mimosa, chocolate and toast!

It's tradition for our family to wake up late, snack on something like cheese or bread while opening presents, then dive right into making Christmas dinner!

When I was a child, my mom always made scrambled eggs, bratwurst, and Mexican hot chocolate. She's visiting us this year and I'm going to surprise her with the same. She said all she wants for Christmas is a great cup of coffee and the morning with her grandchild, so we'll give her that too!

Happy Hannukah.

I usually work Christmas morning and then spend the afternoon doing a volunteer thing at the local children's hospital. They supply us with sandwiches, which I have as a late breakfast/early lunch.

Panettone French toast

oh we usually have some sort of homemade coffee cake & LOTS of coffee while we open presents. this year it will be martha stewart's cardamom streusel coffee cake. yum!

then we move on to a full breakfast of egg sandwiches with pork roll & cheese, and hashbrowns - more coffee! - and mimosas.

that usually holds until dinner!

We usually get great pastries from a local bakery, then have scrambled eggs and bacon. This year my brother is making popovers to replace the pastries--yum!

Brunch menu is chosen by the grandkids---so it varies from cereal & donuts to quiche!

Homemade Monkey Bread!

Mulled cider & cookies!

being jewish, christmas morning (if i'm not working) starts with lazy coffee and maybe a basic weekend breakfast--oatmeal with fruit, maybe, or eggs (i can't cook on a work morning...too early). then around late lunchtime, it's time to order a few too many dishes from the local chinese joint to pick on throughout the day. then we usually go to a movie, so dessert is some sort of candy from an enormous box. :)

At our house we open about half the gifts as there is no holding the kids off and while they check out their new things and eye the rest of the presents my husband and I make our traditional christmas breakfast - which is eggnog frenchtoast, sausage and canadian bacon in a ketchup/maple syrup/apple jelly sauce, and ofcoarse orange juice, strawberries and champaign!!! Yum

Although my entire family was born and raised in the Midwest, Christmas breakfast is ALWAYS lox and bagels. We may have been the only children at our suburban St. Louis Catholic grade school that knew what lox was...

And of course we also have tons of scrambled eggs, freshly squeezed OJ, lots o' coffee and a real STL tradition: gooey butter coffeecake!

Never anything special. Usually a bowl of cereal or toast. And lots of coffee for the adults.

My husband and I both have the 24th off as well as Christmas Day, so we've planned lots of good things to eat for both days, starting with breakfast.

On the 24th, we'll begin our day with a breakfast skillet - breakfast sausage from Flying Pigs, potatoes, onions and whatever else I decide to toss in, with some eggs cracked in as well.

On the 25th, it'll be "bagels and bloodies" as we open our gifts. My husband is going to make a batch of his famous Bloody Mary mix ahead of time so the flavors can blend, and he'll shake some up to go alongside a spread of bagels and toppings from Russ and Daughters.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Being Chinese means the family Christmas dinner is a mostly Chinese food affair, but we've always also made turkey (though stuffed with fried sticky rice).

On Christmas morning, it's turkey congee, made with the bird carcass, the giblets and the assorted weird pieces that didn't make it to the table.

Mom, born in Lebanon, makes Choreg bread with the special spice, mahleb. You can get this from a Middle Eastern grocery--it smells like nothing else. However, this year, she made a bit of a mess making it by having the liquid spill out over the top edge of the Cuisinart, so it didn't rise properly. We may make it into Pain Perdu (bread pudding) or French toast. Or she'll make another batch and pay more attention to what she's doing and not get distracted by my dad!

BTW, my family normally drink tea with this--I really don't love tea but I AM A PEET'S COFFEE JUNKIE, so I'll be having fresh coffee by the POT!

When it comes to breakfast, my husband and I have totally opposite palates. So it'll be stuffed French toast using a recipe from an old issue of Gourmet, served with a side of chicken sausages (from a local company called Wild Meats, which sells the most delicious free-range meat I've been able to find). Fresh orange juice. And then mocha with espresso for me and an Americano for for him. Mmmm... I'm hungry just thinking about it.

We have egg strata: one sweet and one savory.

Something savory!

yum! an arugula and goat cheese frittata, popovers, and grapefruit-orange-pomegranate salad.