Mid-Week Mellow

Christmas isn't the only holiday in December:

December 4: National Cookie Day

The controversial soup/stew debate rages on:

According to The Kitchn, you usually submerge your soup ingredients completely in water or stock, while stews are just barely covered in liquid. Since you use less liquid for stew, it thickens during the cooking process, giving it a gravy-like consistency and making the solid ingredients the focus of the dish. Some recipes even call for flour or a roux (a mixture of fat and flour) to make the stew even thicker. And because stews aren’t as watery as soups, it’s more common to see them served over noodles, rice, or another grain.

Etiquette tips for the holidays:

A 1956 ad for Royal Nuts recommends that holiday party hosts fashion a fabulous Christmas nut tree for their guests. The “tree” is made by shaping a loaf of brown bread into a cone and then sticking it onto a candle holder so it stands up. Then, the host should spread the cone with cream cheese (made green with food coloring) and stick nuts onto the tree with toothpicks for a fabulously festive appetizer sure to get guests talking.

Perhaps talking about how gross that is.