I've always celebrated Christmas in cold climes. Eating shrimp on the beach in Australia just doesn't sound like Christmas to me! I guess it's all depends on what you've grown up knowing. Koala and her family still keep their British roots and roast a turkey, but they also enjoy salad,cold ham, cold chicken, king prawns, and crayfish, she says. Since it's high summer there now, chilled food does make sense.

We've gathered seasonal recipes from around the world, so even if you aren't traveling this holiday, you can still eat your way from country to country.

Have you eaten international Christmas foods? What's your favorite food memory?

When I was little, my mother used to make dough ornaments each year by baking cookies" out of a simple flour, water, and salt dough, decorating them with food coloring, and hanging them with ribbon from the tree. They had an adorable, homespun look, but my younger brother, still a toddler, couldn't quite understand that they weren't meant to be eaten—every year at some point during Christmas we'd find him, face stained by food coloring, in a corner gnawing on a decoration he'd snagged. Being not much older, I was confused by the fact that my mother kept telling me that the ornaments weren't good to eat, and yet my brother so clearly wanted to eat them. One year when I was about five I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I grabbed one of the cookies" and took a bite. It was extremely disappointing—so hard I couldn't even get my teeth in, no sweetness at all, just a salty, floury flavor. At that point I decided that, in the future when my mother said something wasn't good to eat, I'd believe her.

But I never fully gave up on the idea of a dough ornament that was actually edible. I can see the value of my mom's salty creations—they baked up firm enough to withstand several years on the tree, at least when hidden from curious toddlers. But I love the thought of a decoration that beautifies the tree and then—mmm...—does double duty as a tasty treat. What kid wouldn't love to come down Christmas morning and see that Santa had left a colorful confection hanging above the pile of presents, just waiting to be gobbled up.

It turns out, you can actually make many types of cookies into ornaments. Just pick sturdy, dry varieties that won't crumble or go bad and make a ribbon hole in them before baking. These stained glass cookies (pictured above), with a "window" of melted hard candies, would look beautiful twinkling in front of one of the tree's lights. And this recipe tells you how to fit two cookies together to make a three-dimensional decoration.

If you're not saving the cookies as a surprise, making them would be a fun Christmas Eve project to do with children. You could even pipe each child's name on their ornament so they can proudly admire their handiwork when it's on display.

And if you're looking for last-minute ideas for Christmas main courses, desserts, or other recipes, see our complete Christmas Package.

When I imagine a Christmas goose, I picture a Dickens character bundled up against the elements, trudging through deep snow with the huge bird slung over his shoulder, whistling Christmas carols and tipping his hat to the folks he meets along the way.

We always had turkey for Christmas dinner in my family. Goose sounds intimidating. Those birds always have more personality than chickens do in cartoons, so perhaps I'm afraid they'll wisecrack their way out of the pot. Or it might just be that they look so damn big.

I did wonder about going for goose this year. There's a delicious recipe in our Dinner Rush menu planner for this week, and a slew of other goose recipes in our database, too.

I was almost convinced until I read Jam_n's experience with goose in our Kitchen Counsel forum. The 14-pound bird she cooked was "bony, greasy, and fed only 7 people." 

Have you cooked goose?  Any tips? Should I be afraid? And where's the best source for buying the bird?

With all the Christmas craziness, it's easy to forget that New Year's is just around the corner. If you want to do some holiday entertaining but don't want to add another evening cocktail party to everyone's packed schedules, how about hosting something on New Year's Day? You could invite a few friends for brunch. But my vote would be for a later afternoon get-together. This allows you to sleep in if you've been out celebrating the night before, and you can do a casual, kid-friendly buffet that lets guests drop in and out throughout the afternoon. This wintry make it/buy it menu for 25 is easy to put together and much of the work can be done in advance. I can't think of a better way to start the year than a cozy, relaxing day with friends and family.

And for more New Year's Day menus, as well as well as hangover cures, recipes for traditional lucky foods, and healthy eating tips to help you keep your New Year's resolutions, see our complete New Year's Day package.

A highly influential food person who gets to remain nameless Tweeted about dinner the other bitter-cold day, and I was rather amazed to see asparagus on the menu. Sure, you can find the stuff everywhere, from parts unknown, but it goes with December like a Speedo on Santa. When I read that I was still mentally warming up after an unbelievably frigid morning at our neighborhood Greenmarket, where one farmer showed me the water in his jug had turned to ice in under an hour. His kale and spinach and savoy cabbage had not fared much better, but the cabbage was so gorgeous with its crinkly leaves, and so cheap at $2 for a huge head, that I wrestled it home to thaw it out. This was my second cabbage of the season, and I suspect we may be eating many more cooked the same way all winter. (Well, I may shred some for the occasional fish taco.) It's phenomenal when you braise it, wilting the thinly sliced leaves in a little butter with salt, then adding a little water and covering the pan and simmering until they're tender. I've taken to adding grated carrots, too, and the other night started to toss in caraway or cumin seeds or some other seasoning when I stopped to taste first. The flavors were so vibrant I put the jars back in the rack. Cabbage too often gets relegated to coleslaw, and you forget how satisfying it is when you apply heat and butter. I dreaded it growing up because my mom only served it stuffed, and the leaves were tough and the stuffing stodgy (the only thing more gruesome is stuffed peppers). Now I could eat it every night. Except in spring, when there's local asparagus to gorge on while we can.

Yes, I know that title is a pretty bold statement. But if you end up making these, please feel free to weigh in—I have a feeling you'll agree! I make these cookies every year to give as holiday gifts to friends and family. They hold up well during shipping and actually improve in flavor and texture for up to a week. Here's my method:

I have pretty strong feelings about rugelach. I absolutely can't stand when it's dry and crumbly—in my opinion, the dough should be tender and moist and filled with enough gooey, yummy morsels that they practically ooze out the sides. A few years ago it dawned on me that, when I found myself liking rugelach from a bakery, it was usually made with a cream cheese-enriched dough. The cream cheese adds that crucial tenderness and moisture.

