Back to the Old Grind

So. I have been meaning to get back to my blog for a while now...it's been a long while.

The most popular question I get these days is about our menu and how I prep meals for the week during the school year.  It started a few years ago when my girls and I came home from our "first day back at school" and we were STARVING! And I had no idea what we were going to eat! I swear we ate all kinds of bad, bad things before I actually figured out a game plan for dinner that evening.

In the course of the days to follow, we all brainstormed some our favorite dinners and made a menu for the next week. And we continued to do that.  It worked OK, but sometimes we didn't have what we needed and had to learn to plan what to buy at the grocery store. Sometimes making dinner took FOREVER. Sometimes school activities interfered and we had to pick up something because we had to time to cook.

Last summer, I found a cool chalkboard menu to post our menu for the week. I also revamped our menu planning. I started planning a MONTH'S worth of dinners so that I could buy all the meat and special ingredients we would need for the month on my payday. Since I only get paid once a month, I was not used to this. The first time I bought a month's worth of groceries for dinner, I almost fainted at the checkout. However, it lasted until the next payday. And I did not have to go back (at least for dinner stuff).

*It is important to inform you that when my husband gets paid (twice a month), we go get milk, cereal, eggs, etc.

Armed with my new chalkboard menu, I was then able to stick to a menu because I had posted it for the whole family to see and I had all the stuff I needed to make those meals. And the neatest thing is when they come check it to see what we are having that night and walk off saying "YES!"

Now, if the chalkboard menu is not for you, I highly urge you to go browse Pinterest for one that does suit your needs. There are a ton!

My next blog will be dedicated how I prepare my meals for the week! So until then, be happy, do a burpee or two, and try planning your menu for a week!

sjf

Chalkboard Menu

This is one of my favorite projects I did this summer. And based on the comments on Facebook that I got from it, I thought this would be a perfect blog entry. I am sure we all have a paper calendar and we write down our weekly menu on it. It works...sometimes. During the school year, it is really hard to stick to it. This is my attempt to stick to the schedule!

I cannot take credit for this nifty idea. In the summer, I scour the web looking for simple, yet, creative things to make and do. I also subscribe to a lady named The Tip Junkie. (I could devote a whole blog to her, but maybe another time). If you want to find out for yourself how awesome she is, you can find her here: http://tipjunkie.com/.

Anyhow, through Tip Junkie, I found this blog: http://theinspiredroom.net/diy/chalkboard-ideas/.

I thought..."I can do that!" Instead of the side of a cabinet, I used the pantry door instead. In our kitchen, this is a very visible place and the chalkboard adds to our coffee theme (or at least I think it does).

I followed the directions on the can of chalkboard paint. I purposely painted it before our trip to South Padre so it would have time to cure and when we got back, it was all ready to season and use.

And thereyou have it...the story behind our chalkboard menu.

I Love Saturdays and Lemon Curd Cookies

So I had my Saturday "To Do" List ready by Thursday this past week. With school just around the corner, it was time to do the dreaded back to school cleaning of my house. So my Saturday started off with vacuuming the girls' rooms with my mom's Rainbow vaccuum cleaner. If you have never experience cleaning with one of these babies, you should. It's got a water filtration system in it that helps to deep clean the carpet and the air. On top of that, I then steam cleaned their carpets. Both bathrooms in the house also got their fair shair of Mr. Clean, the Shark Steam mop, and baseboards get wiped clean with Chlorox wipes.

In the midst of all of this, Mia comes to me: "Mama, can we make cookies today?"

Uhh, we live in Texas. It is 100+ degrees outside. But what is my response? "Sure, baby girl. What would you like to make?"

She responds with, "Something that we can fill with jam."

Wait. What? Like the minions in "Despicable Me", "WHHAAATTTT?"

I have never done that. And though every part of me screams "NO!", we end up looking for recipes online. We finally settle on this one:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Petite-Lemon-Curd-Cookies-108921

That's right. We have to make both cookies and a lemon curd filling. And I have to temper the eggs. And I have to go out on 100+ degrees weather for butter and lemons. When I return from the store, the butter is still cold, so I set it outside in a bowl to soften. That takes all of 10 minutes! It's that hot.

While I zest lemons and squeeze them for juice, Mia cheers me on and watches the 3/4 c. line on the measuring cup. She is so happy cooking in the kitchen.

The rest goes smoothly. I successfully temper the eggs to the lemon mixture without making lemon flavored scrambled eggs. (That's how I explained the concept of tempering to her. She thought this was hilarious.) We make the butter cookie recipe and after we wait the hour for the dough to chill, we realize that we do not have a 1 1/4" round cookie cutter. That's a small cookie. Probably why they are called 'petite.' We are not heavy drinkers by any means, but for some reason, we have a shot glass. And so we flour the rim of the shot glass and cut our cookies out. In the end, we just end up rolling the dough into small balls and flatten them with our hands. They come out basically the same.

So now the fun part -- filling a ziploc bag with the lemon curd and piping it onto a cookie. I read a lot of the reviews of this recipe and all of them said that this step was very messy. One tester even lowered her 5 star review to 4 because of this step. So I had planned to do this myself. No. Mia is not having any of that. She wants to do it all herself. I relent. Turns out, she is a natural at this step. She squeezes the bag ever so gently and fills up the center of the cookie and tops it with another like she had been doing this all her life. No mess here! I do not know what the other testers were doing, but they could learn a thing or two from Mia.

The time has come. We taste the fruit of our labor. Heaven. The tartness of the lemon curd is amazing. Mia says, "ooh, that makes my ears tingle!" You know that feeling on the sides of your throat and tongue when you taste something tart? We love that feeling here at our house. So worth the work.

So this is what I love about summer. The ability to do things like this with my daughters on a whim and not worry about what it might interfere with or what my schedule looks like. The joy in their eyes when you take time out of your schedule and share part of the day doing what THEY want. Sacrifice. Parenthood. I could have said, "No, I am very busy today. Let's wait and do it another time." But what if another time never comes? Was I tired? Yes. Did I want to nap? Yes. Did I? No. Was it worth it? A million times, Yes.

You have never known exhausted until you decide to deep clean your house and make such a difficult, yet easy, petite lemon curd cookie on a Saturday in 100 degree + weather in Texas with a 6 year old.

Summer 2011

It's been a while, but I have redone the blog and have some high hopes to be consistent with it. Keep your fingers crossed!

Our summer is quickly coming to an end...and I still have so many things I want to do here around the house AND get in some good pool time with the girls.

It would be just my luck to find a great website with simple decorating, cooking, and organization ideas just this past week. A friend at church told me about it and I find myself spending more time than I should on www.pinterest.com . If you have not heard about it, you may want to go check it out.

The best way I can describe it is this: it's like an online bulletin board. You know how when we were teenagers, we would pin up cool pictures, sayings, notes, etc.? Well, basically that is what pinterets is. You can go in and create as many "boards" as you want. See something on someone else's board you like? You can "repin" it on your board. The cool thing is is that when you "pin" something you like, pinterest automatically links the site to your pin. So when you are ready to cook that recipe or try your hand at a nifty craft idea you have on your board, click on the picture and it will take you to the original site with the instructions. *sigh* Yes, I wish I had more summer.

Until next time!
sjf