Meal Planning

I bought a deal on mamapedia a few months back for this GF meal planning site. I think i purchased a 6 month subscription for like $10, and it has been oh so worth it! Not only are the meals entirely GF but they delicious and diverse. We have been trying out new combinations finding some we like and some we dont care for too much. But the best part is, is the convenience! I go on the website each week and pick out meals from the ever changing rotation of meals. Once I select my meals the website automatically generates a shopping list for me (divided by section of the grocery store). Even thought the meals are GF I have not found them to be much more expensive than a regular meal. There are a few times where I have just made mine with GF noodles and served everyone else's over the poisonous variety, but mostly we are all eating the same thing (except I still dont eat meat). I have to say overall I am happy with the site, and I think my family is happy to have tasty meals served almost every night.
speaking of meal planning I have to get to the store tomorrow for the rest of this weeks menu items. I try each week to include at least one chicken dish, one non meat dish, one fish dish, and one red meat dish. Im not exactly sure if this weeks' chicken dish will make it to the table though.

Here is what is on the menu...

Summery Chicken Brown Rice Salad Fresh Bread and Dipping Oil
Corn Fritters with Broiled Tomatoes Snap Peas and Carrot Sautee
Fresh Corn and Scallop Sauté Apple-Spinach Salad
Grilled Salmon with Mango Kiwi Salsa Rice with Fresh Parsley
Tex-Mex Salsa Burgers Margarita Grilled Corn
Mexican Pizza Appetizers


I have also tried to get the girls involved more with the cooking and prep work. This is really tough considering if I allow them too much time in the kitchen we would have NOTHING left to eat for dinner. They sneak food any chance they get, like they are starving to death. Tonight I had Kaylee helping and i turned around for a second to stir something on the stove. When I turned back around she obviously had something in her mouth, when I asked her what it was, she couldnt resopond because we've told her not to talk with food in her mouth, so she opened it and showed me. It was a mouth FULL of raw onions and garlic! REALLY!?!

Our newest favorite in the kitchen is Orange Roughy. Everyone out there should try this kind of fish. Even if you dont really like fish, or think you dont like fish, you should give this one a try. It is FANTASTIC!

