Trying Variety

Growing up I always ate a variety of foods at every meal, my children however prefer not to. They are content eating one thing for each meal and no sides, which means they don't end up eating many fruits or veggies. I am now on a mission to change that! My first move in this mission was to get sectioned plates to encourage more than one food item. Now the goal at most meals is to try to fill up each section with a different food. Mind you sometimes one section gets filled with ketchup but that still leaves 2 more sections to fill with hopefully 2 different food groups. This week has been a roaring success and I hope we can continue it. One night my oldest and pickiest eater even had 2 side bowls to go with his 3 section plate which means he ate 5 different things!! ( I can't lie, one was ketchup but that is ok!)

Amazon Super Deals

I have had two $10 off Amazon Baby Store coupons from Parenting magazine burning a hole in my wallet for a few weeks and I was dying to see what kind of deal I could cook up!

So today I went searching to see what we may need from the Baby Store and while I really don't have a baby anymore since Livy turns 2 on Saturday I was worried I wouldn't find much.

I knew we needed baby wipes so that was my first hunt. I ended up getting 4 packages of Huggies baby wipes for $0.00!!! They were on sale for $11.84, then if you signed up for Subscribe and Save and Amazon Mom you save an additional 30% so that brought it down to $8.04 and since I am an Amazon Prime member I also received free shipping. Then minus the $10 coupon I got all 4 packages shipped for FREE!

Now one more coupon to go and I was challenging myself to get more items for free and not spend any money on this online shopping adventure. So off I went to baby snacks and I found Earth's Best Organic Sesame Street Whole Grain Cookies in a 6 box pack. Originally $12.70 minus 15% Subscribe and Save discount minus $10 coupon and free shipping and I got 6 boxes for $0.79!!!

Now if I could only get such good deals on shoes for myself!

Gotta have 'em : Mr.Clean Magic Eraser

We are always stocked with a BJ's size box of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and this is why:
Braden decided it would be fun to write on his closet door. So he had to clean it!
Mr. Clean Magic eraser in hand and up he went to clean. He did it very willingly too, I think he had as much fun cleaning it as he did drawing on it :)

Not so crafty February

I am at a stall on my craftiness this month. I started a rag doll for Livy but am not crazy about how it is coming out so I haven't picked that up in awhile. I did make a V-Day decoration that I loved for the living room mantle and we did do a bunch of crafty family projects.

Spinach, Spinach, Spinach

So I have been slacking on the postings but busy in the kitchen! I read in Real Simple magazine about the 30 healthiest ingredients to have in your diet and we regularly have 20 of them in our house so I felt pretty good about that. Now to just incorporate the other 10!

My new secret ingredient in "Project Get My Family to Eat Healthier" is frozen spinach. The majority of my family thinks that it is wonderful. Of course Tanner is the hold out on this one but what else is new. Up until recently I was the only one in the family to eat healthy side dishes with strange ingredients. Luckily spinach is starting to open their eyes to more variety and vitamins! I have been adding spinach as well as carrot puree to all sorts of meals and everyone is happy.

Last night I made a baked ziti with Smart Taste pasta and spinach and it was a hit! I was going to add carrot puree to the sauce but was short on dinner prep time due to a trip to the school book fair. I also used the extra ricotta,spinach, fontina, pecorino romano, parmesan cheese mixture as a homemade ravioli filler with leftover wonton wrappers I had hanging out in the fridge. Now Scott has a quick healthy lunch or dinner all set to make when I am at work this week.

This week we also tried a smoked sausage lentil soup for the first time. It was yummy but definitely a work in progress. I should have used only half the bag of lentils as the whole bag made it too "lentily" for our taste and Scott said it needed more veggies. I had some of the leftovers today and it is so much tastier after it has sat for a couple days.

Tonight's dinner will be a baked pesto chicken dish as I have some prepared pesto in the fridge that needs to be used up.

Yummy lunch for the week!

During my weekly recipe search I came across a Greek Turkey Pita with Cucumber Yogurt Sauce that was screaming my name. I love gyros so I thought this could be a healthy and yummy lunch. So today while I was preparing lunch for the fam I also made a weeks worth of this recipe, froze a couple of them for later in the week and made a container of the yogurt sauce and seperate containers of chopped red onion and sliced cucumbers to add to the sandwiches once they are heated for a minute in the microwave. I tweaked the recipe to make it my own and use what I had on hand.
Here it is:

For the turkey pita:
Heat 1 tsp olive oil in medium sized saute pan. Add cut up deli or leftover turkey or chicken ( figure out how many sandwiches you would like to make and then decide how much meat you like in each) I used 1/3 lb to make 4 pita sandwiches. Add pepper and greek seasoning and saute for a few minutes. Lay out desired amount of pitas on pieces of aluminum foil for freezing. Once turkey mixture has cooled down, split up and put on half of each pita. If saving for a future meal, fold over pitas and wrap individually in foil, place in fridge or freezer depending on how soon they will be eaten.

