Shepherd's Pie

So this is from Tuesday's Dinner. I made the shepherd's pie and salad. We skipped the apple crisp. Even though it had a full serving of fruit and the oatmeal, I had one kido making cookies for a friends birthday (and I knew we would end up a percentage of those!) and I had to bribe another kidlet with icecream for doing homework (I know...I know....but the homework got done). And when I bribe one kid with icecream the deal is everybody gets some. Which ends up creating quite the cheering section for the one being bribed!

The only change I made to this recipe, was that I couldn't find my cheddar cheese to put on the top, so I used american instead. The cheddar would have looked prettier, but alas, I didn't find it in the back of the refrigerator until the next day. I did have to use a larger pan, than what the receipe called for, I baked mine in a 7x10 pan instead of the 8x8 in the recipe. And, I do think that it needed salt and pepper in both the potatoes and the meat mixture. Of course, that's just personal taste!!!

The kids gave it mixed reviews. I had two who liked it, one who didn't and one who refused to try it on principal. He decided that anything with "pie" in the name should never, never have meat or vegetables in it. So we may have to re-name this one a casserole next time!

The recipe is in the link to the menu on the menu page, or you can scroll down to the earlier post and find it there as well!!

Planes, Trains and Things that Go!

Sorry this is late....I'm still figuring out how to do this with different software.
Here is the PDF for the weekly theme: Planes Trains and Things that Go!

Planes Trains and Things that Go

The format is slightly different from the others I have posted. If you click on any square on the schedule that has underlined words, it will take you to an outside webpage. Even the pages that I created myself still take you to another pdf document. Hopefully this will work just as well or even better!! Since I'm still testing this out Please Let Me Know if you have any problems, or if any of the links aren't working so I can fix them!!

And of course, let me know how the activities work for you!!

Thanks!!



Pear Bread

This morning's recipe was pear bread (I made it the night before!) The recipe link is below:

Pear Bread

I made a few minor changes to the recipe when I made it. I didn't bother peeling the pears (I figure the skin has more nutrition in it, and it "melts" into the bread when it bakes, so you don't notice it - Plus it's a lot faster to make if you don't have to peel the pears!!)

I also left out the nuts, since my family doesn't paticularly like nuts, and I put in about a cup of chocolate chips instead.

The recipe does make two loaves. So, you can serve one and freeze the other. Or, serve one and suprise a friend/neighbor with the other. Or you can bake half the batter as bread (to serve or freeze) and the other other half as muffins (to serve or freeze) Whatever works best for you!!



January 28th Menu

Hello Everyone!

Here is the menu for this coming week. Sorry it is a bit late in coming. I'm using a lower version of my pdf reader, while I am home on maternity leave, so it will look a bit different. When you open the pdf link, the first page will still have the menu, but instead of clicking on the menu square for the link to that recipe. All of the recipes and links will be listed on the first page under the menu. You should be able to just click on the link from the pdf, but if that doesn't work, you can always copy the link into your browser.

This week's produce item is New Potatoes (because Safeway has them on sale this week for $.99 per pound!) Here's to hoping for a great week!!





Menu Jan 28 New Potatoes

Menu for January 14th: Broccoli

Hi Everyone!
Here's our menu for this coming week. This week's produce item is broccoli! This is one vegetable that my kids either love or hate depending on the day of the week. We go through phases like that. This week, I tried to mix it in with a variety of recipes so that it didn't get too redundant.

If you'd like to look through the recipes. here's a link to a pdf menu. It also includes a shopping list. Just a note, if the ingredient is listed in a recipe, I put the amount before the ingredient, if the amount you need is specific to the number of people you're cooking for (like apples for snack time) I list the amount we buy for my family of 6 after the ingredient. That way you know to adjust for your family.

Jan 14 Weekly Menu

Next Week's Theme: Arctic Animals

In case anyone wanted to follow along with next weeks preschool theme: Arctic Animals, here's the link to the pdf with all of the materials and instructions.

