A bit of red and green garnish turns almost anything into holiday fare.

Since so many of our foods are white or beige, they can use a colorful lift.

While a baked brie topped with cranberry relish and rosemary is a holiday staple in our home, we love garnishing other foods with crisp, flash-fried herbs.

Try it: You’ll discover a colorful, flavorful garnish that can be added to just about everything.

And, it takes less than a minute to cook the cleaned herbs.
 
 
FLASHED FRIED HERBS

Basil, parsley and sage can be flash-fried as a tasty garnish. Combine them with a red garnish for a Christmas effect.
 
Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. WASH, pat dry and pinch the leaves from the stems.

2. HEAT the oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, fry 6–8 basil or sage leaves, or equivalent parsley, at a time until crisp, 2–3 seconds.

3. TRANSFER the herbs to a paper-towel-lined plate. Sprinkle with coarse salt and set aside until ready to use.
 
 
DON’T WANT TO FRY?

You can use the herbs in their raw state, or try these green garnishes:

 
RED GARNISHES

[1] A white soup or any white food—goat cheese, chicken breasts, fish, mashed potatoes, noodles, grains—gets a lift from pomegranate arils and fried herbs. Here, parsley is flash-fried (photo courtesy Chef Adrianne).

[2] Cut pita rounds into triangle “trees,” and add a wood toothpick for the stem. Top with hummus and garnish with a small dice of red and green bell pepper. For more color, buy green hummus, or blend thawed green peas into regular hummus (photo courtesy Tribe Hummus | Facebook).

[3] Raw sea scallops are a favorite of ours. Serve them atop a slice of watermelon radish, or plate them as a first course as shown. Garnish with a bead of salmon caviar or an dab of chile sauce, plus a leaf of parsley (photo courtesy HMF | The Breakers).

[1] Tasty snacks from a French company that has set down roots in the U.S. (photo courtesy Bakerly).

[2] Perfectly flavored rice sides are now a cinch (photo courtesy Royal Basmati).

[3] The Thin Mint cookie finds a new expression in yogurt from Yoplait.

We buy lots of products to try, and we are sent samples as well.

As with aything, some of these are nice but not newsworthy; others become part of our weekly shopping list.

Here’s our latest collection of winners.
 
 
1. BAKERLY: BRIOCHE BREAD & BREAKFAST BREADS

We discovered the Bakerly line at a natural foods store. A brand from France, the products are now also made in the U.S.

We first took home a loaf of brioche—our favorite bread.

We enjoyed the loaf so much, we went back for the rest of the products on that shelf (photo #1): regular and chocolate chip croissants, jam-filled crepes and petite cakes (little sponges filled with chocolate or strawberry).

There are also item on the website we haven’t yet tried, including brioche rolls and burger buns.

For those who enjoy a breakfast pastry, or something sweet with a coffee break, look out for Bakerly.

You can use the store locator at Bakerly.com.

Food Trivia: The expression, “If they have no bread, let them eat cake,” commonly misattributed to Queen Marie-Antoinette, is a translation of the phrase, “S’ils n’ont plus de pain, qu’ils mangent de la brioche.”

But was the insensitive (to say the least) remark actually said by the over-indulged queen?

Perhaps not. The quotation was attributed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to “a great princess,” possibly Maria Theresa of Spain.
 
 
2. ROYAL BASMATI: GLOBAL RICE MIXES

All of this company’s rices are premium:

 
Now, Royal Basmati has created a line seasoned basmati rices in global flavors: Argentinian, French, Greek, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, Moroccan (photo #2) and Thai.

You can cook them on the stovetop or in the microwave. The result: aromatic, well-seasoned sides to serve with anything from plain grilled chicken to Moroccan lamb stew to a Thai-inspired feast.

Here’s more information.

Discover more at AuthenticRoyal.com.

Beginning this month, Girl Scout Cookie fans can enjoy Yoplait yogurt flavors inspired by their favorite cookie flavors:

 
The flavors are produced under a license from Girl Scouts Of The USA.

We received samples of all three, and were thrilled with Thin Mints: a mousse of minty chocolate. We could eat a case of it.

Yoplait products are both naturally and artificially flavored. The other two flavors will have their fans, but we were sensitive to the artificial taste peeking through.

Learn more at Yoplait.com.

What’s next? Stay tuned.
  

There are plenty of chocolate Christmas trees and tree-shaped holiday cookies.

But these two treats from Orange Glad Box, which is a box delivery service for gourmet sweets.
 
 
1. CHRISTMAS TREE BROWNIES

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. BAKE your favorite brownie recipe and cut out tree shapes with a cookie cutter.

