Domestically Challenged – Parenting Tips from Author Alana Morales

Archive for the ‘Menu Plan Monday’ Category

Happy Monday!

photo credit: needoptic

This week’s Menu Plan Monday deals with something that as I became healthier last year, I did inadvertently. As I worked hard to eat better and lose weight, I also did something else without even trying. I ate more whole foods.

I didn’t really try to. In fact, I very distinctly remember scoffing at someone who was gung ho into eating Paleo. But when I thought about my eating style towards the end of the year, I realized that I was eating a pretty clean diet.

According to Zen Habits, it means 

So what is clean eating?

• Food consumed in its most natural state, or close to it.
• Which means nothing processed.
• Fruits and veggies, of course.
• Nuts, legumes, natural nut butters, nut oils.
• Whole grains, preferably not ground into flour.
• Lean proteins, although I don’t eat meat or dairy.

This is my goal, at least. I don’t do it 100% of the time. I shoot for about 90%.

Eating Clean for Dummies defines it as:

Clean eating is the act of basing your diet on whole, unprocessed or organic foods. In other words, when you eat clean, you try to eat as low ont he food chain as possible.

When I asked Twitter, here’s some of the responses:

@Deborah105 - For me, clean eating is no sugar, no grains, no packaged foods.

@aspiringmama - for me it’s gluten free and free of all sugar. No processed foods. Real whole veggies, fruits, organic proteins.

For me it means this:

I eat mostly unprocessed foods – the only regular foods I eat that are processed are my Quaker oatmeal cups and my soy yogurt. Sometimes you can add in Glutino gluten free crackers or Rudi’s gluten free bread, but less than two times a month.

So, the big question is this – how do you eat clean? Or, better yet, how can you easily learn to eat clean?

Here’s 5 ways to get started:

1. Look at what you eat that is processed, then look at alternatives

After I had been working at losing weight for a few months, I got to the point where I really looked at the things I was eating. Then I asked myself the following “Is this moving me towards my goal of losing weight?”

For most of it, the answer was no.

I’m talking things like Rice a Roni (something we had several times a week), processed soup, granola bars, soda, etc.

I didn’t change everything all at once. That would have been torture! Instead, I changed one thing at a time. For example, I stopped eating the Rice a Roni and replaced it with veggies.

2. Replace one processed snack with a clean snack

This was an easy one. I was eating Life Cereal bars for my morning snack. It had good protein, but it had a bunch of ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce. I challenged myself to substitute veggies for my morning snack for a week.

That’s all it took.

Now, for my morning snack, I usually have a veggie with hummus and some fruit. If I really need a treat, I have a Lara bar. SO. DAMN. YUMMY.

So what is one item you can replace with a fresh fruit or veggie?

3. Plan ahead

Remember how important menu planning is? Here’s another area it can help with. Plan your meals and see how you can add in more fresh food. Because of my food allergies, I know 80% of my weekly food in advance. This could be because I eat the same stuff 80% of the time, but it works well for me.

Look at your meals and plan accordingly.

4. Make it easy

Eating clean doesn’t have to mean spending hours in the kitchen, chopping away. Buy bags of baby carrots, flash frozen veggies (I’m hooked on the broccoli/cauliflower mix) and salad bags if you have to. Make it easy to start, then as you get used to it, switch one thing. I now buy whole green peppers instead of buying them, but I still buy bagged carrots and frozen veggies.

Making it easy = making it happen

5. Eat more protein

photo credit: Ms.FabiHenne

Most Americans don’t get enough protein as it is, so try to eat protein at every meal. Eat an egg with breakfast, eat some chicken or turkey at lunch and then have another meat or some beans with dinner.

Do you or are you trying to limit the amount of processed foods you and your family eat? If so, how? Please leave it in the comments!!

Happy Monday everyone!

This week’s Menu Plan Monday post is about how to store your recipes. I have a tendency to print a recipe, then lose it shortly after I’m done with it. To prevent this, I scoured the web for some quick and easy ideas.

