Archive for the ‘food’ Category

Dinner time is supposed to be a relaxing meal shared with your family – or at least that’s what we strive for in this house despite the chaos of every day life. It helps that we have two cooks in the house as my husband and I both share a passion for it and are able to work side by side to get a meal prepared fast and easy. But not everyone has that option so what I am proposing are some 7 simple tips / tricks to help you make a meal not only quick and easy… but delicious as well!

Tip #1

Be organized. Sounds easy right? Well all moms know it’s not. You’ve got kids and all of their crazy schedules – basketball, soccer, tuba lessons, dance recitals. Who on earth has time to be organized about dinner!? Well now you do. Keep a note pad handy and jot down dinner ideas for the week in it a little bit each day. By the end of the week, you’ll have managed to plan out the meals for the rest of the week!

If you have a plan in mind, there will be no last minute “what on earth am I going to feed these kids!?” moments (I’m all for saving a little sanity where I can).

Tip #2

Stock up on cans of soup. Not only are they fairly cheap, but they can add a great depth of flavor to your cooking and cut your cooking time by half!

I like to buy creamy soups – Cream of Chicken / Mushroom / Celery / whatever else that they’ve got. It goes fantastic with chicken, beef or pork dishes. You can even use the soup as a base for gravy. It cheap. It’s quick. It’s absolutely delicious. Plus it can stretch a buck and if you buy the low sodium versions you can really pay attention to the amount of salt you’re putting in your body.

Tip #3

Assign jobs to your kids! One of the more stressful parts to making dinner is that you have kids running around the house getting into trouble while you’re trying to cook a meal. Get them involved. Let your daughter dig her hands into that meatloaf and mix the ingredients or allow your son measure out some ingredients for you. Sure, it might take a little longer but it’s fun and food tastes so much better with a little love in it!

Tip #4

Never underestimate the power of Rachael Ray’s 30 minute meals (or less in some cases!). Not only are they really that fast, but they are really good. I find most of her recipes are affordable and easy enough for people without much cooking skill to make. So check out the Food Network website and pick out some meals you would like to try.

Tip #5

Do all of your grocery shopping ahead of time. If you do the shopping once a week and buy everything you’ll need, you won’t have to stress out about picking up something for dinner. This means you have everything available at home and ready to go when it’s time to start dinner.

Tip #6

Wash all of your produce when you get home from grocery shopping and store it in proper containers. If you wash everything ahead of time, you won’t need to when it’s time to cook!

Tip #7

My favorite tip. Chop up onion, carrot, celery and green bell pepper in small dices. Mix them well in a bowl and transfer them to an air tight container of some kind (tupperware will do but if you have containers that air can be sucked out of, it’s even better). Store them in the freezer. They freeze well and when you need those ingredients to start a dish, you just take it out of the freezer and break off a piece.

Hope these tips are useful to my readers. We practice these in our own home and they work out great!

This blog is happily written in hopes of winning a French Door Refridgerator thanks to TwitterMoms.com and Samsung Appliances. For more information on how you too can enter, please check out this link.

What a crazy morning it’s been. Wow is it only 11am!?

Patches is inside and fitting in all too well. She’s positively in love with Cinders and has been chasing him around the house since she came in about 2 hours ago. I’m talking all out sprinting around the house, batting at one another, jumping on and off of furniture and meowing like crazy. They are having a rip-roaring good time.

Poor Flora. She really is the red-headed step child of the family. Patches wants nothing to do with her just yet – even hissed at Flora a little. I think Flora is just too hyper for anyone’s liking. And yet, she’s so desperate to play with Patches. She wants to have fun too sooooo bad. Trying to give Flora some extra lovings today.

See how sad Flora looks? She’s watching the kitties play and she wants to have fun too!

Patches is absolutely in love with this little cat hotel we have. Cinders hasn’t used it in ages and he’s a bit too big for it now [although Cinders did get jealous and tried to fit his fat ass in it earlier to spite Patches haha].

Both Cinders and Flora have gotten in trouble already today. I set out food for Patches because she didn’t eat well last night due to the rain. Cinders tried to eat it. I chased him off and went after Patches to bring her back to the bowl and by the time I returned no more than 30 seconds later, Flora had scarfed up 90% of the cat food in the bowl. Oh boy was I pissed. It’s like 54 cents per can for that stuff and Flora has her own food.

I’ve shown Patches the litter box a few times and Charlie took her once as well. She just looks around and looks at you like “Why am I in this box and why does it smell like pee?” and she jumps out. Hopefully since she’s bonding so well with Cinders, he’ll show her how to use it.

I have to go out today and leave the animals all home to themselves for a little while so I can drop off my prescription stuff. This should be interesting. I hope the 3 Pupcateers behave while I’m gone!

There are so many ways to cut corners financially and a big one is buying cheaper food. Buying generic brands is pretty key and most off brands taste the same as the big names – and sometimes even better for half the price.

