Here are different but yummy drinks to serve at your Christmas dinner or party for those of you who don’t like eggnog.

Creamy White Chocolate And Cranberry Delight

12 oz. white chocolate, chopped
2 cups heavy cream, divided
3 cups whole milk
3 cups cranberry juice

Combine chocolate and 1 1/2 cups cream over medium heat until melted. Whisk in milk and cranberry juice and heat through. Whisk in remaining cream.

Garnish with fresh cranberries or white chocolate.

Cranberry Splash

8 cups pineapple-orange juice, chilled
8 cups cranberry juice cocktail, chilled

Mix and serve.

Photo By: Kaz Andrew

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Peppermint Punch

• 2 jars (10 ounces each) strawberry jelly
• 2 liters lemon-lime soda, divided
• 2 quarts peppermint stick ice cream
• Miniature candy canes, optional

In a large saucepan, melt jelly with 2 cups soda. Chill the jelly mixture and remaining soda. Just before serving, place 6 cups ice cream in a punch bowl. Gently stir in jelly mixture. Add remaining soda. Add remaining ice cream by scoopfuls. Garnish with candy canes if desired.

Yield:3-1/2 quarts.

Photo By: Nicholas Bufford

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Our friend Susanne from Hillbilly Housewife graciously provided this free "Staying Cool This Summer" Mini-eBook for you to download! It’s full of healthy drink and snack recipes to help you and your family stay healthy and keep cool.

Download it Here!

If you like the Staying Cool This Summer Mini-eBook, you might also like Susanne’s Summer Cooking e-book, which she has offered to our readers this week for only $7.00. Along with the Summer Cooking e-book, Susanne is also throwing in a 140 page collection of her favorite Summer Recipes this week only!

 The Summer Cooking e-book includes lots more recipes that are similar to the Staying Cool This Summer Mini-eBook, but it also includes recipes for breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, desserts grilling and more! Learn more about Simple Summer Cooking here.

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Leftover Hot Dogs, Hamburgers And Peach Smoothies

I’m not sure why but every time we barbecue there are always a few hot dogs and hamburgers left, not to mention leftover baked beans. It’s like a Murphy’s Law of barbecuing. You’ll always have leftovers just like you always have leftovers at Thanksgiving.

Unlike Thanksgiving, where you can find lots of recipes explaining what to do with leftover turkey and gravy, the pickins are slim for leftover hot dog recipes. Today’s menu not only uses the hot dogs but also hamburgers and baked beans in one fell swoop.

Tips:

• Buttering corn on the cob can be a challenge but to have to do it for four or more kids can really wear you out. To make buttering corn easier, spread butter on a piece of bread (the heel works best).Then wrap the bread around the corn and quickly rub. Add more butter to the bread as you need it.
• For a fast and easy fruit pie or crisp topping, sprinkle a 9 oz. box of cake mix on top of the fruit. Then drizzle with 1/3 cup melted butter and bake as usual.
• Use leftover grilled veggies in soups, stews and casseroles for extra flavor.
• If your butter tends to burn when frying foods in it, add 1 tsp. of oil in with the butter.

Menu:

Hot Dog Pie*
Tortilla Chips
Corn on the Cob
Peach Smoothies*

Hot Dog Pie

2-3 (about 1/2 lb.) hamburger patties, crumbled
4 hot dogs, sliced
2 cups baked beans*
2 oz. Velveeta, cubed
1 unbaked deep dish pie crust**
4 slices American cheese

Combine first 4 ingredients and heat either on the stove or microwave, just until cheese is melted. Prick pie crust with fork. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Fill with hot bean and meat mixture. Cut each slice of American cheese into 4 strips and make lattice work on top of pie. Bake 5-10 minutes until cheese is melted.

*If you don’t have leftover baked beans, you can use canned baked beans (16 oz. can) or make your own. Just be sure to use a little brown sugar in them.

**If you don’t have a pie crust, bake without the crust in a greased casserole dish or pie pan until cheese is melted and serve on top of leftover hot dog or hamburger buns.

Peach Smoothies

2 cups frozen peaches, sliced and thawed
1 cup milk
1 can (6 oz.) frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1 pint vanilla ice cream
3 drops each red and yellow food coloring, optional

In a blender combine first 4 ingredients. Add ice cream and blend till smooth. Add food coloring. Makes 4 servings.

Photo By: Steven Depolo

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How to make fresh lemonade

I love to make fresh squeezed lemonade but I never seem to be able to remember from one year to the next the proportions of the ingredients that make it taste best. With Memorial Day coming up, I thought some of you might like a recipe for real live homemade lemonade.

