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This is the time of year when I sometimes crave a good baked potato. When the weather gets cooler, a nice hot baked potato can warm you up and feel like comfort food. Sometimes for dinner I'll put together a baked potato bar with a variety of toppings to satisfy my craving.
Baked Potato Bars can be an inexpensive way to feed a large group, especially if you make it a potato bar potluck affair. The host can provide the potatoes, butter, sour cream and salt and pepper and then ask everyone else to bring a topping. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. It is surprising to me that not everyone loves baked potatoes that well, and especially not with various toppings. Lindsey prefers a sweet potato and has always disapproved of baked potato bars. When I asked her for topping ideas, she suggested butter, salt and pepper. Not really what I was looking for, LOL. Luckily, Maddy and Alicia do enjoy baked potatoes and had plenty of ideas! So, I've compiled a list of ideas that you may not have thought about. Then, if you decide to host a Baked Potato Bar, perhaps you can enclose the list of ideas in your invitation to give your guests some options. I mean, it would be a less exciting event if everyone simply brought cheese.
Did I leave any of your favorite toppings off of the list? Pleas add them in the comments below!
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This time of year, things begin to get busy as we gear up for the holidays. So, sometimes it is nice to read short stories instead of an entire novel when you can fit in little bits of time to read. I think of Halloween as the first holiday of the season, and these short anthologies of spook stories are just the ticket to turn up the spookiness level for your middle grade kids!
Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories is a group of 14 supernatural tales specifically selected by him that are sure to add the creepiness to Halloween or to nights around the campfire! He has included some superb, well known authors' works in this collection that is sure to please!
Josh Allen's Out to Get You: 13 Tales of Weirdness and Woe is described as spine tingling and spooky, but not so bad that it will keep anyone up at night. Sounds just right to me!
Stinetinglers by R.L. Stine are new tales created by the master of the creepy and the spooky! Goosebump books fly off of the shelves in school libraries, and this one is sure to be another hit!
That should be just enough scary stories to get you and your kids through Halloween! I hope you give some of them a try!
Other Scary Books We've Talked About:
Hi everyone! Lindsey here. My blogging has been more sparse these days, but I had to tell you about this delicious spiced pear jam I made, so that you can make your own. As you know, we're big on canning around here. My mom has been canning my whole life, and she has taught me how to can many things. Here is a link to some canning tips she has given you in the past. Well I had a large quantity of pears and I wanted to try making a spiced pear jam I looked around at a few recipes, and came up with this delicious one below! It takes some time to peel and chop your pears, but after that the cooking is pretty much you watching your jam so it doesn't burn. It is so worth it! This jam tastes like fall, and I want to put it on everything! So if you want to try a little pear jam, give this recipe a go and tell us how it turns out!
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I'm finally getting down to the last of my pears! I don't know how Lindsey is doing on hers, but she is going to share a recipe with you next week. But, here is one last pear recipe from me!
A few days ago, I was watching a cooking show where someone made a pear pie! Since I have had pears coming out of my ears of late, I of course latched onto that idea! I figured it couldn't be that hard, and guess what! It wasn't! You Kind of Treat the Pears Like Apples, Yet Differently
My pears had reached their peak ripeness! They were so juicy and sweet. I had to handle them gently so I wouldn't bruise them. They were not crisp like an apple at all.
I used my vegetable peeler to remove the skin of the pears. Then, I quartered them, removed the cores and sliced them into a bowl. I made the slices sort of thick so that they would hold up in the oven. Next, I tossed the pears with the corn starch, sugar and spices very gently. Then, I put them into the pie crust. Easy as that. I didn't cook the pie filling in advance because the pears were already so soft that I didn't want them to get mushy. They started creating their own juicy sauce right away. That sauce thickened in the pie perfectly in the oven.
I used my standby pie crust recipe, except I used buttery flavored Crisco. After I rolled out the top crust, I cut some leaf shapes into it before placing it on the pie, instead of cutting in the normal slits.
Once the pie is baked, just plop on a scoop of ice cream and enjoy it warm and delicious!
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Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
June 2024
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