homemade – Page 33 – Pollywog's Place Blog

Best Pork Loin

Published on December 15, 2023December 12, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog2 Comments

I needed a quick recipe to throw together the other day and I happened upon this recipe HERE. I was totally exhausted after working so long in the new pantry and I really didn’t want to fuss with a lot of ingredients so this was perfect! I did make a couple of changes to keep this more keto-friendly and it was delicious!

We served this with some mashed turnips, steamed broccoli, and some black-eyed peas that had been cooking on the stove. The girls made some cornbread muffins and I made some keto cornbread to go with it.

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Special Holiday Meals: What’s for Christmas Dinner? (2023)

Published on December 14, 2023September 23, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

This has been the topic of discussion for a couple of weeks here now but I really don’t have a definite answer yet. We know that we don’t want to do a ‘traditional’ meal so no ham or turkey this year. We may use the smoker to do some meat and maybe have some pulled pork in the crockpot.

I’m hoping to try to make some Christmas Tree Bread or a Christmas Star with our sourdough but I’m not sure if either of those will happen but they are on my wish list of things to do. I would love to do a traditional Christmas dinner like the one listed in the vintage dinner menu I mentioned HERE but I know that I definitely don’t have the time or patience for that right now.

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Amish Friendship Bread – A gift that keeps on giving!

Published on December 12, 2023December 12, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog2 Comments

Are you still trying to come up with a gift idea for someone? This is a great gift to give… either finish the starter out to bake the bread or gift some starter and a copy of the directions to your friends so they can bake their own bread.

I was recently gifted several starters so I had to dig through my old binders to find my old recipes for this gift. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve made any of these recipes. I ended up making 2 loaves of the Basic Recipe, 2 loaves of Banana Bread, 2 loaves of Chocolate Bread, and a double-batch of pancakes, and I still have 2 cups of starter left over to start another batch.

I have included the basic bread instructions in this post and I will also try to include a pretty printable for gifting. This would be so cute to give a small loaf of bread with a small jar of starter and the instructions.

There are many other variations available and you can easily search for more flavor variations online. I will try to update the blog with some of the other recipe variations that I have in my binder.

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Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 9 (2 Weeks Before Christmas)

Published on December 11, 2023September 16, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog4 Comments

We got the tree up (I hope) and the house is looking pretty festive. This week we will be having our Polar Express Party so that will be the main topic of discussion. Here are some of the things that we will be working on this week:

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Easy DIY Onion Soup Mix and Au Jus Mix

Published on December 10, 2023December 12, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog9 Comments

Don’t run out of these mixes again! These are so easy to make and they taste so much better than the store-bought… your family won’t know what you did differently but they’ll love it!

DIY Onion Soup Mix

Ingredients: