18: 5 Holiday Foods

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Today I am linking up with  Running on Happy and Fairytales and Fitness for Friday Five 2.0 Linkup.

Ah, the holidays. Let’s talk about the holidays. This seems like such a good idea right now, doesn’t it? The holidays comprise Thanksgiving AND Christmas, right? I love and embrace both and I am always trying to make the holidays last as long as possible, so let’s talk about 5 holiday favorites.

1. Vanilla Cinnamon Tea. This tea is a seasonal item from TJs and it’s so good that last year, I made a desperate plea to my friends to check their local stores because my local store ran out and wasn’t going to bring it back until this year. Some lovely friends actually picked up a few boxes and sent them to me and I will be forever grateful that I didn’t have to go 11 months without it.

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2. Spritzgebäck (spritz cookies?). It’s a tradition in our family that my Dad does the Christmas baking and for as long as I can remember, he made Spritzgebäck every year. It’s delicious with a cup of coffee or tea and makes me feel nostalgic.

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(not my photo (from here), but could have been…!))

3. Speculoos (in German Spekulatius) is a popular spiced shortbread cookie. It’s my absolute favorite cookie in the whole wide world. Hands down. You can grab a box at TJ’s (which seems to have a lot of my favorite holiday treats, come to think of it!).  

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4. After Eight (Thin Mints) are must for the holidays. It’s not Christmas without some After Eight for me. Of course, there are different variety of mint chocolate thins and I don’t discriminate, but After Eight are my favorite.

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5. Gingerbread Coffee (from TJ’s). This one also just comes around during the holidays and I just picked up a can last weekend. So good.

Photo of the week: Gingerbread coffee

I know, horrible… I just realized, these are all ‘sweet treats’ and I don’t particularly have a sweet tooth. I am a moderator through and through and I usually don’t tend to overeat around the holidays (ok, maybe a little, but never enough to put myself on a diet when the new year hits), but all of these remind me of the holidays and of home. And it’s quite normal to associate sweets with the holidays, right?

What’s your favorite holiday treat?

  1. I used to eat those After Eight mints all the time! I completely forgot about them. Wow, flashback!

    1. Gotta get some at World Market ;)

  2. The Jingle Jangle ice cream from TJs is officially my new favorite holiday treat. So good.

    1. Oh, I never tried them…. I have to get some :)

  3. That vanilla cinnamon tea sounds tasty. I do find that alot of teas do not have much flavor. I like to add a little cream that I put in my coffee to it. This would be perfect for my french vanilla creamer.

    1. You should give this tea a try… I really love it! :)

  4. I love gingerbread flavored everything! I’m definitely not a moderator at all though, so I can’t buy too many sweets for the house or I’ll eat them all :)

    1. … but, it’s the holidays ;)

  5. My favorite holiday sweet treats are my mom’s health candy, and back when I didn’t know about my gluten intolerance, I also loved her sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies. I am going to try to make GF sugar cookies this year. Hopefully they will turn out! Besides that I really love the meals we have around the holidays, like the GF stuffing my mom makes and all the fixings that go with the turkey. And I love our Christmas Eve meal, which is an assortment of seafood. That is one night of the year when I definitely overeat!!

    1. Oh, I definitely love the holiday meals as well… first the turkey and then the Christmas meal. We never had a traditional meal at my family’s house, but my Dad would always come up with amazing meals!

  6. My favorite is everything pumpkin. The orgsnic canned pumpkin puree from TJ goes into soups, sauces and in my Saturday morning pancake batter! Add some pumpkin pie spice and you have the perfect holiday breakfast! yumm!

    1. I am not the biggest fan of regular pumpkin pie, so I never was much into pumpkins, but maybe I should give the canned pumpkin a try? I might like pumpkin muffins or something…

  7. That vanilla cinnamon tea is my absolute favorite!! I missed it last year and was so sad. This year, my closest Trader Joe’s was all out this week – so I sent a friend who has another location closeby to pick me some up, and they scored some. Well worth all of the work :-)

    1. Ha! You sound like me… I had some friends look for the vanilla tea for me at their TJ’s, too, when my store ran out… LOL

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