This recipe is extra sweet so you can cut back on the sugar if you like yours more tart. Adjust this recipe to your own tastes– more lemon, less lemon, more or less sugar, etc.

Add-ins (Extras that are good with lemonade):

• Fresh berries

• Any flavor powdered drink mix (Kool-Aid), 1-2 Tbsp.

• Lemon extract for an extra twist

• Sprig of mint or slice of lemon

Homemade Lemonade

1 cup lemon juice (4-6 lemons)
1 cup water
1 cup sugar (more or less)
Dash of salt
4-5 cups water

Mix the 1 cup of water and sugar in a pan.* Heat until sugar dissolves. This makes a simple syrup. Cool. (It will keep in the fridge for a long time) Mix the rest of the ingredients into the simple syrup. Chill.

*Quick and Easy Lemonade

I like things fast and easy so you can skip making the simple syrup. Mix everything together and let it set overnight or for a few hours and the sugar will dissolve without having to make the simple syrup.

      -Jill

photo by: coreater

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Delicious Mother’s Day Breakfast!

You discreetly open one eye and scan the room. Maybe if you don’t move they will think you are still sleeping. Crash! The door flies open, the scrambled eggs go airborne and you know they have found you out! There they stand in the doorway – your family, grinning from ear to ear. It’s another Mother’s Day and once again they are treating you like a goddess- bringing you a tray full of burnt offerings (known in our culture as breakfast in bed).

There’s blackened toast, large brown lumps you think may be scrambled eggs, coffee "paste", and oh, are these strips of bacon, beef jerky or dog treats? Then of course you look at their smiling faces full of love and you are reminded how blessed you are. Gratefully, you pick up your fork and start eating. Has anything ever tasted more like manna from heaven?

If you’d rather be able to identify your Mother’s Day breakfast this year, then discreetly slip these recipes to your husband or children so that he can make sure that this heartwarming moment is also a tasty memory for you!

Recipes:

Pancakes

2 eggs
2 cups flour, all-purpose or wheat
1 1/2 cups milk
2 Tbsp. sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
5 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

In a bowl, mix ingredients just enough to moisten dry ingredients. Mixture will be thick and lumpy. Heat a griddle or frying pan over medium heat and lightly grease. Cook on a hot greased griddle. Flip when bubbles break on the surface and the edges begin to dry. Makes 15-18 medium pancakes.

Scrambled Eggs

8 eggs
4 Tbsp. milk or water (optional)
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
4 tsp. margarine (or bacon grease)

Stir all the ingredients except margarine in a bowl until well blended. Heat a skillet on medium heat. Add margarine to the skillet. Pour egg mixture into skillet. Stir constantly about 4 minutes until eggs are fluffy and set. Serves 4.

Country Fried Potatoes

6 Tbsp. bacon grease or margarine
6 potatoes, peeled and sliced
salt and pepper

Melt bacon grease or margarine in a frying pan. Add the potatoes in the pan and cook over medium heat. Flip potatoes and cook until golden brown. Remove from pan. Salt and pepper to taste. Serves 4-6.

Creamy Orange Shake
(like Orange Julius)

1/3 cup frozen orange juice concentrate
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water (optional)
1/2 tsp. vanilla
5-6 ice cubes
2 scoops vanilla ice cream

Combine ingredients in a blender until smooth. Serves 4.

For more money saving recipes check out our Dining On A Dime Cookbook.

photo by: agizienski

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We still have enough winter left to enjoy sitting down with a cup of hot tea. Here is a tea recipe you might try if you have some red hot candies you got on sale after Valentine’s Day.

Red Hot Tea

4 tsp. loose leaf black tea (or 4 tea bags)
32 red hot cinnamon candies
4 5-inch long cinnamon sticks, broken into 4 pieces
3 cups water, boiled
2 orange slices, halved for garnish

Place first 3 ingredients in a 1 qt. warmed tea pot.* Add water and let steep 3 minutes. Add half an orange slice to each cup and pour strained tea into each cup.

*A warmed pot is good because it helps keeps the tea warm longer.

I love tea cozies because they really help to keep your tea nice and hot. Even if you don’t have a cozy, try setting a saucer on top of your cup of hot tea or folding a tea towel in half and wrapping it around your pot. Either one of these things help keep your tea nice and warm.

For you coffee drinkers: If I set my cup of coffee down to go in the other room for something, I will drop my tea cozy on top of it or set a saucer on it to keep it warmer for the couple of minutes I am away from it.

