays. I found beautiful this panettone's recipe. Traditional italian cake, it is delicious; but why not also trying these beautiful mini meringue Christmas wreaths? Sure: cookies are a must for Christmas. I picked up for you Jammy shortbread cookies, spiced rum balls, and some benne seed tuile. Your options will be many more.
A last chapter is all dedicated at the word: share. Let's share what we make with our hands, deliciously for Christmas. It can be a tart, it can be a special cake, some preserves, cookies, in particular these ones can be baked in great quantity for friends, coworkers, people we love and we want to thank, someone stopping by for a visit and that we want to thank with a special personal homemade gift.
The book has also a section for planning the holiday in the best way.
From the advice for the house, passing through the choice of a true Christmas's tree with tips and suggestions, it includes the Christmas Card List, Gifts&Greetings, with ideas for the next Christmas in case you see that you must correct something :-)

Beautiful cover, wonderful illustrations, more than 100 recipes all tasted, new advice for a different kind of decorations this year, Christmas with Southern Living is the indispensable guide if you want to live a beautiful, sunny, unique Christmas.


Highly recommended.

I thank Meredith, Oxmoor House for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

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