by kathilipp | Mar 22, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
So as I’m writing this, Roger and I are driving over the Grapevine in So. California with snow coming at us sideways.
Naturally, my attention turns to gardening…
Actually, now is a great time to start planning and thinking about a garden. This is prime planting season for many of us (when it’s not snowing…) Let’s seize the opportunity together and eat healthier. It is more rewarding to eat the salad you grew yourself than from your favorite café. (Or let’s e honest – drive-thru. Where you intend to get a salad, but a salad doesn’t come with fries, so…)
Thanks to the internet there is loads of help for all of us. Mother Earth News is a great place to start o matter where you live in the US.
Here you will select the region you live in to find out what to plant and when. Everything has a particular time and season that it will produce great fruit.
This reminds me of one of my favorite Bible passages Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
A Time for Everything
1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
There is just something so special about eating with the seasons. So check out their growing guide and start your planning (and dreaming…) Find out what works in your area, compare that to what your family loves, and go from there.
We always do a variety of tomatoes, peppers, green onions, and a ton of herbs. We call it our salsa garden (which can also be called a bruchetta garden,) and we eat from it for months.
Also, seed packets you purchase usually have the right time to plant for your region. You can also just start with buds you pick up from your local gardening center or health food store. The process is already started for you and you just need to transplant to its permanent home. It will take a few steps out of the process for you.
So are you a gardener? A wanna be gardener? How many are going to start this year for the first time? If you are an experienced gardener, tell me your advice, tips and tricks and what you plan to grow. Do what gardeners do – share your wisdom. Over the next several weeks, I will be sharing out gardening plans,container gardening tips, and watering plans.
by kathilipp | Mar 18, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
Hey friends – let me help you out by being a cautionary tale…
Last week Roger and I were out of town at a conference. As you know, I plan my meals in advance, but we got home on Monday and I didn’t feel like going to the store, so I figured, “Hey, it won’t kill us to eat out one night…” Well one night turned into four. All because I didn’t feel like going to the store.
Why didn’t I want to go to the store? Because although I made the meal plan, I didn’t make my shopping list. That’s where the plan went horribly wrong.
So, in order to save those hours, (and dollars) do two things:
1. Make your meal plan (and share it here so you have some good peer pressure…)
Here is mine if you need a little inspiration:
Monday – Whole Roasted Chicken, Baked Potatoes, Roasted Vegetables
Tuesday – Chili, Salad, Corn Bread
Wednesday – Steak, Veggie and Brown Rice Bowls
Thursday -Whole Wheat and Brown Rice Bean and Chicken Burritos
Friday – Whole Wheat Pita Pizzas
Saturday – Every Man For Himself
Sunday – Chicken and Veggie Soup with Brown Bread
So tell us what you are having. But then, make your list. Make it right now before you move on to the rest of your life.
You will have the accountability of a whole tribe of women who are trying to get dinner on the table, and then a plan to get your food into the house so you will have peace each and every day at 4:00.
So what are you having for dinner?
by kathilipp | Mar 6, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
Plan Your Meals for a Month (well, almost a month…)
Each month we will be planning a month’s worth of meals for the next month. Well – I got a late start this month, but we are going to plan for the rest of the month – join us and get a jump on your meal planning!
OK – let’s all take a deep breath. I know that for some of you, planning your meals out for four weeks if going to feel a little overwhelming. For some women, deciding what pair of jeans they are going to wear for running errands can feel a like a huge decision (not for me… I pick whichever ones are clean….and fit.) Some of you may be thinking, “I don’t even know what my life will be like in two weeks, how can I plan for it now?!?” Exactly. If you are like almost every other woman I know, life is super busy. Nobody I know is doing just one thing – If she is a stay-at-home mom, she’s also leading her local MOPS group. If she is managing a house-full of teens, she is also managing her own mobile accounting business on the side. If she’s working full-time, she’s also the head of the committee to raise funds for a well in a village in Africa. And that’s why I want you to have a plan. I want what you and your tribe (family, roommate, friends,) are having for dinner to be the least stressful decision of your day. I want you to take a look at your calendar and your family’s calendar, figure out what nights you can cook, when you can prep meals for later in the week, and what nights you need to have dinner waiting for you to get home. And then, I want you to sit down with your calendar and plan accordingly.
