Easy & Healthy Breakfast Ideas

I love the idea of making hot breakfasts, but it's so hard to get things going early on school mornings.  This post has some simple and clever ideas for busy mamas:

10 Make-Ahead Breakfasts to Start Your Day Off Right
http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/recipe-roundup/10-makeahead-breakfasts-to-start-your-day-off-right-recipe-roundup-155762

And here is a favorite that my friend Angie makes for her family:

Baked Oatmeal

6 cups oats
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
2 cups milk
1 cup oil
4 eggs

Combine and pour into greased 9 x 13 inch dish. Bake uncovered at 350 for 30 – 35 minutes.



Happy day,

12 Efficiency Tips in the Kitchen - repost from Passionate Homemaking

I've been following Lindsey's blog for several years now.  She has so many good tips for Christian moms!!  Check out one of her recent posts titled: 12 Efficiency Tips in the Kitchen.  And read more at

Passionate Homemaking.com.

Shopping on Amazon this year?  You probably already know that most purchases over $25 ship free, but did you know that there is a free online service that will help you find items to fill the difference between your purchase amount and the $25 shipping minimum?  Whether you need 25 cents or $5, this site will list a plethora of items to choose from.  Then you won't go way over-budget on your purchase!

Wanna Be Less Frazzled?

I just read Mandi's blog post, titled Traits of a Frazzle-Free Mom at Our Busy Family Life. She offers several simple keys to keeping this crazy job called 'mom' a little more under control - and full of peace! I definitely think she's onto something!

Mom's Best BBQ

This is the BBQ recipe mom makes when we go home. It's an easy dish to serve a lot of people. And because it's a crockpot meal, you can do the minimal preparation ahead of time.

5lb pork shoulder
1/2t cayenne pepper
1t ground pepper
1 1/8t garlic powder
1T onion powder
2T chili powder
2t salt
2c BBQ sauce
3c beef broth
12 hamburger buns

Rinse pork and pat dry.
Mix all dry ingredients together and rub into the pork.
Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 2-12 hours.
Cook in crockpot on low for 10 hours.
Shred the pork (discard fat); then stir in BBQ Sauce and beef broth.
Cook two more hours then serve on buns.
For a southern twist, add cole slaw or tomatoes to the buns.

You can also put half the BBQ in the freezer to use later, or put some in tupperware to share with a friend.

Phone #s At Your Fingertips

Numbers you might need when you're out and about - save in your phone address book:
Dentist (you never know when you might have an emergency)
Doctor (with a sick child, you don't want to stop and look for a ph#)
Pharmacy (so you can tell the doctor where to call in your prescription)
School
Mechanic
Pizza place
Daycare
Your favorite takeout restaurants

Numbers you reference, but they change seasonally - save on a list in your planner:
Coaches
Babysitters (I sort these by favorites, homeschool (available during the day), and referrals)
Teacher's phone #s
I also keep a few phone #s that I would need if I lost (yikes!) my phone

Numbers you need, but not frequently - in an address book or on a computer spreadsheet
Neighbors
Neighborhood association

Last Tip
Ask your cell phone store if they will print out a list of your phone #s that are saved in your phone. This is a LIFESAVER in case something happens to your phone! And with little tykes running around, you never know what might happen to your phone!

Saving Time in the Kitchen - great tips from Frugal Upstate!

Jenn at Frugal Upstate just published a great article about saving time in the kitchen - she actually titled the article "Avoiding the Take-Out Trap". I follow many of her suggestions, but I never thought about creating a list of all the different meals I could create with a few prepared meats. I love this list! Here are some of our favorites that I pulled from Jenn's list. Visit the link for about 40 great ideas!

Ground Beef
Pot Pie/Shepherds Pie: Mix with can of mixed veggies, white sauce or cream of soup. Cook in casserole dish with either boxed mashed potatoes or biscuits on top
Tacos/Burritos: Add the spice mix and serve either on burrito wraps or in taco shells
Sloppy Joes: Use your favorite recipe.

Chicken
Chicken soup: Broth, veggies, chicken, rice or noodles
Stirfry: Mix with a bag of frozen stirfry veggies and some soy sauce, serve with rice

Meatballs - I need to try these for my family!
Meatball Subs: Add to spaghetti sauce, serve on a roll with cheese

Cooking Between Carpools - Brushetta Chicken

When we're craving Italian, but we don't have a lot of time, I like to default to this Brushetta Chicken Bake recipe that I found from Amy the Aldi Queen. If you cook the chicken ahead of time, you can assemble the dish in a few minutes, then pop it in the oven for 30 minutes to cook. That's just enough time for homework, so it's perfect for us!

