31 Weeks Until Christmas ~ Christmas Countdown 2025

 New Sweet Tasty Treat!  New Recipe Tried.

Pomegranate-Vanilla Cashews.

These would be great for simply gifting at Christmas, to take and add to your charcuterie board, a side to go with a cheese appetizer, etc.  They are addicting, so be careful, ha ha!  They would be tasty as an ice cream topper too, if you do a sundae bar for a gathering or for own ice cream treat.

3 cups of raw (unroasted, unsalted) cashews came out to about 1 pound (16 ounces) of cashews.  

One note:  I think I would use a slotted spoon to spoon it all out onto the parchment paper, vs. dump the entire mix onto it.

Here is why.

Where the extra coating puddled, the cashews stuck a lot more to the parchment, and although they are also still on the crunchy side, I felt the pieces that sat and baked in the extra coating came out more soft and sticky.  To get all the pieces nicely crunchy, and come off the parchment much easier, I think eliminating the extra liquid would help.  The recipe stated to just mix, dump and bake.  Anyway, those are my thoughts, but yes, it's a keeper recipe.  

I used a non-gmo pomegranate 100% juice, my homemade vanilla and regular sugar (I did not have cane sugar, but will get some now).

The recipe is online at:  Veggingonthemountain

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Just some more Christmas gift giving thoughts to share.

One year I gifted homemade taco seasoning to my family. I saved baby food jars (from someone) and filled them.  I painted the lids, and made a handmade refrigerator magnet to top the lid too.  

                     

Old photo from years ago, but you can see the lids painted gold, and the fridge magnet on the top.  I used bottle caps and crocheted granny rounds with cotton #10 crochet thread, and clued it on the inside of the bottle cap, and glued on a magnet.  I have no idea if anyone ever used the seasoning or used the magnet, but there was apparently a lot of thought (or over thought) to this gift (ha ha!).

I was making a new batch of homemade seasoned salt (linked post for recipe), and remembered, that I gifted some to my Mom one Christmas.  She loved it.  In fact, she loved it more than the seasoning from the store.  I have no idea where I got the recipe from either, as I have had it that long now.  Sharing just another idea to gift, if you need some more ideas.  

               

One year I gifted dried rosemary from the herb garden, and attached recipes.  I even gave one to the kids bus driver at the time.  We had a lot of rosemary that year.  One year I gifted sage, as well as recipes, and a note about medicinal sage tea.  I can't recall if I gifted other herbs, but they make nice gifts too, if you have an abundance of a homegrown herb.

I am hoping I have enough sage growing this year to dry a good amount.  We'll find out come summer and fall.

31 Weeks Until Christmas ~ Christmas Countdown 2025 ©  May 2025 by Kristina at Pioneer Woman at Heart