Budget Friendly Peanut Butter Cookies
Enjoy this guest post from my IRL (in real life) friend, Tanya! She offered this recipe up to be shared because it has only 4 ingredients and it uses mostly pantry goods. Because we are a mostly sugar-free household, I tried replaced the 1 cup of sugar in this recipe with a 1/2 cup of raw honey. It was apparent immediately that they wouldn't set up, so I added 1/2 cup of sugar. Still pretty amazing, but more like flat PB Balls than cookie. I'd suggest going with the original recipe and substituting sucanat if you're looking for a change. The 6 boys I served them to for dessert last night approved! :) Try them yourselves and then head over to Tanya's fabulous blog, Free & Easy Living!
Talk Recap & Hannah Keeley at Hen House!
If you missed the talk that The Motherhood held this afternoon, you can go back and read through the conversation, including the recap here.
There were some amazing mommies present with lots of tips to share. Some of my favorite pieces of advice for getting our families to the dinner table are below. Enjoy and stay tuned for more after our lunch on Thursday!
- We have a glass table, so I let my son write the menu on the table with window crayons. We'll also draw fun placemats as well. (Tracie)
- Another great way to make dinner more fun is to ask open-ended questions around the table such as "If you were a superhero what would your special power be?" The kids love it and their answers are usually hilarious! (Hannah Keeley)
- A fun thing that we have done is have "switch night" where mommy and daddy use the kids plates, cups, and silverware and kids get to use mommy and daddy's normal dinnerware. (Alaina Frederick) <-- this was my favorite!!
- I usually have 2-3 freezer meals ready to go. Soups, frozen taco meat, spaghetti sauce, etc. It helps when you have that moment of "WHERE DID MY DAY GO!" (KCMamaKelly)
- I like to ask my kids to choose meal items. I give them options, corn or beans? Chicken or beef? They get to choose their salad dressing too! I also involve them in helping to set the table! They LOVE to help and it keeps them busy while I'm trying to get dinner on the table. (cararolinson)
Get Back to the Table Talk
Join me tomorrow (Tuesday) at The Motherhood at 1pm EDT for a LIVE talk with Hannah Keeley about getting our families back to the table for dinner. We'll share recipes ideas and tips, and tell you how you can enter to win a Libby's gift. See you there!
Before You Begin To Cook - Quick And Easy Ways to Cook and Clean Up
Today's post is from Jill Cooper at Living on a Dime. I have shared before that I received her cookbook as a wedding gift from my aunt and it did wonders for my non-existent cooking skills and low self-confidence in the kitchen. She now has an unbelievable selection of helpful articles and e-books besides her printed books! Enjoy this post and check out her site.
Quick And Easy Ways to Cook and Clean Up, Part 1 – Before You Begin To Cook
Ever since the phrase "30 minute meals" came into being I have been confused. My children say I have always been confused, but that is an article in and of itself. : ) Anyway, 30 minutes is considered a quick and easy meal, but I always thought of a 30 minute meal as an average meal, which is why I’m confused.
Recently, I heard something that clears things up for me a little: The average family spends 2 hours preparing for and cleaning up after a meal. I just about had a heart attack. No wonder so many people are writing saying they don’t have time or are too worn out to cook dinner each evening. I would probably never go near the kitchen either if I spent that much time cooking and cleaning up.
Since eating at home can save you a lot of money, I came up with some tips that many fast cooks have used over the years. I hope these will help you get in and out of the kitchen quickly. Like all new things, you need to practice and make new habits, which may take time, but in the long run it will more than pay off.
Don’t worry if you can’t do it all. Just start slowly and go from there. Also don’t feel compelled to use these tips all the time. If you have the time, feel free to make more complicated menus. These tips are for everyday busy schedules.
Before Dinner
Read Part 2- Quick And Easy Ways to Cook and Clean Up – While Cooking here
photo by: jordansorensen
*********************
Want more like this? This week only, Tawra is selling her Grocery Shopping on a Budget e-books* for HALF-PRICE!
Save money preparing meals your family will love! In Grocery Shopping On A Budget you'll find lots of money saving strategies including:
Quick And Easy Ways to Cook and Clean Up, Part 1 – Before You Begin To Cook
Ever since the phrase "30 minute meals" came into being I have been confused. My children say I have always been confused, but that is an article in and of itself. : ) Anyway, 30 minutes is considered a quick and easy meal, but I always thought of a 30 minute meal as an average meal, which is why I’m confused.