Arctic Animals

One of Those Moments

This is my first official week of maternity leave! It has gone really well.
Except that somehow in the past two days I've managed to strain my sciatic nerve. Which means that far from getting everything done, that I dreamed of accomplishing while on maternity leave, it now hurts to do anything but sit still. (Oddly enough sitting still was not on my list of things to do on my maternity leave.)

So, I've just been taking everything a little slower than usualy and stopping every 10-15 mintues to sit down and rest for 15-20 minutes. Fine. Everything was going well, until it was time to pick up the kidos from school.

My husband switched one of his night shifts to a day shift this week, so he was at work and would need to be picked up after his shift ended at 4:00. I realized as I was heading out the door at 2:30 that the younger kids had try-outs for the school play and would not be getting out until 4:30. So, knowing we would need to coordinate this, I hastily call my husband. He answers the phone but says he can't talk. Hmm... well, I don't have a cell phone at the moment, and we're out of minutes on the car phone, so we'll have to wing it.

I go pick up my eleven-year-old at middle school, and since we have an hour-and-a-half until the younger kids get out, we stop for milkshakes and then drive to the elementary school. She wants to go inside and see former friends and teachers, so I turn around to get the three-year-old out of his seat, and realize that he has no shoes. Really?? Okay, we usually have a few pairs in the back seat, but you guessed it, one of the first things I accomplished on my maternity leave was to clean out the car!

So, I send in my eleven-year-old and try to find something to entertain my three year old in the car for over an hour. I end up letting him move to the middle seat (since the car is parked) he can sit in his brother's booster seat and play with the ipod. This makes him happy. After the hour and a half is over, I'm anxiously waiting for the eleven-year-old to bring the eight and nine year old back to the car as planned. Only they haven't come yet. I'm starting to get worried that my husband is stranded at his work with no way to call and tell me. So, I start getting my bare-foot three-year-old out of the car to go look for them. (Remember the whole sciatic nerve thing?? Yeah, also means I can't lift anything -especially three-year-olds - so now he has to walk bare-foot into the school) Only now he mentions that he peed his pants. Really??? But he had a pull-up on, only aparently not a very absorbant one. Now his brother's booster seat is wet with pee. Great!

Well now, I take my bare-foot dripping-with-pee three-year-old into the school to find my other kids. Who are on their way out. They are late because my eight-year-old was the very last kid in the entire school to audition! Of course, now he remembers that he borrowed a pencil from a teacher, so he immediately turns around and runs across the corner of the parking lot to return it to her. Only he slips and falls on the asphalt because his back pack strap has broken off. (A fact he mentioned this morning as we were late getting into the car) A fact also pointed out to me by the teacher who saw him fall, and ran to help him before, I his pregnant limping mother with the wet, bare-footed three-year-old in toe could get to him.

He is of course sobbing, he's scraped his elbow, both forearms and the palms of his hands. We're late, I have to tell him he can't sit in his regular seat, because his brother peed in it. He now has to sit by his nine-year-old sister who is very indignant that she has to sit next to her brother, because he is upset, and she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. As soon as he sits down he wants his new ipod. Which causes another torrent of sobbing because apparently his three-year-old brother has changed the settings on his favorite game and now it is in French.

We finally get everyone buckled, albeit in the wrong seats, and we get moving as fast as we can to get home to see if Daddy found another way home from work, or if he's walking by this point, or if he's just hanging out waiting for us. Only we seem to be completely out of gas. And the only gas station we pass on the way home is the gas station that only takes cash or debit cards. (You guessed it, I only had a credit card with me!) Now, we're headed down the freeway, just hoping we make it home, and my three-year-old decides to unlock the car door. This does not sit well with me at this point, so now, I'm yelling at him about being safe in the car, and how the last time he didn't listen in the car he had to go to bed, and how none of us want that again, plus this day would really not get better, if we lost a car door or a three-year-old on the freeway. About five minutes later, he starts to gag, and all I can think is if we start vomiting in the too-clean-to-find-shoes car I am going to quit this motherhood gig once and for all!

