My family has a couple of local chefs to thank for providing the inspiration for this year’s Christmas brunch and dinner.

Eric Viedt, executive chef and partner at The Margarita at PineCreek, reads cookbooks voraciously and soaks up culinary trends like a sponge. Then he turns to his kitchen to dazzle customers with unusual and delicious dishes. More than that, he and his pastry chef, Cathy Werle, give cooking classes almost every month, many of which I’ve attended.

So as I planned my Christmas Day meals, I thumbed through a few sets of Viedt’s and Werle’s recipes. Here’s what I spotted and gave a try. I’m also including some food finds that helped round out my holiday menus.

I zeroed in on a recipe for a white bean and clam stew, which included a separate recipe for chorizo, a spicy Mexican-style sausage, that yields about 5 pounds.

“This is rather a large portioned recipe, but we find that it is great to make in bulk and freeze in 1-pound portions,” Viedt said. “Or if you have the equipment, put the mixture into sausage casing. The sausage only get better as it sits.”

I love chorizo but often find the types available at ethnic markets or the grocery store melt into a puddle of fat, leaving very little actual meat to eat. I decided to give this recipe a try. I only needed half a pound for a green chili quiche I planned to serve for brunch, so I figured I’d take Viedt’s advice and divide up the batch for freezing. I cooked a pound and used half for the breakfast pie and saved the rest to mix into scrambled eggs. The remaining 4 pounds I gifted to friends and family.

A couple of tips: Buy bulk ground pork from Doug Wiley, owner of Larga Vista Ranch with his wife, Kim. Kim sends out a weekly email that lists all the meats and other foods they have for sale. Order what you’d like and then pick it up near Ivywild School when they make their weekly drop-offs of orders on Wednesdays. Doug’s pork is excellent and the ground meat extra lean, which was a perfect ingredient for the chorizo. Email farmers wiley@gmail.com or call 440-7062. You can find the special chili seasonings required for the recipe at Savory Spice Shop or Penzeys – Herbs and Spices.

For Christmas dinner, I offered a couple of new appetizers: Fromager d’Affinois Campagnier cheese, which can be found at Whole Foods Market, and giant green olives. The cheese is a soft-ripened cow cheese that has a mild, fruity flavor. Let it come to room temperature before serving. And when slicing the cheese, start at the nose of the wedge and cut toward the back. That way, everyone gets a fair taste of the creamiest cheese, which is the center of the nose and the thicker back part of the rind. .

As for the olives, they are Trader Joe’s Giant Greek Green Olives. The grocery store’s newsletter, the “Fearless Flyer,” raved about them in the December issue saying, “Big. Huge. Gargantuan. Enormous. These olives are truly giant.”

They are by far the best olives I’ve eaten in a long time – very meaty, not overly salty and tasty companions to the cheese. And, again according to the “Fearless Flyer” description, “Unlike many other very large olives, they have a very high ratio of flesh to pit.” Which is a good thing. All the more delicious olive meat to enjoy.

Continuing my theme of taking it a little easier with the Christmas dinner, I opted to buy refrigerated scalloped potatoes from Costco. A couple of friends who are excellent cooks had highly recommended them. Now I may never go back to making my own. The pan of layered potatoes with cheese and creamy sauce heated in just minutes in the microwave. Plus they had a lovely, toasty-looking cheese top, as if they had been baked for an hour in the oven. Just heat them and serve in a pretty dish. It’ll fool guests into thinking they’re your creation.