I am very excited to present The 8th annual Top Ten  readers choice for the past year. We truly have some of the best cooks on the planet that are a part of the blogging community for Miz Helen's Kitchen and your recipe list for this year is awesome. Some of my very favorites are on the list and many thanks for your participation with this blog throughout the year. I know that some of you have been here for 8 years right along with me and some of you are new, so to all of you who have helped make this year so successful, many thanks and God Bless You!

I sure hope that all of you had a fantastic Christmas and Hanukkah season, our holidays were wonderful! We spent time with family and friends plus enjoyed lots of delicious food. Now we get to bring in the new year with all of you as we make meal plan's for the last few days of 2018 and kick off 2019 with some traditional Good Luck Foods!

I am so excited to see you today for our last party of 2018! This is also the week that we feature our Top Ten Post from last weeks party. We have some great features in the Top Ten so be sure and stop by to say hello to these great bloggers. I sure hope that all of you had a great Christmas and Hanukkah, we sure did it was a wonderful season to enjoy great friends and family with delicious dishes! As we close out 2018 I want to say many thanks to each and every one of you that make up this blogging community, you are a very special part of the success of this party every single week. We always look forward to your great post with the latest trends and flavors. When folks look for great recipes they come to Full Plate Thursday, thanks to folks like you!

When the Christmas decorations are in place,  each ornament hung with remembrance and love, its then time to sit quietly and reflect on the great love that has made this celebration possible, the birth of the Christ Child. I reflect on the joy on the faces of the friends and family laughing and enjoying the fellowship of the season and those who have passed on through the years and are no longer with us. All those wonderful people in our life passed this tradition on to us, and now it is time to pass it on to the friends and family that are with us today.

We are so excited for this Christmas season, all the delicious food and fellowship to be shared with friends and family. I love making the meal plan for this week with the special foods for the celebrations of Christmas. We have several traditional recipes that will be included in the meal plan this week, all those family favorites that we all love.

Welcome to Full Plate Thursday, come in and enjoy the Christmas festivities! We will have many wonderful warm drinks to sip and many delicious recipes to try. One of the many things I enjoy about the Christmas season is spending time with friends like all of you, I look forward to your visits every week when we gather together for good food and fellowship. Thanks so much for joining in and being a part of this fantastic blogging community! 

We love to entertain our friends and family and that means I need to have a great little appetizer that is easy and always crowd pleasing. Our Sweet Potato Sausage Balls do just that, this is a recipe that can come out of the freezer and be on the table in no time. The flavors in this sausage ball are a blend of American cuisine, with a vegetable,and a little heat in the back of your mouth, just wait for it. Our cottage visitors just love this recipe!

We often times have weekend brunch here at the cottage which happens to be a gathering place for friends and family on the weekend. We are a short walk to the lake along a lovely country road, so it is a great get away for city folks. A great brunch casserole is always a big hit with the crowd and easy for me to prepare so I can spend more time with guest. This Tex Mex Casserole recipe is just one of those favorites that we get special request for, it is delicious! It has a blend of Tex Mex ingredients and is topped off with a great garnish of our homemade hot salsa and sour cream, it really doesn't get much better than this. The casserole is a make a head recipe that can be frozen for up to 3 months after cooking and is a winner at any meal.

Just one more week before Christmas and we are busy! Making meal plans this time of the year is so important for saving time and money. We are entertaining here at the cottage several times in the next couple of weeks so it will be very important to have the meal plan in addition to the flow chart for the parties. We are looking forward to enjoying every minute of the festivities!

Only 12 days til Christmas and so much to do, so many wonderful recipes to try, so much fun! I love the excitement of the season and all the activities, especially the amazing food that we enjoy at all the functions. That food all starts with great recipes from bloggers like you who have worked hard in your kitchens to perfect the award winning recipes that you bring here every week. We have some great features from last week that you will want to check out with wonderful time saving ideas and delicious flavors! It sure is good to see you here today and thanks so much for stopping by!

One of the special projects that I really enjoy at Christmas is giving my homemade gifts from the kitchen. I remember through the years that the homemade gifts I have received are always so precious to me, because I know how much love goes into the planning and preparation of the gift. It gives me more joy than you will know to be able to give a gift from my kitchen and I am sharing with you some of the gifts that I will be giving this year. My wish would be that I could share one of these gifts with each of you, because you'al are so very special to me.

We can and preserve much of the harvest from our garden every year and we love to share those products with our friends and family. Through the years we have shared an abundant garden harvest and it gives us much joy to do so. Every year we like to make a very special canned good to share at Christmas with friends and family. This year we have made this beautiful Cranberry Jelly. What could be better at Christmas than a nice jar of Cranberry Jelly. This Jelly is delicious and can be paired with meats, poultry, and great with vegetables. We have been enjoying it with our sour dough bread and toasted bagels. It is a great jelly and providing we have some left by Christmas, we will be sharing a jar or two.

We have enjoyed a little slower pace this week and starting to enjoy the fruits of our decorating labor for Christmas. I just love it when we get all the decorations finished and sit by the fire with a nice cup of cider to just enjoy the cottage. I am excited to make the meal plan this week as one of my friends will be coming to the cottage and has requested a special recipe, I just love it when my family and friends want something special on the plan. I need to get started on this plan while my cider is still hot.

We are kicking off December with great features and looking forward to lots of fabulous food for the party today. It is a perfect time of the year for parties and party planning, whats a great party without great party food. We have some of the greatest cooks on the planet that are a part of our community here and we are so happy that you are one of them, we are sure looking forward to what you will be sharing with us for the party today!

We love bread pudding, it is always so comforting and full of flavor. I made this bread pudding with some of the pears that my neighbor gave me, those pears are so delicious. I added some dried cranberries and pecans then drizzled some caramel sauce to finish the dessert. This one sure didn't last long, next time I will make a bigger one to enjoy a little longer. I love recipes that just happen, sometimes they are the very best!

We have been getting some great carrots from the garden they are so fresh and tender. The fall garden vegetables have been great this year and I have had fun developing new recipes. I used a really different spice with this sheet pan recipe and it is delicious. I didn't have many carrots for the recipe so the next time I make it I will double the recipe, it was that good!

Here we are at the first of December already and the cottage is beginning to look a lot like a winter wonderland. The decorating and baking process has begun. Decorations being sorted and placed so carefully: to cookies coming out of the oven, it is a special time of the year. My meal plan this week will begin with a Hanukkah meal to honor my friend who celebrates Hanukkah, I am always excited to do that for her.