Meal Plan Monday

Our theme lately has been "quick and easy" for dinners. With my husband working really long hours lately and me getting to the uncomfortable point in this pregnancy, we just don't have too much time to fix dinner. So our meal plan might not be elegant, but for now, it's what works. :) Again, I've linked recipes I've found online

Monday: Italian sub sandwiches and mini stuffed tomatoes (Superbowl leftovers)
Tuesday: Soup (not sure what kind yet) and tuna fish sandwiches
Wednesday: Crispy orange beef and potatoes
Thursday: Leftovers/fend for yourself night
Friday: Pulled pork sandwiches and baked beans
Saturday: Chicken burgers with garlic rosemary mayo and quinoa


Stuffed Tomatoes:
* 1 pound bacon, cooked and crumbled
* 1/2 cup mayonnaise*
* 1/4 cup green onions, chopped
* 24 cherry tomatoes

Directions
1. Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat for 6 to 8 minutes, or until evenly brown. Once cooled, crumble and set aside.
2. In a bowl, stir together the mayonnaise, bacon, green onions, and parsley until well blended. Set aside.
3. Cut a small slice from the top of each tomato. Using a melon baller or small spoon, scoop out the inside of each tomato and discard. Fill each tomato with the bacon mixture, and refrigerate for 1 hour. Serve chilled.

*We use Tastefully Simple's garlic garlic dip instead of mayo then sprinkle a bit of Parmesan cheese on top. So yummy!

DIY Recipes

Lately I've been trying a few new DIY recipes for basic household supplies. I've really loved them and thought I would share.

First, we switched to a homemade laundry detergent. We prefer to leave ours in a powder form as it's easier to store and scoop. This is the recipe we use:

2 parts finely grated Ivory soap
1 part Borax
1 part Washing Soda (NOT baking soda)

Store in an airtight container. You only need one tablespoon for an average load, 2 if your things are heavily soiled.

We've been so happy with our switch (our clothes are much softer and the cost savings is amazing!) that I'm considering making some dryer balls in place of fabric softener sheets.

The other recipe we tried is our own detangler/leave in conditioner for Pinky. This one is super simple. Just add a small dab of your regular conditioner to a spray bottle, then fill the bottle with water. Give it a good shake and you're ready to go!

My husband has fully jumped on board the no 'poo movement and while I remain unconvinced he loves it. I've been looking for some baking soda shampoo recipes that he can try. I found some interesting information here (be sure to click the follow up at the end of the post for more info).

I've recently discovered the Homemade Mamas blog that has LOTS of great DIY recipes. You should check it out!

What things do you make at home to save money?

Easy Bake Oven!

One of Pinky's birthday presents from her grandparents was an Easy Bake Oven. With the holidays being so busy, we hadn't had a chance to sit down and bake anything until today. It's just as much fun as I remember!

We started with one of the kits my parents had sent along - a sugar/chocolate cookie mix.


The kids were really excited and Pinky and Chaos each made one cookie. The wait time is loooong though. With baking and cooling it took nearly half an hour for just 2 cookies. I think the anticipation made the final product even better - at least for Pinky it did!




Those little snack packs can get expensive, so I did some searching and found that you can use any 3T of cake mix + 1 T of milk to make an easy bake cake. I also found the following blogs full of recipes for the Easy Bake Oven:

Kitchen Crafts n More

Budget 101

And, if like me, you have trouble finding a "standard" light bulb for your oven (we found ours at an Ace Hardware store), check out this post on Mom Times Three.

Happy Easy Baking!