Oven trouble

We have been dealing with yet another issue in our house, sometimes I wonder if/when it will ever stop, and then I realize how boring life would be without all the challenges it throws out at us. On a completely different note, like yesterday I was driving into town with my sick (fever and vomiting) baby and we drive by a house that was completely engulfed in flames. As in there were like 6 foot flames bursting out the windows. During the brief seconds it took me to pass the house and the rest of my 25 minute drive all I could think about were the owners of the house as well as being so thankful for all that I have. I thought i had it bad with a sick baby, who by the way was so weak she refused to even stand on her own. I quickly realized that no matter how difficult I think my life might be, someone else is ALWAYS going through something much worse.
Back to my oven.....a couple months ago after a self cleaning cycle the interior glass on the lower oven cracked. The glass stayed intact, but the crack spread to 3 of the 4 sides. I noticed the oven was losing heat while baking, but it still worked so I figured we could fix it later. Well about a week later I began getting an error message nearly everytime I used the oven (top or bottom), so I decided it was about time to call the home warranty company. They sent put a technician who basically evaluated the situation and told us he had to order parts and come back to install them once they arrived. I asked him what parts were being ordered and he said the interior glass and 2 sensors. He said that he wasn't for sure the sensors were bad because that particular error message could be for multiple things, three things to be exact. So he came back installed the sensors and replaced the glass and that was that. Perfect! My oven is back working properly, for just 60 bucks and it only took about 10 days from start to finished. PERFECT!
Well perfection only lasted 3 days! That's how long it took for me to start getting the error message again. But this time the, message would pop up when the oven wasn't in use, or when I was just using the cooktop. It was strange! I thought about what the technician said about the error message being related to multiple parts and immediately I knew that it would mean us replacing ALL those parts, because that's the sort of luck we have with this kind of thing. So I called the home warranty company back and told them the problem still wasn't fixed. They sent out a different technician (same company) and he was "not so pleasant" to deal with. He said the same thing as the 1st guy that the error message was for multiple parts, and that he thinks it is the control panel, but it is too expensive for him to order because he could not replicate the problem while he was here. I forgot to mention that the 1st technician said he thought it was the control panel as well but he wanted to try the other parts first. So the 2nd guy leaves, after ordering a sensor pad, his theory is that the buttons are sticking which is what is causing the error message. To make a LONG story a bit shorter I decided to stop dealing with the contracted company directly because of the poor customer service and lack of listening skills I called the home warranty service and told them what BOTH technicians said about it being a certain part but "not wanting to spend that much money". They confurmed that because the repairmen could not replicate the problem, they can only spend a certain ammount of money i told them that they need to send someone out to camp out in our kitchen because there is no rhyme or reason as to when the error message pops up The warranty service decided to go ahead and replace the control panel, and they ordered the part. Keep in mind we are in week 4 of the repair now. So the control panel arrived, and get this, IT IS THE WRONG PART! It is a control panel for a completely different oven, different manufacturer at that. The only thing that is the same is the color. So back on the phone with the warranty company, they conference called in the contracted company and posed the question regarding the discrepancy in parts. The company stated that parts on appliances are interchangeable and it is perfectly fine to use parts from different models, even different brands! I could understand that, but not changing the face of our entire oven! And once again the company wasn't listening to us! Finally we came to an agreement that the technician would come back out to asses the part and order the new part. They won't just order the correct part first and then come once to install it. NO!!! NO they have to come out at least 2 more times before the problem is fixed. It is crazy! So now I'm waiting for the next appointment and as I cook dinner tonight the error message completely interferes with my plans, but then there is a new error message! Seriously! I mean what is nex?. So I called the warranty company back to let them know that there was a new error message and they should inform the repair company. So now i am just waiting for the next "pointless" appointment, and am hoping that we can get this problem fixed soon.

As I said before it could be worse.......much worse! I am thankful that this has just caused setbacks, and most of the time the oven still works.

Christmas Morning

They were SO patient Christmas morning, we didn't even open gifts until about 2 hours after they woke up! It was fun and relaxing to be at home, making OUR family memories together. I LOVED this day!

I think Ainslee has learned the "Chandler" smile from Kaylee

Auntie Crista and Uncle Harry really spoiled these girls ROTTEN this year! Here is one of the things they got, a chef's costume.

The entire time we opened gifts from Crista and Harry, we were Skyping with them so they could share in the gifts they gave. It was so fun!

Then it was time for the big reveal upstairs. Kaylee happily tore down the sign that has kept them out of their playroom for the past 6 weeks.

Then the sign got stuck on her sock, so Ainslee helped her out.

Their first look at the room

Kaylee was THRILLED!

Ainslee was thrilled too, but she is much more cautious than Kaylee

Kaylee jumped right on the ladder

Then she checked out the reading area (I still need to get some comfy seating in this area)

Ainslee went to all the "old" toys first. She LOVES that baby stroller and all baby accessories!

Then we broke out the paints.....

After ALL THAT Christmas fun, we napped. Then Amma Rita came over to celebrate some more.

Ainslee got a new purse loaded with lots of goodies, pretend keys, phone, lip stick, makeup mirror.

And then there were more dress-up clothes

At one point Kaylee was in a dress-up dress, on the play phone, AND drilling the table. Talk about some multitasking

Then we played some Candy Lane, while Ainslee made us a snack

THEN, nearly 2 hours late, we ATE! Not only did we lose track of time, but there were a few "set backs" in the meal prep. The biggest was the BIRD that flew into our house. I'm still not quite sure if he wanted to warm up inside or if he thought he could get a bite of our fabulous meal. He was in the house for about 15 minutes, and it went something like this........Kaylee laughing/freaking out excitedly, me freaking out and screaming my head off every time the bird flew to a new location worrying how much poo I was going to have to clean up, Ainslee watching everything very intently mostly focusing on what big sister is doing, Rita trying her best to help out but stay out of the way, and Marcus trying to be a "bird wrangler" and basically yell at me for freaking out so bad. It took him about 4 trys to actually capture the bird, but he did so successfully and released him back outside. It was so much excitement that we didnt even take any pictures.