Recently, I heard something that clears things up for me a little: The average family spends 2 hours preparing for and cleaning up after a meal. I just about had a heart attack. No wonder so many people are writing saying they don’t have time or are too worn out to cook dinner each evening. I would probably never go near the kitchen either if I spent that much time cooking and cleaning up.
Since eating at home can save you a lot of money, I came up with some tips that many fast cooks have used over the years. I hope these will help you get in and out of the kitchen quickly. Like all new things, you need to practice and make new habits, which may take time, but in the long run it will more than pay off.
Don’t worry if you can’t do it all. Just start slowly and go from there. Also don’t feel compelled to use these tips all the time. If you have the time, feel free to make more complicated menus. These tips are for everyday busy schedules.
Before Dinner
- Plan ahead. Most of you already know this but now it is time to put it into practice. If at first you can’t plan an entire week in advance, start by planning the next day’s meal the night or morning before. Meal planning doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep it simple. If you need more tips, check out our Grocery Shopping On A Budget e-Course.
- Choose 10 meals. Once you feel comfortable planning a day ahead, sit down and pick out 10 of your family’s favorite menus. Get your family to help here. A study I read showed that most families eat the same 10 meals over and over and are happy with that. If you eat out at least once or twice a week (fast food, going to friends’ homes for dinner, church potlucks, etc.) the 10 meals should cover 2 weeks of meals. Repeat once and you have a whole months of meals taken care of. If you’re concerned that your family will be bored eating the same thing, think of it like this: The same meal will only be served twice a month.
It doesn’t get any easier. A whole month of menus is taken care of with just 10 menus. You may have thought you would have to sit and come up with 30 new menus at the end of each month, but you don’t. Don’t make planning menus so hard. - Plan meals that only use a few ingredients and use common ingredients. The more ingredients there are in a recipe, the longer the recipe takes to prepare. Additionally, it takes longer to shop for 15 ingredients than to shop for five. If the ingredients are unusual, you usually have to spend even more time roaming the store looking for them.
- Do as much prep work ahead of time and not during the busiest part of the day – dinner time.
- Make sure you have all your ingredients.
- Clean vegetables.
- Place meat in the pan so it’s ready to pop in the oven.
- Make salads.
- For recipes like biscuits and cornbread, measure the dry ingredients into a bowl and put in the remaining ingredients when you are ready to bake. Better yet, try to bake things like cornbread and muffins early in the day, not when you are trying to make dinner.
- Make one dish meals in the morning so that they’re ready to pop in the oven right before dinner. Add a salad or bread and you are done.
- Just putting your meat in the oven early goes a long way towards starting dinner.
- Use your oven or crockpot more and the microwave less. I wrote an article about how using your oven can often be faster and how it can help relieve stress at meal time.
- Start with a clean kitchen, clear counters, empty sink and dishwasher. You might want to check out my article Dirty Dishes Cause Debt to help with this.
Read Part 2- Quick And Easy Ways to Cook and Clean Up – While Cooking here
photo by: jordansorensen
*********************
Want more like this? This week only, Tawra is selling her Grocery Shopping on a Budget e-books* for HALF-PRICE!
- tips for saving at the store
- where to get the best buys
- how to change your family's mindset
- how to plan menus
- efficiently organize your kitchen and pantry
- and more!
Help Eat From Your Pantry Feed America!
Next week, I will have the privilege of meeting for lunch with a few other Kansas City bloggers and Hannah Keeley (celebrity mom author of Total Mom Makeover and host of the tv show Hannah! Help Me!).
The lunch is sponsored by The Motherhood and Libby's to correspond with Get Back to the Table Month. Hannah will be leading a discussion about eating dinner as a family. We will be sharing tips and tricks with each other that I promise to blog about! The most exciting thing about this event is that in addition to learning from each other, we will be joining together to help families in need by creating dinner kits (with canned foods from Libby's as well as other items) and encourage them to sit down to dinner together.
A local organization that I am personally connected to, Hillcrest Transitional Housing, will receive the dinner kits. Hillcrest gives homeless families a completely furnished apartment to stay in for 90 days while they save money and go through counseling to get back on their feet. I have seen many lives changed through this program and am thrilled that it was chosen to benefit from this event.
I am also thrilled that the giving won't stop when this week is over!! Libby's is partnering with Feeding America to organize a massive Virtual Canned Food Drive! Libby's is matching each and every donation made up to $40,000, and every $5 donated will provide 35 meals for hungry families! I'm honored to help promote the drive here at EFYP. Won't you please click the button below to learn more and consider giving?
Watch for more posts about the food drive, our lunch event, and getting our families back to the table, including a special giveaway from Libby's!
The lunch is sponsored by The Motherhood and Libby's to correspond with Get Back to the Table Month. Hannah will be leading a discussion about eating dinner as a family. We will be sharing tips and tricks with each other that I promise to blog about! The most exciting thing about this event is that in addition to learning from each other, we will be joining together to help families in need by creating dinner kits (with canned foods from Libby's as well as other items) and encourage them to sit down to dinner together.
A local organization that I am personally connected to, Hillcrest Transitional Housing, will receive the dinner kits. Hillcrest gives homeless families a completely furnished apartment to stay in for 90 days while they save money and go through counseling to get back on their feet. I have seen many lives changed through this program and am thrilled that it was chosen to benefit from this event.
I am also thrilled that the giving won't stop when this week is over!! Libby's is partnering with Feeding America to organize a massive Virtual Canned Food Drive! Libby's is matching each and every donation made up to $40,000, and every $5 donated will provide 35 meals for hungry families! I'm honored to help promote the drive here at EFYP. Won't you please click the button below to learn more and consider giving?
Watch for more posts about the food drive, our lunch event, and getting our families back to the table, including a special giveaway from Libby's!
Real Food Nutrition and Health E-course
***Taking a break from Make it Yourself Monday to get this time-sensitive info to you***
The internet is an amazing place. Where else can you give and gain experiences and wisdom so easily? One of my favorite resources for learning about eating real, nourishing food just got even better!!
The internet is an amazing place. Where else can you give and gain experiences and wisdom so easily? One of my favorite resources for learning about eating real, nourishing food just got even better!!
Kristen Michaelis, the Food Renegade, has created an online nutrition course targeted at homeschooling families, but great for everyone! The course is structured around her companion book, Real Food Nutrition & Health, and covers the basics of "real food" at a level that is suitable for ages 12 and up. I guarantee you adults will learn a ton, too! Here's a look at what will be covered:
- The major macro-nutrients (fats, proteins, and carbohydrates) & how your body uses them.
- The micro-nutrients like vitamins, minerals, enzymes, & their affect on health.
- The nutrient density of Real Food
- Industrial vs. Pasture-based animal husbandry
- Industrial vs. Organic agriculture
- The basics of Real Health
Nutrition fascinates me. It's a blend of biology, history, chemistry. It's the story of traditional peoples and what they ate, the story of convenience foods and food manufacturing. It's the story of modern Industrial agriculture, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, genetic engineering, and diminishing top soil while also being the story of humane animal husbandry, biodynamic farming, and a respect for life. It's the story of modern diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Yet it also teaches about true health and aging with stamina.
Enrollment in the course for Fall ends in just 4 days on the 24th and classes begin on October 1st. They will run through December 10th, and new class materials will be posted each Friday. Each week's lesson contains:
- Engaging Reading Assignments
- Time-Saving Audio Files
- Informative yet Entertaining Videos
- Group Discussion Questions
- Creative and Thought-Provoking Projects
Read more about the course and consider signing up. Also, enjoy these two sneak peaks at the videos included with the course - I think you'll be pleased with just how high the quality of her materials really are.
RFNH Corn Corn Everywhere Corn from FoodRenegade on Vimeo.
Guest Post: Popcorn and Smoky Roasted Black-Eyed Peas
I'm so thankful for bloggy friends during this busy time! Please enjoy the first of many great guest posts EFYP will be blessed with over the next few months.
Micaela Vega is a working mother of 2, who writes about her experience with incorporating healthier food options into her family's meals at Striving Bean. Sometimes her kids like it, sometimes they don’t – she'll let you know about both.
It’s not often that “Black-eyed peas” and “snack” go together, but they go together surprisingly well.
