by kathilipp | Feb 21, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
“What’s for dinner mom?”
“Where’s dinner, honey?”
Sound familiar?
Dinner: The anticipated or dreaded question of the day. The thing we agonize over not long after breakfast.
What are you cooking for dinner tonight?
Hopefully, we can help each other out and make it a bit easier most nights of the week.
If you love your crock pot or need more ideas for your crock pot here are two blogs you need to check out!
Recipes from the Crock Pot Girl
A Year of Slow Cooking
Another time saver is cook a few meals once a week or many meals once a month and put them in the freezer. Make sure you label them well and all you have to do is grab one out of the freezer in the morning and then pop it in the oven.
Fabulously Frugal has some great freezer meal recipes.
Life as a mom also has great recipes and she even points you to posts to help you get started if you have never done freezer cooking before.
Other quick tips can happen as soon as you unload your groceries. When you buy chicken before you place it into the icebox go ahead and prepare a few dinner options. Place desired amount of chicken in a gallon Ziploc bag and add a marinade then pop them into the freezer. As they thaw the chicken pieces will soak up the flavors and all you have to do it grill or bake.
Here are a few marinade options:
- Italian dressing
- Ranch dressing and 2 Tablespoons minced garlic
- ½ c Olive Oil, ½ c Lemon Juice and 3 T Italian Dressing
- Barbecue sauce
Now all you need is a salad, veggies and/or fruit.
Did you know I was once a single mom? Yes, I had a time in my life where living on budget was more of a necessity than a plan and time was short each day; between, work, shuffling kids around, homework checks and doing the cleaning and cooking solo. On Monday Nicole Bean, a single mom, featured me on her blog 180 Degrees: Turning your life into a new direction She asked to interview me about the time in my life when I was a single mom. Go over and check that out, you will also find a great recipe as well!
Sharing time! What are your tried and tested tips for making dinner delicious, easy, and stress free.
Tell me all your great ideas in the comments below and you could 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 20, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
Now that you can conquer breakfast let’s focus on lunch. I find most people do not think about lunch. Grabbing take out or whipping through a drive thru takes no thought and is super easy but super hard on the hips and pocket book. Lunch is, well, kind of boring. Some eat alone, in front of their computer or have little time to eat due to work or feeding little ones and getting them down to nap.
For those who work you also must think about lunch when you are thinking about or handling breakfast. So how do you go about in a stress-less way while making it healthy at the same time?
- For starters there are many things you can do at night to make your lunch a grab and go as you walk out the door.
- Plan your lunches like you do your dinners and shop accordingly.
- Grab some of those easy items at the store: snack packs of pretzels, carrots, fruit, nuts and cheeses.
- Prepare your lunch while you make dinner. Make an extra serving or two so you and your husband have lunch the next day. If you want to trim your waist line or your bottom line then just take half of your regular portion and place it in a container for lunch as you are plating dinner.
- Do the prep work before bed; the slicing, cutting, placing in bags, or putting leftovers in a container so you can reheat at the office.
- Pack all the items you can in your lunch bag at night. Fill your water bottle and that will just leave you to grab only the refrigerator items in the morning.
- You could also do all of the above on the weekend. Spends a few hours prepping and sorting foods to cut down on daily prep time.
Need more ideas or creative ideas for lunch? Here are a few more ideas, recipes and tips.
Healthy recipes and tips
Healthy Lunchbo Preparatixon ideas
More tips to streamline your lunch prep from Weight Watchers.
Are you a pro at lunch? Is it your favorite meal? What is your favorite thing to do for lunch and how do you make it easy?
Tell me all your great ideas in the comments below and you could 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 19, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
Getting Out the Door
Breakfast on the Go
Do you have breakfast on the go, or do you go without breakfast? How many of you skip breakfast? I am guessing most of us, or if you do not skip breakfast than you might fall into the eat the donut with your coffee as you walk into work or drive the kiddos around category. Let’s face it our mornings are rushed and tackling the days tasks can seem more important to us than sitting down to eat breakfast.
All this week we are going to be focusing on getting out the door in the morning and one of the best ways to do that is to have some Breakfast on the go ideas.
