Comfort foods that make the holidays

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Bieroks
My father's family looks forward to bierocks each holiday season.

Anyone from Eastern Europe would recognize the pastries filled with ground meat, cabbage, and onions: Poland's pierogie is only a phonetic hop away. My great-grandmother made bieroks long after her parents fled the Volga in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution, and today my father and his brother make her recipe around Thanksgiving or Christmas.

For them, it's a chance to relive a childhood tradition, ponder the past, and bring warmth and good smells to my uncle's kitchen. For the rest of us, it's a chance to score a few to take home for the freezer. —D.S.

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Mulled wine
A few years ago I started a tradition of hosting large holiday open houses. I wanted to serve a drink that was delightful and also easy to prepare for a large crowd. I was stumped.

I grew up in a family of Scotch drinkers, but Scotch and beer neither seemed the economical nor popular choice for a large crowd. I happened upon mulled wine at a friend’s home and it was love at first sip — red wine mixed with fruits and spices really warmed the palate. I loved the fringe benefit of the intoxicating scents that wafted throughout the house as the wine warmed: lemons, oranges, cinnamon and nutmeg.

At my holiday parties I like to serve mulled wine in a punch bowl, though I do keep an additional small pot with the wine-fruit mixture on the stove for the entire evening. The radiating bouquet of aromas gives the room a holiday personality. —M.B.

Jon Bonné is MSNBC.com's lifestyle editor. Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC.com's television editor, and writes frequently about food. Monica Bhide writes about food and culture from suburban Virginia. Derrick Schneider is a freelance food and wine writer and publisher of An Obsession with Food. Oakland, Calif.-based Romney Steele writes about food for Edible East Bay and is working on a book about salad greens.

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