Cleanup Hitters of the Fridge

Do you ever notice that moms are the cleanup hitters of the fridge?

Everyone else can open up the fridge, look at all its contents, and declare, “There’s nothing to eat.”

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But moms on the other hand, look at the same contents, and think, “There’s enough in here for 2 more meals. I’m not going to the store.”

I am always eating strange meals for Saturday and Sunday lunches.

A few tortilla chips, with some leftover guacamole, some grapes, and some broccoli reheated – sounds like a meal to me!

Some leftover pasta, a tomato, a piece of swiss cheese, and some Italian dressing – sounds like a meal to me!

My boys always look into the fridge on these days and promptly say, “Can we have mac n’cheese?”

What? Don’t you see all of the possibilities when you look in there? More importantly, don’t you see the fact that Mom doesn’t have to go to the grocery store and spend money when all of this is still available to you.

My husband is really on the boys side of things. I see him wander around the kitchen opening the fridge, opening the cabinets, searching up high for….the cooked lasagna I keep on the top pantry shelf? Who knows.

But last Sunday I couldn’t have been more proud of my husband. He opened up that fridge and promptly fixed himself a meal of leftover potatoes mixed with some leftover spaghetti sauce!

Sounds like a meal to me!

A Meal Plan for this Week

Every Sunday I sit down with my husband and we hash out our meal plan based on the 7,000 after school activities we have going on. Even with a ton of events we almost always sit down and eat dinner as a family. Whether we have to bump up dinner to 5:00 or push it back until 7:30 we eat together because I think it’s so important.

This week I sat down to create the meal plan at the kitchen table and got up before I finished.

A little while later I came back to my list and noticed that my 5 year old had added onto the list.

See if you can pick out the meal she has decided on:

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Happy Monday Everyone!

 

Oven-Fried Parmesan Chicken

One day as I was menu planning I decided to pull out a recipe book I had received at my sister’s wedding shower. Everyone who attended sent in a picture of them or my sister and her groom as well as a yummy recipe.

Since they just celebrated their 4th wedding anniversary I decided now was a great time to check out what was inside the recipe book.

I came across a recipe for Oven-Fried Parmesan Chicken and decided to try it out.

My boys are ridiculously picky eaters, although truth be told they are coming around and trying new things. And guess what? They love this chicken! My son who once cried when chicken was brought to him in a restaurant ate 3 pieces the first time I made this. I’ve used this same recipe with thin pork chops and it’s great too.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup melted butter
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
  • 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Directions

  1. 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. In a large shallow dish combine butter with garlic, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce
  3. In another bowl, combine breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, and oregano.
  4. Dip chicken pieces in butter mixture and then shake in plastic bag, coating well.
  5. Arrange pieces in a large shallow baking dish.
  6. Bake for one hour.

I use about 4 cloves of garlic (because that’s how we roll), and usually cook it a little less than the suggested time.

Just to prove I am not a food blogger, here’s a sad picture of the chicken that I remembered to take about 30 minutes after we were finished eating.

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Have you cooked anything yummy lately that you’d care to share?

Have a wonderful weekend!

 

The Rabbits, It’s Always the Rabbits – Part 4

Read here for The Rabbits – part 1, part 2, part 3

I know what you are thinking…Again with the rabbits?

Yes, the rabbits but this time it’s different.

Unbelievably, I just bought some rabbits.

I know.

Along with the rabbits I also purchased some ducks, geese, chickens, and honeybees.

You can close your mouth now.

Thankfully I purchased these animals from the comfort of my home.

And even more thankfully, I will never ever see any of these animals in my backyard or, even better, dead on my dining room floor.

Instead of angel Christmas gifts this year, my kids, influenced greatly by my 8 year old, decided they want to buy gifts through Heifer International.

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“Heifer International works with community groups in third world countries and provides them with animals which help families help themselves. They train beneficiaries in animal well-being, agroecology, water quality, gender equity, and other topics. The training enables them to care for livestock, grow crops sustainably, and further lift themselves out of poverty.

Families then share the training they receive, and pass on the first female offspring of their livestock to another family. This extends the impact of the original gift, allowing a once impoverished family to become donors and full participants in improving their communities.”

I gave each child a budget and told them they could buy whatever animals they wanted as long as we didn’t exceed our total. We went through the gift catalog on the website reading about each animal, their cost, and talked about how those animals could help someone.

They contemplated, they added and subtracted, they debated, and they discussed.

Eventually, they decided and we bought a flock of hope (chickens, geese, and ducks), honeybees, and rabbits.

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Yes, rabbits.

