Recipe for Gift Giving

Every year we try to give some small gift to our girls' teachers. This is our only year with all three of them at one school, so I wanted to think of something fun and different to do. And I'll be honest, it had to be easy. A loves dancing in The Nutcracker, but it's a big time investment for our family and leaves us all tired by this time of the year. I beat the holiday rush by sending a Thanksgiving letter instead of a Christmas one, but didn't have the foresight to do the same with teacher gifts. So this year, we make a bath soak.

Ginger Orange Bath Soak
2 cups baking soda
2 cups epsom salts
2 TBSP ground ginger
1 TBSP dried orange peel

Mix all together (I doubled or tripled this recipe) and pour about 2/3 cup of the mixture into a paper or cellophane bag.

We opted for paper bags, folded over and held down with a Christmas sticker.

I mixed the bath soak, the girls affixed the stickers and labels and we all enjoyed distributing them to the teachers at our wonderful elementary school.

The original recipe for the soak didn't call for the orange peel, but I wanted some citrus scent to complement the ginger. I tried out the left-overs myself in the bath and found that orange peel gave the bath a bit of texture, but just the scent I had wanted. This was a super-easy, inexpensive and unique gift.

Veggie Soup

After a weekend of party food and party food left-overs on Sunday, I wanted veggies, veggies and more veggies for dinner tonight. Here's what we had:

Tomato Vegetable Soup
1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 onion, diced
1/2 red bell pepper diced
3 stalks celery, diced
1 Tbsp olive oil
2/3 cup fresh bean dip
4 cups water
1 Tbsp fresh basil

Heat olive oil over medium heat.
Saute onion, pepper and celery.
Add tomatoes, water and bean dip mixture.
Bring to barely a boil and reduce heat to low until ready to eat.

We had this with crackers and it was a perfect meal for a rainy winter night. I had wondered if the peach salsa in the bean dip would make the soup taste odd, but it was a really good use of left-overs!

Party Food

For my birthday party, I tried to come up with a few dairy free, soy free items since my nephew is allergic to soy and dairy, thereby making my sister-in-law's diet more complicated. Two such offerings were:

Fresh Bean Dip
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 can corn, rinsed and drained
1/2 of a red bell pepper, diced
2/3 cup peach salsa (medium heat)
1 Tbsp fresh cilantro

Mix all ingredients together and serve with tortilla chips (if you can find soy free) or Stacy's Pita Chips (which are soy free).

I love hummus for a party because it's one of the few dips that actually taste good with baby carrots, celery and cucumbers. Plus, it's full of fiber and pretty darn healthy for a party food. There's a brand that makes a lemon hummus and J and I like it so much that I created this to capture the same feeling:

Lemon Hummus
1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1 Tbsp tahini
1 Tbsp olive oil
approx. 1/4 up lemon juice
1 tsp garlic salt (or fresh minced garlic, if you want a bolder garlic flavor)

Mix all in the food processor and serve with assorted veggies and pita chips.

At Thanksgiving, J's cousin made an apple cider drink spiked with PGA (that would be pure grain alcohol, in case you've forgotten that college terminology). I decided I'm a tad too old to have a PGA drink at my birthday party, so I did this instead.

Spiced Apple Cider
1 gallon apple cider
4 cinnamon sticks
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum

Heat apple cider, cinnamon sticks and lemon juice over medium heat until warmed through. Turn heat to low.
Serve in Christmas Mugs with Captain Morgan's nearby for those who want some additional spice in their cider.
(If I'd had an orange on hand, I would have sliced it into rounds and floated those in the cider as I heated it - do that if you can!)

My only other homemade offering was a tomato tart, along with Wickles pickles (the best pickles I've ever eaten), a sausage and cheese tray, cream cheese topped with red pepper jelly and desserts from Sweet 16th.