-Jill

Photo by: cocreatr

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How To Make Homemade Sweet Tea

Those of you from the South may find this post a little funny because sweet tea is an everyday thing in much of the South and some of you were weaned on the stuff.

There is a whole generation of adults, though, who don’t know about sweet tea because sugar was put on the "bad food" list when they were growing up, but surprise, surprise it is once again ok to use sugar in our drinks. Yeahhhh!!!!

Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon to buy sweet tea at the fast food restaurants and in the bottles. I cringe every time I see someone pay through the nose to buy sweet tea when it is so easy to make and costs only pennies for a pitcher full. To help you save some money on what may be becoming your favorite drink or what might still be an old favorite, here is my recipe for homemade sweet tea.

Even though I am not officially a true Southerner, I will warn you I drink mine so sweet it will curl your hair. You can adjust the sugar if you want, but try it this way first and see what you think. Part of the secret to good iced tea is having the sugar properly dissolved. Just adding sugar to regular unsweetened cold tea doesn’t get it completely dissolved, but there’s an easy secret to this dilemma when making sweet tea.

Some people make a simple syrup to help dissolve the sugar, but you don’t have to go to all that trouble because this recipe makes it’s own simple syrup with the tea.

Homemade Sweet Tea

2 quarts water
3 regular size tea bags
3/4 cup sugar

Boil part of the water (about 3 cups). This doesn’t have to be precisely measured. Just estimate using enough so that when you pour it over the tea bags and sugar, it will cover them well.

While the water is boiling, place the tea bags and sugar into a 2 quart pitcher.

After the water boils, pour it over the tea bags and sugar. Cover and let it steep for at least 5 minutes if you are in a hurry. I let mine sit for 30 minutes or more (or until I remember that I made it .

 Then, gently stir it. You don’t want to break the tea bags.

 Add more cold water up to the 2 quart line. Chill.

If I will be serving mine over ice, which is the way I love it, I will only add water to the 1 1/2 quart line instead of 2 quarts.

Of course, after you try it, you can adjust the sugar and water to your preference.

Sometimes I will use 2 regular flavored tea bags and one flavored tea bag (like peach or raspberry). This adds just the right amount of flavor to it. If you like lemon, toss in a slice!

Jill

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Several readers sent in their favorite homemade Gatorade recipes. If you have one you would like to share please post the recipe in the comments! -Tawra

Homemade Gatorade

2 quarts water
1 teaspoon baking soda
1-2 teaspoons salt (I use Sea Salt)
7 Tablespoons sugar
1 packet Sugar-Free Kool-Aid

Mix, chill and serve.

From: Cheryl G.

I have always found that sports drinks taste better to me and seem to work better for me if I cut them in half with water. This is probably not as frugal as making something from scratch, but it is a savings. From Barb

Hay Time Switchel

2 cups sugar
1 cup molasses
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 gallon water

Heat all of the ingredients in 1 quart water until the ingredients are dissolved. Then add the remaining water. Chill and serve. Makes 1 gallon.

Haymaker’s Switchel (similar, just slightly different proportions)
3 1/2 quarts water
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup maple syrup or honey
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 – 2 Tbsp. ground ginger

Mix liquids. Add ginger and stir thoroughly. Take to the field in jugs.

Homemade Gatorade
1 pack unsweetened Kool-aid (any flavor)
2 quarts cold water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup orange juice

Mix together. This equals the electrolyte replacement found in many popular drinks on the market.

Electrolyte Replacement

1 cup water
1 Tablespoon orange juice or 2 tsp. lemon juice
1 Tablespoon sugar – DO NOT use a low calorie sugar substitute
1 pinch salt

Add ingredients to water and shake well. Will keep at least 24 hours without refrigeration, weeks if kept cold. For those who do not like citrus, use 3 oz. of cranberry juice cocktail in 5 oz. of water but do not add sugar.

Hope these suggestions help! I’m guessing this last mixture is similar to the homemade pedialyte for the mission field and that the one with Koolaid will be more to Kimberly’s husband’s liking. Sure don’t miss that hot midwest weather (but that’s to follow in my article!!)

From Christy M.

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Swiss Mocha

1/2 cup instant coffee
2 Tbsp. cocoa
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. vanilla
1 cup nonfat dry milk

Stir ingredients together. Process in a blender until powdered. Makes 2 cups mix.

*Attach this note to the jar if making a jar mix:

Use 1 cup of hot water and 2 tablespoons of coffee mix for each cup of coffee.

From Dining On A Dime

photo by: refractedmoments

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