When you have a five year old you can get them to eat just about anything if you call it a pancake (or at least that has been my experience) Anyway… I was cruising around Pinterest and found 2 “pancake” recipes I really wanted to try. Here’s one and here’s the other.  (If you’re not on Pinterest and can’t see the recipes sorry ~ shoot me an email and I’ll send you an invite!)  I couldn’t wait so I decided to combine them and see what happened.

Absolute Deliciousness is what happened!!

Here’s how it went.

1 cup quinoa
1 zucchini shredded
3 tbsp flour
1 egg slightly scrambled
1/2 c shredded cheese (I used a mexican mix ~ it’s what I had in the fridge)
a couple tbsp diced onion (I used white, but it would have been better with green onions)
salt and pepper to taste

Let’s make it! 

Cook the Quinoa following the directions on the package.

While that’s cooking, grate the zucchini with a cheese grater. Then make sure you wring it out to get the moisture out. I used a tea towel ~ but if you have full size paper towels that will probably work too!

Once the zucchini is dried mix cheese, flour, egg, onions, salt and pepper in a bowl and combine.

When the Quinoa is done mix it in the bowl as well.

Add a little oil to the pan on medium heat. (I used a non stick pan and the oil was almost unnecessary)

Now grab a 1/4 cup measuring spoon and make 1/4 cup pancakes. I found it easiest to pour the batter on the pan and then flatten them out with a spoon while they were cooking on the pan.

Cook the pancakes for about 5 minutes on each side. They’ll get crispy and brown on both sides. YUM.

These would be great with a nice aioli or tzatziki ~ the recipes for both are on the original pins. I didn’t have the necessary ingredients to make either so we ate ours plain ~ they would have been good with a little ranch ~ but I wanted to avoid the extra calories.

All in all… delicious!!

Every week I take time on Sundays to put together a meal plan. With school having just started my meal plan has grown to not only include dinner, but lunch and breakfast as well. Having this meal plan is what allows me to get dinner on the table every night, so we can enjoy some wonderful family table time.

When I fail to make my meal plan, we fail to eat at home. When we fail to eat at home, I know we’re eating foods that aren’t as healthy and nutritious as they could be.

Here’s the problem.

Meal planning can be tough. Finding something new and interesting to make and staying out of a rut of the same 5 meals every week can be really hard. I’m always on the lookout for new recipes and things to add to our meal plan. I like my recipes to be pretty simple, with normal ingredients that I probably already have on hand, and take as little time as possible. Yeah, I’m not picky or anything! I’ve realized with Hanna in school now we don’t have the leisurely time we used to have for dinner… so a quick easy dinner is more important than ever now.

Well, you can imagine my sheer delight when I got an email from Chef Jeff recently announcing the launch of a new cookbook. Chef Jeff is planning on revolutionizing dinner… I love it. He’s got over 200 simple dinner recipes in this cookbook. All have less than 10 ingredients and take less than 30 minutes to make.

He sent me over a copy of his new cookbook, and I was delighted to say the least. Page after page of healthy recipes, using whole ingredients. I really was thrilled.

Here’s just a few of the recipes he’s got in his DinneRevolution Cookbook:

Lasagna Roll Ups

Vegetarian Pad Thai

Pork Medallions with Ginger Apple Chutney

Pork and Broccoli

Stir-Fry No-Fuss Cabbage Rolls

Shrimp Coconut Curry

Firecracker Shrimp Salad

Southwest Turkey Burgers

Moroccan Carrots Thai Cucumber Salad

Hamburger Stroganoff

Blackened Red Snapper

Soft Tacos

and so much more…

Here’s where it gets really good.

Chef Jeff is getting ready to roll out a new version of DinneRevolution and he before he does he wants to get YOUR feedback!

So he’s offering this fantastic cookbook for free. Yep!

All you have to do is go HERE and enter your name and email address and you too can own a copy of DinneRevolution today!

You can bet you’re going to see more and more of these recipes showing up in my weekly menu plan!

Make sure you get your own copy before this limited time offer expires!

Grab a copy of DinneRevolution for FREE today!

Make sure you come back and let me know what you think… and tell me which recipe is your favorite!

In the beginning, you just want them to eat. I remember when Hanna was little we’d set up little muffin tins full of different kinds of food so she’d eat. Thanks to that, probably, she is now a super grazer, and let’s just say she “enjoys” her meals. Which means she takes FOREVER to eat.

