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’

Recipe for homemade sesame candy made with toasted sesame seeds, honey and sweet spices. Impressive appearance. An unexpected holiday food gift, easy to pack and ship. For years, my mom loved these verrrrry chewy sesame candies from Turkey, the Middle East and all around the Mediterranean. Where she found such exotica in small towns in the northern plains, who knows? How her dental work survived, who can guess! Fast forward 30 years to me fast-flipping through a tall stack of recipes glued onto 3x5 cards during my first years of cooking. Many recipes no longer appeal – there's that Midwestern reliance on cans of mushroom soup for every "hot dish" and a box of Jello for every "salad" – but a surprising number do. The recipe for this sesame candy appealed instantly, just a few ingredients, a simple technique – and the inner giggle that my mom would have rolled her eyes at the very idea of her daughter making homemade sesame candy. Sorry, Mom! Call m