Up Next… Baking!

I’ve already got the Chex mix made up. Or at least the first batch as that goes really quickly and I usually end up making a second. I plan on starting the rest probably tomorrow.

On my list for this year…

Peanut Butter Cookies
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (new this year)
Chex Mix
Candied Pecans
Almond Toffee
Puppy Chow (aka Muddy Buddies)
Peanut Butter Fudge
Chocolate Espresso Fudge
Cheater Turtles

I also have to do that last part of my gift for my FIL. Every year since my MIL passed, I’ve made up a bunch of different meals that could be frozen and easily cooked for him. Originally it was because he didn’t cook. At all. He either ate out or nuked a frozen meal. The idea came to me when I was talking about one of my all time favorite things to get as a gift. My grandmother, who had very little money, always made up huge batches of her homemade egg noodles and pie crust and gave those as gifts. I adored getting them because it made life so easy and gave me something that normally took a lot of time to make an easy meal option.

It started out with me putting together at least 5 or 6 different kinds of meals in individual servings and several servings of each. All made up, he probably ended up with about 20 or 25 meals, including a few left over nights as some I made intentionally large. His favorites ended up being my pot pies and pizzas, so those are always ones I make. The last few years, though, he has been buying himself funky cooking gadgets and doing quite a bit of his own cooking, so my meals have been paired back some. I will still do his favorites this year, but that will be it. It is actually a crap ton of work to put together all of those little pies, but it feels good to carry on the spirit of the tradition my grandmother started.