Meal Plan Monday

Oh, Meal Plan Monday...it's been a long time! LOL! I've been really lax about meal planning lately, but I'm trying to get back into it! So here's our menu for the week (I linked the recipes that I could):

Monday: Penne and Vodka sauce with Cheesy Garlic Bread and Salad
Tuesday: Hot Ham and Cheese Sandwiches with Fresh Pear Slices
Wednesday: Steak Au Poivre with Mashed Potatoes
Thursday: Double Thick Baked Potato Cheese Soup in the crockpot
Friday: Leftovers
Saturday: Mini-Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner with stuffing, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes

A Kitchen Challenge

If you've read my blog before, you know I'm not much of a cook. It's not that I can't do it, I just don't really enjoy it. I seem to lack that gene that can figure out how to throw together a can of this, a box of that, a few herbs and voila! dinner is made. Since my hubby LOVES to cook (in the same freakish, over the top way I love to craft) there has never been much of a reason for me to broaden my culinary horizons before.

Now that baby #4 is on the way and our evenings are getting busier, I'm finding that it's easier to (gasp) cook something fast myself instead of waiting for the hubs to come home.

So, I have challenged myself to find a few recipes that I can cook relatively quickly that won't make the whole family pray for take out. I'm starting small by broadening my crockpot recipes (I have had a request for recipes that do NOT use cream of anything soup - I can't say I disagree). I do hope though to add a few meals that don't involve the crockpot too.

For my first venture, I tried a Chicken in a Marsala Herb Sauce recipe from Stephanie Cooks. The original recipe is here.

I pretty much followed her recipe exactly, except I used 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts instead. At the end, the sauce was not as thick as I wanted it to be. So the real cook in the family showed me how to transfer the liquid to the stove top and thicken it to make a gravy.

It was a really good meal! I wish I would have taken a picture (note for future meals) because it even looked pretty (something I find hard to do with crockpot meals). Even my husband, who normally does not care for crockpot meals, liked this one.

I'm adding this recipe to my "can cook" list.

Happy Birthday Chaos!

Happy 2nd Birthday to my little man!



We celebrated a day early so Daddy could be home for the fun! We made this awesome burger and fries cake for him. It was so easy and turned out SO cute!

The buns are yellow cake frosted with a mixture of cream cheese and chocolate frosting (to give the tan color). The sesame seeds are Rice Krispies. For the "burger" we used chocolate cake and decorated it with Fruit RollUps (yellow for cheese and green for lettuce). We added red and yellow icing for ketchup and mustard. The fries are leftover slices of yellow cake (from trimming the rounded top from the bottom bun) with red "ketchup" icing.

Chaos had a GREAT time (and so did we). I really can't believe he's 2 years old already!!


Happy Birthday Chaos - I hope all your wishes come true!

What's Cooking?

It's no secret that around here my husband is the king of the kitchen. I don't like to cook, don't want to cook, and I'm very happy to leave that aspect of our lives to Hubby. However, there are some nights that it's very convenient to have dinner ready when Hubby comes home from work (like tonight when I'm watching baby C). So, I have turned to our crockpot. I am absolutely determined to find recipes that are easy, quick, cheap, and tasty. I've attempted only one so far - Applesauce Chicken (insert gagging sounds here). It was terrible.

Today is my second attempt. After my last failure, I joined a Crockpot Moms group on cafemom.com. I'm making their Crockpot Ravioli recipe (posted below). They rated it a 10, and it looks pretty simple. As a bonus, I'm pretty sure even Pinky will eat this one. So far it smells really good, and it tasted pretty good when I sampled it. I'm just hoping it doesn't end up a soggy mess and that it isn't finished too early!

I'll post later to let you know our thoughts on this one.

Crockpot Ravioli
1 (25 ounce) bag cheese ravioli
1 (26 ounce) jar pasta sauce
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
2-3 teaspoons red pepper flakes
Italian spices and other seasonings to taste
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
(I also added sliced mushrooms and crushed garlic to the sauce and doubled the recipe so we would have leftovers)

Pour about half of the pasta sauce in the bottom of crockpot. Add frozen ravioli. Pour additional pasta sauce, tomato sauce, and red pepper over ravioli. Sprinkle Italian seasonings over sauces. Sprinkle cheese on top. Turn crockpot on low and cook for 4-5 hours (until ravioli are tender)

UPDATE: Okay, this is definitely a hit! Pinky had 3 bowls. 3!! We won't count how many Hubby and I had...