"Quickie" ketchup

This is "quickie" ketchup. I don't always get around to making ketchup with a recipe. When we had our homemade burgers the other day, and we realized that the ketchup jar was about empty, one daughters asked, "mom, can't you just make some "quickie" ketchup?"

Well, of course I could. It's what I've been doing for the past several months, in lieu of making a big batch of ketchup on the stove.

"Quickie" ketchup is canned tomato paste, sweet pickle juice, soy sauce and water to thin. That's it. It's all made to taste, primarily tomato paste, with just a couple of splashes of sweet pickle juice and soy sauce, then thinned to the right consistency with water. I don't cook it, but simply stir it all together. It keeps in the fridge for about 3 weeks, so I just make enough for a few meals at a time.

I love that it is mostly tomato paste (which counts towards veggie/fruit servings), and uses up some of the sweet pickle juice left at the bottom of the jars, when the pickles have been consumed.

Shopping school supplies for the home office and small Christmas gifts, as well

My two daughters have this week off from work. We're using the time to do a couple of fun things, but also to get some basic errands taken care of.

Yesterday, we went to Target for spiral-bound notebooks for both of them. While there, we bought some office supplies for home, and some small gifts to fill a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child.

Whether you're shopping at Staples, Target or the dollar store, this is an excellent time of year to buy not only the school supplies needed, but also to refill some office supplies and to buy some small gifts and stocking stuffers.

For all of this, I paid $10!! We got enough notebooks to get through all 3 quarters, and likely have a few left over for next year, 18 notebooks in total. And those notebooks were just 17 cents each at Target this week. We were trying to see if we could spend $25 on school supplies. Target's current deal is spend $25 on school supplies and get a $5 Target gift card. Well, we couldn't find enough items to stretch much beyond $10, let alone $25.

If you have young children in your life, you can purchase a couple of these well-priced items for a very small amount of money, and put together a fun little gift. The crayons were 40 cents, the markers were 74 cents, a package of glue sticks was 30 cents, and the package of 2 mini-notebooks was just 50 cents. Watercolor paints are also a nice little gift, combined with a pad of paper. All of these would make nice stocking stuffers, as well.


While out and about, we were passing Five Guys. I suggested we have hamburgers for lunch. One daughter exclaimed, "are we going to Five Guys?" I said "no, but I have burger patties and buns in the freezer at home. And we have homemade dill pickles, plus lettuce and tomatoes in the garden." I estimated that we spent $2 on our burgers, yesterday. We couldn't buy even one burger at Five Guys for that price, and I think ours tasted much fresher, too!

We came home, quickly put together our lunch, and enjoyed the quiet of our own backyard.