I’m Just Sitting Here Watching The Wheels Go ‘Round and ‘Round

Honestly? I have no idea why I chose that title.  I just kind of feel that way today.

I have a semi-lame suggestion for you all.  Since I have told a few people about it and they liked it, I thought I would share it anyway.

If you have a child that is learning how to cut with scissors, and you are tired of every magazine getting cut to shreds before you have a chance to read it, let them cut out coupons.  Not GOOD coupons; come on now. That’s like letting them chop up money. No, I mean expired coupons if they have decent scissor-handling skills, and the Chuck E Cheese ads if they are still pretty much half cutting and half ripping stuff up.  I have one child in each category.

My friend Jill has a great suggestion for what to do with these nicely cut expired coupons.  You can send them to military families, who can use them at the PX.  I don’t know what that stands for, but it’s like a grocery store.  I know from some members in my family that have been in the military that folks do really appreciate being able to use them.  Jill gives a link to a program that arranges for your coupons to get to a military family.  Her post is here.

We had no Tasty Tuesday yesterday.  Well, we did, but it was….. MC DONALD’S.  A.P. had his kindergarten screening in the morning and I was so focused on that I forgot to plan somewhere fun for lunch.  Despite my best efforts, this was where they wanted to go.  The screening was interesting.  At this school, the kids go into a room without their parents.  They play games and talk with the evaluators for about 45 minutes, and that information is part of what is used in making a decision about whether the child is better suited for Young 5’s or Kindergarten.

I found out that his mild stutter is something that probably needs a bit more attention than I have been giving it.  It even has a name; ’disfluency’. I guess when your kid doesn’t really talk until they are three, the fact that they are even getting complete sentences out most of the time seems pretty good. Also, apparently he is crazy good at tic-tac-toe. 

I am not exaggerating that I have been trying to figure out where to send my kids to school for TWO YEARS.  Public? Private? Charter? School of choice? It’s nice to finally have it settled, and to meet his teacher, and some of the other kids.  I am so very, very excited for him.  I told my Grandma that I couldn’t believe I had a child that would be starting Kindergarten in the fall.  She said, “Well, just wait until you have kids that start getting Social Security.  That’s a big reality check”

Menu Plan Monday

We are continuing to work our way up the Food Pyramid and feel pretty good about the fruits and vegetables category.  My ‘lessons learned’ so far are:

• I stopped  serving “snack food” for snacks.  Now I serve apples and peanut butter, or a piece of cheese.  Or, celery and dip.  You see where I am going; my kids think nothing of carrots as a snack now but a few months ago they would have laughed me out of the kitchen, demanding granola bars the whole time.
• I never deny a produce request.  If my kids want pineapple, or mangos, or some other fruit or vegetable while we are in the store, I’ll buy it.  Of course, they also have to eat it, but if I am going to spoil my kids, I’ll spoil them healthy instead of rotten.
• I serve fruit based deserts.  Not so much the canned cherry pie filling (although I am a huge fan of it) type, but we can now pass off 100% healthy frozen smoothie popcicles as desert.
• Sprouted lentils - we can’t decide if they taste “earthy and nutty” or “kinda like dirt”. 
• I serve more than one vegetable at a meal.  I have one kid who likes mixed greens but not broccoli, and one who likes broccoli and  spinach salad but hates mixed greens. Am I going to argue with that?? I don’t think so.
• I rarely throw away produce anymore.  I am embarassed to admit that almost weekly, some lettuce, apples, or celery was looking a little slimy and got tossed.  Now I make sure I use it before it gets to that point. I decided that the most expensive food you buy is food you throw away.
• I save my scraps.  Some of them anyway. The parts of celery and carrots I trim off go into a freezer bag and when it gets full, I make soup stock with it.

My kitchen is starting to look very different.  There is no longer a ‘fruit bowl’; but random produce lying around on the counters at all times. My blender is rarely put away, and my bread maker has taken up permanent residence on the counter too.  It defies my sense of tidiness, but I suppose I will get used to it.

So what’s for dinner this week?

MONDAY:

Eggs, Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes from Cheap Healthy Good, and Pineapple Fluffs.  They reportedly taste like the ones served at Disney World but I haven’t been there in, oh, 20 years so I don’t really remember.

Pineapple Fluffs

2 cans (20 oz. each) crushed pineapple
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/3 cup sugar
1-1/2 cups heavy whipping cream, whipped (Uuh, wouldn’t this just be whipped cream? That’s what I’m using…)

Drain crushed pineapple; reserve 2 tablespoons juice. Set aside.
Place crushed pineapple, lemon juice, lime juice, sugar and reserved pineapple juice in blender or food processor container. Cover; blend until smooth.
Pour into two 1-quart freezer zipped bags. Store bags flat in freezer. Freeze about 1-1/2 hours or until slushy.
Stir gently pineapple slush into whipped cream until just blended, in large bowl. Return to freezer until completely frozen, about 1 hour. Serve.

 TUESDAY

Crockpot Red Beans and Rice from The Simple Cajun Life.

• 1 pound red kidney beans
• 1 large onion chopped
• 1 bell pepper chopped
• 1 clove garlic minced
• hambone
• 2 pounds smoked sausage cut in 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 bay leaf
• salt to taste
• red pepper or cayenne to taste
• black pepper to taste
• cooked rice

Directions
Wash beans. Add in the crock-pot, the washed beans, onions, bell pepper, garlic, hambone, and bay leaf. Pour enough water in the crock-pot so that the water is 2 to 3 inches above the beans. Turn the crock-pot on low and cook overnight or 10 hours or during the day while at work. Do not peek or uncover.

