What Are Your Favorite Weeknight Meals During the Holidays? — Reader Intelligence Request

The holidays are a funny time, when it comes to food. We’re deluged with sweets and ideas for holiday entertaining. Looking at magazines and blogs this time of year one might be forgiven for thinking we subsist for a month on a diet of cheese balls, peppermint cookies, and marshmallows.

But in the middle of holiday hectic — wrapping up work, buying gifts, travel — we need to eat normal, everyday meals. What are your favorite meals and ways to stay nourished and healthy in this busy month of December? Tell us — and read on for a few of my own.

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Recipe: Kale & Apple Soup — Weeknight Dinner Recipes from The Kitchn

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Many two year-olds won’t eat a plateful of sautéed greens even if they’re cooked in bacon, and my daughter — an excellent eater most of the time — was no exception. When she was a toddler, I could usually get by with mixing shredded greens into a few scrambled eggs, but much was my delight when I discovered the kid liked kale soup. This one is mildly sweet with a bit of apple, and it has that beloved bacon-y edge that goes so well with sautéed greens.

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The Best Way to Preserve an Open Bottle of Wine — Wine for All

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If you are anything like me or my friends, deciding what to do with an unfinished bottle of wine is a problem that rarely arises. But maybe you had a few people over for a dinner party, or maybe you are a light drinker, or maybe you just wanted to open both a red and a white for pairing options.

Regardless of the scenario, we all want that opened bottle of wine to taste as fresh and delicious tomorrow, as it does this evening. Here’s how to make sure that happens.

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decadent hot chocolate mix

decadent hot chocolate mix

Here is how I’ve made hot chocolate for most of my life: heat some milk in a saucepan, add a bit of unsweetened cocoa and sugar and whisk. Form lumps. Be unable to break up lumps. Get frustrated, try again, this time slowly slowly slowly whisking milk into cocoa and sugar, hoping to form something of a cocoa roux. Heat mixture until steamy and drink merrily, trying to ignore faint background of chalkiness. Hooray for cocoa?

what you'll need, except maybe not marshmallows
grind it up and you're done

Until this week, that is. This week, I saw a recipe for a homemade hot chocolate mix in this month’s Cook’s Illustrated that had my undivided attention because it wasn’t just cocoa and sugar but ground chocolate and vanilla and salt and and and… I mean, how bad could it be? What was the worst that could happen — we’d have to warm up with several cups of hot cocoa in a single week in the name of recipe testing? I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: sometimes, this job is the worst.

homemade hot chocolate

… Read the rest of decadent hot chocolate mix on smittenkitchen.com


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15 Stocking Stuffers That Don’t Suck — Holiday Gift Guide from The Kitchn

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Stocking stuffers may be small, but they needn’t be an afterthought. In fact, they’re the perfect opportunity to give away all kinds of cool stuff. A bottle of spicy honey, a mini spatula, or a small container of board butter may not feel like substantial gifts on their own, but pulled out of a stocking they’re a home run! Here are 15 little gifts sure to be a big hit come Christmas morning.

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