Soup is the typical New Year’s Day fare around here.  Here’s one of our favorites:

Creamy Chicken Salsa Soup

2 large cans Cream of Chicken soup
2 large cans of water or milk
4 chicken breasts, cooked and shredded
1 jar salsa
1½ c. corn

Garnish with: sour cream, shredded cheese, tortilla chips

Put all ingredients in crock pot on low for 4-6 hrs.

{Sorry, there isn’t a picture!  I’ll add one later!}

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I love to bake no matter the season.  I love to see my children’s (and my husband’s) eyes light up over what new treat mama has created.  It’s easy to want to bake when you have such an appreciative family!

But during this time of year, there are always extra special treats!  We bake and make candy and share with neighbors and friends. It’s the only time of year I make fudge and candy cane cookies and there are always plenty of bowls and beaters to lick!

We usually share our treats with the mail lady and the garbage men.  Yesterday, the mail lady brought us a note thanking us for the goodies and telling the children how she ate them with hot chocolate that evening.  You should have seen the delight on their faces!

Some of our yearly yummies are:

Buckeyes (shown above and affectionately called “Buckin’ Bulls” around here ala my 7 yr old)
Candy Cane Cookies
Snowballs
Chocolate Revel Bars
Fantasy Fudge
Thumbprint Cookies

I also like to experiment and try new recipes, but I prefer to stick with treats that are simple and quick.  I have no desire to spends hours in the kitchen crafting the perfect cookie, so anything that can please my crowd with the least amount of effort gets my vote!

I’m also anxious to try some of the yummy treats I saw at An Oregon Cottage, the cinnamon popcorn at Amy’s Finer Things, and the edible gifts at Many Little Blessings!

One good thing about having a large family is that with so many mouths clamoring for a tasty treat, no one person ends up with too much!

What are your favorite Christmas treats?  My children would love to try something new!

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Note from Amy: I met Tiffany King at the Savvy Blogging Summit this year when she handed my her business card during a session and I exclaimed, “I need you!”  It was the name of her website that caught my attention: Eat At Home.  Worn out homeschooling moms everywhere can benefit from Tiffany’s message and her mission to show moms that preparing quick and easy meals doesn’t have to be drudgery and one more thing on their to-do list.  I think you’ll love her new ebook, Feast in 15, where she shows you how easy it is to create spectacular weeknight meals that fit into a busy homeschool mom schedule!  Get your copy today!

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All of us who homeschool have the same demands as other moms. The difference is that we’re with our kids nearly all the time and we’re responsible for teaching them during a large portion of that time. Daily schedules can swing wildly between being at home, to being out of the house all day.

So how do we get meals on the table with so much going on? Here are a few tips:

Focus on dinner

Dinner is often the big meal of the day. (If your big meal is lunch, then adjust this tip accordingly.) If you can get dinner taken care of, the rest seems easy.

Plan with your available cooking time in mind.

• If you have 10 or 15 minutes in the morning to work on dinner, then a slow cooker meal is in order.
• If you find time during lunch, you can assemble a casserole or do a slow cooker meal that only needs 4-6 hours of cooking time.
• A day of appointments and lessons might call for a quick 15 minute meal. See my new eBook, Feast in 15 for lots of good recipes.
• If it’s one of those rare days when you’ll be home and have time to spare, fix those favorites that take a bit more time.

By looking ahead at your schedule, you can plan your menu with your days in mind. Make the menu fit your family, not the other way around.

Make use of your freezer.

• Pre-cook meats and freeze them. This keeps meal prep on busy days to a minimum.
• Make double batches of soups, stews and casseroles and stock your freezer.

Keep ingredients for a few “emergency” meals.

Stock your pantry with the ingredients for a couple of easy meals that you can pull together at the last minute. Knowing you have those recipes to fall back on will keep you from running through the drive through or feeding everyone cereal for dinner (we’ve all been there!).

Breakfast

I may be in the minority on this, but we keep breakfast super simple. Not only that, but each person takes care of their own as soon as they’re old enough. We also tend to eat the same thing, day in and day out. We’re okay with that because lunch and dinner are varied enough to make up for the standard breakfast.