Well… apparently, that’s not how it works when you start school.

Last year in preschool they ate at the end of their morning, and she could take as long as she wanted to finish her lunch. This usually meant she and I were the only ones left in the room as the teachers cleaned up around us. Well, preschool’s over baby.

This year she starts Kindergarten, in the big school. Which means there’s a lunch hour. (ha!). I called the school a couple days ago to find out exactly how long she has to eat her lunch and was told 25 minutes. Holy Cow.

I’m sending her lunch with her, and we just received our Easy Lunch Boxes and the insulated cooler that goes with them in the mail yesterday. With our gear in hand I decided to do some test runs of lunch starting today.

I packed her lunch

1/2 peach cut into chunks
small handful of almonds in with the peach

4 pieces of celery

a muffin cup of egg salad
5 triscuits
4 pieces of cheese

1 smoothie pop made with these awesome silicone ice pop makers

When we sat down to eat lunch today I set the timer for 20 minutes (giving her a little time to get cleaned up and everything put away).

DAAAANG. With consistent reminding she managed to eat maybe half of her lunch. Here’s what was left.

In the picture it looks like she actually did a pretty good job. I was there though, every couple minutes reminding her to focus. I guess this is just one more thing she’s going to have to learn in school… if she doesn’t want to be hungry she’s going to have to focus while she’s eating.

oh boy… she just came in with the big old sad face. I’m so huuuuungry. I wanna eat. Can I have a snack. Mind you it’s only been about an hour and 10 minutes since she ate lunch, and if she were at school she’d still have 2 hours left in her day. This should be interesting.

Anyway… the other thing I’m doing to prepare for lunches is finding some ideas. Lunch is my take it or leave it meal. I frequently miss lunch and don’t really notice, but now I’m going to have to create a nutritious and delicious lunch every day for her.

So I’ve been scouring the internet, checking out blogs and writing down lists and lists of things to make her for lunch. I’m planning on creating a list I can draw from when I’m doing meal planning and just plan her lunches right along with our dinners.

Here’s a couple great resources I’ve found so far:

100 Days of Real Food ~ Great ideas for sending real food to school with your kiddo.

Laptop Lunches has a fantastic menu section… separated into seasons.  (I looked at Laptop Lunches for a LONG time before choosing the system I bought. I liked the Laptop Lunches, but it was pretty expensive, and I read in quite a few reviews that the lids were hard for younger kids to get off)

iLunchBox ~ extensive collection of lunch ideas, as well as “A Week in Express” with weekly menu for dinners AND lunches ~ uses leftovers in some fantastic ways!

I don’t have a particular system I’m using yet, but I’ve seen some really interesting ones out there… I also feel like once I get into the swing of things it will be easier than I’m feeling it’s going to be now, never having done it.

I’d love to know how you manage the planning aspect of school lunch… what kind of system do you use? How do you keep it healthy, and keep them happy? Just another adventure!

Recently I talked about how to find ideas for meal planning, so you don’t get stuck in a rut. I had a reader ask if I’d share some of the blogs I use to find meal ideas.

I thought that was  a great idea, so here goes!

Raising Healthy Eaters ~ Love this one. She doesn’t always post recipes, and you may have to dig around a bit, but she’s got some GREAT healthy recipes on this site.

Poor Girl Eats Well ~ The tagline says it all… How to Eat Ridiculously Well on a Minuscule Budget. Tons of fantastic recipes, and easy on the budget.

100 Days of Real Food ~ If you’re looking for great ideas for all the meals of your day that are healthy and “real” food (defined by this site as foods with less than 5 ingredients).. this is the jackpot. If you have school age kids her lunch posts are fantastic as well!

Good Life Eats ~ You can find just about any recipe you want on this site… huge archive of delicious recipes.

AllRecipes.com ~ This is one of my go to recipe resources. I love that almost all of the recipes have reviews and you can see what other people did/didn’t like about them and make changes accordingly. I get a LOT of my recipes from this site.

Recipes Girl ~ Another older site with a huge archive of delicious (and gorgeous) recipes.

For the Love of Cooking ~ A wide variety of recipes, from Greek to Camping.

Cooking With My Kid ~ This site has an extensive archive of kid (and grown up) friendly foods. I love to cook with my kiddo so I love how she incorporates cooking with the kids in all the recipes.

Jane Deere ~ a GORGEOUS food blog, that features a variety of  delicious recipes. Just stopped by and I’m going to have to try the Mexican Seafood Cocktail!!

Simple Bites ~ Always has wonderful sounding dishes… and an entire category for making dinner.

This Week for Dinner ~ An extensive archive of recipes, well organized by dish (main course, side dishes, sweet things etc). I recently made the Chickpea burgers from this site and they were delicious! I’m so glad I just remembered them because they’ll be perfect for sending in Hanna’s lunch box.

Good Cheap Eats ~ Extensive recipe archive, as well as link ups that will help you find even more great recipes.

I also use a few company websites to get some ideas for meals as well… these do not come as healthy as I’m trying to cook these days, but they are always good for ideas.

BettyCrocker.com ~ tons and tons of recipes. Go ahead and grab their email newsletter… they send out great recipes in it.

iVillage Food ~ their site can be a little difficult to navigate, but the newsletters are awesome. They send fantastic recipes in them. I save them in a folder in gmail and they’re always there when I need some ideas.

Well that should get you started… and I’ll leave you with one more tip.

Find a food blog that caters to the kind of food you like to eat.

Then… check out their “blogroll” or list of other bloggers they love.

Then check out the comments section of the blog, and click through on the name links in the comments.

This is how I found all these fantastic sites… just clicking around and looking for new blogs to follow.

Breakfast:

This morning I whipped up some blueberry oatmeal. I’m not a fan of oatmeal… but real oatmeal (that takes more than 90 seconds to cook in the microwave) actually tastes pretty good!

I added blueberries to the water while it was boiling, then added the oatmeal.

I also added a couple pieces of dates to it to sweeten it up a little bit.

And topped it with a little bit of coconut milk ~ which I generally use in my coffee (but skipped the coffee this morning)

Cooked it for 15 minutes, let it sit for a couple more. Yum.

However… my instant oatmeal girl wasn’t too happy about it. She didn’t like it at all. I guess there wasn’t enough (any) sugar in there lol.

Lunch:

I had an ENORMOUS salad. Really, Hanna looked at me and said “are you really going to eat all that”, like I was out of my ever lovin’ mind. Dr. Furhman says to eat BIG salads, so I did. It had a bunch of different kinds of lettuce, tons of veggies as well as a few strawberries, and blueberries and just a little bit of balsamic vinegrette on it.

It was delicious… Hanna again, did not really like hers. Which is surprising because she normally loves salads. She did sneak a huge bowl of wheat things and triscuits just before lunch while I was working ~ so she may just not have been hungry.

Problem:

3pm. I’m starving. I don’t think this is the “toxic hunger” Furhman refers to…. I’m hungry. So is Hanna. We had just got back from running errands.

I put together a refried bean burrito on whole wheat tortillas for us. I added a little cheese to hers, but stayed true on mine. I did add some salsa to mine for some extra flavor. Quite good.

Dinner:

I made a mess of some cabbage and tomatoes the other night. I added way too much Mrs. Dash. I had no idea it was so spicy. So I threw it a container and saved it for a soup base. This wasn’t on the meal plan, but since Hanna’s at dance class I just threw something really easy together.

I made super veggies/bean soup. (Eating it now as I write this post!)

Started with the cabbage and diced (no salt) tomatoes I messed up, added some veggie stock, carrots, black beans, cannelini beans, mushrooms, zuchhini and just let it all cook.

YUMMO.

I have no clue how to cook a little bit of soup, so there’s plenty left over, which is going to be great for lunch. I can have a smaller salad and a bowl of soup, and I think that will be much more satisfying.

So there you have it… not sure if it’s on the plan or not, but I’m having a glass of wine tonight too. To celebrate the silence of my house whilst Hanna is at dance class, and maybe to scream at the Bachelorette (again).

I love salads, but I can see quickly becoming sick of them for lunch every day… what’s you favorite vegan lunch?

(trying to stick with as much whole food as possible)

I’m feeling so completely unmotivated today. I have a list a mile long of things that need to be done and I just can’t seem to get going! I picked up a copy of How to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too… thinking I could call that work, and just sit down and read. However,  I haven’t been able to sit down long enough to read more than a few pages lol.

The last time Hanna came in complaining of being hungry I was just fidgety enough to say “hey let’s make something new”.