1. Storage Binder

This is by far the easiest way and while it won’t win any decorating awards, it works. I’m all about simple and easy solutions. Take your recipes, put them in sheet protectors and then they are protected for when you are using them with messy hands. Just wipe off the mess and store!

2. Recipe Box

This is an obvious choice (which is probably why I have never owned a recipe box in my life). Take recipes you find in magazines, cut them out and glue them to recipe cards, then put in the box.

I don’t like this option as much because it is so easy for the cards to get dirty, but if you were to get some recipe boxes that are cute, they could be a nice addition to your kitchen decor.

Here’s a few from Etsy:

3. Recipe Nest

This has never happened before, but I WANT THIS. Yes, it’s for the kitchen and I still want it. That’s how cool this looks.

What is it?

The Recipe Nest is a recipe storage system that looks very easy to use. You don’t have to worry about hole punching anything, it has a sheet protector and an easel to hold recipes while you work and it all folds up to look nice for storage.

Yup. Totally want.

4. Online Storage

As much of a tech nerd as I am, I don’t really like this method. Blowing flour out of your keyboard after a baking session will do that to you. Nevertheless, there are quite a few good recipe storage solutions available, including:

Allrecipes - You had to know I would have this one listed. Keep track of all your recipes from the site in your very own recipe box.

Evernote – Copy and paste your recipes in or just link to the different urls.

Springpad – I prefer this method to Evernote, because it looks better and I can organize my recipes into notebooks.

5. Expandable File Folder

One final way to organize is by using expanding file folders. These allow you to keep recipes organized into different categories, so you can just pull and cook.

What do you do to prevent dirty recipes?

If you use recipe cards or papers not in protectors, here’s my new favorite clean paper tip:

• Hole punch the cards, put a suction cup hook in a cabinate – when you are cooking, put the recipe on the hook, then replace when finished. Just put the hole punch in the middle or use two hooks to keep the paper/card straight.

This keeps the recipe clean and out of the way!

Now I want to know – how do you organize your recipes? Any tips? Any pics? As always, leave it in the comments!

* For more info about how Menu Plan Monday started click here.

Happy Monday (what a misnomer!)!!

For this week’s Menu Plan Monday, I wanted to post an updated list of my potential dinners for the week.

Why bother?

Here’s why – as I have stated many, many times, menu planning is one of the easiest and most important things you can do to save yourself time. And as a parent, we are ALWAYS about saving time.

The steps:

1. Make a master list of dinners. List anything that your family will eat.

2. Decide how to rotate meals. Will you go straight down the list? Put them on index cards and pick at the beginning of the week? Use a random number generator to choose?

For me, all of these are a bit too complicated (although, I am a nerd at heart and am more likely to use the random number generator). When we menu plan, we basically think about how busy our week is, the ingredients we have on hand and the flavors we want for the week (right now I am off anything resembling Mexican food, which is weird for me).

3. Make a weekly plan and shopping list.

My husband does all of the grocery shopping and he HATES the way I make lists. Therefore, I created a shopping list that goes in order. I can just write in what we need and he can go in order through the grocery store. Anal retentive much?

So, once you have this, you are all set! For more ideas about menu planning, check out Organizing Junkie – lots of great info!

THE List:

