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Weekly Meal Plans & Quick Dinner Recipe Blog
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September 29, 2008 by michelle
Property crime is positively correlated to a bad economy. In these tough times, people are getting desperate to make ends meet. Some have resorted to illegal activity, like property crime. In the past month, both Susan and I have been victims of such crime. It is a very bad feeling when your house or cars are burglarized – at its root, it creates a primal fear for protecting your family. There is something you can do. Here are a few tips to help you avoid becoming a victim of property crime.
- Home Exterior –Light it up and clean it out. Good, well-lit driveways and doors are important. Also, keep bushes and flowerbeds trimmed away from the house.
- Alarm Security System – While this is the most costly of the recommendations, it can provide real piece of mind. One tip, get it hooked up to your garage doors and windows, since this area is often away from living areas of the house and harder to hear when something is amiss.
- Windows – It may surprise you to know that 30% of all break-ins occur via the windows in your home/garage. Simple security screws can be purchased at hardware stores and they are pretty easy to install.
- Dog – Outside of the many reasons people love dogs, they hear better than people do. Also, a barking dog, small or large, is a great deterrent for the bad guys.
- Neighborhood Watch – Our police lieutenant recommended this as a great way to make an entire area safe. Makes sense, and you may meet some neighbors in the process.
Tags: crime, safety | Comments (3)
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September 24, 2008 by susan and michelle
Chopping an Onion
Enjoy this quick video demonstrating the simpliest way to chop an onion.
Tags: onion | Comments (1)
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by susan
Here’s a list of 5 easy things you can do to help our environment. No need to do all of these - pick out one or two and just do it. If everyone makes an effort, it will really make a difference. It’s not only trendy to be green, but responsible too!
- Make the Switch – Energy Star compact fluorescent bulbs use up to 75% less energy and last 10 times longer than regular incandescent bulbs. Click this link to a super easy web-site that will help you buy fluorescent bulbs for those places in your house where the lights are on all the time. “If just 1 million households each replaced 4 traditional light bulbs with Compact Fluorescents (CFL), we’d eliminate 900,000 tons of greenhouse gases.”
- BYOB – Bring Your Own Bags to the grocery stores or even to the mall. Check out these very chic, environment friendly bags from Envirosax that we are selling on our homepage (coming soon!) - you can roll them up and just keep a few in your purse. “Globally, we use as many as 1 million new plastic bags every MINUTE at a cost of 2.2 billion gallons of oil a year. Go reusable whenever, wherever.”
- Unplug Your Chargers – Chargers drain electricity when they are plugged in (have you ever noticed that chargers stay warm if they are plugged in, even when they are not charging something).
- Let Your Computers Sleep at Night – “Computers use up to 70% less electricity when you put them to sleep instead of using a screensaver.”
- Cool Clothes - Wash your clothes in cold water and “save yourself up to $400 a year in bills.”
Stay tuned for 5 more ways for your family to be green by checking at our blog.
* Anything quoted is from www.liveearth.com - Live Earth started as a concert in July of 2007 to increase global awareness for the climate crisis. It is now ”a for-profit company [that] seeks to leverage the power of entertainment through integrated events, media, and the live experience to ignite a global movement aimed at solving the most critical environmental issues of our time.
Tags: green | Comments (3)
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September 15, 2008 by susan
As Moms, we know how hard it is to get dinner on the table. Work schedules, complicated school schedules, and extra-curricular activities can make the time before dinner chaotic, to say the least. Eating together as family, however, is a terrific way for families to stay connected and share their day with one another.
Here are some tips that can help you manage the hectic dinner hour.
1. Plan Ahead – The biggest challenge is planning out your meals and getting the food in the fridge. Once you have your plan for the week, you can just come home from work or kids’ activities, get out the ingredients, and throw together supper. Keep your weekly menu posted somewhere – on a chalkboard, in a day planner, or even taped to the inside of a cupboard.
If something requires some time, such as cooking some chicken breasts or chopping up some veggies, you should try to get done the night before (even if that means on a Sunday). Don’t forget to defrost any meat a day or two before you want to cook it.
2. Keep It Simple – Keep your meals simple and fresh and know what you can handle. Some weeks I am overly ambitious and food gets wasted because I never have the time to cook it. I love the weeks when I plan out 3 or 4 “simple” meals, make them all, and the fridge is empty at the end of the week.
3. Make Enough for Leftovers – Always try to make double when the leftovers will heat up or freeze nicely. You can change up the meal with different sides or a different presentation (i.e. meatballs and spaghetti can turn into meatball subs the next night). Soup is great to freeze in small containers and enjoy any time. Make sure to date and label everything you freeze so you know what you have in your freezer!
4. The Sure Thing – Write down a list of easy meals that you usually have the ingredients on hand for and the whole family likes. Some of our favorites are:
• Scrambled eggs or omelets – Pack ‘em with whatever veggies, cheese, salsa you have in the fridge, bacon / sausage (even the fake kind), toast with yummy jams, fruit
• Quesadillas – Sprinkle in cheese, black beans, and leftover chicken.
