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

Chitter-Chatter

I am almost done weeding all of the flower beds.  I have yet to weed the herb garden, but it's in pretty good shape thankfully.

We came up with a solution to "fence" the other vegetable garden on a budget.  We are seeking out a person to come till the vegetable gardens on a budget.  It seems that the only one we can find so far, is with a large tractor (so glad we removed two sides of the fenced garden).  

We had a coyote in the gardens lately.  We are also hoping it has moved on.

The new coop build is on hold (sigh), but there is nothing I can do about it. When you run a homestead, you run into set backs here and there.  

Our AC units are not in yet, and we are in the 80's.  Again, another job on hold (for now).  

I've started harvesting chive blossoms (more on that later).

I managed to gather yarn scraps to crochet the latest book blanket granny square, but have yet to crochet it.  Progress.

I was asked if I had anymore crocheted water balloons, and the answer was no (of course).  Back in Dec. of 2023 we held our last craft show.  Despite letting everyone know, not one person we knew, nor other people who arrived, bought anything from us.  I had a TON of inventory too.  Something for anyone.  The only lady to show up, was one that wanted knitted dishcloths, and I had already made them, and it was a good place to meet to exchange. We decided that was the very last one to do.  Too much handiwork time, very little sales, and a lot of hard work to pack up and un pack and set up.  Not to mention the cost to rent the space.

Anyway, I had asked a ton of people if they wanted them, and tried to sell the remaining water balloons.  No one wanted them.  I had a LOT leftover, so I took them to the library and they used them for an Easter Egg hunt that following Spring.  That was over a year ago.  Now, I'm being asked for them.  Go figure.   I don't even had the yarn to make them.  

So, I will be doing a double check to make sure I do not have any left, but if you are interested in what I am talking about, the post and photo is on this:  BLOG POST.  Enjoy!

If you have the blessing of a weekend off, and adventures in the mix, enjoy!  

Chitter-Chatter  ©  May 2025 by Kristina at Pioneer Woman at Heart