2. USE an ice pick to create an opening for thin candy canes. Break off the crook tops of the candy canes and insert the straight portion into the openings. You can crush the crooks and use them to decorate the “Christmas trees.”

3. DECORATE the trees with a piped icing garland and “ornaments”: small round candies, confetti, round sprinkles or edible glitter.
 
 
RECIPE: PEANUT BUTTER CHRISTMAS TREES

This recipe was inspired by one from Delish.

Ingredients Per Tree

 
Preparation

1. USE soft icing to adhere the peanut butter cups: small, regular, small. Affix the kiss on top.

2. DECORATE the tree with a piped icing garland and “ornaments”: small round candies, confetti, round sprinkles or edible glitter.

[2] Peanut butter cup Christmas tree (photo courtesy Delish).

[2] Peanut butter cup Christmas tree (photo courtesy Delish).

[2] Nacho Tuesday substitutes for Taco Tuesday (photo courtesy Hannah Kaminsky | Bittersweet Blog).

You can combine Meatless Monday and Taco Tuesday with meatless tacos, like this recipe for Veggie Hummus Tacos (photo #1) from Mountain Mama Cooks.

You get a nice portion of mixed veggies, along with nutrient-packed* hummus.

And, you don’t have to be literal on Taco Tuesdays. You can serve taco chips with a hummus-nacho dip, as in the recipe below.

If you don’t want either vegan or vegetarian† tacos for your main course, try this starter from our colleague Hannah Kaminsky of Bittersweet Blog. She serves it with a selection of tortilla chips, plain and flavored.

“Nacho hummus,” Hannah says, “delivers all the cheesy, spicy decadence of a good queso dip with the more substantial heft of a chickpea spread. The two rivals compliment and contrast one another: a natural union that has been long overdue.

“Whether you smear it in pita, thin it out to drizzle on tortilla chips, or just set it out with cut vegetable crudités, it’s a foolproof formula.”

 
RECIPE: HUMMUS NACHOS

Ingredients For 6-10 Appetizer Servings

 
Plus

1. ADD the chickpeas, roasted red pepper, tomato paste, chipotle, and garlic and lemon juice to a food processor. Pulse to breaking down the ingredients, pausing to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

2. ADD the tahini, mustard and all the seasonings and spices, starting with just 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne.

3. PURÉE, and while the motor is running, slowly drizzle in the olive oil, until the mixture is silky-smooth and it reaches your desired consistency. If you’d like it to be more of a sauce than a spread, follow that with water or vegetable stock, as needed.

4. ADJUST the spice level to taste. Top with sliced scallions and dip the day away!

Tortilla chips and corn chips are cousins, are made in very different ways.
 
Corn Chips

 
Tortilla Chips, A.K.A. Taco Chips

This ancient process was developed by the peoples of what is today Mesoamerica.

 
 
________________

*Hummus contains crucial nutrients, most of which come from the tahini: a high content of important minerals like copper and manganese, along with calcium, iron, magnesium and zinc. It is relatively rich in vitamins C and B6, and also contain vitamin E, K, folate (B9) and thiamin (B1).

†The difference, in this recipe, is sautéeing the vegetables in oil (vegan) or steaming or roasting them, versus sautéeing in butter (vegetarian).

[4] Nopalito’s handmade tortilla chips at (photo courtesy Good Eggs).

[2] A champagne cocktail with blue curacao and a gold sugar rim. You can substitute edible gold glitter (photo courtesy Living-On-Cloud-Nine.com).

Just as many of us “drink green” on St. Patrick’s Day, you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy a blue cocktail on the first night of Chanukah (December 12, 2017; the date varies each year according to the Hebrew calendar).

You can use any cocktail recipe with blue curaçao. Add a white accent and you have the colors of the Israeli flag.

This cocktail recipe* (photo #1), from The Breakers in Palm Beach, is a riff on the Piña Colada, with orange flavor (from the curaçao) substituting for the pineapple juice.

Don’t like coconut?

Here’s another blue Chanukah cocktail recipe without any coconut flavor.

Want something elegant? Pour blue curaçao into a champagne flute, add sparkling wine. You can create a rim with sparkling sugar.

RECIPE: BLUE & WHITE CHANUKAH COCKTAIL

Ingredients Per Drink

 
Preparation

1. PREPARE the rim of the glass. Set down to shallow dishes: one for the agave, one for the coconut. Dip the rim of the glass into the dish of agave; then twist in the dish of coconut.

2. SHAKE the other ingredients with ice and strain into the glass.

TIP: If you want to save calories, use coconut milk instead of Coco Lopez.

More blue cocktails: Create a whole cocktail menu!
________________

*They didn’t intend it as a Chanukah cocktail, but as one matching the beautiful blue ocean around The Breakers. They call it the Coco Snowball.