Christmas Baking Ideas

These are some of the cutest and easiest goodies to make for Christmas.  We simply dip pretzels into some almond bark and the children and grandchildren LOVE to decorate them in any way they choose.  Honestly, these are much easier to do and clean up than sugar cookies.  Usually when we get half way done with sugar cookies, I am left to finish decorating and clean up and by then, I'm exhausted!

Here are some other GREAT ideas for you that I will be doing this year....

White Chocolate Peppermint Fudge

Dinner Tonight

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Our family really enjoys Meatloaf, especially since we started having our own grass fed beef waiting patiently to be used in our freezer.  My recipe is my Mother's own famous recipe with lots of good spices, sauces and a bit of oatmeal, and bran in it.  It is delicious, but takes quite a bit of time to prepare.  

Today, on Pinterest of course, I came across this easy sounding Meatloaf recipe that I decided to try.  You can find it and many other delicious recipes on my Yummy Recipes board.

The recipe calls for:

1 pound of ground meat (beef or turkey)

1 egg

1 box of Stovetop Stuffing

1 cup water

Mix it all together and bake in a bread loaf pan at 350 for 45 minutes.

That amount might feed a smaller family, but we like having Meatloaf sandwiches from the leftovers so I doubled the recipe using:

2 pounds of grass fed, hormone and antibiotic free, Highland Beef

2 free range, home grown chicken egg 

(probably from a Barred Rock hen, the one that likes to eat all of my Kale)

2 boxes of incredibly processed Stove Top Chicken made with Whole Wheat

2 cups of raw milk

I used the whole wheat to make myself feel better about using processed boxes of stuffing with so much other excellent home grown and raised ingredients.

When it's just about done baking, I'll smother it with our homemade Amish Tomato Ketchup from our homegrown tomatoes......YUM!!

To finish the table, we'll have some canned peaches, spiced applesauce and hopefully a small salad from the lettuce still growing in the greenhouse!

I promise, if the recipe isn't any good, I'll be sure to add on to this post to let you know, but since we love stuffing, I'm pretty sure we will enjoy it.

~ Much later.....this recipe is delicious.  Our daughter said it was the best Meatloaf she had ever tasted!  I will tell you that you can clearly taste the stuffing in this meatloaf, so if you do not care for stuffing, I wouldn't advise making it.  If you love stuffing the way we do, you have GOT to try this!!

Fun Recipe Site

It seems like forever that I have always referred to Allrecipes.com when I'm searching online for a recipe.  It is a great site and I would highly recommend it, however, I have discovered a new site that I'm really excited about.  It is Simply Recipes!  Many of you may know this site well and I may be really behind and have some catching up to do, but that's ok!  I'm excited about sharing it with others who haven't heard about it yet.

So I stumbled across this recipe for Tomato Pie.  It looked really yummy. I followed the link to it's source.  Bingo!  I couldn't believe how user friendly it is.  It is extremely easy to save the recipes I want into a recipe box, same as Allrecipes, but the added bonus is that I can create a grocery list of items that I need from the recipe too.  Not only that, but it invites you to email an invitation to others so they can view your grocery list.  !!!!!   No more writing down my grocery list and losing it, or leaving it at home.  And the added bonus is that my husband can simply log on to it as he's walking through the store, picking up what we need before coming home.  

AND!

You also can create your own meal planner with the recipes and upload your own recipes!  

So lets review:

Delicious Recipes

Personal Recipe Box

Grocery List

Meal Planner

It also provides you with coupons and lets you mark your favorite local market.  There are also different capabilities that I won't use, but could be helpful to others like using a smartphone to scan the labels of what's in your pantry so that you can keep track of what you have and when you need more.  That is way too technical for me though.  A sharable online grocery list with my husband is about as high tech as I get at the moment.  

And just in case you are wondering if I am being financially compensated in any way for this post, let me assure you that I am not.  I felt this site it truly a help regarding functionality in both the kitchen and shopping.  I hope you are blessed by it!

The Glorious Advantages of Raw Milk

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One of the healthy new changes we have made in our home is the use of Raw Milk.  Glorious Raw Milk!!  Untouched by the human hand, in it's purest form as God intended it to be.  

