Category Archives: In my kitchen

recipes, tips,and knowledge gleaned over years of preparing thousands of meals

large family food idea snacks homemade hummus and pita chips

Posted on 10/21/2013 | 9 comments

This is a favorite large family food idea in our household. We make this at the minimum of once per week.

I used to buy hummus at the store and spend an arm and a leg on it. After having so many children I realized that this was not going to be a frugal purchase for me, so I had to do without. Until one day, I came across a recipe to make your own hummus………hello?? Why didn’t I think of that??

This is super easy to make and my children gobble it up. It is sooooooo good for them, another snack that I don’t mind feeding to them, along with those energy bites.

Homemade hummus

2 cans garbanzo beans
4 teaspoons of minced cloves of garlic, less if you don’t want it so garlicky
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 T olive oil
4 T peanut butter
1 teaspoon cumin

In a food processor or blender add 2 cans of garbanzo beans, drain one can and leave the other can full of liquid

add your garlic

add your peanut butter

add your lemon juice and olive oil

add your cumin

puree your ingredients all together

that is it!!! super easy and tastes delicious! You can leave this out on the counter and let your flavors mix together a bit. We love it, the children dip their vegetables, pretzels, or pita chips into it. We also spread it on pita bread, add some shredded carrot, green onion, and shredded cheese for a healthy sandwich.

To make homemade pita chips, we wipe on some olive oil onto pita, add some spices, basil, oregano, garlic powder, and Parmesan cheese. Bake in 400 oven until crisp. To serve we cut apart with scissors.

9 Comments

Posted in In my kitchen, snacks

Tagged kitchen, large family foods, recipes, snacks

large family food ideas snacks popcorn balls

Posted on 10/19/2013 | Leave a comment

This is a great, inexpensive large family food ideas for snacks…..a yearly tradition around our home.

Popcorn balls

We usually plan a fall harvest party for our household every year. We plan games and activities– just some good fun for the little ones. My oldest daughters and I usually make some cute fall snacks. Popcorn balls are always one of the things that we make. They are super easy and taste great.

We usually double this recipe when having a large gathering. This recipe makes about 16 balls.

1/4 cup margarine
1 pkg. (10-1/2 oz.) Marshmallows
1 pkg. (3 oz.) gelatin, any flavor–we really enjoy strawberry
3 qt. (12 cups) popped popcorn–make sure to not get any seeds into your bowl.

I usually scoop through the corn after having it popped, to ensure that we don’t have any unwanted seeds. It is very bad to be biting down into a hard popcorn seed when you eat these.

So pop your popcorn, don’t worry about making over, we usually do and have a little less, sugar for our balls:)

In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, melt your butter

Place your marshmallows in the pot

Let melt, continuously stir this so that it does not burn

When completely melted, add your package of gelatin

Stir until dissolved. Then remove from heat and pour over your popped popcorn.

Gather up your ball makers….and let them get to work. I haven’t met a child yet that doesn’t like making these, especially when they get to lick their fingers clean!

We found that having your hands slightly dampened, helps in preventing your hands from sticking to the popcorn

You can wrap these up in plastic and twist them closed, or we just sat them on a plate and covered with plastic wrap. They will last for a little while, if you need to make them before hand for a group something.

yummy!!!!

large family food ideas snacks energy bites

Posted on 10/18/2013 | 20 comments

Here is another large family food ideas for snacks…energy bites

This is something that our family enjoys very much. Very simple, healthy ingredients. I can’t even feel guilty feeding it to my children because I know it is good for them. This also works great for those of us who are trying to lose some weight, because it takes away those “sweet” cravings that we have. When I was losing my 70 lbs, there were times when I just craved junk food. These energy bites were the key to helping me not gorge on something unhealthy.

This recipes makes about 175 golf ball sized bites. We store these in our freezer and just grab one when we need a pick me up.

If you want the “smaller family” version scroll down to the end.

Energy bites

15 c oatmeal
6 c unsweetened coconut
5 c flax seeds
4 c mini chocolate chips
5 c (40 oz) peanut butter
5 c honey

Place the oatmeal in a large bowl

Next add the coconut Then the flax seeds–you can use either type golden or the darker one…I have used bothAnd the mini chocolate chips, you can add regular ones, the smaller ones make the balls more uniform.

In a separate bowl mix the peanut butter and the honey

Pour the peanut butter/honey mixture over the rest of the mixed ingredients. Stir until well combined.

Here are the ingredients that I used. I used a whole 40 oz jar of peanut butter. Our honey I get from a local source and they sell it in 1/2 gallon milk jugs. I used 1/2 of the container. For next time, it is easier to just pour directly into the bowl, instead of having to measure sticky honey. I purchase my items at a Mennonite bulk food store. This is from the flax seed. It was 1.5 lbs The unsweetened coconut was 1.3 lbs The mini chocolate chips was 1.75 lbs For the honey I used half of the container The oatmeal we buy in a 50 lb container and the peanut butter was purchased at Aldis.

