What is your favorite holiday food?

Anything with pork in it during Ramadan!

Believe it or not Starchild, I love fruitcake. My mother used to make it at Christmas, and it was an elaborate production that took several days because she would wrap it in brandy-soaked cloths for a certain amount of time. None of my other brothers and sisters liked it, but I loved it - the taste, the aroma, the texture...needless to say, I've never made it for my family - they don't like it either. I just try to find one little one somewhere for myself.

On holidays for my family our rituals include: Thanksgiving- pumpkin pie, baked sweet potato, pecan and coconut casserole (sounds weird, but it is incredibly delicious) and green bean casserole (you know with the onion rings on top - for my son). Those are the things we have to have, along with all the other usuals of course.

Christmas we make cookies - and we always make the same cookies - sugar cookies, home-made shortbread, peanut butter blossoms, gingerbread men, snickerdoodles, and these really delicious lemon cookies that melt in your mouth.

Easter - a bunny cake - carrot of course

Etc., etc. our main dishes always change - but the baking always stays the same. And I'm as bad as the kids - I look forward to those cookies and that bunny cake.

As you can tell - love to talk about food - love to cook and especially bake. I'll be right here if you come up with any more good topics. Thanks!

Here's my recipe for sweet potato- pecan- coconut bake -
I kind of made it up combining two different recipes and I'm one of those instinctive cooks who doesn't really measure, (except when I'm baking something) but I'll do my best to get the right amounts of ingredients in the right order.

Serves 6-8

6 medium sweet potatoes - bake in oven, remove peel, and mash up
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup broken pecan pieces
1/4 tsp. ginger
3 tablespoons butter

Combine brown sugar, pecans, ginger and melted butter. Stir into mashed sweet potatoes. Place in medium sized oven-safe baking dish (make sure you've sprayed with non-stick cooking spray first).

Topping: you'll have to experiment with this to get the right ratios. I don't measure so all measurements I give you here are very approximate:
1/2 stick melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup broken pecan pieces
1 cup flaked coconut
Stir this together in a sauce pan over low heat. Then layer on top of sweet potatoes in baking dish. Bake, covered, in a 350 oven for about thirty minutes. Then remove the cover and bake 10 more minutes. Be careful that you don'to let the coconut and nuts in the topping get burned.

Like I said, for the topping, I just keep adding and tasting until it seems right and I have enough to cover the entire dish of sweet potatoes. You really can't overdo anything except the sugar - you don't want it too sweet - so use the sugar sparingly and add or subtract on the coconut and nuts according to your own individual taste buds.

Let me know if you try it - Aidan