Tag: Mama’s Kitchen

Easy Homemade Bread

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog16 Comments

I know I’ve mentioned in a few posts that we’ve been making our own bread again. We love sourdough bread but a few of the kids had mentioned that they really wanted something more like store-bought so I tried a few recipes and with a couple of tweaks we have found a combo that we really like… Mr. Awesome and I haven’t been eating much bread but we have tried a slice here and there as it smells so good! It is quite exceptional when it’s still a little warm and smeared with real butter and then drizzled with a bit of local honey… mmmmm!

This bread is great to use as rolls and as an alternative to English Muffins for breakfast. It also toasts up really nicely! We save all the breadcrumbs in a baggie in the freezer to use in our recipes where breadcrumbs are needed.

I recently converted my sourdough starter ‘Fran’ to a pasta madre/lievito madre/stiff dough and I like the results so far. You can learn more about this process HERE. I think I want to try to make some Panettone for Christmas this year so I wanted to get some starters going and get a little more familiar with the process.

I’ve also been researching about the Herman starter and Charlie starters so I may want to them out as well.

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Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 7 (The Week After Thanksgiving)

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog5 Comments

Thanksgiving is over but there’s no time to rest yet as the real preparations are beginning for the holidays! One of the biggest things we need to do is to take time to sit down and evaluate how our Thanksgiving was. What was everyone’s favorite part? Was there anything that didn’t work well? Do you need to set up a rotating schedule to have dinner at other family member’s homes? (Odd year here, Even year there, or every 3rd, 4th, year?) Would it be better to have a potluck-style meal where everyone brings something? Was there anything you would like to do differently? Start now for your planning for next year so you don’t forget these ‘little things’! We will also be getting all of our Fall decor ready to be put away next week so we can start pulling out the Christmas decor.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
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The Thanksgiving that I broke the oven!

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog4 Comments

We pray that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and that you didn’t go over budget with the Black Friday spending. We had a beautiful day and we were so blessed to have family and friends to enjoy it with.

The kids did a lot of work to help with our Thanksgiving dinner and preparations. We counted it as Life Skills and they were happy that it wasn’t ‘bookwork’. They have asked if we can have more lessons like this.

The weeks before Thanksgiving the kids helped to plan out the menu, check the pantry for supplies, and help order the groceries. Then they helped to organize the recipes and pull out the dishes and serving trays that would be needed. They did a pretty good job as you will see in the pictures below.

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Keto Cheesy Chicken Casserole

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog2 Comments

This casserole is so easy to throw together and you can customize it to make it your own by adding veggies to it or a little more cheese. It is very similar to my Chicken Bacon Ranch Casserole that we love but haven’t been making since we’ve been eating a more keto-friendly diet.

This goes great with any veggies, rice or caulirice, salad, or some garlic bread. You could even use leftover chicken (or maybe turkey) in the recipe and just cube it or shred it… it would be even easier to put together.

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Orange Congealed Salad

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog9 Comments

This recipe was so good and so easy to make! This will definitely be making many more appearances on the menu! You could easily substitute other fruits and flavors to make it your own as well as add in other things similar to Watergate salad... let your imagination run wild with flavor combinations!

Orange Congealed Salad

Ingredients:

  • 2 small packages of orange-flavored Jello
  • 1 16 oz container of cottage cheese
  • 1 14-16 0z can of mandarin oranges, drained well (you can save the juice for something else like homemade cranberry relish)
  • 1 16 oz container of Cool Whip, thawed
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