Brown Bag Gifts from the Kitchen

Christmas 2013 was done on a modest budget as we followed the mantra "something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read"... and something from Santa.  While we had set aside a little bit of money to spend on our children through some extra jobs taken we had little to spend on anyone else.  But Christmas is a time for giving and we wanted to be as generous as we could be with our extended family whom we would be spending late Christmas Day with.  I decided we should think about how we could be generous and thoughtful, giving of what we have been blessed with.  Combining this school of thought while considering what to do for someone who has everything  was not an easy task.  And going into debt for Christmas is not an option for us, we knew.  We made that decision several years ago.  In the end, I felt good about giving this gift from the kitchen.  We did not feel that we were competing with something we couldn't possibly compete with anyway and so it worked.  It took hours of time from our whole family, from the visit to the farm earlier in the year, to baking and putting items together to crafting “fancy” bags and printing things on the computer.  The whole family had been involved and really it was a gift both of our time in preparation and a gift of saved time to our recipients.  In the end we had packed a box of “from scratch” convenience foods that would provide three different breakfasts, a lunch and a dinner with leftovers.  I stuck some candles in the box too, so they could have a “nice” evening in. 
This is an example of where “food storage” can be used to create convenient quick meals for yourself or wonderful gifts that anyone could appreciate.  I think some of these would make good teacher gifts, too.  Some of the recipes for breakfast foods or mixes can be found under "Food Storage - Mix It Up".

For breakfast there were homemade chocolate chip granola bars, homemade Poptarts made with strawberry marmalade I made from our excursion to pick strawberries on the farm back in June, and homemade Cranberry Granola.  These were packaged with pretty ribbons, rafia and labeled in brown paper bags.

Lunch time brought a homemade chicken and rice soup mix, a mini loaf of homemade bread and a small gift jar of raspberry jam I made from berries picked back in August.  I used some fancy Christmas themed scrap booking paper on the lid of the jam as a label and tied rafia around the jar.  Again, this was packaged up in a similar fashion in brown bags.  While gift giving in Mason jars is very trendy right now, I kept the cost down by just using bags with the exception of the jam.  But any of these mixes could be given in jars.  Maybe as a smaller gift of just one meal this would have been appropriate.

Dinner consisted of homemade biscuit mix and instructions to make them, a homemade Italian salad dressing mix, pasta, canned tomatoes and a homemade Spaghetti Spice pack with instructions printed up on how to prepare it all.  These convenience meals are completely homemade and delicious but a time saver once they are packaged up like this.  You can package the dry ingredients to any of your favorite recipes to make a “mix” and include instructions on how to make the final product.  It’s not hard.

Finally there was dessert; some of our holiday favorites but the highlight here for them was a cutout cookie made from my husband’s great grandmother's recipe and one that the family hadn't made or had in years and years.  The cookies are very good and I’ve never come across another recipe like it.

I included tags with use/freeze by dates on each food.  Once everything was packaged up it all filled a somewhat sizable box and was wrapped up.  It was a gift of time,ease and thoughtfulness and was something we thought would be appreciated.