We’ve started buying Walmart’s brand “Great Value” and for the most part, it’s been an okay experience [this from the family that takes a lot of pride in their cooking and enjoys the use of fresh and quality ingredients]. It’s been a little tough. That Great Value pasta just wasn’t quite what we’re used to but it’ll do. These Great Value wheat crackers aren’t quite the Wheat Thins I love, but they are a decent alternative. The Great Value butter – well, it’s butter. The Great Value Frosted Flakes are okay – slightly different texture but they taste pretty good.

All of that, I could handle.

And then there came the Great Value mayonnaise. No friggin thank you. Okay so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Charlie hadn’t mistakenly picked up the Light version [double ew]. It’s not Charlie’s fault. Not like he’s ever purchased this brand before. But boy is it nasty. I draw the line at generic mayo.

There are just things I can’t live without even if there is a cheaper alternative. I believe in Charmin toilet paper. I hang onto very few luxuries and I refuse to let that one go. Fortunately my husband agrees with this. My Lipton Citrus Green Tea and my Arizona Tea are my drinks of choices and either one or both of them are in this house at all times. But most other things, I can either do without if I have to, or find a cheaper alternative.

I received a comment today on my post Husband/Wife Association, basically to tell me how fat I am. Okay, so I realized that if I was going to write a public blog, the comments wouldn’t always be so nice. But come on… calling me fat? Isn’t that a bit childish?

I obviously realize I’m overweight. I have been my entire life.

Is it genetic? Absolutely.
Do I have an underlying problem causing my weight gain? Yes. Several.
Is it my fault I’m fat? The 8-ball says ‘Very likely’.

I gained a lot of weight from my two pregnancies – weight that has just refused to fall off. I thought I was fat in high school. Pfft! Yeah right. I only wish I had that body again. I was still chubby, but I sure looked good compared to now. I’ve put on serious pounds since Hailey was born and I have most definitely put on weight this year since she’s been away. It’s called depression and my body is feeling it.

I need to get out more. I need more exercise. I eat fairly healthy. We don’t fry foods in this house but maybe ocne every few months. We don’t eat out – it costs too much anyways. We cook all of our food ourselves. We use good, quality ingredients – the best that poor people can afford anyways. We don’t cook in butter or lard – we use very light amounts of olive oil. I eat appropriate portions and I pay close attention to the amount of food that goes into my mouth.

How dare anyone tell me to go on a diet – especially anonymously! That’s just mean.

Charlie is the last person a comment like that should be directed at. He’s 6′8″ and that’s no exaggeration. He suffers from gigantism. He had a tumor removed from his pituitary gland when he was a teenager. He used to weigh over 600 pounds! And ya know what? Through eating right, cooking all of his own food, portion control and eating less fatty foods, he lost over 200 pounds. That’s a couple of people!

Next time you look at someone and you want to call them fat – or worse, you do it anonymously… know before you speak. I have a lot of psychical problems right now. I so much as look at food and I gain 5 pounds. I’m very sickly right now and fighting it. I have to wait until my coverage officially starts so I can go to the doctor to get the ball rolling and get some blood work done to see what we can do about it.

I was snuggled in bed, sleeping when my husband climbed in bed, wrapped his arms around me and nuzzled against me and told me “Happy Anniversary”.

Although I haven’t celebrated a monthsary since high school, I really thought it was a very sweet gesture – especially when he informed me that he’s not only cooking me a dinner of steak, mashed potatoes, gravy and steamed broccoli – he also has a yellow cake in the oven just for me with chocolate frosting to go with it.

Yes, I really do have the most amazing husband in the world and no, you can’t have him and he doesn’t have a brother.

I love that my husband never stops surprising me. He always has a trick up his sleeve and shows me how much he loves me no matter what it takes. I love that no matter how tight things get financially, he finds a way to show me how much he cares even if it costs him nothing and even if it costs him more than it should. This man literally goes without things he wants or needs to show his love for me and I’m completely in awe of that.

Dinner was amazing – as usual. I’m so lucky to have a man that not only knows how to cook, but he enjoys it. I’m about to eat a slice of cake too – which I’m sure will be just as delicious. [I guess I should mention that since Charlie gets home from work around 3am, we usually eat a meal after he gets home - usually in the form of eggs and toast haha].

Tuesday, we decided to pretend like we’re rich. Charlie bought cleaned, de-veined, de-tailed and cooked shrimp – $5.00/per pound. BEST shrimp I have ever had. It was so juicy and full of flavor. I’d honestly spend the money to do it all over again.

At first I thought the pound of shrimp was a lot of shrimp as it sat in a bowl, waiting to be added to the alfredo sauce we were to pair it with. We took some of the shrimp out and first made Shrimp Scampi for Charlie’s mom (which was also declicious by the way). It still looked like a lot of shrimp. We finally add it to the huge wok-sized pan full of alfredo sauce and I suddenly questioned if we had enough shrimp. But in the end, it was just enough. In fact, Charlie and I have both eaten shrimp alfredo twice and we still have sauce and shrimp left over. So in the end, that $5.00 was well spent. It’s made 5 plates of food so far!

Charlie will be upset that I am not showing his plate of food. He’s extremely passionate about cooking and I know he’ll want to show it off. But I think this was better put in a bowl and mine looked prettier! haha