Menu Planning Monday

I apologize! I completely forgot to post this yesterday! Please forgive me!

I wanted to start off this week with a few links. Unfortunately, I did not make a note of the blog I found them on so if you have these up please share with us in the comments!

The 10 Best Foods Your Not Eating

8 Foods You Should Eat Every Day

These are both short slide shows about different foods that are excellent for your health. I've been focusing a lot on more healthful eating. We've started soaking our grains. I am cooking a lot more from scratch. We've started to purchase raw milk. There are a ton of EXCELLENT blogs out there to help you get started with more healthy menus and cooking. Here are a few of my favorites:

Stephanie over at Keeper of the Home

Laura at Heavenly Homemakers

Kimi at The Nourishing Gourmet

Lindsay at Passionate Homemaker

These are my hands down favorite blogs in general and for cooking. They run great informative series and are just an inspiration for a young family like ours and to a mom that is somewhat new to homemaking. Definitely check them out!

For new recipes last week we tried out the Cheesy Beef & Rice recipe from Heavenly Homemakers & it was a huge hit with everyone but my 4 yr old. Right now he is not eating much of anything so that is not a surprise. He wont even eat Pizza anymore, which he used to LOVE. Hubby has asked me to make it again and often!

I didn't remember to get the turkey out of the freezer so we didn't have the Roast Turkey as planned. Let me run and do that now so that we can have it sometime this week.

We also never got to the Spud Special Soup from Keeper of the Home. We might try to do that again sometime this week as a lunch meal maybe. We did do the Arroz con Pollo while my parents were up visiting. I tried to use my big cast iron dutch oven on the stove top to cook it but that didn't work so well. The rice in the middle cooked really fast and the rice on the outside didn't cook at all. I am thinking I will use precooked rice in this from now on so that I only have to wait for the chicken to finish cooking. And I finally made the Asparagus Quiche for breakfast Sunday morning. It was absolutely delicious!!

This is going to be a pretty basic week and I'd like to cook from my pantry. Erik is going to be taking a pretty significant pay cut come September so we really need to cut back on our grocery spending budget. This is going to be VERY hard because this is the time of year I love to go to the farmers market and buy all kinds of lovely produce! We are planning to get our garden in this weekend so we will hopefully have a few things growing soon. We are starting from scratch this year because we had planned to move last year so didn't do a garden. And we let the whole thing grow over

Monday - Was pizza on the grill

Tuesday - I have a meeting & Erik is working so I will have Emma (our baby sitter) heat up leftover pizza or make grilled cheese for the boys.

Wednesday - Breakfast for Dinner (Omelets)

Thursday - Rice jumble (Rice, ground beef or goat, onions, peppers, garlic, tomato sauce and maybe a little cheese)

Friday - Roast Turkey and I think I will make these Spinach Mashed Potatoes with it.

Saturday - Turkey quesadillas

Sunday - Turkey Soup

Monday - Cookout

Make sure you head over to Orgjunkie.com for more menu ideas or to share your ideas.

Blessings!

What I Know NOW About Motherhood...

*This post will be staying at the top of my blog until 5/16. For other posts please scroll down the page. Thank you!

**Update: You have until Monday morning to get your post to me if you are interested. They have extended the deadline for all currently registered hostesses. So get yours posted asap!



I've decided to take part in the "What I Know Now..." blog bash going on over at Notes From My Nest. Great blog. I would definitely suggest checking it out! So...what is the "What I Know Now..." blog bash all about. Well...it is about sharing wisdom between mom's. What you need to do is share a quick post about something you didn't know before you were a mom...that you know now. Easy Peasy right.

Now I need a favor. I have volunteered to be a table hostess. I need at least 5 of you mom's out there that blog (and if you don't yet you should totally get started!) to share a post about what you didn't know before you were a mom that you know now. And there are PRIZES for doing this. Check out Notes From My Nest to get a sneak peak at a few of the prizes. What I need you to do is post a comment here with the link of your post about "What I Know NOW..." and I will share the posts of everyone at my "table." And if you get this to me by May 2nd you get 2 entries into the drawing for free prizes! Wow!!

Now...onto my own "What I Know Now..."

There are so many things I didn't know before I was a mom, it's hard to limit it. I didn't know how much I would love them. I mean I knew I'd love them but you just can't imagine before they lay that little baby in your arms that you really will be willing to lay your life down without a moments hesitation.

I didn't know I would be such a non-traditional parent. By that I mean I nursed my babies well into their second year (and would have gone longer if they hadn't weaned themselves), coslept (and still do), baby wear, non-vax, no-cir, home birthed, plan to homeschool, etc. We have definitely been blazing a new trail within our family and our community with some of our practices.

I also never knew I'd go from being a career minded feminist to a happy stay at home mom! I cannot imagine anyone taking care of my kids full time except ME.

Those are the major things. There are so many more! We each have our own so please share with me yours!

Blessings!

