Holiday entertaining season is now in full swing. Offering homemade refreshments to your guests is the ultimate expression of love and hospitality. We are all time-starved during the big rush, and premade items are good for last minute visitors. With a little planning, you can present your guests with pretty, and pretty impressive, nibbles to go with your best holiday beverages.
Each year at Thanksgiving, folks divide up into two camps. Sweet potato and no sweet potato. For the sweet potato lovers, further subdivision yields the sweet sweet potato side dish aficionados (marshmallow people, I’m talking to you) and those who insist on savory sweet potato dishes at the holiday table, like my Ginger Scallion Sweet Potatoes. Me, I like it all. I grew up with what my parents referred to as candied yams, sweet potato chunks swimming in a sweet glaze and more of an afterthought to the meal. It was our duty to serve them, but no one was clamoring for their presence. And if memory serves, they were canned and not fresh, an oddity because of the global availability of sweet potatoes in autumn. Continue reading