I made some popcorn for the kids the other night, and thought….hmm…how could I add beans to the mix?
Voilà : Popcorn & Smoky Roasted Black-Eyed Peas. A quick and easy snack that the kids really liked.
Another great discovery this weekend? My daughter loves smoked paprika. There’s a difference between smoked paprika and regular paprika. The smoked has a deeper and smokier flavor. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
So break out the movies, cozy up on the couch, and grab yourself a big bowl of Popcorn & Smoky Roasted Black-Eyed Peas!
Popcorn & Smoky Roasted Black-Eyed Peas
Recipe by Striving Bean
Ingredients
Our family weighs in:
***********
It’s not often that “Black-eyed peas” and “snack” go together, but they go together surprisingly well.
I made some popcorn for the kids the other night, and thought….hmm…how could I add beans to the mix?
Voilà : Popcorn & Smoky Roasted Black-Eyed Peas. A quick and easy snack that the kids really liked.
Another great discovery this weekend? My daughter loves smoked paprika. There’s a difference between smoked paprika and regular paprika. The smoked has a deeper and smokier flavor. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
So break out the movies, cozy up on the couch, and grab yourself a big bowl of Popcorn & Smoky Roasted Black-Eyed Peas!
Dried Black-Eyed Peas (before cooking)
Popcorn & Smoky Roasted Black-Eyed Peas
Recipe by Striving Bean
Ingredients
- 1 2/3 cup (1.66 cup) cooked Black-Eyed Peas (or try 15 oz. can)
- 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 – 3 teaspoons smoked paprika (depending on your taste)
- several cups air-popped popcorn
- small amount melted butter & sea salt (to taste)
- Preheat oven to 450° F
- If using canned beans, rinse and drain. Blot beans dry with clean towel.
- Mix together beans, olive oil, sea salt, and smoked paprika.
- Spread beans evenly onto a baking sheet.
- Roast beans for 18 – 22 minutes. (depending on your oven)
- Check every so often. Goal is to dry them (not burn them) so they’re crunchy.
- Mix black-eyed peas with popcorn, small amount of melted butter, and additional sea salt (to taste)
Our family weighs in:
- We all liked them. Daughter said the black-eyed peas reminded her of “black olives”. They reminded me of soy nuts.
Make it Yourself Monday: Cold Remedies
*cool baths for fever
*nasal aspiration
*vapor type oil rub w/essential oils
*lots of nursing
*cold socks (we haven't done this this time, but when my 2 year old was little we experimented with this remedy - said to draw the blood flow down away from the head to ease sinus pressure/congestion)
Link up this week with similar posts about things you make yourself instead of buying from the store. See previous posts for details and ideas.
Backpacking/camping Food
(Picture thanks to Kevin Anderson)
Our family just got back from a long weekend in the St. Francois mountains hiking, camping, and taking in God's awesome creation. We don't camp as often as we'd like, but we've done enough weekend trips as a family that we've streamlined our planning. We like to keep things, especially food, as simple as possible.
First, we bring lots of snacks. Our toddler would be well... an unhappy camper if he were hungry. We focus on having enough food rather than having fancy meals.
Also, we drive a Scion xA - it's teeny tiny! We don't have space for anything larger than lunch box sized soft-sided cooler, so we don't bring food that needs to be refrigerated. I've heard of families bringing their crockpots and getting electricity at their camp sites, and we've certainly seen plenty of camp stoves, but we don't have the space. It is possible to go without.
We also "cheat" by eating a few freeze-dried meals (pictured above). They are usually high in calories and only require hot water which we boil in our Jet Boil (that's an Amazon affiliate link).
Here's a short list of the things we ate on this trip specifically:
- hummus
- carrot sticks
- crackers
- cheese
- jerky
- hard-boiled eggs
- cans of tuna/chicken to make tuna melts
- bread, pb & honey
- granola bars
- instant oatmeal
- chai tea
- dried fruit
- nuts
- instant soup (Japanese miso and osuimono packets)
- freeze-dried meals
(Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship (an affiliate) just recently released an e-book called Kitchen Stewardship in the Big Woods: A Family Camping Handbook With Real Food Options that has a lot more detail about camping as a family and camping with young children. Click here for more details.)
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