Family Meal

What an absolutely epic day of cookie exchanges and a hot cocoa walk 🍪🎄🤶☕️!
I love traditions, old and new, and today was filled with some of my favorites. A new tradition was born with the first annual cookie exchange with dear friends. These bakers brought their best to the table, including potato chip cookies, apple cider sugar cookies and Vietnamese cinnamon snickerdoodles. I made my favorites - grapefruit sugar cookies, Florentines and checkerboard shortbread. The kids took care of adding frosting and sprinkles, and we all left with a smorgasbord!
We had a quick turnaround from the cookie exchange into our 12th annual hot cocoa and Christmas light viewing walk. This is a very special tradition that started when I was pregnant with my oldest. We choose a neighborhood or locale with excellent Christmas light displays and meander around while sipping hot cocoa and nibbling on cookies. Today we found our way to Olympic Manor in Ballard, an excellent choice for Christmas cheer and delight.
Wishing you a very happy and festive holiday season!

Spring crunch salad - the perfect meal for the season 🌷🥒🥬🥗🌷!
This salad is a collection of blanched and raw vegetables that epitomize Spring - asparagus, snap peas, broccolini, Spring onion, English peas, cherry tomatoes and baby rainbow carrots.
They’re lovingly tossed together with a Dijon-honey-lemon dressing and plated over a smear of crème fraîche. To complete the epic crunchiness of the salad, I garnish the dish with a hearty sprinkle of toasted seeds seasoned with .spice sumac. Their sumac is a finely ground berry that adds the perfect tart flavor to the seeds (and salad!).
I hope you’ll try making a version of this refreshing salad yourself. I recommend eating it outside in the sunshine ☀️.

It’s officially Christmas season here at Family Meal, and I have my elves hard at work on four different kinds of cookies!
The chocolate-orange-almond Florentines are an annual staple, a recipe passed down by my mom.
The grapefruit cookies have become a favorite, as well. Due to the lack of red food coloring in my pantry, they turned out “snowflake” blue this year.
Two new cookies came on the scene, and they were show-stoppers! Inspired by , the Disco Zebra Shortbread were a special hit with the younger crowd. Who doesn’t love sparkly cookies?! But my favorite to make for their sheer wow factor were Window Pane Sugar Cookies. Just look at the Christmas lights dance through their Jolly Rancher centers!
After baking about 300 cookies in two days, I think I’m ready to hang up my baking hat. At least until the Christmas cinnamon rolls…
Thank you to for the help with frosting and photography!