1. Mac and Cheese
2. Grilled Chicken
   • Grill with bbq sauce or marinate it for a fuller flavor.
3. Spaghetti
   • To add variety, make different types of noodles or put it over squash.
4. Ribs
   • These can be cooked in the crock pot, broiler or grill.
5. Turkey Burgers
6. Grilled Turkey Legs
7. Beef Stroganoff
8. Slow Cooker Chicken
9. Slow Cooker French Dip
10. Pot Roast
11. Baked Chicken
12. Chicken Parmesan
13. Albondagas
14. Tacos
15. Enchiladas
16. Tostadas
17. Taco Salad
18. Pork Chops
19. Sausage
20. Bratwurst
21. Red Beans and Rice
22. Fetticinni Alfredo
23. Chili – we make it healthier by using ground game meat (deer, antelope, elk, etc)
24. Fajitas
25. Stir Fry
26. Lasagna
27. Tuna Casserole
28. Enchilada Casserole
29. Eggplant Parmesan
30. Ham with Greens
31. Tostada Goop – sooooo yummy! Make extra and you can use it for enchiladas or tostadas or taco salad or…
32. Neat Sloppy Joes
33. Chicken Fried Rice – don’t use oil (I just use water) and save on the fat content.
34. Steak
35. Kabobs – super easy to make
36. Meatballs – add bbq sauce and let the kids eat with toothpicks for extra fun, provided no one gets poked in the eyeball
37. Meatloaf – we make ours with bbq sauce. And bacon. Can’t forget the bacon.
38. Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches
39. Sub sandwiches – use mini rolls and make them custom for everyone
40. Nachos
41. Stuffed Peppers
42. Shrimp Tacos
43. Gumbo
44. Jambalaya
45. Potato, Green Beans and Hamhocks – some good ole soul food that is also super healthy!
46. Baked Fish – we like halibut, catfish and tilapia
47. Ceviche – surprisingly light
48. Rotisserie Chicken/Turkey – pair with a bag of steamer veggies to make a complete, healthy meal
49. Pulled Pork – with my husband’s homemade BBQ sauce…YUM!
50. Carne Asada – we have yet to find good asada out here in Colorado, but we will keep searching.

So, here you go. Now my question for you is this – do you have a list? If not, will you do one? Let me know in the comments! And if you do a blog post about it, let me know so I can link up!

Hey peeps – happy Monday!

Today I have a few ways for you to get dinner on the table when you are desperately busy. This seems to be a really busy time of year for me, though I can’t really pinpoint the reason for it. I also think I am suffering from a little burnout at work and at home, so these are the tips I have been relying on.

photo credit: banditob

1. Pick your go to meal.

As I write this, I am looking at the big bowl of spaghetti sauce that is cooling on my counter. I made this because it was easy, everyone will eat it and the leftovers will save me from thinking about my lunch for at least 2 days. That is GOLDEN to me in this time crunched state.

What meal can you fall back on? If you need help, here’s a quick list of 40 dinner ideas I posted about last week.

2. It’s ok if you have to be a slacker.

My husband has been out of town for the past two weekends. This means a few things, including 1. I didn’t go grocery shopping and 2. I was even more tired than normal.

You know what my kids ate?

Chicken tenders, leftover pizza and appetizers. You know what I ate? Cereal.

And you know what? That’s ok. We don’t eat liek that every night (only every other – LOL). It just so happened that I hurt myself last week and wasn’t too thrilled about cooking or cleaning up after big messes. I gave myself permission to be a slacker, which made it mush less stressful for me. I highly suggest the permission part – it really helps ease the mom guilt a smidge.

3. Pasta is your friend.

Keep some jarred pasta sauces on hand. I like to take some alfredo sauce, mix it with frozen chicken breasts and frozen broccoli for a super quick and easy meal.

4. Take out is a cop out…and that’s ok.

Sometimes, you just need a night (or two) with no dishes, no thought and no mess. If you can afford it, then don’t worry about it. As long as you aren’t feeding your kids Micky D’s 3 nights a week every week, things are probably ok. Our stand bys are Subway and Chipotle. We used to have McDonald’s Mondays in my house, simply because I knew that chances were high that I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before and would be extra tired. Planning for this made my life SO much easier.

It’s ok to do this. I promise.

5. Look for the bag.

Seriously, if you need a quick meal, walk down the frozen food aisle. Find the meal in a bag and there you go – dinner. Serve with a salad or some bread and you are done.

Before the nutrition police come and burn me at the stake, let me say this – i am not advocating you do this every night of every week. Sometimes we have weeks that are rougher than others and these tips will help with those times. I am very happy for you if you have time to cook everything from scratch and find organic goat’s cheese or whatever. I don’t have that kind of time. So there.

How do you get dinner on the table when life gets insane? Leave it in the comments!

Happy Monday all and welcome to Menu Plan Monday!

This week I had a request to hit on some basic recipes for those of us who are a bit challenged in the kitchen. Since I can completely relate to this, I am happy to oblige.

When I first started this post, my intention was to just offer up some easy recipes that someone with basic cooking skills could conjure up one day without too much stress and mess.

