Our Fall garden is doing so well and I can’t believe I’ve never tried this before. We recently harvested our first squash from the Fall garden and we are eagerly anticipating more!
Fall Gardening 2023
Tag: Mama’s Kitchen
Nothing Hidden Ranch Seasoning, Dressing, and Dip
My kids all LOVE the ranch dressing with the green label… you know which one. We can’t keep enough in the pantry as they would drink it straight from the bottle if I let them. I didn’t like the fact that it had so many extra ingredients so I’ve been on a mission to make it ourselves.
This is also great for making your own Seasoned Pretzels!
We like using whole milk with a couple of Tablespoons of kefir mixed in to make this.
Nothing Hidden Ranch Seasoning, Dressing, and Dip
Ingredients:
- 2 T. garlic powder
- 6 T. onion powder
- 2 T. minced onion, or you can just use 8 T. onion powder if you want it smoother
- 2 T. salt
- 2 t. basil
- 2 t. chives
- 2 t. dill weed
- 2 t. parsley flakes
- ½ t. sugar or monk fruit sweetener, optional
- 2 t. thyme
- 1-2 t. Cornstarch, Xantham gum, or Glucomannan powder to thicken, optional
Special Holiday Meals: Our tried and true favorite Thanksgiving recipes plus a new tradition in the making
It’s so hard to believe that Thanksgiving is next week! I haven’t finished all my shopping yet but plan to have it wrapped up before the end of the week. We will probably have a lot of our usual dishes plus a couple of new ones ‘keto-friendly’ versions. We won’t be ‘restricting’ ourselves to keto foods for Thanksgiving as we want to have the freedom to enjoy, but not overindulge, the dishes that everyone brings to dinner.
I love using Canva to make up pretty menus and such! Please excuse my typos… oops!
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Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 5 (The Week Before Thanksgiving)
Thanksgiving is getting closer and I’m sure you are getting constant reminders about how close it is getting to Christmas! Over the past few weeks, I’ve posted about some of the things we are doing to help prepare our homes for the holidays and hopefully prevent a little of the CHAOS. We will continue to review those things and work on a few more things this week. Our list is as follows:
- We continue to look for things that don’t belong and get them put away where they belong or get rid of things we don’t really need as we do our weekly ‘Home Blessings’.
- If we have items (or cards) that need to be mailed, we will try to get them taken care of ASAP… sometimes I have gifts sent directly to the recipients, but I try to warn them ahead of time so they can be on the lookout for them.
- If I haven’t bought the wrapping paper and supplies, then I will try to make sure to get those this week. I also make sure that I have ordered any special tablecloths or tableware that I may need so it gets here in plenty of time.
- I’m also trying to plan to do the 3 gift rule here this year, but I’m not sure how it will go yet. I’ve got some links about this idea HERE, HERE, and HERE. This will hopefully encourage the focus to be more on Jesus than Santa and the gifts he will bring.
- I will review the menu lists in my Holiday Planner so I can try to add as many of the pantry goods to my weekly grocery list as well as double-checking to make sure that we have plenty of the everyday essentials like toilet paper and paper towels because we don’t want to run out of those things when we have guests.
- I’ll review my list of ‘make-ahead’ items and try to knock out a few of them so there will be less to do at Thanksgiving. I will also pull out some of my recipes that will use up the leftover turkey and such if we have any.
- I will also look up some information about Thanksgiving traditions and history to add to our homeschool lessons as well as some fun Thanksgiving activities. You can check this post HERE for some ideas!
Life is crazy enough without adding holiday stress to it. The simpler we can keep things, the better in most cases and we are always trying to find creative solutions to things we need to get done. By spending just a few minutes a day working on these tasks it helps to get us prepared without causing a lot of unnecessary stress.
For more great ideas you can check out the FlyLady website HERE.
Holiday Planner Pics… Nothing Fancy!
I’ve mentioned in several posts about my Holiday Planning Binder but I don’t know if I’ve ever really shared what it looks like. It’s definitely nothing fancy… just an old Trapper Keeper that the kiddos didn’t use and the folders are old pocket folders that they aren’t using. I really like that it zips up because it helps to keep everything contained really well and prevents the inevitable spillage that happens when you have kiddos running around.
This is what the outside of the planner looks like… nothing special at all but the fact that it is purple helps me to identify it from other binders on the shelf and I can tell almost anyone to grab me the purple binder and they have no trouble finding it all. I probably should’ve tried to clean it up a bit before the pictures but this is how LIFE goes around here and these smudges and smears remind me of all the little blessings that are running through my house!
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Pollywog's Place Blog 