Pizza Panini

I found a fantastic idea for lunch today when I was checking out Life as a Lofthouse for any new exciting meal ideas. (She never fails to impress, trust me!) It is SUCH a simple recipe and I even had all of the ingredients on hand! SCORE! My 2 year old LOVED it!

Pizza Panini

• Texas Toast
• Mozzarella Cheese
• Pepperoni
• Spaghetti Sauce (I make mine from “scratch”, so I didn’t have a jar to use in the pic)

I tossed the frozen toast in my toaster oven for a minute to soften them up a bit then I piled the cheese and pepperoni on top, closed it shut, and stuck in in my panini press. Don’t have a panini press? No worries!!! You can cook them just like you would a grilled cheese sandwich. 

I put our favorite “homemade” red sauce on the plate and chowed down! My husband loved them as did my kids! It was a total home run!

Coconut Curry Chickpeas over Rice

 

Recently my husband and I watched a documentary called Forks Over Knives that talked about improving ones diet through whole-food, plant-based food consumption. It was incredibly interesting and I highly recommend you watch it (especially if you have Netflix on demand)! After a discussion about trying to eat less meat, I took a recipe I really enjoy and made it totally plant-based and it was DELICIOUS!

Coconut Curry Chickpeas over Brown Rice:

• 2 TBSP olive oil
• two onions, chopped
• three cloves garlic, diced
• 2 cans grabanzo beans (or chickpeas)
• 2 cans coconut milk
• 1 tsp curry powder
• red pepper flakes
• cliantro, chopped
• salt and pepper

Directions:

place oil, chopped onions and garlic in large frying pan over medium heat and saute till onions are transparent. Add chickpeas and stir in curry powder, saute for 2 minutes. Pour in two cans of coconut milk and stir, salt and pepper to taste. Serve over brown rice topped with red pepper flakes and cilantro. Enjoy!

FYI: I have tried many different brands of coconut milk, and this is by far the best! 

 

DIY Laundry Detergent

I was inspired by a dear friend who recommended this blog post and suggested I attempt to make my own laundry detergent. I have to admit, I was super nervous at first. Primarily because I had recently purchased an HE washing machine and was told it was IMPERATIVE that I only buy the expensive HE detergent.

After a little research, I discovered that this DIY detergent was perfectly fine for an HE washer!

Just in case, I ran it by Hubbalicious. As always, a little CYA is in order before a potentially destructive DIY attempt. If this experiment happens to go horribly wrong, he will be the one working overtime to pay for another washing machine, so I need to make sure he was okay with it.  He gave me the thumbs up!

Okay, “thumbs up” wasn’t EXACTLY what he said. I sort of mentioned it while he was playing Modern Warfare and his response was “mmmmmyeahsurebaby”. I figure that was good enough to hold up in court, right?

So I ran to WallyWolrd to gather my supplies! (You can find an exact listing here) With excitement in my heart I skipped into the store ready to try my new experimental detergent. My excitement was short lived when I soon discovered that locating all of these items was like and easter egg hunt from hell! I couldn’t find half of what I wanted, and despite an attempt at getting a WallyWorld employee to help me (bahahahahaha!) I came up short. After 45 minutes of searching, I finally gave up, purchased the items I could find and drove to the grocery store hoping to find the rest. Lo and behold I found the final items! Score!

The directions stated that I could either use a food processor or grate the soap by hand… ummmm,  I am sure we can all guess which direction I went with that one!

I loaded my soap and turned on the food processor. What I had failed to do was properly notify my autistic daughter that I would be using the food processor! Whoops! My head quickly snapped around to find her spinning and jumping and screaming to the noise. Yeah, poor calculation on my part, right? I brought her back down to earth, explained what I was going to do, then started again. This time to much less drama and hysterics than the first time.

What I also forgot to do was put the little blocker in the processor, so after cleaning up my big mess, I found the part I needed and continued on my merry way to DIY detergent!

I layered and stirred all of the ingredients into my giant tub, then filled one of the containers with just enough to keep within reach! Brilliant!

My first load is currently underway and I am excited to see the results. If by any chance it all goes terribly wrong, I will let you all know – right after I tell my husband… while he is playing his XBOX! ha!

***Follow up*** So far it cleans really well and I don’t see any residue in the washer! Only using 2 TBSP of soap per load is pretty darn awesome! I washed five loads today *ahem, don’t judge* and they are all soft, fluffy, but most of all CLEAN! Score one for my team!

Shopping on a Budget

It doesn’t matter if you have more money than you know what to do with or if you have to make every single penny count, it just makes good sense to budget your money. So every payday I take my food budget out in cash and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Having cold hard cash in your hand really makes you think twice about tossing any extra purchases in your basket, and it especially makes you think twice about calling for take-out!

Once I have my food money, I take my menu plan and make my shopping list and head to the store. In my case I tend to shop at three major stores: Costco for bread, dairy, diapers, WinCo for most pantry items and a few dairy items, and WalMart for toiletries, frozen food, and produce. I don’t live in an area that has a multitude of grocery stores to choose from therefore I drive a bit to get to Costco and WinCo. Fortunately I only do my shopping once every two weeks, so I don’t kill myself in gas costs!

What is important is that you do what works for YOU. That begins with understanding a few things:

 1. What food does your family consume the most of? In my family, my kids eat a ton of crackers, fruit, peanut butter and cheese.

2. What is the ROCK BOTTOM price for these foods? My kids love Cheese-its and Wheat Thins, and I refuse to pay any more than $1.75 per box. That means I need to be aware when they go on sale and have a bit of extra money in my pocket to buy enough to get me to the next sale.