Here are a few ideas for simple breakfasts.

• Quick oats
• Yogurt and fruit with granola
• Toast, English muffins, bagels etc.
• Freeze large batches of pancakes, waffles or muffins. Heat in toaster or microwave.

Lunch

Again, I keep this as simple as possible. Most days do not lend themselves to actually cooking lunch. And even though we don’t eat the same thing everyday, I do not make any menu plan for lunch. We use lunch to eat up leftovers. Some days there’s enough for all of us. Some days there “dibs” are called on the good food from the night before. Other days, no one wants the leftovers!

When the leftover plan doesn’t cover us all, I fill in with these quick items:

• Grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwiches.
• Sliced cheese, crackers, fruit
• Smoothies with bagels and cream cheese
• Pancakes
• Mac & Cheese
• Black Bean and Rice Freezer Burritos

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to cooking for your family?

Tiffany is the founder of Eat at Home, Everyday Food for Busy People. She has also written an eBook, Feast in 15, Speed Cooking Weeknight Dinners that is available as a PDF or on Kindle. She has been married to her husband Jim for 23 years. They have 4 kids, all homeschooled. Their oldest daughter is now in college.

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It’s Summer and it’s hot, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a few gingerbread men over for tea.  And when I say gingerbread, I actually mean

gingerBREAD!

This is a really easy, fun way to take your tea and entertain the children all without heating up the kitchen!

All you do is take any cookie cutter you have on hand (we just happened to have gingerbread men) and cut out the center of bread slices,

add toppings of your choice

Pour a little “tea” from your finest china teapot

and enjoy a breezy summer morning snack!

{oh, and with the right amount of cinnamon & sugar, they’ll eat the crusts too!}

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Lunch for the homeschooling family is often whatever can be thrown together quickly.  I’ve written before about some of our favorite quick lunches, but lately pizza has also made the menu.

Chicken Verde Pizza - a new favorite!

Our pizza dough recipe is adapted from Homestead Blessings:  The Art of Bread Making and made with lightning speed!

Quick Pizza Dough

2½ c. flour
1 Tbsp yeast
1 tsp salt
4 Tbsp oil
1 c warm water
1 Tbsp honey

Preheat oven to 375°.

Throw it all in the mixer with a dough hook and “knead” for 4-5 mins.

Let rest for 5 minutes while you prepare the toppings.

Roll out into two medium pizzas (rectangle shaped will get you more slices), add toppings and bake 12-15 mins.

You have pizza in half an hour!

Some of our favorite toppings (not all on the same pizza, mind you):

• Tomato sauce with Italian seasonings and garlic

• Canadian bacon

• Pepperoni

• Hamburger or buffalo burger

• Onion

• Green pepper

• Cheese

• Almonds

• Artichoke hearts

• Chicken

• Black olives

Good stuff!

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We have several friends who are Messianic, so there have been a few occasions when we have celebrated Sabbath with them on Friday night.  There is something quite relaxing about bringing the day to a close and setting the next day apart by shutting everything down the evening before.  We have thoroughly enjoyed these times of fellowship.

In fact, the new church we are attending is a small, family-integrated one that meets on Sunday nights. Many of the families, us included, worship Sunday morning at home, but then we come together in the evening for corporate worship as a body of believers.  It has made our Sundays much more relaxed and worshipful.

I never thought I would be one who would say going to church at night was okay.  Even now, I feel a little awkward not loading up the big van Sunday morning and heading out…almost as if my witness as a Christian is tainted since my lost neighbors don’t see us head to church every week.

But, as I look to the early church of Acts, I do not see a command to meet in the morning.  And I do not see a day of rest and worship that looks like this:

The You Tube video above is very familiar to many Christian families today. Mine included. But, where is the rest? Where is the worship in such a frenzied day? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this topic as it has been something I have mulled over for many years.

Now, for the recipe…
When we do get together with our Messianic friends, I am quite often the designated Challah bread maker (the “c” is silent).