I served spiced carrot-apple soup, fried turkey (courtesy of my dad), green beans with caramelized shallots, perfect potatos au gratin, and corn bread stuffing (I added extra herbs and wild rice to this recipe). The entire meal was DIVINE! Too bad Ainslee had to miss it! She was pooped and asked to go to bed without even eating dinner.......poor baby.

And for dessert we had another PW favorite, caramel pumpkin cheesecake. I made ours GF and just used regular graham cracker crust. This is a recipe EVERYONE should try!

We had such a perfect Christmas! I LOVE my family, and I cherish these memories! Marcus was able to take a few days off after Christmas so the extra family time was even better. I cant wait until NEXT Christmas!

What's for dinner?

Since this post, I have had trouble finding the desire to cook. We have been eating out WAY too much, throwing random food together at the last minute, or just snacking. I have made a few meals, including the ones that I referred to in that last post about meals. Actually I made them probably 2 (or more) weeks ago, just never got around to posting about them. In between the meals I am about to critic I threw in 2 batches of our new favorite meal, so you cant really say that we are STARVING to death, but i could do a much better job at preparing a proper meal!

So here goes:

Chicken Piccata with peas

This dish was OK. That's about as good as I can give it. I'm sure it has the potential to be really good, but my version wasn't that great. Too much lemon was probably the culprit, I don't think I will be making it again anytime soon.

Beef with snow peas served with coconut rice

This one was AH-maze-ing! Well except for the coconut rice, and I didn't cook the snow peas long enough. Actually I substituted sugar snap peas for the snow peas, and I didn't cook the SUGAR SNAP peas long enough! But the beef in this dish made up for everything else that went wrong. I will definitely be making this one again........and so should you! YUM!

Sea Bass with risotto and salad

This would own a place in the weekly menu if I didn't have to sell my car to pay for the sea bass!
Is Halibut cheaper? If so I might try it with that fish, as suggested by PW. It was just so tasty all around! Kaylee really liked it too, I just wish I couldve afforded a bigger piece, we all would've been much happier! The risotto makes a great side dish for almost any meal, and I can make a KILLER salad, so that meal was top notch in my book! And it was fairly sinple to make too.

Chicken Parmigiana with broccoli

I was totally supposed to make this dish and I just never did. So I cant say much except that it sounds good! I will let you know when we try it and what we think.

Pioneer Woman you did it again!

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We had our annual Christmas brunch with some of the closest family friends. It is held at a different family's house each year, and everyone brings a dish. Usually MOST of the dishes are breakfasty casseroles, most of which I cant eat. This year I decided to take a break from the traditional and I made the bacon wrap jalapeno thingys. And they were a huge hit! Try taking them to your next pot luck!

Our Interesting Turkey Day

We couldnt just have a "regular" Thanksgiving this year, our had to be different! It sort of started with the surprise visit from my baby brother (who is away at college, but is still my baby brother). He wasnt originally going to come home for Thanksgiving, but then decided to come. I suggested he keep it a surprise from my parents. He got into town late Wednesday night, as in midnight, and my parents were already sleeping. I suggested he sneak in the house (my parents dont always lock their doors) and go to sleep. He agreed and surprised the heck out of my mom the next morning. And her response when she saw him was "what the heck are you doing here?" HAHAHA! What a greeting?