The Secret to Planning 31 Meals
For years, I have been taking a catch as catch can approach to planning meals. I would sit down with a blank calendar and fill in the spots with meals I knew my family would like. I would make a shopping list based off of those ingredients, go to the store and buy what I needed. I would go home with a plan in hand and the groceries to make it happen. And that is when my plan would bump up against the reality of my life. I would plan a stir fry for Monday night. The problem? No one was going to be home on Monday night – or at least not at the same time. My husband, Roger, had to eat early – he has a phone call to India every Monday night for work. My son, Justen, would be eating late – he works at the library until after 6 o’clock. My daughter, Kimber, had drama rehearsal and didn’t know when she would be home, and Jeremy, my step-son, was doing a drop in at 4:45 after school to change clothes for work. Perhaps not the best night to be doing stir fry? Unless I wanted to be a short-order stir-fry cook, (and let’s be clear, I have no desire to do that,) most of my people were not going to be able to eat dinner (or at least not one that they would want to eat.) It took me a while to figure out that Monday nights in the Lipp-Hunter house were the perfect night for a big pot of soup and a yummy salad; something that was ready to serve at any of the o’clocks that my family members would be eating at. So now instead of planning what was for dinner, I was planning how I was going to cook dinner each night. Taking all schedules into account (most importantly, the schedule of whoever was going to be cooking that day – and surprise – it’s not always me!) I figured out what was going to be the best type of meal for me to fix. Here are the meals I have to choose from: Freezer Meals – These are meals I have prepared weeks, or even months in advance and stick in the freezer to pull out at just the right time. Freezer meals are great for nights when I will get getting home late – I can have someone else in my family stick the meal into the oven so it will be ready to go that evening. Or, when I’m extra organized, I can set the frozen meal into the oven in the morning and set the timer on the oven to turn on 30-45 minutes before we want to eat. (I have to tell you that I feel extra-efficient when I do this. Kind of like Judy Jetson without the severe hairdo.)
Slow Cooker Meals – Love my slow cooker – especially when I’m smart enough to pull all the ingredients together the night before. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that while I’m running around town doing errand or off working, my slow cooker is at home, slaving away to have dinner ready for us when we get there. Plus, I will show you how to make freezer meals that get dumped directly in to the slow cooker so that you can save yourself even more time and energy.
Left Overs On Purpose – I love this category because it feels like cheating – you had a balsamic pork roast on Tuesday for dinner, but your crew only ate half – and you’re glad. You planned on cooking twice as much as you needed because those leftovers on purpose are now being mixed together with bok choy onions and mushroom to make an Asian stir-fry for Thursday night. (Key note here – if you are making leftovers on purpose, be sure to label your leftovers accordingly. Especially if you have teenage boys in your home.)
Pantry Meals – The meat didn’t defrost in time or you are at the day before your grocery run and there is “no food in this house”. Have no fear, pantry meals are here. These are meals made primarily from ingredients you have on hand- adding in random ingredients you may have hanging around and what to use up. Leftover chicken or ground beef you hadn’t planned on? Make a great chili from your pantry and throw in the meat – yum without waste. I usually plan one pantry meal at the end of the week – a great way to make sure that nothing goes to waste. Fast Food at Home – These are the meals that you actually cook that night. We all have our family favorites that we couldn’t live without. This is when I pull together a super-simple bowl of pasta with marinara, basil and Parmesan cheese, with a bagged salad and a couple of warmed up croissants, or an Asian Stir Fry. Each of us has our favorite go to meals in this category. Every Man for Himself – We have this kind of nights about once a week. Usually on nights when I’m working, everyone has to forage for themselves. This is an excellent way to use up leftovers, but I do make sure that I have sandwich fixings around for lunches and the EVFH nights.
The goal is to match the cooking method with your life – no stir-frys on soccer night, no freezer meals the night after you get home from the farmer’s market, not pantry meals when you have tomatoes in your garden that you either need to use or lose. I want you to plan what you are going to eat around your life so that dinner is less mess and less stress.
So here are the steps to getting your meal plan together:
1. Calendar: Grab a blank calendar page (I have a great one over on my Facebook Author page.
2. Schedule: Look at the activities and schedules for those you are cooking for. Most households develop a weekly rhythm over time. Tuesdays and Thursdays tend to be less chaotic around our house, while Mondays everyone seems to work and Wednesdays have always been a church night. Since we have teens and young adults at our house, Fridays are usually just me and Roger for dinner, and our big family dinners (when even the kids who don’t live at home come back) are on Sunday evenings. While this schedule can vary wildly (especially when I’m traveling) it does have a basic flow that helps me plan my meals. Once you have an idea of the schedule, write down the kind of meal you need to have that night – if you need to have dinner ready when you get there (and not worry about it burning in the oven,) then a slow-cooker recipe could be the ticket for you.
