New Christmas Tradition: Homemade Bagels

For those of you who follow along on Instagram and Insta-stories, you already know that my family and I stayed home for Christmas instead of traveling this year. I was worried that I wouldn’t feel quite as festive since we weren’t celebrating with all of my extended family… but in all honesty, it was pretty lovely. My cute little nephew obviously makes everything more adorable and my parents did an amazing job decorating the house. What else could we possibly need? A new tradition, that’s what. Something that we can repeat for years to come, that is unique to a Chicago Christmas… with a touch of NJ & Long Island rolled into the mix. (My cousin Dan suggested that addition – all puns intended!)

Luckily, we came up with the perfect thing:

Unfortunately, I can’t take ANY credit for these bagels. My brother David and his adorable wife Ali found the recipe on A Beautiful Mess and they’ve been making them for special occasions for the past few years. To be totally honest, I snuggled with Lily for most of the process – but I did jump in to form the bagel rings AND sprinkle the delicious toppings on!!

We topped our bagels with a similar everything mixture as A Beautiful Mess, but since my parents had a cheese blend that included Asiago in the fridge, we had to make a few cheesy bagels, too. YOLO.

I’ll admit that I’m kind of a bagel snob… if visiting the east coast every year didn’t do it, living in New York totally ruined me. And since I try to eat healthy most of the time, I want the carbs I eat to be worth every bite – which means mediocre bagels are OUT. But these… these are chewy and perfect and it took a LOT of willpower to stop eating them after one and a half. Hahaha true story.

Serve with bacon and eggs and you’ve got my favorite breakfast in the world. Yum yum yum yum.