One of my favorite things about the holidays is learning the stories behind treasured family recipes. I’m a traditionalist when it comes to holiday meals, and yet I can’t resist the occasional tinkering or experimentation. While our Thanksgiving menu generally resembles the meals I had growing up, I’ve taken a few liberties with some dishes. We rarely spend the holiday with my own family, so I make the sweeter cranberry sauce we prefer instead of my aunt’s cranberry-orange relish, and add blue cheese to my mom’s green bean amandine. Other things, like sweet potato casserole, have made their way to our menu even though I don’t recall having had them as a kid.

For one of the first Thanksgiving meals my husband and I hosted, I decided to add a Southern twist to that ubiquitous sweet potato and marshmallow casserole. (This Oregon girl and New York boy now reside in Virginia; though just slightly in “The South,” there are a few Southern favorites we’ve embraced, like bourbon.) A splash of bourbon and crunch of pecans counters the sweetness, and the result is a fully-loaded crowd pleaser of a casserole that’s earned its place on the table every year. The kids go nuts for the marshmallows while the grown-ups like the sophistication of the bourbon. I’m kidding of course, the grown-ups go just as nuts for the marshmallows as the kids. After all, at what other meal of the year can you get away with topping the vegetables with candy?

Recipe: Southern Candied Sweet Potatoes with Bourbon

Ingredients:

• 3 pounds sweet potatoes (about 6 large potatoes)
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup pecan halves
• 1/8 cup bourbon whiskey
• 2 cups marshmallows

Instructions:

1. Wash, peel and cut potatoes into large chunks. Place in a large pot and fill with cold water to one inch above the potatoes. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 15-20 minutes, until potatoes are fork tender. Drain.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spread potatoes in an 9×12-inch baking dish. Sprinkle with salt, brown sugar, pecan pieces, and bourbon. Place marshmallows on top.

3. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until marshmallow tops are golden brown. Makes 6 servings.

~~~

What’s your family’s favorite holiday dish? Macy’s wants to know: Macy’s is cooking up a storm at its Facebook page and asking fans to share their most-loved recipes here. Then, fans can vote for their favorites for a chance to win fun prizes! The Facebook contest is open until November 30.

And, you can enter to win a prize right here: Macy’s is offering one lucky FoodieTots reader a choice of one of four products:

-          Martha Stewart Professional Cookware Ceramic Covered Casserole Dish (perfect for sweet potato casserole!)

-          Martha Stewart Professional Cookware Hard Anodized Fry Pans (set of 3)

-          Martha Stewart Professional Cookware Stainless Steel 15” Roaster with Roasting Rack

-          Macy’s Culinary Council Thanksgiving and Holiday Cookbook

To enter, simply leave a comment below sharing which item you would choose and what you’d cook with it. The giveaway ends Friday, November 25 at 11:59pm, Eastern time. The winner will be notified by email so be sure to leave a valid email when you comment (will only be visible to me). For additional entries, tweet or share the contest on Facebook, then leave an additional comment here letting me know you’ve done so. Good luck, and happy cooking!

Update: Thanks everyone for entering our holiday giveaway — the contest is now closed and the lucky commenter is #13, Sara. Check your email, Sara!

It would be hard to out-do the highs and lows of 2010. Looking back, some of our most memorable meals weren’t even homemade — such as the pizza dinner in our new dining room the day we closed on the house, and the first sushi after the foodie bebe’s birth. Between the many firsts still in store for the baby, and the boy starting kindergarten in the fall (?!), 2011 is bound to be full of so many more memories. But before we forge forward, here are just a few favorite Foodie Tots moments of 2010:

3 favorite Sweet Treats –

• Snow Cake & Snow Cream (during the Blizzards of 2010)
• Lemon Cupcakes (for Share our Strength’s Great American Bake Sale)
• Strawberry Cream Tart (& a FoodieTot cooking video)

3 favorite Farmers Market Meals –

• Moroccan Lamb Stew
• Honey Mushrooms & Polenta
• Baked Ratatouille

And tooting my own horn for a minute, 3 notable honors:

• Featured in NPR’s Meatless Monday story
• Named one of Babble’s Top 50 Mom Food Bloggers
• Quoted in Jane Black’s Washington Post story, “Watermelons: What Happened to the Seeds?“

And looking forward now … the foodie bebe ate her first solids on the first day of 2011:

Stay tuned for a few posts on baby food as we kick off 2011 with a renewed focus on good food for even the littlest eaters. Thanks for reading these past three years, and please drop me a note if there are topics you’d like to see more of in 2011. Cheers!

Before I pull together my own year-in-review for 2010, I wanted to share 10 posts I didn’t write in 2010, but wish I had. These are posts from the blogs that fill my feed reader, the ones I turn to throughout the year for support and inspiration. If you’re not already reading them, I hope you’ll check them out.

10. Marion Nestle is a must-read on food politics. This post, “Food Corporations Buy Silence from ‘Partners,‘” shows how the food wars are only just beginning, even as the Child Nutrition Act has been signed into law.

9. Speaking of the food wars, a first-grader known as the “Little Locavore” took on Sarah Palin in “Red Carrot’s Anti-Fast Food Guidebook” (at Little Locavores)

8. Organic Gardening Q&A via Good Life Eats — a helpful read if “grow your own” is one of your 2011 resolutions

7. I only got as far as freezer, uh, sauce and vanilla-preserved strawberries this spring, but next year I aspire to Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Strawberry Preserves with Mint and Black Pepper

6. 26 Kitchen Organizing Tips from Real Cooks, at Simple Bites

5. Musings on Feeding Baby from Stacie of One Hungry Mama — especially relevant as the foodie bebe will be beginning solids very soon!

4. Strategies for getting family dinner on the table, and recipe for Mustard and Balsamic Glazed Pork Tenderloin, by Christina of Take Back Your Table for the Rachael Ray blog

3. “School Lunch Reform — Stick a Spork in My Eye” — school lunch reform realities from What’s Cooking with Kids

2. It’s not a blog post, but everyone who cares about kids and/or food should read Chef José Andrés‘ “Food for Thought” talk at the Economist’s The World in 2011

1. “Let’s Ban the Phrase ‘Picky-Eater’” from Spoonfed, one of my new favorite blogs. As you ponder your family’s new year’s resolutions, this is great inspiration: drop the labels, embrace real food, and your kids will follow. Really.

{And, if your new year’s resolution is to read more Foodie Tots, you can get new posts delivered straight to your inbox, for free!
Subscribe here, or “like” us on Facebook to get updates there. Thanks!}

Part 3 of 3 in the Oregon 2009 travelogue, and the first in an occasional “Eat, Play, Love” series* of quick notes and reviews from our family’s favorite places.

The past several years our trips to Oregon have included jaunts to the Coast, but limited time this year sent us east of Portland, instead, for a day-trip up the Columbia Gorge. It’s too gorgeous (haha) to do it justice in a short post, but here are a couple highlights. The most well-known of the Gorge’s incredible waterfalls is Multnomah, but there are about a dozen in total along the Historic Columbia River Highway scenic route, several visible from the road and others you’ll have to hike in to see.

EAT: Pack a picnic to eat at the base of Multnomah Falls, where you can watch salmon smolts swimming and get up close and personal with passing freight trains. (Keep an eye out for roadside stands on the scenic route by Crown Point offering fresh berries or other seasonal produce.) There is a restaurant if you don’t want to pack your own food, and you can reward hungry little hikers with soft-serve ice cream and/or fudge at the base of the falls. If you time your day to end, as we did, in Hood River, mom and dad will enjoy the libations at independently-owned Full Sail Brewing Co., where they do have a verbal children’s menu if you ask, and kids and parents alike will enjoy the view of tug boats, barges and kitesurfers in the river below.

PLAY: Swimming is no longer allowed in the pool beneath Multnomah Falls after a large chunk of rock broke off several years ago. But you can continue a little further down the road to Horsetail Falls and splash or swim at will in the refreshingly cool pool. Water shoes recommended as the bottom is rocky. Kids who can hike at greater than a .25 mile per hour pace will enjoy the loop behind upper Horsetail, where you can actually walk behind the fall. Out at Hood River, beaches provide ample playing space for smaller kids, and the adventurous can sign up for windsurfing or kitesurfing lessons.

LOVE: It’s been 14 years since I lived in Oregon, so I rely on NW Kids and several Oregonians I follow on Twitter for new ideas or reminders of old favorites when we head back: some faves, @magazinemama (of NW Kids), @LizEBoz, @designmama, @pdxmama, @lelonopo, @sarahgilbert, and @thiskat.

* I thought I was being clever with my “Eat, Play, Love” theme riff on the best-selling book Eat, Pray, Love, but it turns out someone else beat me to it. Check out her fun blog, too – especially this awesome kitchen sink salad on a waffle.