Ok back to our energy bites……after you have thoroughly combined your ingredients, it is time to roll them into balls.

This works best if you just slightly dampen your hands. Then grab some of the mixture and form it into golf ball size balls.

I put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them individually. After completely solid, I place them in tupperware containers and store them in the freezer.

Energy bites for the “smaller family”

1 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
1 cup unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup flax seed
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Mix as in above and store in freezer

20 Comments

Posted in In my kitchen, snacks, Uncategorized

Tagged healthy eating, kitchen, large family, recipes, snacks

large family food ideas desserts chocolate chip pumpkin muffins

Posted on 10/15/2013 | 19 comments

large family food ideas for desserts chocolate chip pumpkin muffins….

When we do a baking day around our home, we do it big. We usually have 2-3 things going and we bake a lot of that item and then freeze part of it. Chocolate chip pumpkin muffins are one of our families favorite snacks.

Scroll to the bottom for normal serving sized versions:)

9 -8 oz cans of pumpkin
18 eggs
4 1/2 c coconut oil
5 c brown sugar
5 c white sugar—-if i had raw sugar on hand I would just use 10 c total of raw sugar
12-14 c white whole wheat flour
12 tsp baking powder
9 tsp baking soda
6 tsp salt
6 tsp each cinnamon and nutmeg
3 c mini chocolate chip
Makes about 84 muffins depending upon how full you fill your cups

To make your muffins…….

In a very large mixing bowl……add your pumpkin

Crack all 18 eggs into the bowl…..hope you have some egg laying hens add your coconut oil as well
add your sugars to the bowl

With a beater, mix on low until thoroughly combined. Takes about 5 minutes to ensure proper mixing of this big bowl. We then add all of our dry ingredients, we start with all of the little ones, like baking powder, salt, etc We then add our flour, start with 12 cups first and add more as needed. You want to mix this very well with a mixer. You can mix all of the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl, but I don’t usually have the extra time it takes to do that and would rather do it all in one big bowl.

After you have done a good job mixing it quite thoroughly, time to add your mini chocolate chips. If I don’t have the mini ones on hand, I use regular chocolate chips, they all taste the same—delicious.

Keep on mixing……..to make sure you have got all of those little chips combined. Nothing worse than getting the muffin that got “jipped” some chocolate chips!

We use paper liners in our muffin tin for four reasons:

I don’t like to have to clean out muffin tins—it is a job that I detest
makes it easier to stack them on a platter to serve –because we can no longer have a single layer, it is usually a stacked pyramid!
they pop out of the pan very easily
it is easier to feed to my little ones, actually it is neater, with all of those gooey chocolate chips, we need a part of the muffin that is “clean”

Bake at 350 for 30-40 until muffins are done–insert a toothpick
I used to have all of my “baked goods” sprawled out over my dining room table and I just sat back and looked in amazement, before I put them into the freezer. But nowadays I have to package them up and put them away before they disappear. Too many little ones that think this is one of those restaurants with an all you can eat buffet!

yummy delicious……

Now what if you don’t have a large family but you still want to make these fantastic muffins?? Well you could get out your calculator and start dividing and deducting…..and…..oh never mind, here is the recipe that started it all. At one time in our marriage I used to make this amount and it was enough for all of us. Those days are long gone……..

chocolate chip muffins for “small families”

3 eggs, well beaten
3/4 c oil
2 1/4 c sugar
2 1/4 c canned pumpkin
BEAT THE ABOVE TOGETHER
2 1/2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
SIFT TOGETHER THE DRY INGREDIENTS AND THEN BLEND IN
add 1 pkg chocolate chips to mixture

Bake 350 for 30-40 minutes until done

19 Comments

Posted in desserts, In my kitchen, snacks

Tagged kitchen, large family, recipes, snacks

large family food ideas…desserts…pumpkin pie

Posted on 10/14/2013 | 5 comments

Large family food ideas desserts pumpkin pie….

I have found that with having a large family most everything that we do is different than the average family. That includes dessert making. I used to love making pies for our family but by the time I had made enough for our large family I would have 3 pies stacked one on top of the other in the refrigerator and usually that would result in someone accidentally knocking over the pies and making a mess in an already overcrowded refrigerator.

There had to be another way ……

I came up with making our pies in a jelly roll pan. It was easier to make one large crust instead of individual round ones, and cutting and serving was way more convenient.

I use the same ingredients that I would for my traditional pies but with an extra ingredient added to the crust to give it a little more structure.

Large family Pumpkin pie squares

crust