New thoughts on food

I've been trying to redirect some of my thoughts on food and what a body needs to be healthy. I've been reading a blog I just love and her thoughts on food more or less match up with my own. Moderation in all things, try to keep the refined stuff to a minimum and love your veggies. Oh, and most importantly, wine in ok in moderation too! Here's the site: Stone Soup
Of course, since it's summer we've been eating our CSA veggies and a few from our own garden. I've done a lot better this year and have had far less waste than years past.     ~pat self on back~
Keeping it simple is becoming my mantra and it seems that it really follows with my family's tastes too. They actually seem to like it better when it's not a complicated, lots-of-ingredients meal.

month by month

I've actually stuck with my monthly meal calendars this whole time. I really love having that at-a-glance list of meal ideas. I get the week's groceries usually on Sunday or Monday. Then I can swap out anything that week for any other night, especially good for nights with unexpected happenings. It's been a really great help.
I got all my Christmas favorites done this past weekend. The stollen for Christmas morning is in the freezer; the honey cakes, and a few other cookies are in the tin. I need to get the Christmas Eve soup in the frige so I'm not in a hurry that day, but that will probably get made Thursday or Friday.
I love the holidays. Maybe it's even the influence of the monthly calendar, but I was able to get myself ready to go for all my services so I'm not rushed at the last minute. Yay! Baby steps...

Snacks

I'm always on the lookout for quick, healthy snacks that I can give to the kids when we get home after school. While I still believe that a couple of cookies and a glass of milk are ok on occasion, I'd rather they have something with a little more nutritional value.

Ok, ok, so prepackaged things sometimes sneak in there. The red circus box of animal crackers anyone? Sure, I'm down with that. Plus it's totally portable, and what kid doesn't love that?

I've come across a few 'healthy' cookie recipes that I want to try, though I think some may need tweaking--you can't call something healthy just because you use whole wheat flour instead of white if it still has 2 cups of sugar and a stick of butter in it. (Or can you? I'm totally ready to be persuaded!)

Today though, I decided that mother-daughter time was worth more than nutrition and L and I made Cinnamon Pull-Aparts (they are from Cooking Light, so surely they're not too bad(?))

It's breadstick dough cut into pieces, balled, rolled in melted butter and then in cinnamon sugar. You put three balls in each cup of a muffin tin and bake! Lots of fun to do together and adored by mouths everywhere, or at least in our house.

My monthly menu

I bought a Once-A-Month cooking cook e-book, thinking I might give that a try. Turns out a RevGal doesn't really have a free weekend like they suggest you need to really do that well. (And frankly, the stuff they make in there is NOT waist-line friendly!)

So for all my five dollars, I got a nice calendar that I use to work out a monthly menu. I'm not strict. If I just absolutely don't want what I've got down for Tuesday this week, I'll swap it up for Thursday (or whatever) since I've probably already gotten all the ingredients for that week's meals.

I think I started doing this in April and so far I've found which nights need quick stuff (the nights I've pottery and the nights L has ballet) and which nights we can do homemade pizza on the grill (usually reserved for weekends).

I make sure that there are always chicken nuggets in reserve, but I find that this way, we hardly ever need them (though I do put them on the menu usually about once a month since the kids love them).

That said, I've been making what I call "chicken sticks" which are basically ground chicken meatballs made into sticks instead of balls. Not fried, I know what's in them, and the kids love them. I highly recommend taking your favorite meatball recipe and trying this. Kids love things they can dip.

eating for spring

Now that (I think) spring is actually here, I am getting my spring appetite back, meaning that I want lighter fare, less heat in the kitchen, and fewer calories on my waistline.

I still have to keep the kids favorites in the lineup, but mostly that spaghetti and chicken nuggets.

I've found a brand of sweet potato fries that the kids love and turns out the baby (she's 2 now!) loves roasted broccoli. Who'da thunk?

I can't wait to get the garden started again this year (see RevGal Gardens). I'm just waiting on DH to do some of the heavy work.

I think one of my go-to ideas this season will be hashes. All kinds of great combinations there.

But probably one of my all time favorites is this salad. It has all the flavors of spring, uses fresh spring veggies when you have them and is great with frozen when you don't. You can add other veggies too. I like a few artichoke hearts, maybe corn. Yum!

winter blahs

I actually did really well over the winter. Didn't gain a single pound over the holidays. Probably too busy to eat much. But now that January is here, I'm back to craving sugar. I think it happened right after we had the really big, kids were out of school snow. What did I do with a couple of cabin-fevered kids? Bake! oops.
It's not too bad, a couple pounds tops. Still... I just really wish I could have the willpower to get exercising. But after a solid 15 years or so of fighting my own lethargy, I'm pretty sure that there is no motivation in the world that can get me there long enough to make it a routine.

Cooking for the weather

RevGal is going to have to get serious about eating better again. It looks like I'm going to need to put myself back on the WW online plan or this could be a bad fall/winter season. It's the birthday cake--that's what always starts it. Then it's downhill from there for the rest of the cool/cold weather.
I've realized that my sweet-tooth is out of control. I crave sugar all the time. So I'm going to try and cut down on that a great deal as well.
So cooking is going to have to change a bit as well. I always like to cook with seasonal ingredients and we all know that when the weather starts to cool off we like to make more comfort/hearty foods.
I made a yummy dish last night out of the most recent Everyday Food mag.--the chicken spinach casserole. Ok, the half and half was what made it so good. Next time, I'll try it w/ff h&h and see if it's still as good. (I had to make my own h&h this time as I had none on hand.) But it was quick and easy. I added extra spinach. I liked it all, but I think the kids' favorite part was the bread cubes on top that got all nice and toasty in the over. Bonus: I made them with homemade bread that I had made on Saturday.