Merry AFTER-Christmas! I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas with friends and family! I love Christmas, but once it’s over I like to go back to normal rather quickly at my house. At 9:30 on Christmas morning Jeff and I already had our tree (that fell at 5:30 one morning and broke 1/3 of our ornaments) un-decorated and it was in our yard. I could not handle the needles ANY.MORE!! By last night everything else was put away and we are back to a normal (clutter free) house. I love how people can enjoy their decorations until the New Year or after. I am not one of those people.

I wanted to share a recipe that I made about 27 times over the past month or so. Perhaps I should have shared it sooner now that the Holidays are sort of over? I didn’t think about it until my last batch Saturday. It’s a SNACK MIX recipe that I got off Pinterest back in November. I had to make teacher snacks for my kids’ school, so I made a big batch of it and sent it. My daughter told me her teacher loved it, so I made more in December when my kids’ middle and upper school had Wassail Week (aka snack week) in the library. I made 3 batches that week and sent it to school! We also made it for all of our neighbors, Jeff’s office and other friends!

Here is the recipe:

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 packet dry ranch dressing (or dip) mix

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp dill weed

1 – 9 oz package of oyster crackers (I used big and small ones)

1 – 11.5 oz reduced fat Cheez-its (I used the Walmart box my last several batches -cheaper. Doesn’t necessarily have to be reduced fat either)

8 oz (half a normal bag) waffle pretzels aka Snyders Snaps (I used these and also pretzel sticks. Don’t get the butter flavored snaps. You could probably use regular shaped pretzels too, but I went to great lengths to find and use the waffle shape.)

I honestly used more than the above – sometimes I threw in 2 bags of oyster crackers (1 big and 1 small size oyster cracker), and I also threw in extra waffle pretzels and pretzel sticks too. I added a little extra of the onion powder, garlic powder and dill weed. You could also use Goldfish or any other small cracker.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the pretzels and crackers. Drizzle the vegetable oil over the mix a little at a time, stirring continuously so that everything is coated. Mix dry seasoning ingredients in a separate bowl, and sprinkle a little at a time over your mix, stirring continuously so that again, everything is coated.

Spray 1 to 2 cookie sheets with non stick spray and spread snack mix evenly among cookie sheets. Cook at 250 for 15 minutes, then give it a good stir. Continue cooking for 15 minutes and then let cool. Store in an airtight container. Will keep for 2 to 3 weeks.

This is my mix in my huge Ikea bowl!

Here are the pretzels I used. They can be hard to find! Walmart was hit or miss but Publix had them. Don’t get the butter snaps! Like I said, you could probably use any pretzels, but I had these in my head so that’s what I used each time.

My seasoning mix:

I sprinkle, then stir, sprinkle, then stir, and so on and so forth!

Ready to bake:

Seriously this was like my 18th batch! We even game some to the mail lady and trash men!!

I hope you make some, share it and enjoy!! I’m usually not a huge Chex Mix person, but this stuff is really good!!