In our house we have a few familiar staples — green bean casserole, candied yams, and mashed potatoes and gravy to name a few. We serve both kinds of cranberry sauce (with and w/out berries). We also serve Almost-A-Dessert Cornbread (the recipe is here). But this year, the runaway favorite was sweet potato casserole. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the dish. All recipes for it have pretty much the same ingredients I think — butter, brown sugar, vanilla, nuts. I think the reason why the dish was so popular this year was because of the pecans. I used Emerald Pecan Pie Glazed Pecans. They are soooo good…

What’s your favorite side dish?

I don’t have too many holiday anthologies for some odd reason. I love the holidays and I love anthologies, you’d think I’d have a bunch of ‘em. The ones I own are:

See? Not many.

I have a story in a holiday print anthology, you can see the e-book cover in the sidebar –>

So, how about you? Do you have a favorite holiday anthology? (I’ll be asking about holiday single titles in another post…)

This is another tough one for me. I’ll list a few of my favorites tomorrow. (I got distracted tonight by other things and ran out of time.) But in the meantime, I found this. Enjoy!

What’s a memorable holiday gift you gave to someone?

I have so many, as I’m sure you all do, but one I remember is when I stayed with a college roommate’s family over the holidays. I was in the Army then, stationed at Ft. Jackson, SC. She lived in Churchville, PA. I hopped on a Greyhound bus and headed up to spend two weeks with her family. It was awesome! I had such a good time with them. They were Italian. They owned a bakery. Every evening dinner was a delight. They took me to NY for my first time and NJ. I was in Times Square when the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve, which was one of the items on my “Do Before You Die” list. (Do y’all have one of those?) I rode the subway. I went to the observation deck of the Empire State Building. I ate at Vincent’s in Little Italy. I made chocolate chip cannoli for their bakery. (and I’m so in love with Joe Morelli that the word “cannoli” will remind me of him forever.) It was the trip of a lifetime.

Of course staying with them over the holiday meant I needed to give them gifts on Christmas day. (my pleasure) My girlfriend had three brothers and a dad. I knew the perfect gift!

I bought all four silk boxer shorts.

Now, you may think that’s a strange gift to give to people you’ve never met prior to a week before, but I’m of the firm belief that every man must own at least one pair of silk boxers. My friend was fairly certain that none of the men in her family owned a pair (though she didn’t know for sure and certainly wasn’t going to find out! LOL)

They loved them! The oldest and youngest brothers broke theirs in right away. The dad waited a day and then proclaimed over breakfast that there was nothing like wearing silk boxers (yes, I know… *g*). He found them “sensual.” His wife nodded with a glimmer in her eye and a lovely smile. The quieter of the three brothers didn’t say anything at first. Finally, a few days later, I asked him if he’d tried them yet. With a blush, he lifted his shirt and showed us the waistband.

Ah… My work was done.

How about you?