Dallas, TX blogger - parenting, cooking, gardening, DIY-ing, crafting, and life with three boys!
Salad dressing is something that people are very passionate about. If a favorite kind of dressing is missing from the potluck, they might skip the salad all together. I think everyone assumes that everyone likes Ranch dressing, but that is not true! I cannot eat Ranch dressing at all, but my husband and kids do! My favorite is Italian or some vinaigrettes. I love tangy, robust flavor on my salad and veggies!View Post
Last year, I scored an awesome, new-in-box snow cone/ shaved ice maker at a garage sale. It is so simple because you can freeze a block of ice and within a few hours, make a super smooth snow cone! I did cave and buy some snow cone syrup but wow….that stuff has a TON of sugar and food dye, so we started using juice with our shaved ice.
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One of my absolute favorite Halloween candies is caramel apple suckers. I adore these sweet, sour, sticky suckers, but do I really need a whole bag? Noooo! I had some of these yummy caramel bits on hand from our Mickey Mouse caramel apples and mini silicon candy molds, and I was surprised with how easy it was! They're small enough to be satisfyingly sweet, but perfect for portion control and little ones!
Ingredients:
Christmas will soon be here but until then, there is a lot of time to fill! Kids who are out for the holidays plus parents who have a lot to do to get ready for the big day means that we have to pull a few tricks out of our hats. Here is a fabulous DIY for something the kids love and can spend hours creating with! Homemade Christmas gak is perfect for preschoolers (who aren't tempted to eat stuff) all the way through adults who love to play with squishy gak. And, it can be scented to smell like Christmas with thieves oil or cinnamon spice.
Ingredients:
Directions:
Notes: *The thieves oil might make it harder to mix well, but keep at it and it will turn out fine. *Remind kids to not put the Gak in their mouths and to wash their hands after playing with it. *If the kids get it on their clothes like mine did, (because doesn't everyone love to SIT on their Gak? Ugh!) just immediately pick off any that you can and rub with warm water and then wash. It came out well and didn't stain, but with the food coloring and oil, it made me a little nervous.
Homemade Christmas Gak is a great way to pass the time during snow days and would make a great, inexpensive gift or stocking stuffer!
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I'm the kind of girl who keeps a Costco sized bag of semisweet chocolate chips in the freezer. What….you don't do that? For one, it saves a lot of money, not only because I buy in bulk, but because it's the only chocolate I really eat. I can use it for chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip pumpkin bread, or I can grab a handful and share some with the boys midday. There's nothing wrong with that…right? I mean, it could be worse! Right?
For awhile I was making my coconut chocolate candy often. D and I would eat it, but no one else really cared for it. And then I realized that if I'm the only one really eating it, then perhaps I should not be making it anymore. Huge sigh. But then, I discovered something new and different from my regular coconut butter ……. CAKE BATTER coconut butter!!! This is totally NOT sponsored, but this company, Nikki's, makes amazing flavors of coconut butter and Vanilla Cake Batter is one of them. Vanilla Cake Batter, people! Coconut butter that tastes like cake batter. Here are the ingredients: organic unsweetened coconut, organic extra virgin coconut oil, organic honey, organic vanilla extract, and sea salt. It's so delicious right out of the jar, but I made my chocolate candy with it! And it's so, so delicious!
Ingredients:
Directions:
Fall is my favorite season, for many reasons. My top three reasons all involve the foods that are in season during the fall: apples, pumpkins, and delicious cranberries. For so long, I bought the canned cranberry sauce but last year I wondered to myself how hard it could possibly be to make cranberry sauce and you know, it's pretty easy AND homemade cranberry sauce tastes SO much better than anything you could ever buy in a can!
I just found cranberries for sale in the grocery store…they are only sold Oct-December, I believe, so I will grab a few bags every time I see them! Cranberries can be frozen in the bag for up to a year, so stock up so you can make all of these delicious cranberry recipes throughout the year.
Now….back to the homemade cranberry sauce. It takes about 10 minutes and four ingredients! Can't get easier than that!
Ingredients:
Directions:
This cranberry sauce is perfect with the traditional turkey and dressing meal at Thanksgiving OR with chicken, pork, just about any meat and lots of vegetables, too!
We make so many recipes that contain cream of mushroom soup. It's so easy to use and it makes the dish so creamy and filling. However, when I actually read the label of the canned variety, there were a lot of ingredients that I questioned and I quickly became frustrated. Homemade cream of mushroom soup is so yummy and the best part is that you can store it in the fridge in glass jars and pull some out whenever you need it. I found a lot of great homemade cream of mushroom recipes online and have tried a few. If this recipe isn't for you, don't give up, search for another one and try, try again!
Ingredients:
I'm not one to measure things, really, just ask my mom. But, this is a small package of washed mushrooms:
First, remove the stems:
Chop them up:
Next, melt 2 Tbsp of butter in a large non PFOA pan:
Then, add the mushrooms to the melted butter:
Since I had a jar of yummy homemade vegetable stock in the fridge, I added about 1/2 cup to the mushrooms and cooked for about 15 minutes, until they were all cooked well. Some recipes call for onions, too, and you can add them right along with the mushrooms, but I opted to leave them out of my soup.
We like our cream of mushroom soup chunky, but if you don't, you could take this time to puree' the mixture, it's up to you. Either way, set the mushroom mixture aside.
Homemade veggie stock:
In the pan, melt two more tablespoons of butter (or use olive oil) and whisk in 4 Tbsp of flour.
Next, I add in the salt, pepper, and milk and whisk until smooth. Slowly add in the rest of the vegetable stock and bring to a boil and cook until thick, whisking off and on to prevent sticking. If it's not thick enough, you can then whisk in corn starch.
Then, stir in the mushrooms:
Yummy! Homemade cream of mushroom soup!
This recipe makes about two small jars of cream of mushroom soup, or about two cans, maybe, although I really haven't measured it to be sure. But the good news is that if you want to have more soup in your recipe, you can add a bit more without having to open up a new can!
Here are some great recipes to try out with homemade cream of mushroom soup:
