Welcome to the Soiree! In addition to recipes in Your Home Sweet Home Appendix E,  you might like to try one of these:

Starters and dips

Cream cheese dip

Stuff celery or enjoy with sliced cucumbers, carrots, or crackers

• 8 oz cream cheese at room temperature
• 1 of 1 ½ tablespoons of horseradish
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Blend the ingredients. Either stuff the celery or offer the bowl of dip with a plate of vegetables and or crackers.

 Bacon and sausage in a woven bread

The bread

• 3 cups flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 6 oz butter
• ¼ cup water

Mix the flour and salt, work in the butter by hand or with a food processor. Add the water a little at time to form a dough. Knead it until it holds together and feels firm. Then flour a surface so you can roll out the dough. Roll out the dough to about 12” by 10”. It should be thin enough to cook well but thick enough to hold the ingredients.

The filling

•  ½ lb. bacon, cook to render off some of the fat, but don’t make it crisp. Cut it into one-inch pieces.
•  ½ lb. pork sausage sliced thin. Whatever kind of sausage you like hot or mild or use ground pork and add more spices and salt, for instance, 1 teaspoon each of basil, oregano and garlic, ½ teaspoon of salt.
•   4 eggs hard boiled. Cool in ice water. Remove the shells. Chop the eggs.
•   Salt and pepper

Keep to the side: One whole egg not used in the mixture but used to glaze the bread and make it shine.

Mix the filling ingredients together.

In the center of the dough, from the top to the bottom of the long side

Spread the filling. On either side of the filling cut the dough into strips. Take one strip on the right and cover the mixture, then a strip from the left and pull it over to cover the filling. Keep going all the way down. The filling should be covered and look like a braided bread.

Crack the remaining egg. Mix it with a tablespoon of water and brush the bread.

Put the filled bread on a jelly roll sheet or something that sides to catch any run off from the bacon or sausage.

Oven set at 425° for about 30 to 40 minutes.

Cool. Cut into strips and serve.

(One variation to the filling is to cook ½ of mushrooms in butter with salt and garlic and add them to the filling mixture. Experiment with the filling!)

In Your Home Sweet Home I invited you to share a favorite recipe of yours. I hope that you will send it to penelope@wealthychoices.com.  Some of the recipes may be posted here and shared with the community for all of us to enjoy.