Saving Time in the Kitchen

I love multipurpose cooking - it saves SO much time in the kitchen.

This week I broiled a chicken, then shredded it to put in the freezer for casseroles. I saved the broth and made chicken noodle soup with some of the shredded chicken. We had some for dinner, and I'll freeze some for later.

After making Shrimp Skewers a few nights ago, I had leftover spaghetti sauce and pasta. So I used the leftovers to make a chicken tetrazini. I simply mixed together the spaghetti sauce, pasta and some of the frozen chicken from earlier in the week. I added some italian seasoning, basil, oregano and garlic powder. When I cook it, I'll top the dish with monterey jack cheese. This will make a super easy dinner on a busy night in the next few weeks.

Happy time-saving cooking!

Time Savers for Packing Lunches

A great tip contributed by my friend Shannon:

As school starts back, I have a mommy secret to share. Yesterday, I spent a little less than half an hour making 22 PB & J sandwiches. With two of my daughters in school, this is a little over two weeks of lunch entrees. I freeze the sandwiches in individual ziploc bags and just pull two out every morning. They are well defrosted by lunch and I only have to add a fruit and another side or two (rice cakes, yogurt or string cheese are common accompaniments for us) to make it a complete meal. I try to let my girls buy lunch at the school cafeteria once each week to give myself (and them) a break from homemade lunches, but I find that making the sandwiches ahead of time like this makes it much easier to pack lunches!

**When Shannon first told me about freezing PB&Js I admitedly thought she was a little bit crazy (in the nicest way!). But I tried it, and now I love the tip. I don't freeze them all the time, but I do make them ahead during busy seasons and when I have an extra loaf of bread on hand. The sandwiches taste great - they're moist, but never soggy. It honestly works better to freeze them than refrigerate them.

Saving Precious Time - a great link

Family Focused Fun just sent me to discover a great post titled, The Art of Spending Minutes to Save Hours. It's not intended for home management, necessarily, but it has lots of tips for finding the shortcuts that make life easier to manage.

A New Hair Twist

I tried a new hair twist today, following the directions from an article in Woman's Day magazine. It was easy to do (less then 5 minutes) and it was really cute!

Here are their directions and the picture from their magazine:

1. Place your thumbs at the top of your ears and run them back through your hair to sweep the top half into a ponytail. Secure it with a hairband, then pull remaining hair into a ponytail directly below.

2. Twist the top pony clockwise and pin it into place; twist the bottom one counterclockwise and pin so ends can peek out.

Gas Buddy

My friend Mary called today, asking if I knew of a website where she could find the cheapest local gas. I laughed when she added, "I thought if any of my friends would know that kind of info, Ann would be the one to know!" I was excited to know the answer to her question.

GASBUDDY is a great website for comparing gas prices in your geographical region. You type in your zip code, and it gives you a list of local prices reported by readers along with the time they spotted the price.

It can be a great tool to keep you from getting gas station at the pump that is 10 cents higher than another pump on your daily route.

Italian Breaded Pork Chops

I love allrecipes.com! Here's the pork chop recipe we made for dinner tonight. How did we find it in the middle of 800 pork chop recipes? I typed in "baked pork chops", then asked the search engine to sort the recipes by rating (5 stars, then 4.5 stars, all the way down to 0 stars). I read through the first dozen recipes with high ratings & high review #s. With 316 4.5 star ratings, I guessed this would be a pretty good recipe! And it was - we all enjoyed it. :)

The Dishwashing Debate

Lindsay at Passionate Homemaking just posted a great article about the dishwashing debate. She gives statistics from three different styles of washing:
1. the dishwasher
2. washing dishes by hand using running water
3. washing dishes by hand using a filled sink basin.

Perhaps the most eye opening part for me was her research on bacteria left on items from hand-washing vs. dishwashing.

It's a good read!