Tiny Talk Tuesday

Time for another Tiny Talk Tuesday! I don't have much for this week. I am actually going to share something that Bennett has been doing for a while but I completely forgot about last week. He did it again the other day so it reminded me to share.

I am not quite sure where he got this from but he started a few weeks ago coming up to us, grabbing one of our hands and say "Nice to meet you Mama." And he will do it over and over and over again. It is just too cute.

Aiden is spending a lot of time reenacting some of the shows he likes to watch. Especially the Backyardigan's. He loves to play cowboys & pirates and is always saying things like "partner" or "captain." He will occassionally refer to all of us as Captain (i.e. Captain mama, Captain Bennett, etc). Too funny!

Share some of the funny things your kids are saying over at Not Before 7.

Tackle it Tuesday

I've decided to start participating in the Tackle it Tuesday meme over at 5 Minutes for Mom. I am hoping this will get me motivated to get through a lot of things that need to get done around here. Today's tackle (or this week really) will be clothes. Not just laundry...although that will definitely be part of it. We have a ton of clothing just lying around the house that hasn't been put away in forever. Away it needs to go!!

Below are a few photo's of areas that need attention due to out of control clothing!

First is my wardrobe. It's a mess. Not to mention I have a bunch of shirts with stains that need to be tossed.
More clothing that just needs to be sorted and put a way.

Laundry needing sorting and putting away in our bedroom.

And the mountain of clothing in the boys bedroom that needs dealing with. We just got a BIG bag of clothing for Aiden from a friend. Most of it is long sleeve and pants so it needs to be put away for fall and winter.

And here are the totes with the 2T summer stuff for Bennett and 3 & 4T summer stuff for Aiden. Need to empty out their drawers of winter stuff and put this stuff in. Plus there is 18 month + stuff in this pile that needs to be sorted into keep (for next child or to hand down) and get rid of.

And last but not least I have laundry on the line that needs to be folded, sorted and put away, I have a load of laundry that needs to be hung, Diapers that need to get into the washer and another 1-2 loads of laundry in clothing hampers to get to the bathroom. Busy laundry day today!

I'd better get busy! It is already after 10am. I've been baking these yummy breakfast cookies(recipe courtesy of Heavenly Homemakers) this morning and the house needs to be straighten up a little. And can't forget to get out all the needed ingredients for dinner tonight!

I will post after pictures next Tuesday so check back then! And please share what you plan to tackle this week over at 5 Minutes for Mom! Enjoy this fabulous spring weather!

Blessings!

Menu Planning Monday

I slacked on the menu again last week. We didn't make quite a few of the recipes in the plan, including the breakfast cookie recipe or the Mother's Day Muffin's from Heavenly Homemakers. I am hoping to try both of these again. At least the breakfast cookies. I am also going to try to write out my menu plan and hang it in the kitchen so I can actually see it more often.

A few of the things from last week will be carried over to this week. This is also a slightly crazy week as I have a booth scheduled from 9am-9pm on Friday and a Doctor's appointment on Wednesday night. So those will be easy nights. Maybe something in the crockpot...

Tuesday - Cheesy Beef & Rice thanks to Heavenly Homemakers. Try again from last week.

Wednesday - Pasta and sauce

Thursday - Roast a Whole Turkey still in the freezer from last season.

Friday - The Spud Special Soup thanks to Keeper of the Home

Saturday - Arroz Con Pollo with leftover Turkey instead of chicken.

Sunday - Pizza on the Grill

Have a great week everyone! Pray that I can keep to my plan better this week!!

Urban Homesteading

I was reading some old posts over on Stephanie's blog at Keeper of the Home and came across this one which included a link to this video.




What an amazing, inspirational video. If this family can grow 6000 lbs of produce on only 1/5 of an acre I can only dream about what we can do with 15!!! I am so excited to get my garden going again! We already put in our new strawberry bed and the asparagus just started to peek through in the last few days. Yum...asparagus quiche...that's what I want to make first!

And here is an excellent book about growing on small acerage. I definitely want to get a copy of this!


And one of my favorite things about where we are is that we can have chickens. I definitely think that raising our own food, whether vegetable or animal, is much more frugal in the long run than buying it from others. I have not actually figured out what my cost per a dozen eggs is to raise my chickens but when organic eggs are between $4-5 a dozen I must be doing OK. Plus I know my chickens are getting all kinds of things that those chickens probably are not like lots of green grass and sunshine!



Our chickens also help us with reducing our waste. Chickens are omnivores so they will eat pretty much anything. They get all of out leftovers. The only things we need to put into our compost are peels (and even some of those they will eat). All of the scraps of meat & dairy that they recommend you not put in compost we feed to our chickens. And they LOVE it. Whenever we head out that way they all come running to see what goodies we have today.



Where we live we do have problems with foxes, fishers & skunks (yes skunks! I never knew skunks like to kill chickens!) so we use some electric net fencing to keep our girls safe. We just rotate their pasture around the hen house every few weeks. We do also keep a rooster now as we have heard that fertilized eggs are great for you also (and I am hopeful one of my hens will go broody one of these days! And maybe get a few baby chicks).