So I set out creating my perfect Franken-recipe from several Epi versions. I used the dough from this recipe but the filling from this one. (If the choice is between a simple jam-and-raisin filling versus a chocolate and cherry one, is there even a question as to which one is better?) I rolled the rugelach into a log shape, as in the first recipe, rather than in the half-moons of the second recipe, which I felt would expose too much of the dough and filling to the drying oven heat. I used finely chopped bittersweet Valrhona chocolate rather than chocolate chips to bump up the flavor even more, and I used two to three times as much preserves, dried cherries, chocolate, and walnuts as called for. (Though there is a fine line where you cross over into too much filling, making the logs impossible to roll up. Aim for a thinly spread but even layer of preserves and a generous scattering of the other ingredients.) I brushed the cookies with cream as in the second recipe, rather than milk as in the first. (Again, no question: When is cream ever not better than milk?) And finally, I sprinkled a bit of sugar over the tops of the logs before baking, as in the first recipe.

When the logs came out of the oven, I followed the first recipe's instructions to partially cool them, then finish slicing, following the partial cuts you've made before baking. The results were incredibly moist little bundles of buttery dough, tangy sour cherries, and rich, deep bittersweet chocolate. I've made them every year since, and recipients always rave.

Anyone else like to create recipes this way, by taking desired elements from various other versions? If you're a builder of Franken-recipes, I'd love to hear about your creations.

Having a "calories be damned" kind of day? Then you'll want to dig right into one of the pull-out-the-stops "splurge day" recipes in our new feature Comfort Food Recipes for Splurge Days or Any Day. We've got recipes for burgers topped with bacon, cheese, and a creamy sauce; crispy deep-fried chicken; pudding made with heavy cream; and 12 more decadent dishes.

But we haven't forgotten about you and your comfort food needs if you're watching your calories, fat, cholesterol, or sugar today. Step aside iceberg lettuce salad and carrot sticks and make way for one of our diet-friendly healthy comfort food recipes. For each "splurge day" dish, we have a less caloric, but no less delicious, "any day" counterpart: a bison burger with a creamy low-cal sauce; crispy "unfried" chicken; deceptively rich-tasting chocolate-hazelnut pudding made with low-fat milk; and a dozen more main courses, sides, and desserts.

What are your favorite "splurge day" and "any day" comfort foods?

Oh Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah...

The Festival of Lights begins tomorrow evening, so in its honor, I thought I'd do a little latke poll. Like many aspects of Jewish cooking, potato pancakes seem to inspire strong opinions. My personal feeling is that the classic version, made from grated raw potatoes, is by far the best. I like them crispy but not too hard—for the perfect contrast of textures, there should also be a thicker, soft section in the center and lots of thin, crispy strands on the edges. (To accomplish this, I don't squeeze out the water from the grated potatoes, but I do press down on the pancakes as they cook to spread them out a bit. If you like them very crispy, use a kitchen towel to squeeze the excess moisture from the potatoes before mixing them with the rest of the ingredients.)

On the other end of the softness spectrum, there's the mashed potato latke, in my opinion a bastardization of the form. But I know some people who appreciate these plump, pillowy creations in their own right. And of course, chefs are constantly coming up with "reinvented" versions of the latke: beet latkes, parsnip latkes, curried latkes, latkes with Asian flavors. Just about anything that can be grated or pulsed in a food processor can be mixed into a batter and called a latke. And the ubiquity of the potato in world cuisines means that even classic spud versions take well to a variety of ethnic additions.

Maybe I've gotten cynical at an advanced age, but I read the New York Times op-ed today advocating frozen salmon over fresh and immediately wondered if the issue might not be more complicated than it was presented. And if an alternative solution might be even simpler. Basically, the writers contend that frozen wild salmon does not have to be shipped by air and is thus ecologically superior even to fish caught or farmed locally. Makes sense, but what about canned salmon? It's also wild, and it can be shipped at escargot speed because it's far less perishable than either fresh or frozen, with no power for the freezer required. Canned salmon is one of the greatest deals in the supermarket, as long as you don't try to force it into dishes where it doesn't belong. You can use it in chowder or salmon cakes or macaroni and cheese or even a very French gratin, with mushrooms and scallions. It's not a star, more a supporting player. But the price is right, and you can recycle the can.

Then again, the best deal of all is smoked salmon someone brings you from Alaska, like this fillet I found deep in a cabinet while looking for a prop for this post. (Smoking is the original preservation method.) For all anyone could tell, it could have been in that shelf-stable package since the Wright Brothers even dreamed up the flying machine that is wreaking so much environmental havoc today. . ..

Let's talk about last night's dinner aka today's lunch. Today's midday meal featured this delicious pasta with kale pesto and butternut squash (a Melissa Clark recipe for the New York Times). The recipe got me thinking about wintertime pesto not made with basil. After all, who said that you can only make pesto with basil? And yet, I couldn't help be skeptical. Kale pesto? I am happy to say that my skepticism was laid to rest. True, kale can't compete against basil in terms of taste or smell but because of the kale, the remaining ingredients--garlic, lemon zest, and toasted pine nuts--had the opportunity to shine and complement the sweetness of the roasted butternut squash. And if off-season basil isn't particularly appealing, kale's a great alternative.

Read up on Melissa Clark's Epi-log posts and check out her recipes. 

Is anyone else familiar with kale pesto? Do you have a winter alternative to a summertime food?

(Photo by Esther Sung)