Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Sounds like your friend is a wonderful hostess, who thinks about what her guests (you!) would like, and serves it. I've been known to serve Chinese take-out appetizers as well as chicken satay from the local Thai restaurant. Always a big hit!

For 25 years I've been making the mushroom pate recipe from the first Moosewood Cookbook. Whenever I make it, my guests want to know what it is -- looks like liver, but tastes of mushrooms and cream cheese. This one looks interesting, too.

I love this kind of potato salad made with fresh thyme from my herb garden. And no scallions for me, either!

My grandmother's matzoh balls. The recipe she taught me was "a little this, a little that", but somehow it works where other recipes have failed. Every time I make them, I think of her.

we made this for hors d' at xmas - didn't LOVE it. makes an excellent base for a wonderfully delicious creamy 'shroom soup though..

Oops. Forgot to add my second new blog, Larousse Bites - Personal Notes on the Larousse Gastronomique 1961 Edition.

Today's post is "It's Christmas so it must be Cockscombs".

Blog name: Hunter Angler Gardener Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast
My URL: www.honest-food.net
What it's about/tagline: Found foods, foraging, unusual veggies, wild game and fish -- all with serious eating in mind. I am a cook who hunts, not a hunter who cooks. My bent is the Mediterranean (Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal) although I have a weakness for American recipes from the 1600s and 1700s. I also review wines from both the Mediterranean and from my local regional wineries in the Sierra Foothills, Lodi and Clarksburg.

One year, my grandmother ordered New Year's dinner entirely from Neiman Marcus. I don't want to know how expensive it was, but there were things on phyllo dough, crab cakes, some kind of soup, and cheesecake 'lollipops'. But none of us cared about that because there was a lemon chiffon cake sitting half-thawed in the fridge. We used cheap silverware and bent fork tines trying to stuff chewy, sweet, silky chunks in our mouths. YOM.

You know, I just don't get the tater tot thing. But that's probably because I only tried them the first time last year and don't have the childhood associations. That said:

Ore-Ida Toaster Hash Browns are heaven. I love them. I actually like them more than McDonalds hash browns, which is saying something.

Stouffer's Deluxe French Bread Pizza

And my all time favorite - Tower Isles Spicy Jamaican Meat Patties (I'm actually a little surprised not to see anyone pick them.)