But,whether it’s sitting around the table, or breakfast on the go it’s so important! It provides the energy we need to start the day, it gets our metabolism going and we all want that to work right. Nobody likes putting on extra pounds or buying a larger size. So how do we start the day off on the right foot, make it quick, easy and healthy and stay on time?
Below are a few links to give you some ideas about breakfast on the go. Many can be made ahead or take little to no time at all to prepare.
If you have kids there is plenty you can do to set up the night before.
- Before bed set the table with the bowls, spoons, napkins and cereal choices. Add any fruit or bread items needed…anything that does not live in the fridge.
- Have a list in the kitchen of your current breakfast choices so you do not waste time hunting for food. I have a friend who types up breakfast choices for her kids and before she sends them to bed the kids initial what they want the next day. The list changes as her food choices change. This save several minutes each morning for everyone in the house.
- Set your coffee pot at night so by the time you wake up you have hot, fresh coffee.
- Use your Crock Pot for breakfast; it’s not just for dinner.
- Go ahead and chop the fruit or peel it and place it in a Ziploc bag. If you are prepping apples toss with lemon juice to prevent browning.
- Have breakfast on the go choices ready: cheese sticks, yogurts, nuts and homemade breads sliced and in a container as well so you can grab it on your way out the door.
Below are a few sites you can visit to get great crock pot breakfast on the go recipes.
Crock Pot Breakfast ideas
10 Easy Breakfast Crock Pot Recipes
Here are a few places that list great, quick and easy breakfast options.
Top 10 easy breakfast recipes
9 Fast and Healthy Breakfast Ideas
You have to love this next list of breakfast ideas, if only the website address… “Dumb little man” But it is also good to get a man’s perspective as well as a lot of us are taking care of his needs too!
5 Quick & Simple Breakfast-On-the-Run Ideas
And be sure to head over to my Facebook Author Page to download our list of 30 On the Go Breakfast Ideas!
So let’s help each other out. I want to hear what tips and tricks you have to make breakfast simple and healthy and getting out the door on time with little stress.
Tell me all your great ideas in the comments below and you could 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 1, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
(We had some technical difficluties, but here is last Friday’s blog post – all winners will be announced this weekend!)
Project #5
Getting your kitchen to work for you.
What is your all time favorite kitchen gadget? I don’t know about you but I like to have and use anything that might make dinner prep quicker. Whether it is chopping, grating, mixing, stirring, cutting, mincing, shredding, baking, blending processing, kneading and so on….
Tell me in the comments below your favorite kitchen gadget and how it gets dinner on the table and you can win
by kathilipp | Jan 24, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
Day #3
Kitchen Tips
What are your favorite organizing kitchen tips?
The number one favorite of my all time favorite kitchen tips? Clear off your counters. Here are my tips to enlarging your kitchen by cleaning off you counters.
- Reclaim some counter space. The most valuable real estate in your entire house is the space on your counter. There should be nothing on the counter that doesn’t either: 1. Work for you on a regular basis (i.e. My coffee maker sees more action than the funnel cake stand at a county fair, so it deserves a place on the counter. My food processor I only use once a week or so. It has not earned the right to be on the counter.) Or 2. Make you happy to look at.
On a regular basis I have to fight with my “stuff” to keep it off the counter. I promise you, clutter and appliance migrate there in the middle of the night. I am constantly waging a battle to keep my counters cleared.
Here is a list of things that have not earned the right to be there (but keep trying to sneak their way on):
- Slow Cooker
- Can Opener
- Kid’s school projects
- Dishes that just don’t want to get put away
- Mail
Things that have earned the right to be on my counter:
- Coffee Maker
- Canisters (they are not just decorative, they hold everyday essentials like coffee filters, packets of sweetener, and dog treats.)
- Toaster Oven (so we don’t need to fire up the big over very often,)
- Spices
- A container of frequently-used utensils
- A butcher block of knives
- Toaster
Your use of counter space is going to be different than mine, but you get the idea – be thoughtful about what you give your permission to live on your counter.
