A quick and easy dessert salad, made with fruit, pudding mix, non-dairy topping, chopped pecans, and topped with a pinch of nuts, coconut and Maraschino cherries.

Pineapple Orange Fluff

Okay, seriously. How can you not love a fluff? Easy to throw together. So creamy and delicious!

There are lots of different variations on it these days, but the standard base ingredients usually include some kind of fruit, a complimentary flavor of pudding mix and non-dairy topping (aka Cool Whip) at minimum. I typically like to add mini marshmallows and chopped pecans also.

Three of the most popular versions, and my personal favorites, are pistachio, orange and pineapple, although there are a multitude of variations left only to the imagination! Some recipes these days use pie filling, some sweetened condensed milk, cottage cheese, some use Jello instead of pudding, some use sour cream, some even use flavored coffee creamers or extracts.

A shortcut sweet potato casserole with the unusual addition of banana and finished with rows of marshmallows and brown sugar sweetened cornflake cereal crumbs.

Sweet Potato Banana Crunch

I am all for being about tradition when it comes to holiday meals. Keep the dishes that you know and love on the menu, because everyone will be expecting them, every, single year!

My Mama's holiday table was the same every year, with very little variation between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I miss those times so much, and while we now share our holidays with my son, our daughter-in-law and grandkids, I still find myself missing my Mama tremendously this time of year.

A classic Deep South dressing, made with torn French bread, vegetables and fresh Gulf oysters with their liquor.

Classic Oyster Dressing

Growing up, Mama always made two dressings. One, she made with bread, most often using the Pepperidge Farms herb stuffing mix and it went right into the bird, with leftovers to be baked in a side dish. I always ate the one from the turkey and despite modern day warnings, I somehow survived. It really was the best!

The other dressing she made was an oyster dressing for my Daddy. Daddy was the oyster lover in our family and other than me, none of the rest of the family were all that interested in it to my recollection.

A quick and easy, creamy corn chowder made with veggies, sautéed in bacon drippings, cubed potatoes and shrimp.

Corn Chowder with Shrimp

I started off intending to make this chowder with some frozen crawfish tails, that I was sure I had in the freezer. Unfortunately, after having to hurriedly rearrange things and transfer stuff from the refrigerator freezer, to the deep freeze, courtesy Hurricane Zeta, it was just faster and easier to grab some shrimp.

No worries. They are delicious too! The only difference really, is the flavor that comes from the fat in the crawfish, but honestly it's a good chowder either way. You can even use a combination of the two, or throw in some crab as well. Although not as popular down here, clams may also be substituted. Oysters as well.