Blog Archives
Meal Plan…Tuesday – May 21 2013
Well, we had a long weekend here, so I didn’t get this posted yesterday. I would say we enjoyed the outdoors as much as we could, for the most part the kids had a blast playing with the water table in the back yard, but they also fought most of the weekend….too much fun in the sun and not enough sleeps makes for grouchy kids! And I seem to have picked up a cold. again. Thankfully it is going to rain for the next few days, so we will have some quiet days inside watching movies and building forts.
Here is what we are eating this week:
Monday (yesterday!) – we ate chicken strips and salad and grilled asparagus
Tuesday – my famous spaghetti
Wednesday – whole wheat fettuccine with zuchinni ribbons
Thursday – roast chicken with sweet potatoes and salad
Friday – pan seared fish fillets with grilled veggies and rice
Since the warmer temps are here again, I will once again be looking for yummy no bake dessert ideas. I would love to find some puffed rice cereal that doesn’t contain BHT, so that my kids can enjoy rice crispy treats…do you have a favourite no bake dessert?
As always, I am linking up with Laura at Org Junkie. Happy Meal Planning!
Frugal Tip Tuesday – slow cooker desserts for easy summer baking
At first this tip might not seem frugal, but it is! If you have air conditioning in your home, using your oven while it is running is counter-productive. You end up heating the house a bit, which makes your a/c work harder, which in turn increases your bill! This is why we try to avoid using the oven during the summer months, unless there is a cool morning and we have the windows open.
Avoiding using the oven is very difficult for me, I love to bake, and roast, and bake, and bake, and bake. Not being able to bake yummy desserts in the summer is just not fair. As nice as ice cream or a no bake cheese cake is, I would much rather have a warm gooey brownie or chocolate chip cookie. Roasting or baking food, I can live without for a few months, since most of it gets replaced with yummy bbq which we aren’t able to have all year round.
After using my slow cooker yesterday for some buffalo chicken, I wondered about slow cooker desserts. Here are some awesome looking ones that I found:
Triple Chocolate Peanut Butter Pudding Cake
I actually ventured out with the kids this morning to pick up some chocolate chips and peanut butter chips to make that first recipe. The toddler helped assemble it all, and the house smelled amazing while it cooked for 2 hours in the slow cooker. Unfortunately it didn’t taste very good. Well, my husband enjoyed it, and so did the toddler, but I didn’t care for it. Next time I would add more cocoa powder and skip the peanut butter chips, since they just made the entire thing taste like peanut butter instead of chocolate.
Have you ever made a dessert in your slow cooker? I’d love to hear about it, or any other tips you have!
Don’t forget to follow me on twitter and like me on facebook!
Father’s Day Food
I love getting time in my kitchen. It’s even better when I have the time to cook nice food, try new recipes, and not be tripping over the littles that are usually at my feet. This past weekend we celebrated Father’s Day with a great menu! My hubby loves food, loves trying new recipes, especially ones that are a little more labour intensive that I wouldn’t make on a regular week day. I just love when I get to plan a menu for a special occasion, picking a theme and finding new recipes online or in my cookbooks.So with the kids napping/under the watchful eye of my husband, I spent the afternoon cooking and baking!
Here is what we enjoyed this past Sunday:
Breakfast:
scrambled eggs
bacon
Red Lobster cheddar bay biscuits (you have to try these! Super easy, super yummy! They taste exactly like the Red Lobster ones!)
Lunch:
Caesers (my hubby’s favourite mixed drink)
guacamole (my own recipe: 3 ripe avocados, 1/2 a medium red onion diced, 1 minced clove of garlic, salt and pepper to taste)
Cookie bowls with ice cream(these were a HUGE fail. It was simple too hot in my kitchen for the dough to stay chilled before going in the oven. The dough just melted right off and dripped all over my oven. My hubby still ate his and said it was good, but the stress of making them didn’t prove worth it for me to attempt again.
I also made black forest stuffed cupcakes to take to my parents for dessert. My Dad isn’t big on desserts, but he loves black forest cake, and these are a great homemade option. They might just be my favourite cupcake ever, I love them even more than a good red velvet covered in cream cheese icing.
Hope you all had a great Father’s Day, celebrating with your Dad’s, or at the very least keeping them in your thoughts all day.
Meal Plan Monday
Another week down! Another week closer to this baby arriving. It is seeming a lot more real now, as this past weekend the big boy bedroom was painted, and the bed was put together. He isn’t sleeping in there yet, but maybe by the end of the week? We still need a gate for the top of the stairs (just in case he figures out how to open doors…) and I would like to finish decorating it before he moves in. He is already very excited about it, so fingers crossed that it all goes smoothly.
Time to finish up my homemade iced chai latte (yummy, and frugal!), and then maybe clean up some toys…here is what our dinners looks like this week:
Monday: BBQ pork loin with pasta salad and garden salad
Tuesday: Chicken and broccoli stir fry over rice
Wednesday: Pizza and Caesar salad
Thursday: BBQ Pork chops with rice and peas and salad
Friday: Tuna casserole
Saturday: We’re having company over, so we will either have a big BBQ, or order in pizza
Sunday: we always have Sunday dinners at either my parents house or my husbands
I bought another basket of peaches this week. They are so perfect right now I can’t resist them! Hopefully I will be able to save a couple and whip up a cobbler of some kind.
Happy menu planning!
Come and link up over at the Organizing Junkie
Meal planning caused me to have a breakdown!
Oh goodness, another Monday is here. The last two weeks I have been in the “I’m going to be pregnant FOREVER!” phase. Last night, it hit me. For some reason the panic set in, that another week is approaching, and it’s going to fly by because it is a jam packed week, and so is the following week, and the week after that…until suddenly it’s the September long weekend, and this baby could really come at any time at that point! Really, it could come at any time now…The panic over not being ready for this second kid (big boy room will be done this coming weekend, making room in the nursery for newborn stuff), but more emotionally not ready. For some reason grocery shopping is getting me upset; one less shop with just me and my little guy. I love going grocery shopping with him; he points out everything in the store, he is always in a great mood, and flirts with all the cashiers. He even helps me put the groceries away, saving this pregnant lady from bending down to take stuff out of the bags! Shopping with him is easy right now. And we only have a few more of those easy shops left :(
Ok, enough of the drama. Here is what we are eating this week:
Monday: Pork tenderloin with rice and peas and salad
Tuesday: Eating out (YAY!)
Wednesday: BBQ sausages and salad
Thursday: Pizza pasta (the hubby requested calzones, but there is no way I’m turning on the oven for dinner in this heat! So this is my compromise)
Friday: Fresh veggie saute (loosely based on this Kraft recipe, but really, you don’t need a recipe) served over rice
Saturday: BBQ chicken and salad
I’m also going to make some granola bars from this recipe (again, as per the hubby’s request)
Hope everyone has a great week full of great food!
Come and link up over at the Organizing Junkie
