The holiday season is a time of celebration over food and drink with our friends, and in rare cases, our relatives. This season is also a time when my kitchen becomes off-limits to my husband or anyone else who expresses a desire to "help" me prepare holiday food. I admit that it's a female stress thing, but with sharp knives and blunt instruments at my disposal, my husband would rather engage in hand–to–hand combat with Godzilla than to enter my kitchen.

While I love cooking, I hate doing everything at the last minute.

My solution to the problem is to prepare as much of each recipe a day ahead of time. My physicist husband's solution (see "help" above) to accelerating the preparation process is to invoke what he refers to as a universal truth of all matter: the product of the stove temperature X the cooking time = a constant. For example, if the recipe calls for 350 degrees for 30 minutes, it can as well be prepared at 700 degrees for 15 minutes (you get the idea). It is his view that, with a controlled thermo-nuclear reaction, we could prepare the food while seated at the table.

But I digress.

Through the years I have collected and traded many recipes from dear friends. They continue to remind me of our friendship, even when we are thousands of miles apart. Here are some of my holiday brunch favorites:

[Followed by detailed recipes]

Orange Sauce Crepes (35 years old, from Kristen Taylor of Salt Lake City)
Hot Open-Face Crab Sandwiches (from Joan Petty of Baltimore)
Bubble Bread (from Susan Horsely of Scottsdale, Arizona)
Onion Pie (from Gail Long of Winchester)

ENJOY