So, following the above schedule, this is one way that I could think of planning: Sunday: Left Overs on Purpose – Round 1 Mondays: Slow Cooker Tuesdays: Left Overs On Purpose Round 2 Wednesday: Freezer Meal Thursday: Fast Food at Home Friday: Every Man For Himself Saturday: Freezer Meal
3. Recipes Now that you know how you should cook that night, it’s time to figure out what you should be cooking. Don’t get overwhelmed! Start simple and small. Mix in one or two recipes from this book with your family’s favorite recipes. Besides your schedule, here are some other things to consider when making up your menus.
• Time of year – I like to eat seasonally as much as possible. If my garden is bursting with squash, or the last time I went to the market the strawberries looks anemic (and were from a foreign country) those are things that can influence my meal planning.
• What I already have on hand – when I hit a great sale on chicken, I stock up. And my veggies from the Farmer’s Market? Those babies have an expiration date. I want to be thoughtful with the food I purchase and use it before I lose it, whenever possible. There have been so many times I have bought what I already had on hand because I didn’t check before making my meal plan and heading to the store.
• The Weather – OK – this may not be the biggest consideration, but last year I put together a month’s worth of meals for June without thinking once about BBQing. Why have beef stew in the summer or Asian chicken salad in the dead of winter? Celebrate the seasons with delicious food.
So if I were going to add some recipes in, here is an idea of what one week of meals would look like:
Sunday: Left Overs on Purpose – Round 1 Spice-Rubbed Pork Roast with Potatoes and Ratatouille
Monday: Slow Cooker Chili and Bread Machine French bread with a Blue Cheese Spring Mix Salad
Tuesdays: Left Overs on Purpose Round 2 Left-over sliced Pork with Homemade Mac-n-Cheese and Asparagus
Wednesday: Freezer Meal Poppyseed Chicken, Bagged Salad, and baked cinnamon apples
Thursday: Fast Food at Home Veggie Pita Pizzas with Turkey Pepperoni
Friday: Every Man For Himself Leftovers
Saturday: Freezer Meal Teriyaki Chicken with rice and grilled veggie kabobs
Try this at Home: Give yourself some space to plan – don’t try to do the planning, shopping and cooking all in the same day. I would say give yourself a week to plan and shop and do a little advance cooking (for the freezer meals, etc.)
You may be one of those lucky people who share the meal planning with someone else. If that’s the case, I suggest for your first time planning that you set aside a good hour or so to go through the exercise. It actually is a lot of fun to do this with another person.
I would love to hear what you are most excited about implementing into your schedule. If you have other tips and tricks for planning meals for a month share them with me. I am sure everyone will love to hear them too!
by kathilipp | Mar 4, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
This week I am going to help you make dinner, save time, save money, get organized and make dinner time meaningful and full of purpose once again. We are going to focus on how all of us, regardless of how busy you are can make great tasting, healthy meals for your family. Like all projects we start at the beginning. For the What’s For Dinner Solution we start by finding out what you have to work with and getting it all organized.
See what you have
Do you know what is in your pantry? Have you checked the back of the freezer lately? And what about that one drawer in the fridge you never open? Do you even know what spices wait for you in the cabinet?
Not all of us are culinary experts who easily plan menus. Make appropriate shopping lists and can whip up a gourmet meal for our family every night. Life is busy and hectic. We juggle managing a house, a career, husband’s career kids, games, play dates, doctor appointments, baseball practice and the list goes on and on. Not to mention we are not programmed to wake up and decide what we are going to prepare for dinner. If we do the thought is fleeting and before we know it 5 pm has arrived, the natives are restless and there is no plan.
So what do you do know?
First off you need to know what you have on hand.
Take the time to clean out and organize your recipes, pantry, cabinets, fridge and freezer.
Let’s start with the recipes.
Get them organized. If you have recipes cards or a folder with papers shoved inside buy some notebook dividers. Label them appropriately: Appetizers, salad, side dishes, main course: meats, pasta, desserts, breads, breakfast etc…
As you are organizing your recipes sort through them; will you make that again? Did the family like that dish? Does it fit within my diet plan (diabetes, allergy, healthy, no sugar etc.) There is no sense in keeping recipes that will not be used. It is just more clutter.
Now for the Pantry
Clean out expired products.
Sort by food likeness: baking products, canned goods, cereal, crackers and so on.
The fridge
Same steps from the pantry apply, like foods together. Condiments on one shelf, milk, creamers and juice on another. Use the produce drawers for the produce and deli drawer for your meats and cheeses.
