Wild rice stuffing serves as lighter, beautiful substitute for the bread stuffing that's such a constant during holiday meals.

For Christmas I wanted to make a ham, but traditional bread stuffing felt too rich to serve alongside the salty pork. So, instead of reaching for bread and herbs, I reached for rice and fruit. The other inspiration for this, was that my grandmother had given me a beautiful blue and white dish as an early birthday present, and I wanted to highlight how pretty the dish – and the new dish – looked with cranberries.

On top of its excellent taste, this stuffing contains far less fat and calories than the conventional version. So, have an extra Christmas cookie sans guilt.

A woman can't live on cat-adorableness and holiday cheer alone. Sometimes cheddar-covered green olives are also necessary. These warm, salty balls of cheese decadence are more than just a great snack for Christmas-tree gazing and kitten admiration, they're also a great appetizer to pull out for holiday gatherings.

And, yes, I think I might have just channeled Alec Baldwin from one of his stints on Saturday Night Live.

The crazy month of December is quickly coming to a head. Office parties, Christmas, Chanukah and New Year's Eve are in our sights. And these are some of my favorite appetizers from the last year to make for parties or presents. None of them are too time consuming to make, and most of them are fairly inexpensive as well.

Have you ever surprised yourself in the kitchen? Have you ever chopped, roasted, sauteed and then plated a dish - thinking you knew how it was going to taste - only to be completely bowled over by that first fork-full when it passed your lips? I had that happen last week.

I don't just rehearse meals for Christmas, I practice them for New Year's too. Especially this year. I found out recently that Jedd's brother and sister-in-law are coming that weekend. It's pretty exciting because they live 13 hours away and we've only celebrated the new year together a couple of times. So, obviously I want to make something that's pretty festive. So, my thought process went something like this:

“What's really festive? Festive... festive... Festivous? No, that's the opposite of festive. Festive... festive... oh! Truman Capote's Black and White Ball. That's super festive. And he used to serve chicken hash for his guests at midnight. Midnight is officially New Years Day. Cool. Chicken hash it is.”