BOGO Gift Certificates and Frugal Gourmet Food Gifts – HBHW Newsletter
December 1st, 2010
Editorial
Hello again and welcome to another edition of the Hillbilly Housewife Newsletter. We had a busy Thanksgiving in our house and, as usual, cooked way too much food. We will be enjoying leftovers for weeks and probably months to come. If you celebrated Thanksgiving last week, I hope yours was just as successful.
Thank you to everyone who submitted recipes for our Holiday Recipe Contest. We are busy now reviewing the recipes so we will be able to select the prize recipients. Scroll down and check out the prizes and gifts we have in store for you. Also, be sure to send your email address to me at susanne@hillbillyhousewife.com so we can notify you if you’ve won a prize and to send your gifts to you. Thanks again to everyone who took time to share their holiday recipes with us.
Since it’s December now, I’ve started thinking about gift giving. However, my thoughts never stray too far from food. Why not combine the two? That’s what our featured article is about this week – frugal gourmet food gifts. Please be sure to scroll down and click on the link to see how you can turn food into great gifts.
This week’s quote and story are about giving gifts from the heart; and receiving those gifts with just as much grace. I hope you’ll take a moment or two out of your busy day to read and reflect on today’s quote and story.
Those are my thoughts this week. As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions. Feel free to email me at susanne@hillbillyhousewife.com
Warm Regards,
Susanne – The Hillbilly Housewife
Inspirational Quote
We can do no great things, only small things with great love.
~Mother Theresa~
BOGO HBHW Gift Certificates
As promised, I have joined the Black Friday and Cyber Monday gang and whipped up a deal for you, my dear readers. From now until Christmas Eve, you can order one of the new HBHW Gift Certificates and get a second one to use for yourself FREE. The gift certificates are valid for an entire year and can be used on any of the HBHW ebooks. The gift certificates come in four different denominations so you’ll be able to find a price range to fit your budget. Please be sure to click on the link below and see how easy it is to do your gift shopping right here on HBHW.
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/hbhw-black-friday.htm
Holiday Recipe Contest
We have wrapped up our contest and have started the process of gathering all your delicious recipes together. We’ll be going over the recipes to figure out which ones to award prizes to. This is going to be very difficult since they all were so fun! Thank you again for taking time to submit your recipes to us so we all can share.
Of course, everyone deserves a prize in my eyes. That’s why my friend Patti Winker at www.RemarkableWrinklies.com and I are giving each person who submitted a recipe a copy of her new eCookbook, Memory Lane Meals. Patti has put together a nice collection of over 80 recipes for cakes, pies, cobblers, bars, candies, snacks, and more. Because these recipes have been collected for many years, you’ll find some of them a tad old fashioned, but don’t we love that!
Along with Patti’s eCookbook, you’ll also receive a pretty little document you can download that will include all the recipes submitted to the contest. We want you to be able to share it with your friends and family and point to your own recipe and say, “My recipe is published on HBHW.”
Now we need your email address so we can do three things:
1) find you if you win a prize, and
2) send your free eCookbook from Patti, and
3) send your own copy of all the holiday recipes.
So if you submitted a recipe for the Holiday Recipe Contest, won’t you please take a moment right now to email me at susanne@hillbillyhousewife.com and let me know what email address I can use to contact you? Thank you very much!
As a reminder, here are the valuable prizes we are giving away:
- A copy of the Crockpot Cooking Guide
- A copy of the Freezer Cooking Guide
- A copy of the Meal Planning Guide
- Lifetime Membership
- Six Month Membership
- Three Month Membership
From DineWithoutWhine.com
- Lifetime Membership
- Six Month Membership
- Three Month Membership
From SavingDinner.com
3 month subscription (Value $15)
12 month subscription (Value $47)
Christmas for the Freezer menu (Value $10)
Thank you again for entering our Holiday Recipe Contest.