Then I got to thinking.

What would really be helpful would be a list of things to cook so that when you went to menu plan, you could just look at your list and choose, knowing that if it was on the list, you could do it.

This was an AHA moment.

So, here’s a list of possibilities. All of the possibilities are ones that I have either tried or cooked personally, so I can vouch for all of them.

1. Mac and Cheese
2. Grilled Chicken
   • Grill with bbq sauce or marinate it for a fuller flavor.
3. Spaghetti
   • To add variety, make different types of noodles.
4. Ribs
   • These can be cooked in the crock pot, broiler or grill.
5. Turkey Burgers
6. Grilled Turkey Legs
7. Beef Stroganoff
8. Slow Cooker Chicken
9. Slow Cooker French Dip
10. Pot Roast
11. Baked Chicken
12. Chicken Parmesan
13. Albondagas
14. Tacos
15. Enchiladas
16. Tostadas
17. Taco Salad
18. Pork Chops
19. Sausage
20. Bratwurst
21. Red Beans and Rice
22. Fetticinni Alfredo
23. Chili
24. Fajitas
25. Stir Fry
26. Lasagna
27. Tuna Casserole
28. Enchilada Casserole
29. Eggplant Parmesan
30. Ham with Greens
31. Tostada Goop – sooooo yummy! Make extra and you can use it for enchiladas or tostadas or taco salad or…
32. Neat Sloppy Joes
33. Chicken Fried Rice – don’t use oil (I just use water) and save on the fat content.
34. Steak
35. Kabobs – super easy to make
36. Meatballs – add bbq sauce and let the kids eat with toothpicks for extra fun, providing no one gets poked in the eyeball
37. Meatloaf – we make ours with bbq sauce. And bacon. Can’t forget the bacon.
38. Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches
39. Sub sandwiches – use mini rolls and make them custom for everyone
40. Nachos

I have to admit, I was surprised that I was able to generate a list this long of things that I had personally cooked. Pretty cool, if you ask me. Most of what is listed here is something that can easily be cooked after coming home from work.

My suggestion with most of these is to make double and freeze it. Voila! You have a made ahead meal that you can just drop in the freezer.

So, what would be on your menu list? Leave it in the comments, or better yet, do your own post and I will edit this one to add your link!

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a GREAT weekend!

This week for Menu Plan Monday, I’m talking about casseroles. I loooove a good casserole and since we are projected to get snow twice this week, I love the idea of tossing stuff in the oven and warming up the house. There’s just one problem.

I’m trying to lose weight.

And I don’t know about you, but the casseroles I remember growing up with were dripping in fat. That’s part of what made them taste yummy, but that’s not the point here. The point is, you too can still eat casseroles without eating your weight in casseroles.

Here’s some recipes I found:

Casseroles Under 300 Calories, courtesy of MyRecipes.com

There are 10 to choose from, the two that I would love to try is the Marmalade French Toast and the Eggplant Parmesan, which I pasted below.

Eggplant Parmesan

Preparation

Combine first 7 ingredients in a large saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer, uncovered, 20 minutes.

Place eggplant in a large bowl; add water to cover, and let stand 30 minutes. Drain well; blot dry with paper towels. Combine 1/4 cup water and egg whites in a shallow bowl. Combine breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese; stir well. Dip eggplant in egg white mixture, and dredge in breadcrumb mixture.

Place half of eggplant on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray, and broil 5 minutes on each side or until browned. Repeat procedure with remaining eggplant. Set eggplant aside.

Spread half of tomato mixture in bottom of a 13 x 9-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Arrange half of eggplant over sauce; top with half of mozzarella cheese. Repeat layers with remaining sauce, eggplant, and cheese.

Bake at 350° for 30 minutes or until bubbly. Let stand 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with fresh oregano sprigs, if desired.

10 Healthy Casseroles, courtesy of Taste of Home.

Make sure you take a look at the Turkey Enchilada Casserole!

Healthy Casserole Recipes, courtesy of SparkPeople.

You can’t go wrong with SparkPeople, so check out this list.