Juicing for Better Health

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What is your favorite breakfast?  I don't think I have a favorite, but in the past, if it contained eggs and cheese or biscuits and gravy, it was considered my favorite breakfast.  We also used to live on cereal.  You know the kind, the one with the box that says it contains whole grain and fruit.  Most of the time it was even labeled organic. 

Homemade Biscuits and an Amish Cookbook Giveaway!

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I'm very excited to finally find a biscuit recipe that works for me!  Biscuits have never been my strong point, so I never make them from scratch, but have you read the label on any brand of biscuits from the store?  Ick!  I had made the decision to either learn how to make them or we wouldn't have them at all.  

Christmas Baking List

Christmas Cutout Cookies

Aren't these beautiful?  Occasionally, I wish mine looked like these.  Everyone always says that practice makes perfect and I've been making these for over 30+ years and have never had them come out this pretty!  Oh well, maybe if I was a perfectionist it would really matter to me.  The most beautiful cookies I know of are the ones my children and grandchildren make.  Those are the ones that have broken edges, too much icing and tons of sprinkles on them, but they portray love and laughter and family!

Thanksgiving and Thankfulness

As wives and mothers, we set the mood of our home.  With the rush of the season, the preparation, the cooking, the gathering....there is so much for us to wrap our minds around, I tend to neglect the decorating, which leaves our home a bit sparse looking.

I'm not one for store bought clutter, not even for special occasions, but I do love a beautifully set table and handmade decorations.  This is where Pinterest.com comes in.  It is my new found right hand.  Coming up with ideas on my own isn't my specialty, but give me a picture and instructions and I'm all set.  I can find things that fit my very own taste and then go to the website with instructions so easily that I have more crafts on my list to do than I'll ever have time for.

Life as a Keeper of the Home

Labor Day weekend came as a huge relief for me, not due to some huge free for all at the lake on a boat (although there is nothing wrong with that), but because I was finally able to catch up on some of the canning I needed to do.  We've spent so much time working in the garden and at the Farmer's Market, I haven't had any time at home long enough to get some canning done.  

You see, for some time now, I have felt the pull to create some sort of cottage industry, but could never really put my finger on what it should be.  One of my favorite things to do is to grow organic heirloom vegetable plants.  The garden is my sanctuary.  It is where I

Sweet Stuffed Peppers

Last year I chopped up my abundance of sweet peppers and put them in the freezer.  They added beauty and great taste to almost every meal all winter long, however, I still was unable to use them all.  This year I decided that our family would eat more of them as stuffed peppers instead of slicing them into different meals and they are terrific cooked this way.  I've also heard that you can stuff them and freeze them too, so I'll be putting lots of them away in that manner for this coming winter.  I'm so glad to find different ways to use these tasty treats.

Sweet Stuffed Peppers

1 pound ground beef
1/2 cup uncooked long grain brown rice
1 cup water
6 sweet bell peppers (any color)
2 (8 oz) cans tomato sauce (I use spaghetti sauce)
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder (or cook 1/2 of a medium onion with your ground beef)
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning (or crumble your homegrown herbs of Basil and Oregano into it)
1 cup cheese of your choice...Cheddar, Colby Jack, Mozzarella etc.

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

• Cook the rice and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover, and cook 20 minutes.

• In a skillet over medium heat, cook the beef (and onion) until evenly browned.

• Remove and discard the tops, seeds, and membranes of the bell peppers. Arrange peppers in a baking dish with the hollowed sides facing upward. (Slice the bottoms of the peppers if necessary so that they will stand upright.) 

• In a bowl, mix the browned beef, cooked rice, 1 can tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. Spoon an equal amount of the mixture into each hollowed pepper. Mix the remaining tomato sauce and Italian seasoning in a bowl, and pour over the stuffed peppers.  

• Bake 1 hour in the preheated oven, basting with sauce every 15 minutes, until the peppers are tender.  10 minutes before they are done, sprinkle cheese over their tops.

 I hope you enjoy! 
 


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