Featured Article
When I turn my calender to December, I often start to panic. No matter how prepared I am in the gift-giving area, there are always a few people on my list that I struggle with right up until the last minute. That’s when I normally turn to food. Yes, food is still a very acceptable, and appreciated, gift. But, if you want to make your food gift a bit fancier, take a look at some easy and frugal ways to give gourmet gifts:
Recipe Sharing
I’m going to share one of my favorite food gift ideas here. This is a very soothing drink mix enjoyed by young and old alike. Put it in a jar and add as much fabric and ribbon as you like to make it extra pretty. You may even want to visit your local thrift or resale shop and see if you can find an antique-looking teaspoon to include.
- 1-1/2 cup plain instant tea
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 cup instant powdered milk
- 1/4 cup powdered coffee creamer
In a resealable container combine all of the ingredients and stir with a fork or a whisk to distribute everything evenly. Store on the pantry shelf.
To Prepare: Combine 2 tablespoons Ginger Tea Mix with 3/4 cup boiling water. Stir the ingredients in a tea cup to dissolve. Serve with lemon cookies at tea time.
The English prefer milk or cream in their tea, while most Americans prefer lemon. I have an English grandmother who taught me to appreciate both methods of service. This recipe is very English in origin so it contains milk instead of the lemon most of us are more accustomed to. It is an odd little recipe, and the first time I made it I thought it would be fine for my personal consumption, but probably not worthy of sharing. Then friends and family members got a taste of it, and begged for the recipe. It tastes a little strange at first, certainly exotic, and then it grows on you, eventually becoming an addiction of almost shameful proportions. I recommend you make half the recipe the first time to give it a try, and then see if it casts it’s spell upon you, demanding you prepare it in every growing quantities. Makes an excellent gift for the holidays.
If this isn’t quite to your taste, try this English Breakfast Tea recipe instead, or browse through my frugal beverage recipe section for more ideas.
Frugal Tips
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Do you have a tip to share? Fill out the submit a frugal tip form and I’ll be glad to add it to the site and share your tip in an upcoming edition of the newsletter.
Recipes
Here are some of the most recent recipes that have been added to the HBHW site. Enjoy!
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Do you have a recipe you would like to share? Click here to send it to me and I’ll be happy to add it to the website.
I’m Looking For:
This section is all about you. If you are looking for a particular recipe or a tip on how to do something, submit it here and I will post it in an upcoming newsletter. I’ll give you my input and other readers of the newsletter will have the opportunity to share their recipes and tips as well. So take a moment to post your questions and of course if you have a tip or idea for any question posted in this section feel free to leave a comment under the appropriate post.
I’m Looking For Requests
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I’m Looking For Responses
Below you will find some of the recent responses to the “I’m Looking For” Requests. You may also want to go directly to this section and browse through all the recent submissions and replies. To do so, click on “I’m Looking for” here, and start looking through them.
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Inspirational Story
A Box of Kisses
~author unknown~
The story goes that some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became infuriated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree.
Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, “This is for you, Daddy.” He was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found the box was empty.
He yelled at her, “Don’t you know that when you give someone a present, there’s supposed to be something inside it?”
The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said,”Oh, Daddy, it is not empty. I blew kisses into the box. All for you, Daddy.”
The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged for her forgiveness.
It is told that the man kept that gold box by his bed for years and whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.
In a very real sense, each of us as humans have been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, friends, family and God. There is no more precious possession anyone could hold.
Final Thought
That’s it for this edition of the Hillbilly Housewife Newsletter. I hope you’ve had as much fun reading it as I had creating it for you. I also hope that you have found the information helpful and useful. And by all means feel free to forward the newsletter to family and friends or even better, encourage them to subscribe to it.
Do you have a question, a tip, a recipe or a story you’d like to share with us? Email it to me and I’ll include it in a future issue. Can’t wait to see what you have to say.
Warm Wishes,
Susanne – The Hillbilly Housewife
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