Living on a Budget

Hillbilly Housewife is a website with a plethora of ideas for saving money in the kitchen. Their tools are pretty easy to scan for quick learning, but I could also spend an hour reading about all of their strategies. Here are some of my favorite parts of the website:

Cutting the Fat & Calories from Ground Beef
Magic Milkshakes (Frosties with no milk for a quarter!)
Emergency Menus for $45/week or $70/week (these include 3 meals & snacks!)
Healthy Thrifty Meals
Nutritious Meals at Minimal Costs
Menus to match Angel Food Ministries food boxes

So happy money-saving to you!
ann

Laundry - Making Every Minute Count

I usually do 3 loads of laundry back to back. And I try to make every minute count. Here's the way I do it - do you have any tricks?

Carry all laundry to the laundry room.
Start running warm water in washer and add laundry detergent.
Sort clothes into piles - for us it's usually lights, darks and reds/browns
Change water temperature to cold (for everything but whites)
Add first load to washer.

Here's where I cut down the most time - between loads.
First move wet clothes to dryer, but don't start the dryer.
Start running warm water with detergent in the washer for load #2.
Then add a drying sheet to the dryer, check the dryer filter and push start.
Then change your washer temperature to cold and add your clothes.

I know it only cuts out a few minutes, but every minute counts in my house!! This way there's no standing around waiting for water to fill between loads and I don't get sidetracked on another task FORGETTING to add the laundry!

The Mega List of Freezer Meals

Lasts month a lot of bloggers were batting around favorite freezer meals. Last week, my friend Mary emailed me a huge list of freezer meals from Moms Budget.


You can even sort their recipes by type:

Beef Chicken Pork Vegetarian Soups
Stews & Chillis Pasta Chinese Style Spicy

So make a meal for your family & a friend in need. Or make an extra meal for families to pick up from your church freezer. Or make an extra meal for your freezer - to pull out on a crazy day.

Happy cooking!

Living Simply

I just finished a wonderful library book called Living Simply by Joanne Heim. It was a delightful easy read, full of practical ideas for living a simple life. It was challenging, encouraging and inspiring all together. I thought I would share some of my notes with you:

How do we come to choose what it is that we spend our days doing? Would we choose it again if we could?” Did we choose it today, or has it simply carried us along somehow? 46

Living simply involves intention and purpose. It requires focus. It looks beyond the task at hand to the purpose behind it. Knowing the purpose can make all the difference. Packing lunches can be another chore to get done in the rush before school, or it can be a task undertaken to provide nourishment and energy for my children so they can learn all there is to learn that day. Cleaning my house can be an item on my to-do list, or it can be done for the purpose of making my home a place my family enjoys. Living simply involves changing our thinking, looking at our lives from a different perspective. It means stopping to ask myself why I am doing something and making choices that reflect my purpose. 45

Saying ‘no’ to some of the excess means being able to say ‘yes’ to others – and having the energy to pursue those things that have more and lasting value. 28

Satisfy me each morning with your love and establish the work of my hands today, Lord God. Order my day, arrange the tasks to be accomplished, prepare me for the conversations I’ll have. Help me sing for joy as I clean my home, read to my children, spend time with a friend. Number my day aright and help me pursue and grab hold of wisdom. 44

I can’t comprehend how one goes about making a sculpture like this. Michelangelo once said, I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” It sounds so simple: You just hold the chisel like this, give it a little tap like so, and voila! An angel. … In some ways, understanding the ‘how’ of simplicity is a lot like freeing the angel from the marble. Our lives are like chunks of marble: often unwieldy and weighted down by all the stuff we’ve acquired, commitments we’ve made, and complexities forced upon us that come from living in a world that never stops. But the quality of life we search for is in there somewhere, and so we start with the obvious things – getting rid of sharp edges, corners, and conspicuous flaws. We begin to consciously choose less, and in doing so we pare away more of the excess. We learn to say no and begin focusing on those things that bring joy, not stress. As we examine our lives, we focus on what is most important; soon, we begin to see the shape of it in our minds…and we set free the beautiful angel trapped inside. 30-31

I'll share more of Joanne's thoughts tomorrow - until then, you can visit her blog. It's also very encouraging.

Yummy Treats

Don't these scones look divine? They're from a new blog I found called Down to Earth. I LOVE scones, because they're yummy enough for kiddos, but fancy enough to serve for special occassions. They add just a little bit of celebration into daily life, and I love to celebrate!

Four women contribute to this blog, but this recipe was submitted by Rhonda Jean, a homemaker from Australia who describes her mission as: "My aim is awareness, to be generous, kind, to reskill, discover all I can, learn how to recognise happiness and truly live my life." I love that! She also talks a lot about simplicity, and HOW to start living a simple life.

Happy Sabbath day to you