The last time I taught ancient world history, I found a challah bread recipe online and made it with the kids (we’ll be doing that again this year).  I’ve tweaked the recipe to fit my need to make it quickly and it is absolutely delicious!

Challah Bread

2 c. warm water or milk
2 pkgs dry active yeast
6-7 c. flour
1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/4 c. oil
1 egg

In a large bowl or mixer, dissolve yeast in warm water or milk.  Add sugar and salt and 3 cups of flour.  Mix well.  Add oil and egg and mix well.  Add remaining flour and mix well.  {dough will be a bit sticky}

Place in a large greased bowl {not plastic} and put a warm, wet cloth over it {I use a tea towel, run through warm water and wrung out}.  Place in oven. {you might need to warm the oven a bit before putting it in there…but don’t leave the oven on while it rises!}

Let the dough rise until it reaches the top of the bowl – approx. 30-60 mins.

Divide dough into 3 equal pieces.

Divide two of those pieces into thirds and roll all 6 pieces into 16″ long ropes.  Use 3 pieces each to make a braid, pinching at each end to seal.

Divide remaining dough into 6 pieces and roll each into 17″ long ropes.  Again, use 3 pieces each to make 2 braids and place each braid on top of the thicker braid, tucking the ends of the top rope under the bottom rope.

Cover and let rise {I just keep them on my stove top, but you could put them back in the oven} for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375°.  Bake bread for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.  Remove from oven and brush tops and sides with butter.  Cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight bag or container…that is, if there is anything left to store!

My friend Sarah was homeschooled and actually had a business as a teenager selling challah bread on Fridays.  So, if you have any budding entrepreneurs in your house, you might consider something like this!

It really is a fun and easy bread to make, and the results are rather tasty too!

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Actually, it was the one about the very pregnant mama sitting in the car outside the liquor store while her husband went in and bought vodka so she could make…

VANILLA!

Yes, folks, that pregnant mama was me this last summer, sitting outside the liquor store in the sweltering heat while my husband went in and bought the cheapest vodka he could find so we could try our hand at making homemade real vanilla.

Many months had passed since our last bottle of Mexican vanilla had run out.  We missed the richness of real vanilla, and my husband just about couldn’t bring himself to purchase vanilla extract for our baked goods and definitely not for our homemade ice cream.  After chit chatting with some friends of ours who had begun making their own, we decided we could definitely handle the process and the price…and even the trek into the liquor store.

We purchased vanilla beans from Saffron.com where you can purchase 1 pound of beans for $19.95!

The vodka was the very cheapest money could buy – around $7.

Looking back, we put an excessive amount of beans in our first batch – 24, to be exact.  I’m thinking 6 ought to do the trick next time.  It might take a bit longer to steep, but this would be the biggest bang for my buck.

So, I slit the beans lengthwise and I also chunked them up (not necessary, but the idea here is more surface area).

I poured off a bit of the vodka (yes, it went down the sink, not in my mouth), and added the beans.  Then, I wrote the date on the bottle and set it up in the cupboard for 6 weeks.

I’ve seen on other sites where they say it takes 6 months, but our friends told us 6 weeks, and sure enough, by 6 weeks, the vanilla was ready to use.  We left the beans in to keep adding to the richness of the flavor.  Our friends pour off the vanilla and reuse the beans in a new batch, but they have twice the number of children we have and they are sharing with their church family, so they go through more vanilla than we do. (Tiana from God Made…Home Grown says you can just keep adding vodka to your bottle so you can keep using it!)

It has been so nice to have real vanilla to cook with again!  It’s so incredibly easy and so worth the trip to the liquor store!

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I wish there was a word to describe just how absolutely divinely yummy these are…but there isn’t.  So, you’ll just have to make them and taste for yourself!

In my home, these are known as Lynnette’s Chocolate Chip Tea Scones because this recipe came to us from Lynnette over at Dancing Barefoot after she brought them to church one morning and we raved and raved and begged and begged for the recipe!