Once we convinced Caroline that buying a pegasus horse was not an option she went with the rabbits.

The family that kills rabbits just bought rabbits.

Cue the Lion King music. Again.

This year our family has talked a lot about poverty, families that are struggling, and kids who are hungry, both locally and far away. My hope is that by exposing them to programs like Heifer International and the Angel Tree they will see themselves as part of the solution and know that they can make a difference even at just 11, 8, and 4.

Donating to Heifer International was new to our family this year but based on the kids excitement I know it will not be our last experience with them. I think this program would also be fun for a school service project, a bake sale focus, or even an animal themed birthday party.

I’m not receiving any sort of compensation from Heifer for telling you about their program. I’m only asking that once you can purchase “a pegasus” our family is notified immediately.

Preschool Drop Off

Everyday, immediately after preschool drop off, where the teacher comes to the car and helps my daughter out, I vow that today will be the day I go home and clean out my car.

And yet, I don’t.

I’m just banking on the fact that my car is not the only toy filled, clothing filled, school work filled, and goldfish filled car they’ve seen that day.

Mystery Boxes…Do You Dare (Halloween Party 2013)

We had our annual Halloween party this past weekend and it was a lot of fun.

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As well as being quite tasty.

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But….not too healthy (only some of the butter we used).

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We may have cooked ourselves silly making sugar cookies, pumpkin whooopie pies, banana bread, oreo mummies, cupcakes, chocolate faces, pretzel witch fingers, pretzel eyeballs, marshmallow sticks, rice krispie treats, snickerdoodle cookies, and pumpkin muffins.

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We also played a game which I think the kids enjoyed – Mystery Boxes

The idea of Mystery Boxes is to reach into the box and try and figure out what food is in there.

For example, I told the kids that I had witches hair. Once they felt it, they needed to decide what food my witches hair really was.

I took 4 boxes (Cheezits, Amazon, shoe boxes) and spray painted them or covered them in fabric with Modge Podge.

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I then glued on a piece of cloth to the outside which covered a hole I had cut out in each box.

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Each box on the inside was lined with tin foil. One had a cup and another had a bowl which held the food items.

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Before starting the game, I handed out a piece of paper to each child and told them what was in the mystery boxes – witches hair, mummy intestines, troll eyes, and Frankenstein eyes. Then I had some parents hold the boxes for me, not letting the kids peek inside the boxes.

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This picture of my son reaching into the box is my favorite one from the party.

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Here’s a sample of the sheet with their guesses on it.

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Here we all are talking about what each of their guesses is for the food items.

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And the reveal….

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In case you are wondering…

Witch Hair = Ramen Noodles

Frankenstein Eyes – Olives

Mummy Intestines = Lasagna Noodles

Troll Ears = Dried Apricots

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Mystery Boxes = Silly & Slimey Fun 🙂

 

 

Just in case

Just in case you were thinking about going to swim for an hour shortly after eating an apple and 2 homemade pumpkin poptarts...

Don’t.

That is unless you like swimming with the feeling that there is an alien about to burst through your stomach.

Of course, that feeling didn’t deter me from eating 2 more pumpkin poptarts when I got home shortly after.

But hey that’s me.

Complete self control.

After all, I didn’t have another apple.

Homemade Pumpkin Poptarts

On “The Chew” talk show the other day I saw homemade pumpkin poptarts and thought I would give them a whirl.

I’m trying to add a few more items to our Halloween buffet and thought testing them out first might be a good idea.

I changed the recipe slightly since I didn’t have pumpkin spice but I think they turned out alright.

Here are the ingredients for the homemade pumpkin poptarts:

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon pumpkin spice (I used cinnamon instead)

Flour for rolling out

Premade pie crust (you can find this in the biscuit section of the grocery store)

You can find the actual recipe for the poptarts here.

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While I don’t think they will make the cut for the Halloween party, they did make a nice surprise breakfast on a Monday morning.

Do You Ever…

Do you ever sit down for an hour looking through recipe books, figure out a meal plan for the week, go to the store and buy your groceries, only to return home only to discover that you cannot find your meal plan and have no idea why you have green pears, frozen spinach, and back beans sitting on your counter?

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No?

Me neither.

Chicken Fried Rice

I recently discovered this recipe for chicken fried rice from Iowa Girl Eats and it’s delish. She has the recipe with step by step pictures instructions which are perfect.

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Since I was going for easy one night I used the chicken fried rice which I already had in the fridge along with a bag of frozen chinese food and some frozen egg rolls. While the egg rolls were good the frozen chinese was not. I guess this is not really a surprise.

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Dinner is served.

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