• Pasta - Tossed with sauce or just olive oil, parmesan / mozzarella, any leftover veggies such as broccoli, tomato, asparagus
• Fish - Stop at the fish market on the way home and then sauté or bake some fish with a little olive oil, salt & pepper, and lemon juice (you can usually get a lemon at the fish market). Fish takes just a few minutes to cook and you can have a great meal at home (we like to serve it with couscous which takes just 5 minutes).
• Baked potato bar – Baked potatoes take a good hour in the oven, but there’s no mess and no hands involved.
• Taco night – Keep a taco kit in your pantry and some turkey meat in the freezer.
• Sammies – The pre-packaged meats last a long time and taste pretty good. It’s all about the bread so keep a back up loaf in your freezer. It can defrost in minutes. Any type of grilled Sammie with some soup is a great meal for the whole family.
• Pizza, Pizza! – Keep pizza sauce and cheese on hand. Use bagels, English muffins, French bread, or an extra pizza dough (which you have waiting in the freezer) to whip up the ultimate kid “sure thing.”
Tags: dinner, family | Comments (0)
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September 3, 2008 by susan
You’ll see some Italian inspiration in a lot of the meals this week. The steak and tilapia were both huge hits in my house. Even my kids will eat tilapia, and it’s a pretty affordable fish that you can pick up right at the grocery store. My family has a “love ‘em” or “hate ‘em” relationship with capers, but you can easily leave them out or pick them out of the tilapia dish. The chicken BBQ burgers, submitted by a YGS member, were fabulous, grilled up with some red onion. It’s a great recipe to add to your rotation of easy and kid friendly suppers. Thanks Brenda! As Fall is right around the corner, we are looking for some new ideas from tailgating recipes to soups and stews. Please send us your family’s favorite, Fall recipe.
Tags: menu, Recipes | Comments (2)
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by susan
I know it is little more work in the morning to pack your kids’ lunches (especially if your kids have opposite tastes like mine), but hopefully these ideas will help you keep it simple and fresh. Your kids will someday remember opening their lunch boxes to find healthy sandwiches, crisp veggies, crunchy snacks, sweet fruits and, of course, a surprise treat! Most importantly, if they can skip the long hot lunch line, they will have more time to socialize with their friends at the lunch table instead of in the classroom. So set your alarm 10 minutes earlier and try out some of these school lunch tips & ideas.
1. Always pack a veggie or fruit:
- Experiment with different veggies by trying cucumber moons, bell pepper strips, carrot sticks, celery and peanut butter, snap peas or shelled edamame.
- Keep a spray bottle of lemon juice and water in the fridge to spray on sliced fruit so they don’t get brown.
- Wash and prepare all of the fruit and veggies at the beginning of the week so it is ready to go.
2. Crunchy snacks are a must:
- Keep it simple and healthy with pretzels, goldfish, baked chips or tortillas, popcorn
- Alternate types of crackers - whole wheat crackers, animal crackers, wheat thins, triscuits
- Add some protein energy with granola bars, healthy cereal, homemade trail mix of peanuts, raisins, m&m’s
- Don’t waste money buying prepackaged snacks – a bag of zip locks goes a long way!
3. Here’s the toughest – the main course!
- Thermos of hot soup, chili, mac & cheese or leftover pasta, although the kids will need to keep track of the thermos and bring it home.
- Homemade lunchables – Get the deli counter to slice your deli meats and cheese on the thick side and cut them up into your own lunchables. You will save lots of money and you can get it all ready at the beginning of the week. You could even use cookie cutters to cut out shapes instead of squares (for the truly ambitious early birds!)
- Basic sandwich of deli meats, cheese or PB&J on fresh bread (try to find whole wheat or honey whole wheat bread that your kids like). Be sure to buy some lunch Tupperware at the beginning of the school year so their sandwiches don’t get squished.
- Tortilla Rolls – ham, turkey & cheese rolled up in a tortilla, sliced and wrapped tightly. You could even try cucumber, avocado, and imitation crabmeat inside the tortilla if your kids like California sushi rolls.
- Pretzel Kabobs – turkey, ham, bologna and cheese rolled up and skewered with a pretzel stick. Pack some whole wheat crackers on the side.
- Mini Bagel Sandwiches – bagels and cream cheese (try to throw some diced up veggies on the cream cheese) or raisin bread with cream cheese
- Pita filled with leftover chicken strips, chicken / tuna salad, or salami and cheese
- String cheese, whole wheat crackers, yogurt (try freezing gogurts)
- Baked tortilla chips, salsa in mini Tupperware tub, cheddar cheese cubes
- Half of a baguette with fresh cheese, scoop of chicken salad and grapes
4. Don’t forget to keep them hydrated with a bottle of water, 100% juice product, or milk from school (even if it’s chocolate).
5. Lastly, every lunch box needs a small, but sweet, surprise treat. Frozen peppermint patties are a favorite in our house, but a homemade cookie is extra special.
Tags: kids, lunch, school | Comments (0)
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