Thankfully, he did not throw up. We did make it home without running out of gas. We found my husband at home, who forgot to mention that he had already made arrangements with a co-worker to drive him home. Of course his next comment was: "What's for dinner?" followed closely by: "Did you know there are ants in our closet and they are all over my white dress shirts?"

I'm still considering this motherhood gig and weather I'm really cut out for it!!!

One of the things I like about having a pre-planned menu, is that it makes it easier for me to be flexible with dinner! We had pork chops tonight, but I switched out the side dishes. I usually print out a copy of the menu and put it on the refrigerator for the week. Then I cross off the dishes as I make them during that week. That way if I have to go out of order or switch something around, I can tell by looking what I have left to choose from (and I know I'll have the ingredients on hand!)

For tonight's dinner, I made pork chops. I bought boneless chops and pan fried them in a non-stick skillet. Then I put all of them in an 11"x 7" baking dish, covered them with foil and finished cooking them in a 350 degree oven. I have an electric thermometer that you can put into the food while it bakes, and see the read-out on the outside of the oven, so I just cooked them to 165 degrees and served.

The sides I "borrowed" from Sunday's dinner.

If you're interested you can click  on the menu tab at the top of the blog and download any of the weekly menus.

 This week we started our Ice and Snow projects! At the beginning of the week, I usually print out the activities I'd like to use and put them in a binder. The binder has tabs for the days of the week. Then the night before, after the kids have gone to bed, I usually gather everything I'll need for the next day and put it in a basket. That way, when I sit down with my three-year-old to do the projects, I've got everything I need. I also cut out anything I want to pre-cut the night before! This is great to do when I'm watching TV.

 We were a bit of an over-achiever with our glitter snowflakes. We decided we needed glitter, stars, and more stars, but we had fun with it!!

This was our story board. My three-year-old was interested for about three minutes in it, until his older brother came home from school and wanted to play with it. Then all of a sudden he wanted it all to himself, and it was the coolest thing ever!

If you'd like a pdf document with all of the Ice and Snow activities here's the link:

Snow and Ice

This morning's breakfast was waffles. I thought it would be a good back to school treat for the kidos who are headed back after Winter Break.
There's a great basic waffle recipe at all recipes.com if you'd like to make them from scratch, but making them from a mix is fine too!! Classic Waffles
I just had to include a picture, since my mother-in-law gave me a Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Waffle iron for our wedding, and it's still our favorite! Who doesn't love Winnie the Pooh pancakes in the morning!
I decided to go with fresh strawberries, but if they are hard to find or expensive you can always use frozen. I just put frozen fruit in a saucepan. Add a little sugar if necessary, and bring it to a low boil. Then I add a little cornstarch mixed in water, bring it back to a boil, and let it thicken up. Voila! Fruit topping!

Preschool Theme: Ice and Snow

With all of the frost we've been having in my little neck of the woods, I thought this week would be the perfect time to do all of our ice and snow activities.


Here's a link to the pdf, which includes a materials list:

Ice and Snow

For some reason I'm not able to upload pictures at the moment, so hopefully this afternoon, I'll be able to post some of the pictures of the ice and snow activities!

Menu for the week of January 7th

Next week's menu will feature oranges as the "Harvest of the Week."

Once you click on the link, it will open up an interactive pdf document. Clicking on any of the items that are underlined will automatically take you to the recipe.

If you'd like more inforamtion on how I create the menus, feel free to click on the "Menus" tab at the top of the blog.

Here's the link to the pdf:

