A breakfast casserole made with eggs, biscuits and sausage gravy.

Egg, Biscuit and Sausage Gravy Breakfast Casserole

This is another one of those recipes that's been making the rounds on Facebook for awhile, made with canned biscuits, a packet of sausage gravy and eggs. Nothing wrong with that!

I wanted to make it from scratch though, so I made up a quick biscuit dough and easy homemade sausage gravy instead. You may certainly exchange that out for the convenience products to save time, but do keep in mind the sodium levels on any pre-packaged product so that you don't oversalt or overseason. You'll need an 8-count can of refrigerated biscuits and a packet of sausage gravy mix that makes 2 cups (such as Pioneer brand).

A classic soup combining dried split peas and ham, with a mirepox of onion, carrots and celery, enhanced with a ham bone or ham hocks.

Split Pea and Ham Soup

As much as I look forward to all those delectable holiday dishes that we wait all year to eat, I tire of it all pretty quick. By a day or two later, I usually start craving simple things like egg salad or grilled cheese and tomato soup, and anything that hasn't been consumed is destined for the freezer, where it will be re-purposed in another way, another day.

Merry Christmas from Deep South Dish

Thank you for making Deep South Dish one of your sources for Southern recipes and for being a part of the family here. Your kind comments, endless encouragement and continuing support is what keeps me doing this.

Merry Christmas from The Cajun and me as we look forward to a healthy and prosperous New Year for all of us in 2014. God bless.

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A traditional Mississippi Gulf Coast Christmas treat, this is my small batch version of pusharatas - a heavily spiced, drop fritter, made with apple, orange and lemon, raisins and pecans, and deep fried and finished with a dip in a thick powdered sugar glaze.

Small Batch Pusharatas

I love pusharatas. Love. Love. Love. But, because of their history here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the best recipes are mostly huge batches, making hundreds! That is excellent when you are giving them away as gifts, of course, but sometimes you just want enough for your own cookie trays, so this year I wrote a smaller batch recipe.

 

  An old-fashioned heirloom fruit salad recipe, made with whole seedless grapes dressed with a sour cream and cream cheese dressing, whipped cream folded in and finished with a brown sugar and pecan topping.

Grape Salad

This is a retro fruit salad recipe from waaay back. You'll see versions of it all over the internet with very little variation in the base recipe of seedless grapes tossed in a creamy, sweet dressing, usually made with cream cheese, sour cream and sugar and finished with a brown sugar nut topping.

A wonderful heirloom recipe dating back 100 years, this simple pecan cookie bar is topped with a brown sugar meringue layer, giving them a slightly crisp, cracked topping.

Original Old Fashioned Mud Hen Bars

You may never have heard of Mud Hen Bars before, or you may have seen them for first time in the last couple of years across the explosion of food blogs, but it's actually one of those recipes that's been around even longer than I have.

Santa Claus Whiskers Cookies - a slice and bake butter cookie, filled with chopped candied cherries and pecans, and rolled in coconut before baking.

Santa Claus Whiskers Cookies

I have the tried and true favorites that I like to make every Christmas, but sometimes I like to add something new to the cookie tray and this was one that I kept running into when browsing my cookbook collection. It's a slice and bake log cookie, so it needs an overnight rest once you roll it up, but it comes together easy enough.

Top Favorite Sweets for Christmas

Top Favorite Sweets for Christmas from Deep South Dish

When the holidays roll around, things can get pretty hurried up and hectic, that's for sure. It's awfully convenient to run by the deli and pick up already made cookies and sweets, or order gourmet treats from across the internet, and I certainly do that too, but there's really nothing that can beat the taste of homemade from scratch treats that come right out of your own kitchen.

Old Fashioned Holiday Fruit Salad with Custard Sauce

Old Fashioned Holiday Fruit Salad with Custard Sauce - a mixed fruit salad, made with canned fruit cocktail, mandarin oranges, grapes, maraschino cherries and fresh apples and finished with an egg custard and fruit juice based dressing - a long-time favorite on many Southern holiday tables.

Holiday Fruit Salad

Fruit salads are popular for holiday meals and there must be thousands of variations, from congealed, to mixed fruit, to frozen. This classic version made from an assortment of fresh and canned fruits and dressed with an egg custard that substitutes juices for the traditional cream sauce, dates back many years and has been a holiday favorite in my family for years.

A whole chicken, cut up, seared and roasted in a cast iron skillet with tarragon, thyme and fresh rosemary and lemon slices.

Cast Iron Skillet Roasted Cut Up Chicken

Chicken is so economical, and we eat a lot of it in this house.

I often buy the big family packs of chicken pieces and split them up, or whole chickens when they go on sale for 99 cents a pound and under, cut them up and freeze them. Leg quarters, drumsticks, wings, whatever is on sale, I know I'll find a use for it. Sometimes we'll make a meal out of wings!

A slight crunch on the outside and chewy on the inside, these light and airy cookies are made with coconut, sugar, flour and beaten egg whites.

Coconut Macaroons

Coconut Macaroons are another fabulous and super easy cookie to add to your Christmas sweets tray, but don't confuse them with French macarons, which, although meringue based, are sandwiched with some kind of a filling and a whole 'nother kinda cookie.