Fantastically Frugal: Conscious Christmas part 5

Ah, the smell of baking pumpkin bread, spice cake, cookies and candy. It’s time to highlight gifts from your kitchen. This is one of my favorite subjects. I can remember baking cookies and making fudge to give as gifts to our neighbors every year growing up. Those are some of my most cherished memories and recipes. Jillian has memories of making Christmas candy…homemade caramels, friendship cocoa, and nuts and bolts. Yum! As with most homemade gifts, it is not just gift that is enjoyed by the recipient, but the process is cherished by the giver.

The sky’s the limit with gifts from your kitchen. Cookies, quick breads, and candies are standbys. But we also make flavored vinegars, seasoning mixes, gifts in a jar, Jams and jellies, frozen cookie dough, gourmet cocoa blends, snack mixes, bread and muffin mixes, and so much more.

This is yet another use for those baskets gleaned from garage sales and thrifting throughout the year. Use them to package your homemade food gifts. You can do a hodgepodge of gourmet gifts for the connoisseur. Jams and jellies, flavored honey (Winco has this in bulk), home baked crackers and cookies, cheese logs, homemade liquors, homemade salami, flavored vinegar and whatever else you can think of.

We usually try to have a theme for the baskets. If you make rockin’ canned spaghetti sauce, you could have a spaghetti dinner basket. Include jars of your sauce, dry spaghetti, a loaf of garlic bread, a thrifted shaker filled with parmesan cheese: yummy and appreciated!

A salad basket could use a wooden salad bowl as the basket. Include salad tongs, toppings, homemade herbal vinegars, seasoning blends, and maybe some homemade salad dressing mixes and instructions.

For a gift for a cookie lover, include several batches of frozen dough and some cookie necessities. Include cookie cutters and decorations, and mix up some cinnamon sugar, or powered sugar, and throw in a new or vintage rolling pin. Check out www.marthastewart.com for some recipes for cookie dough that freezes well and instructions.

Please make sure that any food gifts that need refrigeration or need to be put back in the freezer are handled accordingly. It would be a shame to go through all the work to have your gift spoiled.

One of our best standby gifts by far are herbal vinegars. We have been making these for years. They are easy and look so gourmet. We don’t really use a recipe for most of them. Take a glass bottle with a stopper or cork. Jillian and I use recycled bottles. Clear wine bottles work great, as do marinade bottles, and olive or other oil bottles. I got most of my bottles from a store that made sushi. The rice wine vinegar comes in these great bottles. Most stores will save recyclables for you if you ask. Talk to managers though for best results. Michael’s craft store and Joann’s both carry replacement corks if you need them.

Wash the bottles thoroughly. We run ours through the dishwasher. Rinse your sprigs of fresh herbs. Basil, rosemary, sage, tarragon, and oregano work great by themselves or mixed. Thyme does too, but the leaves often fall off so it’s not as pretty. It tastes great though. I use mostly white wine vinegar, but really any vinegar should work. My best recipe is Red Wine Basil Garlic Vinegar. Put several sprigs of basil in your prepared bottle. If the herbs don’t cooperate use a wooden skewer. Drop 4 peppercorns in the bottle, about 5 whole peeled garlic cloves next, and then fill the bottle with red wine vinegar. Yum!

Herbal vinegars need to be corked and put in a cool dark place for about three weeks before using. The herbs will discolor, so if desired you can replace them with new herbs before giving them as gifts. We don’t usually get this ambitious. We decorate the bottles by making gift tags and tying them onto the bottle necks with raffia (supplied by any craft store), or ribbons. The vinegars can be used in salad dressings, marinades, over veggies, anywhere you use vinegar. Just remember not to clash flavors.

For some other great recipes, check out the website www.razzledazzlerecipes.com. There are more recipes than you could try in a lifetime. There are literally thousands of recipes, and they are free for your use. They have gifts in a jar, candy, fudge, gift mixes of every kind. I really cannot say enough about this website and its sister sites. It is the best! If you would like to make your gift mixes look professional, Cake Castle carries clear bags of every persuasion. Jillian and I like the crunchy cellophane bags. We fill them with our yummy mixes. Then tie a label on them with ribbon or raffia.

So snatch up some recipes to try and start now, some of these ideas can be made ahead to simplify your holiday season. Enjoy the giving and the memories.

Until tomorrow,
Brandy and Jillian