Cucumber Yogurt Sauce:
1/2 cup plain greek yogurt
1/2 cup light sour cream
1/2 cup peeled and grated cucumber with excess water removed
2 tsps red wine vinegar
salt
pepper
2 cloves minced garlic
Mix all ingredients together and chill until ready to use.

Cut up veggies for adding to sandwich. I used sliced cucumber, tomatoes, red onion and romaine lettuce. You can also saute the onion in with the turkey if you prefer cooked onions in your sandwich.

This will be my dinner for work tonight and tomorrow and lunches for a few days this week and it only tok me 20 minutes with interruptions from 3 children to get it all prepared!

Healthy Pop Tarts and Pizza Pockets

So I found a great blog from a stay-at-home mom who makes the majority of her family's food from all natural ingredients and she has great recipes.

This is her blog: http://heavenlyhomemakers.com

While I strive to cook like her, I just don't have the creativity so I have been tweaking some of her recipes with ingredients I like to cook with as well. She is very inspiring for families who want to eat more naturally.

So today I made the homemade pop tart recipe and instead of plain yogurt I used plain greek yogurt to make the crust to pack a little more protein punch into the recipe since we can always use more protein. The crust came out great and so easy to do! I made strawberry and cinnamon brown sugar pop tarts and sprinkled the tops of both with brown sugar. They sure did taste healthy and were a semi-hit. Braden and I liked them, Scott is too sick to eat and Livy is napping but I am sure she will like them.

I also used half the batch of the crust to make the pizza pockets since the recipe uses the same crust recipe. I made them with Trader Joes's Pizza Sauce and 2% Shredded Mozzerella cheese since that is what we had on hand. The kiddos are going to have these for dinner so I will have to report back on how well they go over.
I think I am going to make some homemade mac and cheese with leftover ham cut up in it for dinner. I am in the mood for comfort food since we got another foot of snow last night and I have to walk throuogh a 5 foot tunnel of a walkway to get to the cars! I spent a good chunk of the afternoon baking and shoveling since Scott didn't last too long out there. I am very done with the snow and ready for spring!

This was an inexpensive cooking day as well since all the ingredients used are staples in our house! Love that! So now I know I can make both of these at the drop of hat since I will most likely have everything I need for them.

The Stomach Bug has struck!

So the nasty stomach bug that has been moving from family to family has finally struck our house. I thought it was going to skip over us, but no such luck. So far Scott and Livy are the only ones who have gotten sick and hopefully that will be it. They have both been sick since Monday and Livy is finally almost back to 100% today. Scott was feeling a little better on Tuesday but the last few days it got worse for him. So needless to say between the two of them being sick, this has been a week of whatevers for meals so I haven't been really creative. I had great plans for Crock Pot Chicken Cordon Bleu, Lasagna Soup and Chicken Taquitos but never got to make them, so they have been bumped to next week's meal plan in hopes everyone can enjoy them. Doesn't feel worth it to make such yummy meals when they won't be enjoyed by everyone. I am dying for a yummy homemade dinner so hopefully our household is back to 100% soon!

An actual successful craft project!

While I usually have great ideas in my brain for great craft projects, they very seldom become reality. But I am surrounded by wonderfully crafty people at the high school where I work so I have been inspired to complete something great. I just had a coworker who gave birth to twin boys and I wanted to make her something special and I knew she would appreciate some handmade craftiness even if it wasn't perfect. So I decided I was going to make her a trendy looking diaper changing clutch to make her public trips to change the boys fashionable. I searched for easy instructions that I could hand sew ( the sewing machine is still a foreign object I have yet to understand) and made my own pattern (which that in itself I was proud of myself for!)I then sat with Scott while we were watching football and Livy was napping and the boys were playing and set to stitching. I actually completed this entire project in 2 hours on a cold Sunday afternoon and I am so happy with the finished project. It was bittersweet to wrap it up with diapers and wipes and ship it off to the newly blessed x 2 mama, but I know she will like it! Luckily I took pics to show off my hard work!