I found this video from the same people that talks about raising chickens in the City! You can do it too!




There are tons more video's and websites out there about raising chickens in a small space and as long as your city ordances allow why the heck not!! Here are a few great websites to get you started.

The City Chicken

Mad City Chickens

An Article in The City Farmer about raising chickens in the city.

And here are a couple of books you could check out also!



Does anyone else out there raise chickens? Would you consider it? Do you have a garden? More Frugal Friday tips!

Blessings!

Menu Planning Monday...I Know on Tuesday Again!

OK...I am running a little late again this week. The last two days (or should I say nights) have been tough and I have been VERY unmotivated. And let's just say that my new habit forming has not been going quite as planned.

On Sunday night Aiden woke up throwing up. After stripping him and his bed, getting him cleaned up and dressed and putting him into our bed he proceeded to throw up in our bed. Again with the clothes and bed stripping. Thankfully at this point he seemed to be done and went off to sleep. I finally got myself into bed and doesn't Bennett wake up screaming. Not sure why, bad dream I guess but I was up with him for a while longer also.

And then last night Bennett didn't go to bed until almost 9pm and then woke up again a number of times and was then up both mornings by 5:30am. Needless to say I am feeling a little tired.

Done with the pitty party now! On to Menu Planning.

We were able to stick a little closer to our menu this last week. We didn't do the goat roast because I never got around to taking it out of the freezer. The quiche was amazing. I used the Yogurt Dough recipe from Nourishing Traditions. We put in tomatoes, spinach, onions & a little bacon I had in the freeze. Oh how yummy it was! I also made up a HUGE batch of pancakes from a Nourishing Traditions recipe and have some scones and biscuits soaking right now to make.

I just started picking up a few Raw Milk products in the last few weeks also. The farm (Great Hopes Farm in Brooks, ME) is not far from us but I didn't want to have to go out there ever week so I did some research and found out you can freeze milk. I bought enough for two weeks and have frozen a little more than half. I actually got some cream from them so I am hoping to make something yummy for a treat later this week. Maybe some rice pudding or a custard. I will try to remember to post more about the benefits of raw milk later this week or next week.

And our chickens are laying like crazy so we are trying to remember to do lots of meals with eggs. We made egg salad last week, which was delicious (I'm even starting to develop a taste for it) and I plan to make some more hard boiled eggs this week for my boys to eat as snacks. They LOVE eggs.

I really cleaned out my cabinets this week and made a list of everything in them to try to do some pantry meals. I have a few cans of beans that I would like to use up as I am ordering some dried beans from a local grown cooperative. We are going to try to do the same thing with our two freezers also. Go through and make a list of what is left. Feed to the chickens anything freeze burned and start using up everything else. This will also help us to conserve energy as we wont have to open the freezer to see what is in there and we will just cross things off as we use them. Now when that will get done...who knows. Hopefully this week though.

I also have tons of turkey and chicken carcasses left over from processing our birds last year that I would like to turn into stocks before the weather gets really warm so I am hoping to work on that this week also. I also know we have a bit of broccoli left in the freeze and Erik LOVES cream of broccoli soup. Stephanie over at Keeper of the Home shares a recipe that I think I will try for lunch one of the days.

And did I mention that I accidentally ordered a HUGE bag of quick rolled oats (when I meant to get whole rolled oats) from my coop about 2 months ago. I found this excellent breakfast cookie recipe at Heavenly Homemakers that I think I am going to try to use some of them up. They make a terribly mushy oatmeal so I would really love to use them up and then buy some local grown whole rolled oats!

OK...so now onto my menu.

Tuesday - Pasta, Sauce & Sausages (Erik is working an overnight so I try to make easy things for the boys & I when he will not be home. He will probably take some leftover quiche for his dinner)

Wednesday - Baked cheesy pasta (Erik asked me to make a macaroni & cheese this week. I will cook up some pasta with a little homemade cheese sauce and throw in some vegi's we have in the freezer and maybe some chicken or turkey from the freezer also. And then breadcrumbs and a little Parmesan on top and bake it. YUM!)

Thursday - The Spud Special Soup thanks to Keeper of the Home.

Friday - We are having another family from church over and the weather is supposed to be lovely so we will probably do burgers and vegi's on the grill.

Saturday - Cheesy Beef & Rice thanks to Heavenly Homemakers. I'm thinking I will make up two or three of these to pop some in the freezer. I will also add some more vegi's to it like peppers, maybe spinach, etc. to make it more of a one dish meal.

Sunday - It is mother's day and Erik is working! I will probably let him pick something up for us on his way home for dinner (and some chocolate and maybe a movie for after the kiddo's go to bed. ) And I want to try these Mother's Day Muffin's from Heavenly Homemaker. Yummy!

Share what's on your menu and for more menu ideas check out Org Junkie!