3. Keep track of your rock bottom price. I have read blogs about keeping a folder for the lowest price you can find food so that you can reference it as you shop. That just doesn’t work for me! I can barely remember to get pants on before I head out the door most days. There is NO WAY I am organized to keep a book of grocery prices. Fortunately after a few shopping trips I started to recongize the lowest prices on my most often purchased foods.

What has saved me the most money is learning to purchase food ONLY when it’s on sale. We use a ton of cheese in our home and we LOVE those packets of grated cheese, but at most stores they cost between $3 and $4. Not at WinCo! I pay on average $1.79 per pack of cheese! Doing much of my shopping at WinCo has allowed me to knock 30% to 40% off my average shopping bill! So the 20 minute trip twice a month is totally worth it to me!

If you are lucky enough to have a membership to Costco, I have found that bread is tremendously affordable, as well as milk and some veggies!

For everything else, I head to WalMart.

I will be the first to admit, life is so much more convenient when I can just run to the local grocery store for my items, but it’s also awfully expensive. Unfortunately as a single income family, we can’t afford that luxury these days.

What is your secret trick for saving money on food? Leave me a comment and let me know!!!

Your First Menu Plan

Welcome back to Meal Planning 101! By now you should have your list of dinners (that will soon begin to grow). You are now ready to take the first step and make your weekly plan. Here is a link to what my weekly menu printable. Now print it up and let’s get started!

In addition to your meal list and your menu printable you will also need your calendar. Every two weeks I sit down with all three and make my master plan. In our family, my husband leaves the house at 5pm and doesn’t get home till 7am, so on the nights he is working I need to have food that I can pack up and send out the door earlier than the nights he is home. I also try to wait for nights he is home to use the BBQ (it’s just easier to have two adults when I have small kids and a hot BBQ).

Mark off any days on your menu that you know you won’t be home for dinner or days that you will need to have crock-pot meal cooking to feed the family and then begin to fill in the dinners. Don’t worry about breakfast or lunches at this point, it’s just too much to take on at one time.

Make sure you only pick FIVE meals, and leave two open for fast food, dining out, or left-overs. Giving yourself room to fall off the wagon is the best part of this plan. Trust me on this, it is REALLY hard to go from no plan to a very strict plan. Baby steps are always best!

Congrats! You have your meal plan! Tomorrow I cover how I shop to spend the least and still feed my family with healthy food! See you then!

Meal Planning 101: Get a List

The first thing I needed to put together as a meal planner was a comprehensive list of food I liked and could possibly make. Remember, I was still setting fires in my oven on a regular basis because it hadn’t dawned on me that paper plates were not sufficient vessels for food prep! Huh! Who knew?

My first list was full of the standard fair: spaghetti, tacos, frozen lasagna, and more tacos. What can I say, they were pretty easy to make! As my confidence grew so did my skills and along with it my list of meals. What started as 12 dinners has slowly evolved into 60 or 70 meals to choose from when I do my meal planning. Not too shabby, eh?

If you are new to meal planning, I can tell you that the biggest mistake you can make is to jump head first into a month plan or even a two week plan. Seriously, TRUST ME ON THIS! Your first goal is to set up a FIVE DAY meal plan.

Why only five days? Because if you were like me, it has become second nature to drive through El Pollo Loco or call Dominos for dinner because nothing else was planned. That mentality is a hard one to break, and you need to expect those moments to still happen. Also, life happens. You are going to forget to pull the frozen chicken out of the fridge in time for dinner. You are going to get stuck somewhere and not have enough time to make dinner. You are going to look at your menu plan and think, “no thanks, I want Chili’s!” You know what? That’s okay. Now you are just going to plan for those moments (whenever they come along) and do your best to stick to the plan as often as you can!

So now it is your turn… grab a piece of paper and start your list of all of the dinners you can think of that your family will like to eat.

And just because I love you, here are my top twenty (in no particular order)!!!

• Salsa Verde Beef
• Coconut Curry Chicken
• Chicken Parmigiana
• Chicken Picatta
• Mustard Curry Chicken
• Chicken Crepes
• Autumn Chowder
• Blackened Chicken and Bowtie Pasta
• Fettuccine Alfredo
• Chicken Divan
• Mongolian Beef
• Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry
• Crock Pot Bean Dinner
• Chicken Rigatoni
• Meatball Sandwiches
• Pot Roast
• Shrimp Scampi
• Taco Salad
• Pollo Asada Tacos
• Jamaican Jerk Chicken

What are your family favorites? Leave me a comment and let me know! I always love a new food find!

Intro to Meal Planning

My entry into the world of meal planning came out of a moment of pure desperation. My husband and I made the decision to become a one-income family, and suddenly a life of going out to eat most nights was no longer in the budget. As suddenly an official stay-at-home-mom, it quickly became evident to me that I needed to learn how to cook food. Also the food needed to taste good. Really good. Because we were picky. But we were also broke. Oh, and did I mention I didn’t know how to cook? Yeah, it was ugly.

So here I was, a mom of two kids and no idea how to cook, bake, shop, or manage a kitchen! Not that it wasn’t for lack of trying! I can recall driving to the store to buy food, roaming the isles and tossing in food that looked good, coming home and putting the food away and then trowing the food away three weeks later! My lack of understanding and focus was wasting us piles of cash, and I had to quickly find my way out of the mess.

Not long into my new life at home, I discovered meal planning. It changed the way I shopped, stored food, and cooked! Most importantly, it was saving us money!

So here I am, five years later, cooking food worthy of our food-snob family! I am feeding my kids healthy, delicious recipes and doing it (mostly) under budget! Winner winner, chicken dinner!

How did I get here? Lots of mistakes, a few really good ideas, and most of all BEING CONSISTENT! I hope you are ready to spend a little time with me learning the basics and building pantry and freezer full of yummy food that will keep your family happy and won’t break the bank!

Welcome friends to Meal Planning 101!