Lynnette’s Chocolate Chip Tea Scones

3 c. unbleached flour
¼ c. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ c. butter
3 large eggs
½ c. sour cream (you can use milk, but it’s better with sour cream)
2 tsp vanilla (we use the REAL stuff)
¾ c. chocolate chips (milk chocolate are the only choc chips worth eating says my husband)

Preheat oven to 425°.  Grease a large cookie sheet.  Mix together all dry ingredients.  Cut in butter until coarse crumbs form.

Mix together the eggs, sour cream, and vanilla.  Add to flour mixture.  Mix until blended.

Add chocolate chips until evenly distributed.

Form dough into a ball on floured surface.  Press out until ¾” thick.  Cut with a biscuit cutter (or a canning ring or an upside-down glass…) and place on cookie sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes.  Cool on wire rack.  Serve warm or cool completely and store or freeze.

Makes 12-15 large scones

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Since we’ve been talking about Family Integrated Churches/Home Churches this week, I thought I’d pass along our favorite Communion bread, made by one of the dear ladies of our home church when it was her turn to host.  It’s a simple unleavened recipe that can easily be broken into pieces to share for the Lord’s Supper.

Lord’s Supper Bread

1/4 c. milk
3/4 c. flour
2 Tbsp. shortening
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp honey

Mix together and roll out flat on a cookie sheet.  Bake at 375° for 10-15 minutes.

NOTE: We also make this quite often to eat with soup in our own home.  When we do this, we usually quadruple the recipe to get the size of pieces you see in the picture.

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Quite often I share with you anything I find noteworthy; however, every now and then there is something that doesn’t fit into a post or something that deserves to be repeated.  When I have a decent list of those put together, I’ll try to write up an “Amy Raves” post.  I’m also going to try to send them out on Friday night or Saturday morning so I can participate in Saturday Stumbles over at It’s Come To This.  So, consider heading over there to find even more articles, resources, and raves!

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Bosch Mixers

So, I told you I am a practical mommy who likes practical gifts.  Therefore, the year I got my Bosch mixer was stellar!  I was pregnant with our 4th child and I gave that Bosch a run for its money.  I made bread and cookies (I highly recommend the cookie paddles!), I mashed potatoes and made homemade butter.  I had a blast!  I still use my machine nearly every day in some capacity.  I also now own the slicer/shredder which I use to shred cheese, veggies, and soap for my homemade hand soap and laundry detergent.  I cannot even begin to tell you just how valuable this appliance is in our kitchen!  And don’t forget…Martha (aka Marmee) from Marmee’s Bread Market has graciously agreed to offer a coupon code for Raising Arrows readers (this coupon code also applies to her grain mills)!  In addition to a great price, you also get a 1 hour instructional DVD and FREE SHIPPING!

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Deodorant

Yep, that’s right…deodorant!  Several months ago, I ran across a video on making your own deodorant.  I couldn’t wait to use up our old deodorant so I could try this stuff!  FINALLY, I had an empty deodorant container and quickly whipped up a batch of this homemade deodorant.  Let me tell you…THIS DEODORANT IS AMAZING!  It lasts all day, it works like no other natural deodorant I have ever tried, and even my husband raves about it!  In fact, he just told me he was considering DUMPING OUT his old deodorant stick so I could fill it with the homemade kind!  The only caution I have is to let it dry under your arms since it is made with coconut oil, but to me, that is an easy thing to do when you consider how great this stuff is!

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Yummy Things

This isn’t a link, it’s a memory that was jogged by an online conversation I stumbled upon a few weeks ago.  Someone put the words hot cocoa and toast in the same sentence and I was instantly transported to my childhood and the yummy warm goodness of dipping my buttered bread past a heaping mound of melted marshmallows and into a pool of beautiful hot chocolate.  I would wrap my cold little breakfast hands around the mug and breathe in the heat.  How could I have forgotten all this?  So, the very next morning cocoa and toast was breakfast!  Some of the kiddos were delighted.  Some were appalled, but all were subjected to my memories.

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