So with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I decided to finally bite the bullet and create that dark-chocolate-tasting party I have been threatening to host for years. To assist me in my quest to find the best dark chocolate choices for Valentine’s Day, I enlisted 15 of my chocolate-chowhound friends to sample 42 brands of high-end dark chocolate generously contributed by chocolate companies far and wide. Read the rest of this article on at my featured column on the Huffington Post.

Photo from Flicker Under CC by EverJean

I’m like this about two foods at the Winter holidays – cranberry sauce and yams. I have made my yams the same way for 25 years. It’s an uneventful but satisfying concoction involving butter, brown sugar, bourbon and cream. It’s not that I don’t enjoy other cooks yam creations when I’m a guest in their homes for the holidays, but my yams – in my humble opinion – are still the best.

And let’s face it, how much can you really do with a yam? Variations on a standard theme almost always turn out to be related. So at last weeks Christmas dinner, where I dinned in someone else’s house, I took my customary scoop of the yam dish from the buffet table. I was pleased that they were part of the meal, but had no great expectations. After all these were not “my yams.”

But at fist bite – brown sugar smacking my lips, oranges doing a jig on my tongue and butter basting the back of my pallet – I was scandalized by the starchy tubular vegetable I had just eaten. These were in fact the best yams I’d ever tasted – damn it. That one instant had made mince-meat of my decades long yam dish history and a new tradition was born.

I was liberal in my compliments on the cooking and the hostess – my stepmother Anne’s cousin Crissa, was generous with her recipe. I’m already planning on doing a test run of my new favorite yam dish for New Years dinner.

Traditions, like everything else, can adapt and evolve with time – a good thing to remember as we head into a new year. Even the most ordinary of things, can surprise us, delight us, and put us on a new path of discovery (culinary and otherwise). We only have to say “Please pass the yams.”

RECIPE

Yohwser Yams

Chrissa was kind enough to tell me what she put in this recipe and how she prepared it, but we did not get into the particulars of amounts and she didn’t share a recipe title. I’ve named them Yohwser Yams - since that was the expression that popped into my mind when I tasted them. As with all good cooks you’ll have to use the ingredients and directions below as the basis for the dish and make the rest up as you go along.  Alternatively, find a good baked yam dish in a cookbook and start weaving in the ingredients from this recipe as appropriate.

Ingredients:
Yams
Butter
Brown Sugar
Honey
Whole Oranges
Salt and cinnamon to taste

Directions: In a large casserole dish place a layer of sliced yams on the bottom. Cover them with a bit of butter, brown sugar and a smidge of salt and micro-pinch of cinnamon if you so desire. Add onto a layer of thinly sliced oranges (peel included). Repeat this entire process until you reach the top of the casserole dish. Last, pour honey over the entire top and bake at 350 degrees for 2-3 hours.  Let rest in the refrigerator for a day, then make a second day at 350 for one hour. Serve the yam dish on the third day, after re-heating at 350 for one hour.  Chrissa says that the secret to these yams is to cook, and recook them until they have melded into one soft, juicy, buttery mass of side dish goodness.

Anne and her Lassi

Not to be confused with the town in Greece of the same name but different spelling, the Lassi (a yogurt drink) is the most popular beverage in Indian – second only to the cardamon sented Chai tea that has made it’s way into Starbucks and corner coffee shops throughout the U.S.

I must confess that I’m not much of a lassi drinker since I prefer my yogurt delivered in the more traditional medium. But this morning my step mother Anne – whom we are visiting in Los Osos for the holidays – offered up a smoothie that after one sip had me boldly declaring “That’s not a smoothie it’s a lassi.” And a good one at that.

Using the best of both worlds (the frozen fruit banana bonanza of the standard smoothie, combined with the creamy yogurt goodness of the lassi) Anne has managed to score a winner. With a citrusy overtone and a smoothly tart background, it hit the perfect note for a pre-xmas breakfast. Here’s her Los Osos Lassi. Make it, drink it, be merry.

Los Osos Lassi

Like most good cooks, Anne doesn’t make this greatness in a glass by measuring, but by a culinary instinct finely honed from 60 plus years of putting in her time as a dedicated avocational cook. You may want to adjust the amounts here and there to get the blend of flavors and the smoothness you desire.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups yogurt (plain)

3/4 cup frozen or fresh mango

3/4 cup frozen strawberries

1 whole bannana

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup orange or tangerine juice

Directions: Combine all ingredients in a blender and process until well combined. To make a thicker or thinner lassi, adjust the amount of juice.

Please note that this article is copyrighted by Karen Leland. If you would like to reprint any or all of it on your blog or website for non-commercial purposes you are welcome to do so, provided you give credit and a live link back to this site at www.karenleland.com

The past few months, it seems I’ve spent countless lunch hours hovering over my desk while shoving food from the deli next door down my throat. Between telephone interviews, Twitter postings and tough economic times, I often don’t make the effort to do more than choke down a salad or sandwich and call it lunch. In between forkfuls of romaine, my mind wanders to the good old days when I leisurely ate steamed dumplings from the dim sum restaurant down the street, or pomme frites from the French-style sidewalk café overlooking the bay. All this midday-meal mayhem has left me longingly wondering, “What has happened to the lunch hour?”

According to one new study from DiGiorno, 45 percent of the country’s workers say they’re taking shorter and/or fewer lunch breaks than they did a year ago. More than a third say they pass on their lunch break, thanks to an increasing workload.

Click here to read the rest of this article on my Productivity Superstar blog on Web Worker Daily.