A Handmade Christmas ~ Week 7 {Things to eat!}

Christmas is almost here! I imagine you have some excited households, as I do. I hope you and your family have a wonderful, peaceful and joyful Christmas!!

I am actually wondering if anybody else is still out and about in Blogland... I wondered if I should even bother to post this last Handmade Holiday but I decided I might as well go ahead and do it. I know some people celebrate later and also you just might need a last minute idea. :-) So here we go. Everything that I am sharing today is made in the kitchen....

     Vanocka Braid is our family's Christmas Breakfast tradition. I posted the recipe here in 2007. It is one of those breads that looks elegant and takes a little bit of work but at the same time isn't that hard. It is fun to have as a special tradition.

Speaking of traditions I guess we are going to do homemade pasta again for our Christmas meal. We are working to make it a tradition. I would love to hear what your traditional foods are!

Now, on to gifts....
I think food gifts are great! Everybody eats (though of course when giving food it is good to consider diets, allergies and preferences), food doesn't clutter up the house later and it is practical. Besides it is fun to give and get something special that you wouldn't have normally.

Today we actually made pumpkin bread to give out, but I didn't take any pictures. I decided on that for two practical reasons: #1. I know a lot of people give out unhealthy things and your body can begin to feel overloaded with that and #2. It was much easier for me to make then a bunch of different varieties of cookies.

Another gift we made recently was "Puppy Chow". I had gotten the Chex cereal very cheap with some coupons, so it ended up being fairly inexpensive. We also made enough for us to eat which my kids found very exciting! I think I have made it only one other time and they didn't remember it. They really thought I should share the recipe here on my blog. :-) So here is the link.

I think candy is always a fun gift too, even though it isn't healthy! Making candy lets the kids and I have the fun of really messing and experimenting in the kitchen too. Here is our most recent candy experiment:  

Chocolate Nut Clusters
1 1/2 cup Chocolate Chips
1 Tablespoon butter

Put chips and butter in bowl, place in the microwave and heat it for 1 to 1 1/2 minutes at 50% power. Stir until smooth. (You may need to cook it more.)

Then with this we made 2 types of candy, using 1/2 the chocolate for each.

For one type we put a few pecan pieces in each candy cup and then poured chocolate over them and then topped with another pecan.

For the other type we mixed in 1/2 cup each of Coconut, Kashi Go Lean Crunch Cereal and Sliced Almonds into the chocolate. Then we filled candy cups with the mixture and topped with coconut.

We let both types harden in the fridge. They were yummy and we had fun experimenting!

There are lots of neat food gifts, I would love to hear what you have given or enjoyed recieving!

Do you have any more ideas to share?

Please link them up or leave them in the comment section.

To link up please write a post about the handmade things you are doing (gifts, decorations, food, etc.), put a link to here in your post and then add the link to MckLinky.