Here comes the holiday season! It's just around the corner! I've already started to see the commercials for Christmas, and Thanksgiving hasn't even happened yet. To be fair, Christmas decor made it's way to the stores right after 4th of July, so who are we kidding. Retailers aren't kidding when it comes to competing for your hard earned dollars. That includes grocery stores. I don't fault them for this. It's their job. Their job is to get as many of your dollars as they can. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to keep as many of your dollars as you can. This isn't Mission impossible! It can be done. You just need to be a little more savvy, and you win. Part of that savviness is in making more of the things grocers tell you have to be bought.
Many of these recipes I've listed before in one way or another, but I wanted to place them here for convenience. Both for you and me. Before you grab a premade, possibly chemically laced bottle, can, or package of something for the holidays; look here to what you can cross off your list. It's a bigger list than you think! Full disclosure, I don't know why the next two recipes are highlighted white, but I couldn't fix it so.....
Sweetened Condensed milk
2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup of sugar
1 tsp vanilla
On med/low heat whisk the milk and sugar together. Keep stirring occasionally while the milk mixture reduces by about half ( you're shooting for 14 oz. I weigh mine to get it exact). Once reduced, remove from heat and add the vanilla. Mix well. Makes 12-14 oz and you can use this recipe anywhere sweetened condensed milk is called for.
Evaporated milk
This is incredibly easy. Simply pour 3 cups of milk into a pot. On a med low heat simmer until reduced by half. Use where ever evaporated milk is called for
Cream soup mix
1 1/2 cups dry milk
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 ts salt
mix all together then cut in
1 stick of butter. Store in an airtight container in the fridge. To use for plain white sauce just use 1/3 cup mix to 1 cup of water. If you want cream of chicken, use chicken broth, cream of mushroom: open a can of mushrooms and drain, add water to the mushroom liquid to equal 1 cup fluid. Then follow the rest of the recipe. You can also add 1 cup of cheese and 1 tsp. yellow mustard to make cheese sauce. If you don't have dry milk, you can simply make a white sauce using 2 TBS melted butter, 2 TBS flour, 1/4 tsp salt and 1 cup liquid of choice: milk, chicken brother, mushroom, etc. This recipe will take the place of your cream of chicken, cream mushroom etc. I used this recipe last night to make queso cheese sauce for our fajitas. It was very good, and popular.
Homemade Poultry Seasoning
2 tsp ground sage
2 tsp Thyme
1 tsp Marjoram
3/4 tsp ground rosemary
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground black pepper.
Just add everything to a jar and shake well. Just keep it in your spice cabinet for use whenever you need poultry seasoning.
Homemade pumpkin pie spice
4 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
Chicken Broth
Cook a whole chicken for dinner. SAVE THE JUICE FROM IT"S COOKING! After it's use for that meals, remove the rest of the meat. Save that meat in the fridge of freezer for other meals. Take the bones from the chicken, and the cooking liquid from cooking the chicken and place in a crock pot or stock pot. If you have the giblets, add those too. Add some celery (2 large stalks), some carrots( one large), half a large onion, couple of tsp salt, and 2 tbs vinegar. Covered it all with water, put the lid on and set it to low. Let this simmer at least a day. If in a stock pot, let it simmer during the day and check on it periodically. Add water if it cooks down too low. You want to keep everything covered. At bed time, turn off, then resume cooking on low the next day. You want to cook both crock or stock pot, until you can take a bone out and crush it with your fingers. That means the vinegar has done it's job and removed all of the minerals from the bones, and the broth is now infused with those good for you minerals. The broth is now ready. Strain the broth to remove the bones, and vegetables. The bones are so soft after cooking broth that I will mash up everything, veggies and all and give it to my dogs. They love it. Place the broth in the refrigerator to cool. Remove once cool and skim the now solid fat off the top. Your broth is now defatted. This should a make at least a few quarts of really good bone broth. Bone broth cost big bucks at the store. You got it cheap cheap!
Stuffing
Save the heals of loaves of bread, left over hot dog bung, hamburger buns, corn bread, and biscuits. Keep this stale bread in your freezer. If you don't have left over corn bread or biscuits, simply make them and freeze to use for stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner. No one should have to buy( and pay crazy money) for stale bread. Saltine crackers are also a great stuffing addition. Use your favorite recipe, just don't buy the dried stuffing.
Pie crust
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup lard or butter. Please don't use shortening, and make sure the lard you buy isn't hydrogenated. I use butter most of the time.
6-7 TBS cold water
Mix flour and salt together. Cut in the butter until it's crumbly. There shouldn't be a piece bigger than a pea. Make a well in the center. Add the cold water a TBS at a time, tossing it into the mixture. It you need t add a little more water, add just enough to get a nice dough that doesn't crumble, but isn't sticky. Divide in to two pieces. Roll out each onto a floured surface. Makes two crusts. You can flour parchment or wax paper and roll the crust out on the paper, then roll and freeze or refrigerate until needed.
Baking powder
2 TBS Baking Powder
2 TBS Corn Starch
4 TBS Cream of Tarter
Mix all together in a jar. Use as you would any store bought baking powder, only this will work way better. Much cheaper.
Brown Sugar
Mix in 1 TBS of Molasses into 1 cup of granulated sugar. You can blend this to mix, or use your hands to mix well. Use just as you would any store bought brown sugar. Way cheaper this way.
Powdered Sugar
I've actually done this. I know it sound crazy, but to make powdered sugar you need to put a cup of sugar into a blender and blend on high. You'll need to stop it periodically to loosen things up, but it works.
Okay. That's all I can think of at the moment. If I think of anything else, I'll add it here. Please comment if you know of something I've missed, have a question, or just want to say hello!
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