Asking a cook to pick out favorite recipes is an impossible task, like asking a mother to single out her favorite child. These recipes, they're my babies and I love them all! Sure, there are days when one 'baby' is better than another, that's the very 'nature' – literally – of seasonal cooking. But pick, I have, my favorite recipes for 2008, just one recipe a month. What do you think, have I picked your favorites too?!! Plus, I think you'll love what's in store for 2009, including the celebration of Kitchen Parade's 50th anniversary , back to my mother's first columns in 1959. Happy New Year's to all! ~ Alanna My Favorite Recipes from 2008 (hover with a mouse for a description; otherwise click a photo to view the recipe) ~ All 2008 Kitchen Parade Recipes ~ More "Best of the Year" Favorite Recipes from Kitchen Parade ~ Kitchen Parade's Best-Ever "Most Useful" Recipes 2002 – Present ...

An easy elegant seafood appetizer recipe, tiny portions of crab meat served in "spoons" of endive. It's an indulgent small bite for special occasions but remains low-cal and low-carb. Real Food, Fresh & Inventive. Finger Food for Festive Gatherings. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special, Mere Minutes to the Table. Potluck & Party Friendly.

A traditional dish in the Midwest at Christmas, oyster stew, an oyster soup really, just fresh oysters steeped in a milky broth. Unlikely Fact: Oyster stew is a Midwestern specialty. As long as I can remember, I’ve made oyster stew on Christmas Eve for my Iowa-born father, who remembers it fondly from his childhood. In my family, he’s the only one who eats oyster stew, just gently cooked fresh oysters in a milky broth, an oyster soup, really. But he doesn’t mind, all the more for him! The question is, how would oyster stew become a specialty in states like Iowa and Missouri and Minnesota and Nebraska? The coasts, sure, where fresh oysters would be easily had; but the Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s, when oysters would have travelled long distances? (My dad remembers refrigerated rail cars, perhaps that’s it.) So it’s a mystery to me. What’s not a mystery is how this oyster stew recipe is relished – think silent but obvious appreciation, think spoons clinking the sid...

A festive, colorful cookie for Christmas cookie plates, quick to make, easy to enjoy. The recipe uses less-expensive and lower-calorie fresh cranberries, spiked with orange essence and pecans. "Luxury is not a necessity." Many of us are celebrating Christmas frugally this year. We are “making the list, checking it twice” to save a few dollars here, more dollars there. So a favorite food magazine’s frugal (ahem) entertaining ideas caught my attention. Granted, the article was titled "Luxury for Less" – but still, it suggested we substitute American caviar for Russian beluga and truffle oil for scrapings of fresh truffles. “We get it,” the story opened. And they do, if luxury is a necessity. But luxury is luxury – and luxury not a necessity. Me, I’m baking less this year, an accommodation to fewer cookie monsters within cookie-grabbing distance, and with less-expensive ingredients, in nod to life-strapped budgets. But baking at all? It’s a luxury. It’...