49 days until the Big One!

Only 49 days until Christmas! Yay!!

I am home today with a sick kid-Benjie got up this morning throwing up. However, he seems to be much better now. Hmmm...oh, well, everyone needs a "mental health" day every now and then, and I know for a fact that he really was sick this morning.

We are going to be pretty low key around the Hamlet this weekend. The weather is supposed to be beautiful. Lynn is going to work at the church, and I'm going to clean out the freezers in preparation for the holiday stockup! I want to make some goodies and freeze them, and I like to keep a few things in the freezer for quick meals or impromptu get-togethers. Do you do that?
What sorts of things do you stock up on?

In the freezer, I like to keep flash-frozen chicken breasts (so that I can pull out 2 or 3 and make soup or chicken and dumplings, or 5 0r 6 and grill them...), frozen french fries, biscuits, and some bags of vegetables, especially purple hull peas and whole kernel corn. Most other veggies I used the canned version. I like to keep a couple of extra boxes of margarine sticks and a couple of rolls of sugar cookie dough, too! Around this time of year, I start stocking up on boxes of pie dough, bags of flour and shelled nuts to keep in the freezer, also.

In the pantry, I like to keep cans of beans, cream style corn, and lots of cans of tomatoes in various forms-sauce, pureed, crushed, diced and whole. I like to use either pureed or crushed in soup or chili. The sauce I add herbs like basil and oregano for spaghetti sauce. I pour the diced over chicken breasts with onions and peppers for my version of "Swiss Chicken".

I also usually have bags of dried beans, pasta and rice in the pantry most of the time. I almost always have a cake mix or two, some brownie mix and some chocolate chips, cans of frosting and ingredients for a few desserts. I like to use canned apple pie mix, we like it better than fresh. I also like to have peaches for a cobbler, cans of pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk. I buy boxes of beef and chicken broth and store them in the bottom of the pantry. I also like to keep an extra bag or two of sugar on hand. And it's great to have bags of dried fruit-cranberries, bananas, raisins and apples are favorites around here. I like to put dried cranberries, apples, raisins and mixed nuts together for a healthy sweet-but-salty trail mix. YUM!

These three are getting where they eat so much, that I have to keep a few things stashed away!

Growing, aren't they? My three little blind mice! They unfortunately all three inherited their mother's eyes. Sad, really.

I hope you are having a good time getting ready for the upcoming holidays! I love this time of year more than any other...fall in all it's glory, with the holidays looming! What could be more fun??

Later!

Cathy