Frugal Festive Touches
Computer connectivity has been spotty and unreliable most of today, which is another reason why I should learn never to put off until the last possible second what I could do weeks in advance. Unfortunately, I'm fifty and haven't learned that yet, in spite of many opportunities and lessons in the school of life. Ah, well.
Today's post is about little ways to add some festive touches to your regular fare- instead of spending extra money for fancier than normal dishes, you can add holiday touches to things you already make in order to create special memories for your family, and give that something extra holidays bring, without something extra removed from your budget.
Shapes and colors:
Roll out biscuits as usual, but cut into triangles for Christmas trees.
Or use raisins to make a snowman face on a biscuit, then put three biscuits on the pan touching each other to make a snowman.
Braid biscuit dough and shape in a circle for a wreath, dot with strawberry jam.
Make your pancakes into wreaths or snowmen in the pan.
Use cookie cutters to make Christmas shapes of your sandwiches, sliced lunch meats and cheeses, and quesedillas
Shape a meatloaf into a wreath shape. When it's done, fill the center with snowy white mashed potatoes.
Shape a home-made pizza into a tree- it's just a triangle, after all.
Use tiny cookie cutters to slice potatoes and carrots for stew into small triangles for trees.
Color:
Add red jam, fruit, or food coloring to your pancake batter
Use ketchup to make festive designs on your eggs, meatloaves, and more.
Use parsley flakes sprinkled in a cookie cutter stencil to add green trees or leaves to the top of a meatloaf, lasagna, pasta dish, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, or....?
Some free Christmas reading for your Kindle- some will be free indefinitely, some will only be free a few more hours after I post them. Make sure you check twice:
Old Christmas
A Family Tradition Christmas Cookbook
Great Christmas Candy Recipes (Holiday Entertaining)
The Christmas Books
by William Makepeace Thackeray
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6 Responses to “Frugal Festive Touches”
December 14th, 2012 at 10:01 pm
I just love your frugal touches!What great incentive to look for ways to make celebrations special!
December 15th, 2012 at 6:26 am
With our kids it was always colour, yes, but faces, no way. They’d make the snowman, but then refuse to eat him. Or it might be a her. Whoever it is, it now has human characteristics, maybe it’s alive, and we don’t even want to go there. If they’d been at the Little House in the Big Woods, they would have refused to eat Ma’s pancake men.
Just saying that with some kids, proceed with caution before anthropomorphizing the food, KWIM?
December 15th, 2012 at 6:35 am
A couple of things that we HAVE done, though: one year we had kiwi fruit and raspberries as part of our Christmas dessert, and we arranged the green kiwi slices into a wreath shape. I think the raspberries were in a small bowl in the middle, but they could also have been scattered around the wreath as decorations.
Also we’ve arranged cookies on a big round plate in sort of a wreath shape.
We have a basic oatmeal cookie recipe that gets dressed for the holidays: this year we added Rice Krispies, dried cranberries, and butterscotch chips, but really any special additions can be a treat, especially if it’s something we don’t often have. (Our kids love butterscotch chips but don’t often get them.)
Any kind of frozen red fruit is a bonus to have around at the holidays. You can make an easy (microwave) raspberry sauce to have over ice cream or cake, add strawberries to mixed fruit (fruit salad, fruit crisp), or put cranberries in a quick bread or muffins.
December 15th, 2012 at 6:36 am
Forgot to mention: the raspberry sauce is also good over pancakes. Especially for those who don’t do faces.
December 15th, 2012 at 11:21 am
That’s funny, MS. I guess my kids were all little horrors, because they loved eating things with faces. If it was a full body thing- like hot dog men, they always started by biting the heads off.;-D
December 15th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Even my kids weren’t always consistent with their objections. I don’t remember any of them refusing to eat a chocolate Santa…
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