All posts by NerdMom

Food

Keys to Successful Meal Planning

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So Many Choices!

If you are here from my spot on Central Valley Today, welcome!

Food. It is a necessity and we spend so much time figuring out what we are eating, when, making it and that is not mentioning the numerous trips to the grocery store! Well, while eating is a must you can make all the rest just a little easier. I am a big believer in meal planning in all its forms and incarnations. You can just plan to actually have the stuff for 5 meals in your house or you can go the other way and plan every meal in detail for the next month. How you do it is up to you but there are some easy tips to consider that will start you on the right path!

Meal Planning Tips!
-Have a base list of meals your family loves. One night during dinner just sit down with a pad and ask everyone what their top 5 meals are. That is a great start!

-Take stock of what you already have (pantry, frig, freezer). Lets not waste money! Start with what you have and eat all those wonderful things you already bought! We don’t want to put money in the garbage!

-Anchor your week’s meals to the grocery ads. For example chicken breasts and London broil are on sale this week. We will be eating both this week! I also make my meal plan off the ad then make the grocery list.

-Try something new every couple of weeks. Variety is the spice of life! I made a new recipe last week (Gluten Free Spinach Fritters) and they were a hit. They will be on next week’s meal plan because we found an easy keeper!

-Plan meals that remake leftovers. I am making chicken tonight with roast potatoes. The leftovers will be in my gluten mac and cheese that I am making Thursday night. Uses the leftovers but with a little planning is an entirely unique meal.

-Take life and your schedule into account. I have crazy Wednesdays! Dinner can’t be late because we head out to church that evening. So you will notice that is often my crockpot night! This week we are having corned beef.

-It is ok to plan an eat out/order in night! NerdDad and I like our weekends to be pretty easy. So this pas weekend we had corned beef hash on Saturday and then we had the Outback brought in on Sunday. It was no stress or surprise because we usually plan on fast food/ordering in 1 night every weekend.

 

 

Meal Planning doesn’t have to be hard at all! It may take a few minutes but it is worth it. I really encourage you to put it down somewhere so you can look at it. You are more committed and frankly I can forget part way through the week;). I do my meal planning on my Cozi and on my website but you can do anything with it. There are also some great free printable planners out there from places like DonnaYoung, Family Fun, and Vertex42. You can even get magnetized meal planning pads for a dollar at Michaels and the Dollar Tree.

Use what makes you feel comfortable and just do it!!! Let me know what works for you and what doesn’t!

Contesting Monday

Contesting Monday 3/26

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So here is the deal. If you are hosting a giveaway or have a post about someone’s giveaway just leave a link. Make sure this link is to the giveaway post itself and not just the blog or it will be deleted. If you listed it last week but your giveaway is still open, list it again! Also your link must be to something family friendly or it will be deleted.
So now you need to add your giveaways and go enter some giveaways! Let them know that Contesting Monday sent you!

Games, kids

Duo and Make A Wish

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Through March 31, 2012, Discovery Bay Games will donate $1 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation for every person that takes the Play Together Pledge on Discovery Bay Games’ Duo Facebook Page, with a maximum donation of $10,000.

I love this company’s interactive games and I love this idea. Playing with your family isn’t just fun but has also been proven to be great for your kids! The kids learn more and respect you more after actually having fun with you!

So pop over to the Facebook, take the Pledge and help out Make A Wish!

Food

Easy Crockpot Cleaning

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Gross right? I had made a nice pork roast low and slow and then we had to run off to church! The next day this monster faced me and I know I am not the only one who has found myself in this predicament! So what is the easiest way to dispatch this mess?? Ah, that is a super easy secret!

First, dump all the goop and liquid out!
Fill with soapy water of any temperature! Then turn on the crockpot on high.
15 minutes or so later scrub it out with a kitchen brush and dump the water out. Seriously, that is all that has happened here.
Then rinse and dry! That is it. And while the crockpot is on you can clean the rest of the kitchen.

Every so often in order to deal with staining, that seems common with pinto beans, I take a green scrubbie sponge and either some Comet or baking soda to it. Just scrub it out and it should look a lot better! That is it! You can clean your crock pot in just a couple of minutes just by multi tasking!

Holidays, kids, Tips

The Perfect Easter Eggs

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Ok, was it just my family growing up? My family that would come together for Easter and pool like 7-10 dozen hard boiled, colored eggs. There were so many cousins that we would break up the egg hunt by age and height breakdowns;). It would take a half hour to hide the eggs and something like 3 times as long to find them, if we found them all. Then we would live on egg salad sandwiches for the next week. And after they were outside in the Central California heat for 2 hours doesn’t that sound yummy?

So when I had my own kids my husband and I decided to do things a little different. I have bought a collection of cheap, fillable, plastic Easter Eggs. Then I buy adorable and cheap things (often on clearance the year before;) to fill them! We even separate them by colors and assign them to specific kids. So 1 year I filled daughter #1’s eggs with play jewelry, son #1 got plastic bugs and son #2 got leaping bunnies. It is so easy and fun! We have been doing it for 8 years now and it has always been a hit!

There are no nasty egg sandwiches for days. The kids spend the next few weeks or months playing with their dime store treasures. I just bag up the the plastic eggs and store them in the garage for next year!

And if one gets forgotten in the heat? It’ll be fine tomorrow!

(Disclosure: I am submitting this to the Hershey Bunny Trail and am receiving a basket of goodness as a thanks!)

Food

Free Silk!!

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If you and your family are Silk drinkers this might interest you! Have you tried their new Fruit and Protein? Well, they are giving away 60 coupons a day on their Facebook page and it will be at random. While you are there you can also grab the $1 Silk coupon from the link on the left side of their Facebook page!

When child #2 went through her milk allergy time after she was born I lived on Silk!