Hearty and Healthy Casseroles, courtesy of Parents.com

This site does require registration, but it is probably worth it since they have a recipe for Scallop and Shrimp Fetticcini.

Now, the big challenge in my house will be adapting these recipes to fit with my food allergies. Getting rid of the cheese will also get rid of calories and fat from the recipes, so that is a good thing.

My question for you is this – does your family like casseroles? If so, how do you make them healthy? And of course, when you try one of these, please leave me a note and let me know how it tasted.

Have a great week!

Happy Monday peeps!

Welcome to another week (one in which I will have to work all 5 days). I don’t know about you, but mac and cheese is one of my fave comfort meals. I can’t eat it due to my allergies, but the thought of a nice hot plate of steaming, creamy mac and cheese makes my mouth water!

Here are 8 ways to make this classic.

1. My mom’s baked Mac and Cheese

My mom used to make this and now I bake this for my family. I don’t have measurements (of course), but you can guesstimate as needed.

Ingredients

1 box Elbow Macaroni noodles

1 block Cheddar Cheese, cut into chunks or strips

Milk

Butter

Directions:

1. Cook the noodles until done. Drain.

2. In a round or square baking dish, layer noodles and cheese until you run out of room in the pan.

3. Put a few pats of butter on top.

4. Pour milk into the bottom of the dish. Pour more if you like it really creamy.

Bake covered at 350 until all cheese is melted. Remove the lid or foil and let it bake uncovered for a few minutes to make it nice and crispy on top.

One word – YUM.

2. Colorado River of Cheese and Macaroni

This recipe from The Food Network looks complicated, but yummy!

3. Macaroni and Cheese with Slow Roasted Tomato Slices

I would be remiss if I didn’t include a recipe from my nemesis Martha. This is a very gourmet version of the classic.

4. Macaroni and Cheese with Bacon

What else is there to say? It has bacon.

5. Alton Brown’s Macaroni and Cheese

This variation includes mustard powder and onion.

6. Green Chile Macaroni and Cheese

I like the concept of this, since I love green chile, but not sure about it in my mac and cheese…

7. Crockpot Macaroni and Cheese

Toss the ingredients in the crock pot and enjoy after work.

8. Mac and Cheese from scratch

From Southern Living – It looks to die for!

What is your variation? What is your kids favorite? Leave it in the comments!

Happy Monday all!

I don’t know about you, but up here in Colorado, we are in the middle of a snow. This translates to this – I don’t want to go anywhere. At. All.

It also means that nothing hits the spot like a bowl of hearty soup. It’s filling, it’s easy to make and it makes for great leftovers. The one issue I have found is getting the kids to eat soup. The Princess doesn’t seem to like the consistency of soup, so we have taken to letting her eat it with bread to beef up the consistency. My son will eat soup, but only certain kinds.

Here are two recipes we have made in the past two weeks that have turned out really tasty (and are healthy!):

Albondigas

This is a traditional Mexican meatball soup that is GREAT when served with warm, buttered tortillas dipped in.

* About the measurements – I don’t have exacts, because this is a dish my husband makes and he doesn’t measure. Anything.

• Ground Beef - we have used many mixtures, including vennison, elk and turkey. No matter what you mix in, it needs to have a base of ground beef for the flavor and the little bit of fat.
• Onion, chopped
• Onion Powder
• Garlic Powder
• Salt
• Pepper
• Cilantro, fresh
• Tomatoes, fresh
• Mint, fresh
• 1 small can Medium or Mild Green Chili
• 1 Egg
• Rice, optional – this is used to hold the meat together
• Beef bouillon – to taste
• Caldo de Pollo – to taste

Mix everything into the meat except the beef boullion and the Caldo De Pollo. The egg and the rice help the meatballs stick together. Form into medium to large meatballs, then place in a large saucepan.

Fill the saucepan with water and set to boil.

Add some beef bouillion and Caldo de Pollo depending on your tastes.

Boil for a minimum of 30 minutes. Boiling longer helps the soup have more flavor.

Serve with warm tortillas.

This dish can be made spicier if you want.

Ham with Greens

This is a traditional Black “soul food” dish that I grew up on. I tried to make it as healthy as possible, by adding spinach as the greens. You can also add Green Beans.

• 1 package Ham Hocks, Ham Bone or even bacon
• 1 clump Greens – could be Collard, Mustard, Spinach, etc.
• Potatoes
• Salt
• Pepper

In a large saucepan, put the ham hocks and cover with water.

Rinse and rip the greens into small-ish pieces and add to the pot.

Cut potatoes into chunks – add to pot.

Boil until the potatoes are soft. Taste intermittantly and add salt and pepper as needed.

Serve with warm, buttered corn bread. Yummmmmmmm.

So, what are your favorite soups to make during winter and do your kids eat them? As always, leave it in the comments!

Happy 2011!

I hope you had a very enjoyable holiday season. Now that it’s over, it’s time to get back to real life. Tough, but necessary.

Last year, I talked a lot about menu planning. Well, it turns out, I did it for a good reason. As a busy working mom, the thing that saved me the most was menu planning and using my crock pot.

I have been working hard to lose weight, so I will need to balance the crock pot use with my food allergies (dairy, wheat and yeast) and making a healthy meal that everyone will be interested in.

photo credit: www.theedinburghblog.co.uk

To kick off the year right, I want to share some links to help you menu plan. Even if you only plan 3 meals a week, you will be ahead of the game. If you plan 3 meals with leftovers, that’s 6 meals. If you freeze them, you have ready made meals for those days where you are just too busy to cook a good meal.

This weekend, I used several frozen meals as we recovered from the holidays. It was awesome to not have to cook. This is my plan for next week too.

My newest meal planning challenge?

Eating all the meat that my husband has killed. We have a freezer full of different meats, including elk, deer and antelope. We processed a lot of it into mixes – ground beef mixed with elk, ground sausage mixed with deer to make breakfast sausage, etc.

This is not within my norm, but so far it is working out well. We have had deer meat chili and spaghetti and neither kid was for the wiser. I want to use the meat we already have.

Here’s the links on getting started with menu planning:

Menu Planning

Menu Planning from Organized Home

A Basic Guide to Menu Planning from Simple Mom

Meal Planning Tips and Tricks from Annie’s Eats

And of course, Menu Plan Monday from I’m an Organizing Junkie.

Have I convinced you yet? I am telling you, this is one of the biggest timesavers you can employ. If you have already started planning your menus, tell us what is working. If you haven’t, what is stopping you? Leave a comment so we can help you out!

Happy Monday!

This week I am combining my Menu Plan Monday with my 12 Days of Christmas series.

Today’s topic is an important one. Many women equate the holidays with sore feet and utter exhaustion. Much of this is due to cooking and baking. Here are some tips to help you spend less time in the kitchen and more time enjoying family and friends.

1. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

I know this makes me sound like a broken record, but I really, really mean it. What can you simplify to make your life easier? Here’s a quick list:

• Precut veggies.
• Pre-crumbled bread.
• Pre-crumbled sausage.
• Store bought cookie dough.
• Premade pies.

Basically, as you can plainly see, anything you can buy to save time might be worth it. For me, I don’t like to use premade cookie dough at the holidays (go figure, right?) but will buy precut and prechopped veggies all day long.

2. Make a plan. Stick to plan.

Design a simple menu. Do you really need 13 separate dishes and 7 different desserts? Really?

Pick something that you do really, really well and then add a few things to round out the meal. Problem solved.

3. Potluck style rules.

Ask your guests to share a favorite dish of theirs. They will like being able to share something that is important to them and it is less for you to do.

4. Work early.

Do ANYTHING early that you can. If you can cook it and freeze it, do it. If you can cut it and stick it in the fridge, do it. For Thanksgiving this year, I did ALL my baking in the 3 days leading up to the big day. We precook the meat and bread for the stuffing the day before. It makes it so much easier to just pop food in the oven and then forget about it for a few hours.

Basically the mantra is this – DO WHATEVER IT TAKES SO YOU CAN ENJOY THE HOLIDAYS TOO.

PERIOD.

What tips do you have to save you time in the kitchen around the holidays? Leave them in the comments!