Early the next morning or returning from work, check and see if the water has been reduced. If further reduction of water is needed and generally it is needed, turn the cooker on high. Smash some of the beans to thicken and cook one or two more hours; adding the smoked sausage in the last half hour of cooking. Remove bay leaf and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Or pour the entire mixture from the crock pot to a large heavy duty pot or black cast iron pot. Smash some of the beans to thicken the gravy. Cook to reduce the water and thicken the gravy. When the gravy is almost the consistency you want, add the smoked sausage, salt and pepper and remove the bay leaf. Cook for 30 minutes. Serve over rice and enjoy.

Salad, mixed greens with garbanzo beans and hard boiled eggs.  Served with a side of broccoli

Pineapple Berry Smoothies

WEDNESDAY

My Husband’s Sheperd’s Pie.  Brown 1 lb of ground turkey, add 1 can of creamed corn and mix well.  Put in a casserole dish and top with 2 cups mashed potatoes (home made or from a mix) spread evenly over meat and corn mixture.  Sprinkle 1/2 shredded cheddar cheese; bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Green beans with carmelized walnuts

Cherry Rhubarb Crumble

THURSDAY

Coalition meeting; dinner provided.

FRIDAY

Lemony Garlic Shrimp

Parsley Potatoes (boiled red potatoes, cut up and tossed with melted butter and parsley)

Asparagus Gratin (you have to click on the recipe and it pops up)

Pineapple Berry Smoothie Popcicles (Same recipe as above; just thinned out a bit with OJ or pineapple juice and frozen)

For more Menu Plan Monday, and probably a lot less commentary, head over to Laura’s blog.

 

 

 

 

Clotheslines are IN!

Have you heard? Dryers are so 2007. Get with it and join me in a Clothesline Challenge! Amy from Gift of Green  (spend a minute on her blog; you’ll like it) put this all together and you can join in too!  It runs in May, June, and July.

So how does it work? Well, you decide how much you really need your dryer.  Being that Grand Rapids is not exactly sunny and warm right now, I am making good use of some indoor clothes lines hanging in my basement.  They are relics of the cloth diapering days in the Binder household.  Man that seems like a long time ago! I also have a folding drying rack I have set up in front of my dryer because it’s inconvenient to move and it discourages me from using the dryer.

I have been doing it for a few weeks now, and I have learned a few things.  First, I have to keep up with my laundry.  There is no “laundry day”.  Every day is laundry day; at least one load.  This is because I simply don’t have the space for much more than one load hanging at a time. 

Second, my clothes smell really, really good.  Something about the dryer heats all of the smell out, or something.

Third, I need an exemption for kids’ whites.  I cannot handle putting up 1000 little pair of underwear and 2000 socks.  This is only one load a week.

Fourth, I am saving money and making my clothes last longer.

So come on now; who else is in? You can join at any level (I know; I sound like a public broadcasting fund drive) that works for you. It starts at 10% clothesline usage and goes all the way to 90%. I hear there are even some giveaways.  I hope they are clothespins, because I am kinda running out…

Cranergy

I am a mediocre exerciser. I watch my friends go to the gym and run, lift, body pump, and take pilates classes.  I used to be good, I swear. I used to do more than just stroll on the treadmill, watching the Giada on the little mini flat screen. I used to run before my step class.  Now I don’t do either.

I have been looking for a way to boost up my exercise, and I think I finally found something that will help.  I was asked to try a sample of Ocean Spray Cranergy Energy Juice Drink and gladly accepted the opportunity to review it.  I had two different samples; “raspberry cranberry lift“, and “cranberry lift“.  The bottles are 12 ounces, so I drank one about 30 minutes before my workout.  I tried the raspberry cranberry lift first.  I liked it, but it had a very small aftertaste and I couldn’t tell if it was the green tea extract or Splenda I was tasting since I don’t drink either very often.  Remarkably, I actually felt a little jazzed up from it.  Is this what green tea does to people? Why didn’t someone tell me about this before?  Call it a placebo effect if you want, but I genuinely believe it gave me a boost. 

I tried the cranberry lift flavor two days later.  I liked this one way better, and there was no aftertaste which I now think was probably just whatever the raspberry flavoring was since this also has green tea extract and Splenda in it.  If ‘guzzle-ability’ is a word; this drink has it.  I had the same results; a beefed up workout. 

The Splenda cuts down on the calories; a 12 ounce serving only has 50.  It has 100% RDA of Vitamin C, but also 70% of Niacin, B12, B2, and B6 which I can’t take in a supplement form because it makes me sick so that was an added bonus.  It is 23% fruit juice; kind of a red flag but high fructose corn syrup isn’t an ingredient.  You can check out the details on the Cranergy website; I was pretty impressed with the contents and results.

I saw the bigger bottles of it at some grocery stores, and the smaller 12 oz bottles at others.  It’s a pretty new product, so there was a little sign on the shelf in the juice aisle.  You can print a coupon off of the Cranergy website for $1.00 off if you would like to give it a try.  If anyone has tried this, what did you think?