Design the winning wine tote and you could be headed to Las Vegas and a $2,000.00 shopping spree.

Enter George duBoeuf’s Fashion your Bag contest, download the bag template and start designing. All the information you need is on the website.

There’s only one catch:

You’ve got to upload your design online by 11:59:59 a.m. ET on 12/31/09, or mail it in to be received by January 7, 2010.

Perhaps you can make it a group activity with your more create family members, after all the Christmas gifts are open.

• Read more about George DuBoeuf’s Beaujolais.

Can you design a better wine tote? If so,
enter the contest!

We’re having Chef Daniel Boulud’s
tuna tartare, topped with caviar, at
our Feast Of The Seven Fishes. Here’s
the tuna tartare recipe.

The tradition of eating seafood on Christmas Eve dates back to medieval times, to the Roman Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat or milk products on Fridays and specific holy days. Fish, typically fried in oil, was most often substituted.

Thus, traditional dishes for The Feast Of The Seven Fishes include baccalà (salted cod fish), calamari and fried fish and seafood (oysters, scallops, shrimp, smelts).

For a gourmet Feast Of The Seven Fishes, consider this seven-course dinner: (1) oyster shooters or oysters on the half shell, (2) seafood chowder, (3) marinated seafood salad (calamari, octopus, shrimp, green and black olives, onion) over greens, (4) angel hair pasta with lobster in a tomato cream sauce, (5) squid ink pasta with scallops and red caviar, (6) your favorite salmon dish, (7) your favorite shrimp or lobster dish.

Consider creating your own seven fish dishes on Christmas Eve. You don’t have to adhere to Italian specialties or make a full dinner out of it. Try seven appetizers on a “mezze plate,”* such as calamari salad, cocktail shrimp, crab cakes, crab dip with crudités, tuna-olive tapenade, seafood paté and smoked salmon or gravlax. Make the Feast Of The Seven Fishes a holiday tradition in your home.

*Mezze, pronounced MEH-zee, are Middle Eastern appetizers served either before or with dinner, generally with pita. Several mezze are served at the same time, in what is called a mezze platter. Examples include baba ghannouj (eggplant dip), falafel, feta cheese, hummus, kalaj (baked halloumi cheese in pastry), moutabal (grilled eggplant), and sambousek, spicy carrots and tabouleh. Up to 50 varieties can appear on a mezze table—a Middle Eastern “antipasto.”

The recipient will enjoy being able to build on his or her expertise on an ongoing basis.

• One stein does not fit all. Take a look at the proper glasses for different types of beer.

Forget the stein: This is the classic
Pilsener glass.

[1] Make pomegranate sangria for your guests (photo © Pom Wonderful).

[2] Make pomegranate sangria for your guests (photo © Pom Wonderful).

There’s nothing more festive than a holiday punch bowl.

Historically, Christmas meant gathering around the wassail bowl for good cheer. “Wassail” is Middle English contraction of the toast, wæs hæil, “be healthy.”

Medieval wassail was a mulled beer or mead, heated and topped with slices of toast (a.k.a. sops)—a piece of bread provided for nourishment (think of it as a precursor of crackers and cheese). Today, mulled cider is made with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg.

You can fill your punch bowl with mulled cider, or go more modern with this pomegranate sangria recipe. You don’t need a punch bowl. A pitcher is fine.

If you want a mulled cider recipe, we’ve got some nifty choices (and history) for you as well.

P.S. December 20th is National Sangria Day. National Mulled Wine Day is March 3rd.

Sangria is a type of punch. While “punch” evokes the image of a large bowl of drink, the word actually refers to the five ingredients in the original recipe.

While Americans often serve sangria from a pitcher, the Spanish way, feel free to fill up a punch bowl.

Ingredients

 
For The Garnish

 
Preparation

1. MAKE the ice block in advance. A large block melts much more slowly than cubes, keeps the punch colder for longer and reduces the dilution. Make it by filling a cake pan with water and freeze the night before. You can also fill a balloon with water; tie off the balloon and place it in a bowl in the freezer the night before.

2. MAKE the sangria. Remove the arils from the pomegranate (some stores sell arils already removed). Place all ingredients into a sangria pitcher. Refrigerate and let stand 2 hours before serving.

2. PLACE in a punch bowl; or for individual servings, pour sangria over a glass with ice cubes and top with a fruit garnish. Finish each serving with a splash of Cava Spanish sparkling brut.

Not only has she invented, to our knowledge, the concept of the “mug cookie”—a cookie baked with a slot that hooks onto a mug of hot chocolate, tea or coffee—but she has done it in the most charming way. Get the recipe and download the pattern.

Cookies are only one of Martha’s impressive talents. We can’t wait for an occasion to make her bacon cups and fill them with scrambled eggs or a spinach salad.

For those of into Jell-o shooters, here is an impressive Jell-O shooters recipe or (if you leave out the vodka) a way to amuse kids with Jell-O.
Martha Reardon, we don’t know you, but we love you!

It’s cookie magic: a wee gingerbread
house that perches on the rim of a mug.
Photo by Martha Reardon | NotMartha.org.