Holiday Gifts Of Love Blog Hop

I'm thrilled to be a part of the Holiday Gifts Of Love Blog Hop! Join me in celebrating the holidays with a fantastic group of authors as we share everything we love about Christmas, Christmas steamy stories and you might even learn a new tradition along with dozens of chances to win fantastic prizes!

In my family, the holiday takes place on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day is a relaxed, vegetative state where much grazing occurs, but Christmas Eve is when we actually celebrate. That's when everyone usually gets together for enough food to make you burst and presents are passed around as soon as the clock strikes midnight. The kiddies always insist they will stay up but only the most determined usually do and we end up having to drag half groggy little ones to the tree. Of course once the wrapping paper starts flying, they wake right up!

Dinner is usually a sublime roasted duck. We're not big ham or turkey folks, maybe because we're Portuguese. It's duck, roasted potatoes and veggies. There is always some kind of seafood dish too! Usually squid, baby octopus and shrimp. Dessert can be various little cakes but everyone usually gravitates towards the custard tarts (pasteis de nata if you're ever in a Portuguese bakery) and Honey cake (bolo de mel)

We do eggnog differently too. In that there is no egg and no nog. (what IS nog anyway?) Our version is a decadent dessert in a glass called Nikkita (no idea why!) It's from Madeira (where the mommy is from) and the recipe is sinfully simple. Equal parts vanilla ice cream and passion fruit soda (Sumol is our brand of choice). You can use seven up as a substitute and if you go to Madeira you'll find they use BEER in the restaurants! I'm partial to the passion fruit soda myself. Simply scoop three or four helpings of vanilla ice cream into a blender and pour in enough of the liquid (or liquor!) of your choice to level with the ice cream. Blend until you get it the consistency you like. Usually when it's just a little thicker than milk, you're good to go but by all means, add more or less liquid if you'd rather! You're going to be making batches of this stuff all night. Trust me.  It will separate as it stands. No worries. Just give it another quick blend before you serve. Enjoy!

As a part of the hop, each of the participating authors are giving away a little something. I thought for my prize I would give away a sneak peek at my upcoming historical erotic romance Wanted! I've been sharing snippets from it for the past couple of weeks and you guys have told me your're really excited for when this releases on January 4th so how about a peek at the first chapter?  Just comment here between Dec 14th and the 17th and I'll pick one lucky commenter to win that first chapter!

But that's not all you can win!

There is a huge blog hop grand prize you can win by commenting one my blog and by visiting the other participating hoppers! The more blogs you comment on, the more chances you have to win that grand prize! So what IS the grand prize? Have a lookie loo!

So leave me a comment here with your e-mail addy and then get hopping to the other authors blogs on the main site here: http://carrieannbloghops.blogspot.com/ too! Happy Holiday Hopping!