We use the Kroger brand “chex”, which is usually well under 2 dollars a box. YAY! I saw the other day on the box that they have a chex mix recipe ~ for the microwave. I love chex mix… and my mom wouldn’t make it very often so it was kind of a special treat. I was seriously worried it was going to be gross coming out of the microwave and I’d waste 7 cups of cereal.

I hopped online (yes, even procrastinating making a snack lol) and read some reviews and while people said the flavor wasn’t as deep with the microwave version there were a few people who mentioned it was not soggy at all (which was my concern) so off we went.

Benefit of being a blogger, and taking pictures of everything is this: impromptu snacks mean impromptu kitchen cleaning ~ which was one of the things on my list today. yay, I am making progress.

Hanna made most of this recipe… with her relentless “Can I pour it? Can I measure it? Can I do it?”  For the Worcestershire sauce I gave her a smaller bowl to pour into in case there was a big over spill or something ~ it wouldn’t ruin the whole thing, but she did great.

So here’s the recipe:

Microwave Chex Mix

1/4 c butter
4 tsp  Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp sugar
7 cups chex (or Kroger bran Rice Bitz ~ we used all rice, but you can mix it up if you want
1 cup peanuts
1 cup mini pretzels
1 cup oyster crackers

What you do:

melt the butter in the microwave.  Once melted stir in the seasoning… watch how long it takes to do this because the butter starts to solidify if you have to look all over the kitchen for required spices and then you have a 5 year old measuring and pouring.  

Once the spices are in with the butter mix it all up good to combine all the flavors.

Add the cereal, make sure you start stirring it as soon as it hits the bowl or you’ll have some pieces with lots of flavor and some with none. Mix in all the other things and stir it all up to get flavor on all the pieces.

Pop it in the microwave and cook for 5 to 6 minutes. Make sure you take it out and stir it around every 2 minutes. I cooked mine for 5 and 1/2 minutes and some of the pieces were getting a little on the dark brown side…

Once it’s cooked (it will be VERY HOT) spread it out on a paper towel to cool ~ which only takes a couple minutes.

Eat and enjoy!

I’ll be honest here…  I really only like the cereal bits in chex mix. I added the peanuts because I had them, but as I look at my would be empty bowl all the peanuts are still sitting there… It’s just as good without all the extras ~ especially if you just like the cereal. You might want to add in a little more cereal to take the place of all the extras if you don’t add them…

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As gas prices and groceries, and just about everything else go up in price I start looking at ways I can save money. Since one of the places we spend the most money is on our groceries that’s where I start looking to save.

Now this isn’t going to be an article with a million tips about how you can eat cheap… but it is going to be an article about 1 thing I did, and how it will assist us with eating on a budget.

Last weekend was Easter. We had a ham. However, when I was doing my meal plan last week I noticed in the circular that turkey was on sale. On sale to the tune of .79 a pound. WOW.

Even though it wasn’t Thanksgiving I picked myself up a whole 20 pound turkey this week. I don’t think I’ve ever cooked a turkey without the pressure of a million people coming over, and a kid going nuts to see them. It’s a totally different experience on a Spring Thursday.

So I popped my bird in a brown n bag (which are genius inventions that still make me a little weirded out… but they work great), and set the timer for 3 and 1/2 hours.

The house started smelling good, and right at dinner time the timer went off and the pop up timer popped in my bird. I set it out to rest for a bit and as it cooled I opened the brown n bag and poured all the drippings into a pan. I let that cool and low and behold came out with 2 quart jars of turkey juice.

After the turkey cooled and set for a bit I carved it up. (another totally different experience with no pressure). I carved the breasts off whole, and carved off the legs/wings/thighs and other dark meat. The dark meat is our favorite so it’s what we had for dinner last night along with some stuffing and peas.

After dinner I came in and got to thinking about what I’m going to do with the rest of this turkey! When there aren’t 10 people eating it leaves a LOT.

The breasts were huge, so I cut them in half. Then I diced two sections and put them in their own freezer container = 2 more family meals .

The other breast I cut in half and put in two freezer containers = 2 more family meals

I put the rest of the dark meat in a zip top bag, which will be for lunches this week = 4 to 6 lunches

I put the bones and the remainder of the pan in a zip top bag to make stock out of. I imagine I will get at least a gallon of stock out of this turkey.

The juice in the two quart jars = huge pot of soup which will probably = 3 to 4 family meals

There are 3 people in our family, so if we add it all up we come out with around 33 individual meals ~ not counting the countless meals the stock will be in.