Another great counter space saver is to see what you can have mounted under your cabinets or on your walls. For the longest time, I had a vertical paper towel rack that sat on the counter. It was a constant frustration to me that it took up so much space. Then one day it occurred to me that just because our house wasn’t built with an under-counter towel rack, didn’t mean I couldn’t do the job myself, (or bribe my cute husband to do it with a plateful of chocolate chip cookies.) I also have a microwave and CD player/radio mounted under my cabinets to save space.
And on my walls? I have a very cute set of stainless steel measuring spoons and a coffee scoop. I use them every day, they look great on the walls, and everyone in my house knows where to put them away.
I am constantly looking for those eleusive kitchen tips to make my kitchen life run smoother. Now it’s your turn: Tell me your favorite kitchen tips – whether it be for shopping, unpacking your groceries, cooking, cleaning, meal planning, meal planning calendars, anything! One of my lucky commenters will win the (yet to be released!)Creative Slow-Cooker Meals by Cheryl Moeller. You know I’m a HUGE fan of the Slow Cooker – so I know you will just LOVE this creative book!
Here are the kitchen tips you’ll get
from Cheryl’s Book
Creative Slow-Cooker Meals: Use Two Slow Cookers for Tasty and Easy Dinners comes a new kind of cookbook and a new attitude toward planning meals. With an eye toward the whole menu, not just part of it, columnist Cheryl Moeller teaches cooks to use two crockpots to easily create healthy, homemade dinners.
Don’t worry about your dinner being reduced to a mushy stew. Each of the more than 200 recipes has been taste-tested at Cheryl’s table. Join the Moeller family as you dig into:
• Harvest-time Halibut Chowder
• Salmon and Gingered Carrots
• Mediterranean Rice Pilaf
• Indian Chicken Curry
• Apricot-Pistachio Bread
• Shrimp Creole
• Rhubarb Crisp
… and many more!
Check it out here!
by kathilipp | Jan 23, 2012 | Home, The "What's for dinner?" Project |
Day #2
Leftovers On Purpose and Free Recipes: Chicken Leftovers into Dinner
“Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart” ~ Thomas Fuller
Download the Five Best Ways to Use Leftover Chicken (and my favorite – easy – Roasted Chicken recipe.)
My friend Gerry and I were having a deep meaningful talk about Thanksgivings past. No, we weren’t reflecting on all the things we were grateful for, we were remembering our food traditions. (My mouth starts watering just thinking about turkey gravy.)
She told me that one year she was just tired of putting on the whole show, so she decided they would eat in a restaurant. The food was yummy, and they had a great time relaxing and letting someone else cook and clean up. It wasn’t until the next day that Gerry saw the fatal flaw in her plan: No leftovers. How were they going to construct on Friday those turkey-and-cranberry sandwiches with dressing and gravy that were almost as much a tradition as anything that happened on Thursday?
An ode to the leftover!
What is a LOOP meal?
A LOOP meal is a great way to reinvent leftovers. You cook one day, have Left Overs On Purpose, and then use those leftovers to create a great second meal later in the week.
Share with me in the comments your favorite way to use Left Overs On Purpose.
We usually roast about one chicken a week and have about three or four meals from the le
ftovers. (I can hear you moms of six LOLing as you read this…) Our supermarket has whole chickens on sale about every other week, so this is a great deal for us.
In addition to the suggestions I’ve given you in the download, here are some quick and easy ways to use leftover chicken:
- Top your salad with it
- Make Chicken Salad
- Add it to veggie soup
- Use it to top a baked potato with broccoli
- Use it on pita pizzas
- Put it on Grown Up Grilled Cheese
Finally – we have some amazing bloggers who are taking the challenge in whole new directions – I would HIGHLY encourage you to go to their blogs for some inspiration:
Amy at Homemaker in Training offers you a Master Class in meal planning and getting your shopping list together. Trust me, you want to reach her black belt level of planning.
And if you’ve discovered you are well beyond the newlywed stage and you still haven’t figured out this cooking thing, you’re not alone. Go check out Julie D. great blog about Learning to Cook After 40 and you won’t feel so alone.
“What’s for dinner mom?”
If you love your crock pot or need more ideas for your crock pot here are two blogs you need to check out!
Sharing time! What are your tried and tested tips for making dinner delicious, easy, and stress free.