Friday Night Whatever Night

With a cold coming on and it being the end of the work week (even though I still have to work the weekend, but I can pretend right?) I was really not in the mood to cook an elaborate dinner and was tossing around the idea of ordering Chinese take our since we haven't done this in years. But then I decided I was going to be inventive, not stop at the grcery store and spend money, and work with what I had. So I got home from work and picking up Braden at school and got to work before I could change my mind and plop my butt on the couch. I started by making homemade pizza dough and setting that in a bowl to rise. I have a super easy yummy recipe for pizza dough that is supposed to be like Pizza Hut, while it is not like Pizza Hut, I really enjoy it and the ease to make it. Now off to get Tanner off the bus...BRRRRR it was cold outside. Then while I was in the mode I quickly whipped up a double chocolate fudge cake with vanilla pudding filling for Braden's 1/2 Birthday which is actually today. We celebrated last night since I am working at the hospital tonight.
The dough was now ready to be created into dinner so breadsticks with red sauce for Tanner, 2 buffalo chicken calzones with leftover homemade breaded chicken nuggets I had made the kiddos the night before and 2 whole wheat tortilla chicken calzones for Braden and Liv using leftover tortillas from the enchiladads and lefotver chicken from the night before. While this seems like alot going on for making dinner when I really wasn't in the mood, it wasn't too bad. In all I really only used a handful of ingredients and kind of had a buffett prep line to get them all made a the same time which made it much easier. Everyone enjoyed their dinners and the enormous layer cake for Braden's 1/2 Birthday celebration with music by Livy who sang Happy Birthday repeatedly throughout and was very entertaining.
Another 5 out of 5 G's meal!

Mexican Night this week

So this past week I was really in the mood for some home cooked yummy Mexican food (sure I would love to eat at our local authentic Mexican reataurant and down some margaritas, but with 3 kids 5 and under, eating at home is usually so much easier). So I set off to find an enticing recipe to quench my hunger for Mexican. I couldn't find the perfect recipe but found one similar to something I was looking for and I decide to reinvent it. So Beef and Spinach Enciladas turned into absolutely to die for Turkey and Spinach Whole Wheat Enchiladas. They were so wonderful and the leftovers the next day for lunch were just as good. I topped each one with a dollop of light sour cream and went to town, no side dishes were even needed for this Mexican delight. Super easy and healthy Mexican dinner that scored 4 out of 5 G's. (Tanner was the only hold out, but that is par for the course in this house)

Fun week of cooking and crafting and SNOW!

So this week started out just like any other week. School, work and the daily grind. Then late Tuesday night the wonderful blizzard started. Now the only reason I can call it wonderful is because A.) I was not scheduled to work at the hospital and B.)I work at a high school which means blizzard=snow day and a chance for all of us to veg out in our pj's and just have a fun family day. So we ended up getting about 20 inches of snow in less than 24 hours and it was beautiful outside. We enjoyed our Snow Day by sleeping in late, enjoying a leisurely breakfast, making a snow fort, playing games, making kid crafts (I helped the boys make wooden catapults from kits they received at Christmas), cooking and relaxing. For lunch I made a delicious crock pot chicken noodle soup but it almost was a bust before it was even made. As I was prepping the ingredients I realize I have only 2 chicken bouillon cubes. TWO!! I was like OK this is not a good start to a wanna be yummy chicken noodle soup! So I put in water, my measly two chicken bouillon cubes, seasoning, shredded carrots, a beef bouillon cube for good luck, and then had the ingenious idea to add a can of cream of chicken soup and see what happens, oh and I did add a breast of chicken of course. So I put the lid on the crock pot, set it on low and hoped for a yummy dinner.
As dinner time approached I carefully removed the lid to see what we had...and I was pleasantly surprised at the yummy aroma as I shredded the chicken and added some mini bow tie pasta. A quick taste test proved that I indeed had saved the snow day soup! Now the homemade bread was another story....I figured I would fire up the bread machine to make some piping hot homemade bread to go with our soup. So all the ingredients when into the machine and I pressed START without a second thought. Unfortunately I should have thought twice and remembered to use BREAD flour because what I ended up with 4 hours later was a less than stellar hunk of mushy cooked flour. I was very sad, as was Scott since we were really looking forward to this lovely bread. So out came the rolls to save the day, but they were not the same :(
I also made some delicious chocolate chip pumpkin muffins for snacks, those were a hit!
Also the soup was enjoyed by 5 out 5 Gauthiers which gives it 5 G's and a definite repeat recipe! Funny how sometimes crazy impromptu recipes can result in a great meal!