Welcome to the special Christmas edition of the coupon funded menu corner! Christmas usually involves large amounts of food, and this year was no exception. Here’s a look at some of the festive goodies that I made:
We were invited to a fun party on Christmas Eve, and I was asked to bring my seven layer dip, which was a hit at the Halloween party. This is so simple and really tasty. I put in two cans of refried beans, my loose interpretation of homemade guacamole (I smashed an avocado with lemon juice, salt and pepper, salsa and some fresh tomato), black olives, chopped tomato, salsa, cream cheese, and shredded cheese.
As I mentioned yesterday, I had decided to give everyone homemade gifts this year. I started by making some hot drink mixes:
I had planned to make gift bags full of homemade goodies for a while, and was mulling over the various things I might include. Well, frugal minds think alike, because Money Saving Mom posted that she was doing the same thing, and shared some great ideas on her blog. I liked her idea of giving homemade drink mixes, so I followed her lead and made Fireside Coffee Mix to put in my gift bags. I also made Swiss Mocha Mix from this recipe collection, and Spiced Hot Chocolate from the Gifts In a Jar e-book – which was also recommended by Money Saving Mom!
I also used this recipe for Pancake Mix, and made 15 bags to give out. Judging by what I heard from one of the recipients, this makes yummy pancakes!
To make the mixes festive, I packaged them in fun party favor bags, and tied them with ribbon. Then I made decorative tags that gave the name of the mix and directions for preparing it.
And it wouldn’t be Christmas without Mince Pies! I’m from England, and Mince Pies are a tradition there. All you really need to do to make them is buy a jar of mincemeat, which is basically a rich fruit filling. Then you make a pie crust – I always use my favorite oil crust recipe – and cut small circles with a biscuit cutter. Place one round into a cupcake pan, fill it with a dollop of mincemeat, and cover with another pastry round. Poke a few holes in the top with a fork, and bake until lightly browned. Let cool, and then cover with sifted confectioner’s sugar.
Mincemeat usually isn’t cheap in America, since it’s an imported item; It typically runs about $6.00 a jar. However, I lucked out a while ago, when I found a bunch of jars on clearance at Safeway for only .99 cents each! Suffice to say, I bought them out. And that was before I started using coupons – I’ve always been a stockpiler!
I packaged the Mince Pies in the party favor sacks, and included them in each gift bag. I made a big batch – 48 altogether.
Here’s the sum of each gift bag’s contents:
I still have a ton of Lindt chocolate bars from the great sale at Walgreens, so I put them to good use here.
And there you have it: all my Christmas list, taken care of! As you can see, I had quite a conveyor belt of goodies going on. The only exception to this was that I had gifts for 3 people that I had already picked up at the beginning of the year, which was good, because two of those people live far from me; so their gifts were easier to ship than this would have been. I also won a present for Jai in a giveaway – some of you may already know that I like entering giveaways and sweepstakes.
My cupboards are still full of baking supplies after making these goodies, so I should be well stocked for a while. I never even used any of the margarine or eggs that I bought – I ended up having more ambition than time, but my gifts still turned out pretty well, even though I didn’t bake as many things as I thought I would.
Side note: My Internet connection has been very unreliable today. The internet went down this afternoon and was out for most of the day. I’m hoping that the problems have been fixed, but we’re getting some stormy weather coming through so it may go down again in the next day or so.