My turkey cost me 16 bucks which = .48 cents per meal.

In addition, most of our family meals have leftovers that one or more of us eat for lunch the next day… so the family meals will probably come out to 5 meals each, which brings this total even lower!!

Now that’s what I call eating on a budget.

Sometimes eating on a budget just takes letting go of your “norm” and looking outside what you normally would do. I wouldn’t normally cook turkey in April. I also wouldn’t normally buy a piece of meat for 16 dollars, but when you look at what it breaks down to, it was an excellent buy.

We’ll have a good source of protein on hand for a good long while. I’ll be able to throw in a turkey dish when funds are a little tight to fill out the menu. We’ll have delicious home cooked meals, and I’ll only have paid .48 cents per person.

When holidays come around where people usually have family over and cook a large piece of meat, keep an eye out on the deals. If you can invest a few hours up front you can have meals on a budget for quite a while to come.

What do you think? What tips do you have for eating on a budget? Keep an eye out for the turkey recipes coming up in Menu Plan Mondays.

photo credit: Kimberlykv

I just saw this recipe come through my facebook stream, and it sound delicious!

Tropical Island Chex Mix (here’s the link to the betty crocker recipe)

Here’s what you’re going to need:

Here’s what you do:

(what happened here. I’ve always made Chex mix in the OVEN)

Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

In a smaller microwavable dish melt butter, then add brown sugar and juice concentrate and heat until hot.

Pour over dry ingredients and mix until it’s evenly coated.

Cook in microwave for 5 or 6 minutes, stirring every couple minutes, and then lay it out to cool on foil or waxed paper.

Store in an airtight container.

I’m gonna try this tomorrow. I’ll come back and let you know what we think. If you’ve tried it (or are gonna try it) please share your thoughts in the comments section.

I’ve been psuedo following the primal lifestyle for the past few (maybe more) months. I struggled in the beginning with lunch ~ but have now settled into some great homemade soups and other delicious recipes. However, breakfast has become a struggle.

I did some searching around and decided to try a Fritatta ~ I’ve made them before, and decided to grab some stuff out of the fridge and put it together.

Here’s what I used:

bacon (3 strips)
7 eggs
mushrooms
zucchini
onion
seasoning you like (I used a rosemary mix I have)
spinach leaves
cheese

Here’s what I did:

I turned on the broiler so it would be ready when I needed it.

I grabbed my handy dandy cast iron skillet and cooked the bacon. When the bacon is done take them out and set them on a plate with a paper towel.

Leaving the bacon grease in the pan I cooked the onion, zucchini and mushrooms until they were a bit tender. ?And added some seasoning mix.

While that was cooking I scrambled up the eggs in a bowl.

When the veggies were tender I poured in the egg. Stirred them around a little bit to mix them up and crumbled in the bacon.

As it started to cook I layered on the spinach leaves.

As the eggs began to set I put them in the oven under the broiler.

Let the eggs cook, and when they’re almost done add a layer of cheese (if you’re doing dairy).

Put it back under the broiler until the cheese turns golden brown.

That’s all there is to it! Not only is it delicious out of the oven, but it saves well and reheats in the microwave quite nicely for multiple days worth of breakfast ~ if you can keep it around that long.

My hubby’s favorite breakfast is Eggs Benedict. I agree it’s yummy but Hollandaise sauce is so hard to make ~ it made me shy away from making it for him.

Well yesterday was his birthday and in his way of being infinitely difficult to buy for ~ because when he needs/wants something he just goes and gets it ~ I got him a nice egg poacher.

It just so happened on the back of the egg poacher was a super easy recipe for Hollandaise sauce.

So easy it doesn’t take the stove and is done in less than 3 minutes. WOO HOO!!

Easy Hollandaise Sauce

2 egg yolks
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
dash of cayene pepper
dash of salt
1 stick of butter melted

Melt the butter.

Add the egg yolks, lemon juice, cayene and salt in the blender.  I used our single serving blender.

Once the butter is melted start blending the ingredients and pour in the butter. (I just poured it in the hole in the top of the lid) Blend until it begins to thicken (which is not very long).

That’s IT!!! Super simple and easy. YUM.

The sauce came out so smooth and creamy ~ it didn’t separate or look lumpy ~ the best I’ve done thus far!

I’d love to hear what you think and let me know if you try the recipe how it works out for you!