A Centerpiece for Christmas Dinner

By Sandy Hu
A new video for Video Friday

One of the best things about making Christmas dinner is coming up with a different centerpiece for the table each year. As kids, I doubt my boys really appreciated the effort, but I enjoy this annual project. I continue to collect all the holiday issues of magazines, looking for design inspiration.

This year, I’m making Christmas trees from sheet moss, something I saw in one of the magazines a few years ago. These trees are easy to make but moss is messy – it will crumble on you – so make these trees in a place where you can clean up easily afterwards. I like the trees in their natural state for a woodland effect, but you can add embellishments if you like your trees fancier.

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Make Glögg to Serve or a Mix to Give as Gifts

By Sandy Hu
A new video for Video Friday

All this week, Special Fork bloggers have been featuring some of their favorite holiday entertaining recipes. Today’s recipe doubles as a fragrant and warming drink to serve at your holiday party or to give as a gift if you’re going to a party.

Glögg is a Scandinavian mulled wine drink; we’re preparing the seasoning mix. The recipe was developed when I was a PR representative for the California Raisin Advisory Board in the heyday of the Dancing Raisins campaign.

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Stuffing in 30 Minutes

By Sandy Hu
A new video for Video Friday

I can’t wait for Thanksgiving! We always observe the holiday at home and it’s always a cooking fest spanning several days. But I don’t mind the work. I love to prepare the meal and I love the leftovers.

Every family has dishes that are sacrosanct. In our house, it’s the stuffing. The cornbread one I make, from The New York Times International Cookbook, takes hours to prepare – chopping vegetables, mincing herbs, cubing and toasting white bread, making cornbread, and using a food grinder to grind the giblets.

Growing up in Hawaii, my mom’s was a Portuguese stuffing studded with pimentos, sliced olives and chopped linguisa.

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How to Roast Cauliflower

By David Hu
A new video for Video Friday

As the weather gets colder, think roasted vegetables. They’re easy to make and give you that warm, wintery feeling. For today's video demo, we're making Spice Roasted Cauliflower, a recipe from Lori Powell, our cooking for one or two blogger.

For this recipe, I like to mix cauliflower colors. Yellow and purple cauliflower are no longer such a novelty; I can find them in my everyday supermarket. The colored heads are great, not only from a presentation standpoint, but for added health benefits.

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Almost Foolproof Fish

By Sandy Hu
A new video for Video Friday

If you're a little leery about cooking fish, worried that it might turn out dry, here's a good recipe to try. It just requires marinating salmon steaks in citrus juices to give the fish added flavor, and then simply baking them in the oven.

The only caution is to keep from overcooking the fish. The rule of thumb is to cook fish about 7 to 8 minutes per inch thickness. At that point, remove the fish and use the tip of a knife inserted in the center of the fish and peek around the cut. The flesh should be opaque and no longer translucent, but still moist.

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