Home Made Goodness

Look what I've been working on today! Son had a sleepover with one of his football player team mates. They had a blast playing games together. Peanut was feeling a bit left out from the boy's game playing so I involved her in some cooking activities. We also made sugar free cherry jello, but I didn't take a picture of that, I forgot about it until just now.

The great thing about homemade things is you know exactly what goes in to it. No chemicals and I can control the amount of sugar my kids eat. I am trying to help my kids learn proper serving sizes of foods too, I am hoping they can avoid the road I am on with constant weight struggles. I am too late to keep this from happening to son, but Peanut will hopefully benefit from all of this effort at least. It also didn't cost much, I just had to buy a box of pectin for the blackberry jelly.



I found a recipe for blackberry jelly that only called for me to use 4 cups of the blackberries I had, so I am planning on making Cheesehead some blackberry cobbler a bit later today too. We also made apple jelly, but no one has tried it yet. Of course that meant we HAD to have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. The boys both chose the fresh blackberry jelly for their sandwiches. Peanut wanted the Smucker's brand. (She doesn't like to try anything new, but I'm sure she'll come around in time.) I was lucky the MIL had given me some tomatoes in freezer safe jars last year. I saved them all and now I can store the extra jelly in the freezer until we're ready for more. I'm asking for canning equipment for Christmas so I can keep them on shelves in the future, but it worked out perfect for now. Son's friend liked the jelly so much he asked if he could have a jar to take home. I said that would be fine. I feel that's a great compliment coming from a 10 year old boy, isn't it?

Son's friend can be picky with his eating habits too, so I fed them foods I thought the kids would all eat. Homemade applesauce was one of the things I served. Son's friend said it was even better than the stuff that comes in the jars at the store. (He wanted a jar of this too, but the kids had just eaten the last of it.) I'm going to have to buy more apples too, son wants to have homemade apple sauce as his birthday treat for school at the end of this week. Instead of canning my homemade applesauce, I usually put it in individual containers in the fridge. That way it's already portioned out and it's easy to grab some to put in the kids' lunch pails.




Peanut likes to help me decorate baked goods. I had her choose the color she wanted to make the vanilla frosting. She chose yellow because it's both of her grandma's favorite color. Too bad they live too far away so I can't give them each one. She stirred in the food coloring diligently until it was evenly distributed through all of the frosting. I wish it had occured to me to have her get out the Betty Crocker Cake Decorating Kit that we got her for her last birthday. Another thing I just thought of!



We have an abundance of sprinkles in our cupboard. I like to stock up on things that are on the clearance racks at the end of whatever season, that's how I got all of these. We had some great fall sprinkles in our stash. What fun. We shouldn't run out of treats for a while now, should we?

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy