Tag Archives: meals

Scrapbooking Your Favorite Recipe

Cookbooks fascinate me. Mostly the type that have beautiful full color photographs offsetting a delicious, mouth-watering recipe. I’ve discussed creating a cookbook with your scrapbooking supplies before. Did you listen? A couple of months back my mother’s art class decided to put together a cookbook using their beautiful painting techniques. My mother didn’t want to take the time to paint her page, and I have absolutely no painting skills. She asked me if I would scrapbook the recipe she wanted to do and hand over a page. She wanted two pages. One real clean and simple that she could add … Continue reading →

Toddlers at the Table

We have all read and heard so much about how important it is for families to eat meals together. Many of us actually WANT to have and nurture the family meals. That can make it incredibly tough and challenging to figure out how to manage the difficult toddler stage. Anyone who has ever tried to have a civilized meal with a 2 or 3-year-old at the table—knows how “uncivilized” it can be! So, what can you do when it comes to toddlers at the family dinner table? Family meals ARE important, but I am of the opinion that flexibility and … Continue reading →

Conquering Holiday Grocery Waste

Want to save almost $2,000 a year? Eliminate the bulk of your grocery waste. Here is how. In my earlier article, Conquering The Grocery Waste (1), I explained that most households waste 25 percent of their groceries. This waste is foodstuff that has gone bad or foodstuff that was purchased and then never used. In that first article, we talked about how produce is one of the biggest areas of waste and how we can make smarter choices to eliminate all of that money that ends up in the garbage can. Now, in this article, we will cover one of … Continue reading →

The Last of the Thanksgiving Turkey

My children have not always been soup eaters. As youngsters, they would have the occasional bowl of canned chicken noodle soup but that was about it. Now that they are older teenagers, their tastes are “maturing” as well and now a big pot of soup is likely to get scarfed down. In fact, it felt strangely ritualistic and almost “cultural” to make the big pot of turkey vegetable noodle soup this past weekend and share the last of this year’s Thanksgiving turkey with my teens… Even though we’ve had our Christmas decorations up for over a week and are definitely … Continue reading →

Dinnertime as a Sacrament

I really enjoy cooking and trying new recipes. I have several cookbooks and I go through them regularly, looking for tasty tidbits I have overlooked. I feel a sense of satisfaction when I hit on something that is unique, tasty, and easy to prepare. Then I set it on the table, and receive a four-part chorus of groans. “What is this?” “I don’t know, but it looks like dog food.” “Yeah, it smells like it too.” “I’m not eating this.” My husband, thankfully, isn’t that picky and will clean up the leftovers, of which there are plenty, because the children … Continue reading →

Bacon in Bulk

You can bring home the bacon without spending a lot of bacon when you buy it in bulk. Here are some top tips for buying, storing and using bacon that will give you the most bang for your buck. Bacon is one of those foods that falls in an out of favor. Bacon and eggs were once the staple of the successful American diet. Then it fell out of favor because of the fat that is part of bacon. Substitutes, such as turkey bacon, which is leaner (and the bacon we personally prefer), became available. Couple that with the South … Continue reading →

National Men Make Dinner Day: Husbands, Hit the Kitchen!

Wayne’s not here to cook for me tonight, but if he was I’d make sure we honored this day. (Which, in case you didn’t know it, is National Men Make Dinner Day.) “Are you kidding me?” ‘Fraid not, sweetheart. We may be living in modern times, and some husbands do take on the task of cooking for their wives and families on a regular basis. But notice the use of the word “some.” Not “most.” That means there’s still a lot of men out there who enjoy the benefit of a wife-prepared meal and never raise a finger to help. … Continue reading →

Do Single Parent Families Eat Less Healthy?

I was talking with another single mom the other day who confessed that she “never had time to cook.” Meals at their house usually consisted of take-out, easy-to-prepare meals or food from the deli at the supermarket. While this fit the “stereotype” of the harried single parent family, it got me to wondering if some of the stats are accurate—do single parents eat less healthy than others do? My own experiences are a little skewed because not only do I love to cook, but I am also pretty thrifty—so cooking at home and preparing meals for my family has always … Continue reading →

Stretching Out a Meal Kit

Prepackaged meal kits can be fun and easy for busy families, but they hardly provide enough food for most families. There are some inexpensive ways to stretch out prepackaged meal kits and make sure that everyone has enough to eat. Let me first start by saying that I normally pass up those prepackaged meal kits because they can cost a lot of money for little food. Often, I can make my own version of these types of kits just by grouping things in my pantry that you find when you open the box of one of these kits. I’ve written … Continue reading →

Saving Food: The Ice Cube Method

I have spoken a little bit about food waste before. Among the strategies to curb food waste (and money in the rash) are having a leftover or clean out the fridge night, using leftovers in savory muffins and keeping a container to make freezer soup. Now here is one more strategy: Using ice cub trays. We now have our water hooked up to our refrigerator and have automatic ice. I won’t get rid of the ice cube trays, though. They come in handy for saving leftover food, especially when you need small amounts of something. A good example for using … Continue reading →