Unique Holiday Cooking Time Savers: Slow Cookers, Chex Mix and Other Tips

What do you want to do at Christmas time? Do you want to spend wonderful, quality hours with your family? Do you want to feed them wholesome, homemade quality food? It's very difficult to do both! Producing all those holiday favorites your family loves takes a lot of time in the kitchen. But if you think outside the box and plan ahead, you can minimize the time in the kitchen and maximize the time you can spend with your family.

Here are few ideas I try to implement each year. Some ideas reduce the total time spent in preparation, while others simply have you doing the preparation ahead of the holiday crunch to save time later. Implementing even only a few of these ideas will leave you with more time to enjoy your friends and family, while still enjoying real homemade holiday goodness.

HANDY CUP OR BOWL OR TUREEN OF HOMEMADE SOUP: Make a big batch of your favorite, cozy, homemade soup or stew ahead of time and freeze portions of it individually in a muffin tin. Portioning it out in this way makes it easy to grab a cup or bowl of soup quickly, or to heat up an entire batch more quickly than if the whole amount was frozen solid. Just spray the muffin tin with cooking spray and add the soup, leaving a little room for expansion during freezing. Once it is fully frozen, pop the individual portions out and place into a freezer bag. Remove one portion and cook in the microwave for a cup of soup. Remove two portions and cook in the microwave for a bowl of soup. Or place a little bit of water in a pan and add all of the portions. Slowly bring up to just boiling, and you have a nice pot of homemade goodness for your family after an evening of decorating, wrapping, caroling, etc.