Don't get me wrong. I love candy canes, gingerbread and peppermint bark. And we will surely be making and decorating cookies this week. 

But sometimes it's good to be a little salty.

In addition to our ginger sugar Christmas cookies, these are some of our favorite funky alternatives, all using not-sugar bomb cereals as an essential ingredient.

Furikake Chex Mix
It's easy, packages up well, and is a most welcome change-up from all the sweet action going on during this time of the year. My son, the Chex Mix Jedi, declares his preferred combinations to be Crispix and pretzels or Rice Chex, Honeycombs and pretzels. Capn Crunch steer clear you should for this.

This takes a little more than an hour to make. However, in the spirit of full disclosure, it didn't take me much time at all because my #1 son made this batch for me. 

Click here for the recipe.

My Daddy's Energy Bars
This is probably one of the healthier treats. Yes, it has marshmallows, Rice Krispies and butter. BUT it also includes oatmeal, raisins, nuts and peanut butter.

My Dad made these for years and now my nieces have taken over the annual 'baking,' which means microwaving for less than 10 minutes.

Click here for the recipe.

Cranberry Cereal Biscotti
This has been one of the most popular items at our annual Christmas party for the past two years. The cereal makes it crunchy but without becoming molar-cracking, as when some biscotti can be a tad hard.

Click here for the recipe.

'Tis the Season. Eat Well. Be Well. 

We did the Costco run this weekend, and of course, picked up a chicken. It's the poultry equivalent of Mary Poppins' magic bottomless bag. One $4.99 Costco Rotisserie Chicken will fuel for 4-5 meals this week. 

Here's what what's cooking. I'm using up the orphans from last week. So we won't be wasting the rest of the cornbread from last week's chili, an errant red pepper, part of a humongous red onion, and the Costco-sized bag of broccoli florets.

Sunday--Pasta with Broccoli, Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Shredded (Costco) Chicken, as made by the husband. This is not a new recipe, but an unfortunate "I forgot!" so look for a tardy posting later this week.

Monday--Costco chicken with Cornbread Stuffing (using the previously noted leftover cornbread), roasted broccoli w/garlic & pancetta, and Okinawan sweet potatoes. I might even make some gravy. The all-oven meal.

Tuesday--What Started Out as Tyler Florence's Pork Chops. There is no picture of this, and we haven't had it all winter yet.

Wednesday--Sweet and Sour Chicken, Yaki Musubi and Tangerine Spinach, Take 2. I'll use Drumettes here.

Thursday--BBQ (Costco) Chicken Pizza, with red onions and extra red peppers from last week's fruit salsa.

Friday--(Costco) Chicken Divan, using the rest of the Costco broccoli.

Saturday--Nachos with Spanish Rice, Warm Jalapeno Cheese Sauce, Guacamole and yes, if there is any more of it, the rest of the Costco Chicken.

Eat Well. Be Well.

Everyone who knows our house realizes that I do not bake very well, and that my husband is an extraordinary baker. The way I see it, cooking is more a liberal arts (i.e., art history) activity and baking is a science (i.e., electrical engineering).

Cooking tends to be far more forgiving, and doesn't typically punish a free-flowing, qualitative, don't-exactly-measure, and make some educated substitutions methodology. Soup going bland? I can add something to fix it. Too spicy? I can fix that too.

Baking, on the other hand, is all about precision and science. Measure. Stir too much give you a flat cake. Stir too little--lumpy flour balls in your cake. Put hot liquid into cold beaten eggs too fast and you're stuck with bastardized scrambled eggs. Do it slowly and the most miraculous custard emerges.

So when I decided it was time to make Vanilla Cranberry Bread Pudding, even my kids were skeptical. "Why don't you wait 'til Dad comes home?" and "I think he said he was coming home REALLY early."  

For the record, I did this all by myself. I did not have a baking menehune come in the afternoon to make it for me. However, except for pouring hot cream into beaten eggs, this recipe is extremely forgiving. The size of the loaf of the bread can vary, and the ingredients are very straightforward. And I learned that if ladle hot cream into cold beaten eggs slowly while stirring (and holding your breath and praying), you do not get scrambled eggs.

Next time, I'm doing this with dried apricots and maybe adding a little lemon juice. Or coconut and pineapple. Or maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead.

Click here for the recipe that even I can make well.

This weekend we held our 20-something annual Christmas party potluck. When my husband and I were recently settled, working crazy, slightly homesick, 'adult holiday orphans', we figured we'd have a little party and maybe this would get us invited to a one of our friends' families for a 'real' Christmas and/or New Year's.

Now it is officially considered tradition. Our cooking has gotten better (and our cooking mishaps are legendary).  We've gone through sig-O's, newlyweds, babies, 2nd marriages, and growing-up kids. We have a bona-fide ohana here, and it would be weird to spend Christmas elsewhere or worse, to cancel this party.

We make the main dish and our friends bring a bunch of amazing side dishes. Some of the best Feeding My Ohana recipes have come from these parties. This year, we had salted turkey from Thanksgiving and kalua pig.

The popular sides were Spam musubi with hot and spicy Spam (gone in about 15 minutes), sticky rice with lup cheong, eggnog pound cake and an amaretto cake with raspberry frosting. One of the favorite desserts, deemed Feeding-My-Ohana worthy, is cranberry cereal biscotti. I was pretty much ordered to post the recipe immediately. 

Click here for it. And Happy Holidays to All!

Is there no end to that Costco bag of cranberries from Thanksgiving? "We" finally finished off  the first bag by making cranberry coffee cake. 

And giving credit where it is due: Todd found this in the Joy of Cooking, p.780. Like pineapple muffins, it was a simple 3-bowl recipe (wet, dry, streusel). But based on the pineapple-cranberry fiasco, I thought putting raw cranberries into coffee cake batter was a little iffy.

It sat a full day before I had the courage to take a piece. What an idiot! I should always implicitly trust the baker of the house. 


Click here for the recipe.

I was trying to make a pineapple-cranberry sauce. Cranberries, pineapple juice, and tangerine juice. Stir together and boil. How hard could it be?

It was awful. 

If it had been any more sour, my head would have imploded. Tart, tangy, puckery--those don't even come close to describing the hurts-your-ears-because-it's-so-so-so-sour flavor.

But the fix was incredibly easy. Add sugar by the tablespoon. And suddenly bad sour mellows into sweet citrus-ey with just the right amount of kick. Amazing how quickly and simply this fixed itself. Click here for the recipe.

Apple Cranberry Pie with Oatmeal Streusel = unanimous thumbs up

This was a good balance for the super sweet pecan pie and the smooth creamy pumpkin pies. Granny Smith apples + cranberries give this pie good texture and some zing. 

We'll definitely be making this again next Thanksgiving. Click here for the recipe.