Freezer
If you do not already start today and write the date on all foods you place in your freezer.
Make a list of what you have on your freezer so you can plan your meals accordingly. Stop buying food you already have.
All of the above will help you see what you have, how much you have and make your menu & list making easier. Not to mention you and the family will be able to quickly grab a great snack when needed.
Now it is your turn. Tell me in the comments below what you do to stay organized so you know what is on hand to eat. Any organizing tip you want tos hare with the other readers are great too.
by kathilipp | Feb 23, 2012 | 21 Ways to Connect With Your Kids, Home |
You have breakfast, lunch, you are dressed and ready to walk out of the door but what about the children? Are they ready? Are they even awake yet?
I have heard funny stories so many times about a mom dropping their child off at school only to realize they are still in their pajama’s, or the child does not have their backpack, lunch or homework. Or the kids are in order but mom is wearing slippers with her business suit.
A goal for many wives and moms is to make mornings smooth and get everyone where they need to be on time…even dad! How does that get accomplished? Many of the tips that I have shared all week can be used on the kids as well. For those whose children are out of the toddler stage in elementary school, you can begin to incorporate them into the nightly preparation times and teach them how to get their things ready.
- Get yourself ready first. This way you can focus on the children!
- Pack back packs before bed: Do they have their homework, library book, show and tell item; all papers are signed and checked?
- Fill their water bottles and pack lunch items before bed as well.
- Have the children set out their clothes and shoes the night before on their dresser. This will lessen morning temper tantrums and in decisions.
- Do all baths and showers the night before.
- Make sure they have decided what they want for breakfast.
- Tuck the children in bed at a decent hour. Children usually need 10-12 hours of sleep so plan accordingly. This will help ensure they get up easily too.
- If you have several children or several family members but 1 bathroom delegate bathroom time. If more than ones are brushing their teeth at the same time it will more likely turn into play and a mess.
Here are some other thoughts on getting kids ready on the morning.
Top 10 Morning Madness Tips for Getting Kids up and Ready
What have I missed? My kids are older now and can take care of getting out the door on their own. As the saying goes it takes a village, so tell me what works in your house for making sure the family is up and ready to go on time. I am sure all my readers can benefit from all of the great input.
Anyone who leaves a comment will be entered to win a $25 Starbucks gift card.
One winner will be chosen from all comments posted for the entire week.
Please, be sure to link to your blog or provide an email address so we can get in touch with you!
by kathilipp | Feb 22, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project, Uncategorized |
What type of person are you in the morning?
Do you hit snooze several times, jump out of bed in a rush grab your ball cap while you slip your jeans on?
Do you get up early but spend most of your morning looking at your closet telling yourself you have nothing to wear?
Or do you lay out your clothes at night complete with your shoes and accessories you will wear?
No matter what category you fall into I am sure we could all use some inspiration to help manage our mornings.
Here are a few simple and elementary tips. I am sure a lot of you might remember your parents telling you some of these.
- Prepare for your day at night. Make sure your purse, backpack, laptop bag are ready for you to just grab in the morning.
- Refer to Breakfast on the Run and Lunch to go so you do not have to fuss over your meals for the next day.
- Go to bed at a decent time. (Sleep is not just for princesses, our bodies need sleep time to grow and heal)
- Set an alarm clock. If are a serial snooze button hitter place your alarm clock on the other side of your bed; this will require you get up and get your day going.
- Open the blinds and curtains. Filling your room with daylight will help your body wake up. In just a few weeks we all will be setting our clocks ahead an hour and most of us will wake up to the sun.
- Eat that yummy breakfast you planned the night before.
- Do you know how long it takes you to get ready in the morning? If not, time yourself from the moment you get out of bed till you walk out the door. This will give you an idea of when you should wake up so you are not rushed.
- Stay consistent with your waking time each day. This will train your body to naturally wake up on time. Even on days you don’t have to get up early, do. This will give you a wonderful break from your morning routine. You can spend time in the Word, sip your coffee, watch the news or just enjoy the quietness of the house while the natives sleep.
So what have I missed that you may do that will help another girlfriend out? I want to hear it all. My mornings get by me way too fast!
Tell me in the comments below what your tried and true strategies are for getting up and out the door in a snap. What makes your mornings easier?
Anyone who leaves a comment will be entered to win a $25 Starbucks gift card.
One winner will be chosen from all comments posted for the entire week.
Please, be sure to link to your blog or provide an email address so we can get in touch with you!
So as I’m writing this, Roger and I are driving over the Grapevine in So. California with snow coming at us sideways.