Menu Jan 7 Oranges

Of Shower Curtains and Boys

First of all, let me just say that I really do watch my children......really I do.
Last night, while waiting for my eight-year-old to fall asleep, my three-year-old was running around. He had just gotten out of the bath a few minutes before and was running around waiting for his turn to go to bed (they share a room and they cannot go to bed at the same time, or they will keep each other up FOREVER).
I was finishing something up on the computer when I heard my three-year-old coughing. As I got up to see what was going on, he met me half-way in the kitchen and threw up all over my shoes!! This is not an uncommon thing in my house......it happens every now and then, but this was a bit out of the blue. He hadn't been sick, it had been a while since dinner. For some reason I kept asking him if he had put anything in his mouth. Nope, he was sure he hadn't. He said his tummy hurt, but that seemed obvious. 
Once he was done throwing up, I took him into the bathroom to give him yet anther bath. As I pulled back the shower curtain, I realized that the liner was torn.......and missing a piece. (It's blue, and super-thin, and I suppose looks a bit like a giant fruit roll-up.....sort of??)
"Jay...........did you put the shower curtain in your mouth?"
"NO! I'm not talking about it!"
"Jay...mommy needs to know what goes into your mouth or your belly...... did you put a piece of the shower curtain liner in your mouth???"
"NO, Nope, no."
"Okay.......let's get you washed up"
A few minutes later my twelve-year-old comes up to me and says "Jay just told me the wierdest thing....he says he ate the shower curtain"

Seriously...........he ate the shower curtain liner!!! I have absolutely no response to this.....are shower curtains poisionous? They can't possibly be good for you.......yeah....try searching on the internet for whether shower curtain liners are poisonious if injested...Okay...so they are made out of some very icky stuff. Umm...try calling your husband at work to tell him your son ate a SHOWER CURTAIN LINER!!!!!!! Should I take him to the emergency room ('cause I'd just LOVE to be that mom that comes in and has to explain to the ER staff that I think my kid might have eaten a shower curtain!) Wow... no the house is waaay too messy for a visit from CPS. Let's just call his doctor at home and see what he says.

Bottom line: He's fine.....I think he may have tried to eat a piece of the plastic, but I don't think it went down. (As icky as it seems it wasn't in any of the throw-up) I'm hoping he just gagged on it and that's what caused the vomiting!

New Rule: NO EATING SHOWER CURTAINS!

And we now own a very thick, non-tearing, NON-EDIBLE shower liner!

"Wednesday Night Suprise"

This week I haven't posted a menu, since at my house it's time to use up all of the odds and ends left in my cupboards, refrigerator and freezer. Every so often they just seem to pile up! You know the extra cans that somehow made it into the shopping cart, or the leftover half of a cucumber.
So instead of sharing a whole menu this week, I thought I would share some of the tips I use when I want to use up most of the odds and ends.

1) Soup - soup is a great way to use up little bits and pieces of leftovers. I stock up on chicken broth when it's on sale and keep it in the pantry. That way, when I have leftover meat, I can just simmer it with whatever leftover veggies I have in the fridge. Add in some kind of starch (chopped potatoes, rice, or dry pasta) and whatever fresh or dried herbs you have in the cupboard, and you are good to go!

2) Salads - much the same thing, as long has you have some greens and a favorite salad dressing on hand you can add in pretty much whatever leftover raw veggies you have on hand. To make it the main dish add in any shredded meat you have and you're set!

3) Omelets - again, good for adding small amounts of leftover veggies and cheeses. (If omelets are challenging, just scrambling the eggs with the other ingredients works just as well - especially when topped with shredded cheese!)

4) Fried Rice - you can take day old (or 3-day-old) rice and add veggies, eggs, and meat (optional). Just fry it up in a little bit of oil in a wok or a non-stick frying pan.

5) When I have more challenging ingredients left over, I turn to one of my favorite online recipe sites:

www.allrecipes.com.

They have an option at the top of the page to search by ingredient. I prioritize my extra ingredients because I want to use the ones that might go bad soonest first. I pick two, and enter them into the search by ingredient page. Then scroll through the options it gives me. If none of them appeal, try a different combination. Many times, it gives me options I never really thought about. Sometimes I end up needing just one or two ingredients from the store in order to make whatever looks good (okay with me, since I'm trying to avoid wasting the ingredients that might otherwise go bad and get thrown away). The last example I have was typing in "carrots" and "sour cream" and coming up with a great recipe for sheppard's pie that I didn't even know I was craving!

If you have other hints or tricks for using up the odds, ends, and leftovers; let me know in the comments, and I'll post them for everyone else!!