So before all that happened, we had this little setback called...........a BROKEN OVEN! How in the world is one supposed to cook a Thanksgiving meal without an oven? That is a rhetorical question.....I know it can be done, but oooohhhh how much easier the oven makes it! So once the oven/fire hazard was removed from the house, it was picked up off the curb in less than 1 hour. We continued to rack our brains trying to figure out how we were going to cook our dinner. Mom had a couple friends offer their ovens to us, but the idea of transporting food across town just didnt seem "doable". Finally my mom thought about a neighbor who lives a couple doors up who have moved away and have their house on the market. They are really closer family friends, so mom called the neighbor who lives across the street, and has the key to their house. THAT neighbor ended up offering HER oven to us. So we took her up on it. I hurriedly prepped the pumpkin cheesecake (substituted GF graham crust for gingersnap crust), and ran it up there to put it in the oven. Oh forgot to mention that the neighbors were in their pjs about to get ready to leave and go eat their own Thanksgiving meal, and were going to leave their front door open for us! After the hour was up we go get our cheesecake, and turn the oven off. A few hours later after prepping all the other dishes, my mom and I DROVE 4 houses up the street, with the 5 dishes. I even put my seat belt on out of habit, and my mom laughed at me! In our defense, our reason for driving was that we couldnt possibly carry all that food IN THE SLEET!!! Yes ladies, the temperature went from 75* to like 30* in a matter of a couple of hours.......it was crazy! So we brought the food up and decided to head back down to our house, because, who wants to sit in someone elses house while they are not home and your entire family is back at your own house? Not us! We drove back down the street after my mom nearly gave herself a concussion trying to get back into the car. We set our timer to return when we had to swap out the dishes in the oven. When we opened the front door we were greeted with a very nice fog of smoke. My mom trys to get in the house, after taking her shoes off, and the door closes too fast behind her and takes a chunk out of the back of her ankle. I make my way to the kitchen I learn that the source of the smoke was the drippings in the bottom of the oven from the 4 pies the homeowner had made that morning. I opened the door to the oven and I was knocked back by the smoke, and immediately after that the smoke alarm started going off. All I could think about was NOT burning down the neighbors house on Thanksgiving! We fanned the alarm, to make it stop, so that we could gather our thoughts. I opened the front and back door to circulate the air and turned the ceiling fans on in the house. I did a quick switch-a-roo of the dishes in the oven, and we decided to sit our little booties right there and wait until everything was cooked. As the timer got closer and closer to beeping, I started thinking about transporting these smokin' hot dishes home. We called my baby bro up to bring some "supplies" and ideas. He came with 2 beach towels. (thanks John!) We sent him home with one dish and told him we needed more to bring home the remaining items. Just as he left we heard the door open, and turn around to see the homeowners! They had already finished their meal and were HOME! We havent even finished cooking ours! I had to explain the whole story of the smoke, and they laughed. And we devised a plan to get the rest of the food home

After 2 injuries to my mom, a house that could have burned down, being drenched by sleet, and an hour after scheduled dinner time, we all finally sat around the table. It was good......REALLY good! I wouldve made a few tweeks to the menu, but didnt really think about it in enough time. And the best part was the dessert, the pumpkin cheesecake ROCKED!!! PW you did it again!


We ended the night attempting to burn the calories we just packed into our waistline playing the Wii. Marcus had to leave for work, my big brother went home, my sister and her boyfriend stayed for a little bit, I didnt make it very much longer, and hit the pillow pretty early. It was nice actually getting a decent nights sleep, and it was even better getting to sleep in a little. When Kaylee woke up she went straight to Amma and Abba, I trained her well! Actually it was probably because she gets ice cream and chocolate for breakfast from them, or maybe it was because she had NO IDEA I had spent the night too. Either way, I got a few extra precious minutes of sleep. THANKS MOM AND DAD!!!


This year I am most thankful for family, not burning a house down, and for all under-appreciated household appliances!



and as I type this post I realize that I didnt get one single solitary picture of the day! I wonder why?

Check out what's been cooking....

All I have to say is OH MY GOSH!!! I love LOVE LOVE Pioneer Woman! Like I am trying to justify planning a trip to her home so I can meet her. She is AWESOME! And i am in love with her blog, Im actually not sure if it is technically a "blog" but anyways her website is ridiculous amazing! Check it out for yourself, but beware you might just spend hours and hours reading everything, and stay up WAY past your bedtime (like me), so be ready to exert LOTS of self control (I cant)

So I am always on the hunt for new menu items. For a couple reasons, I want to expose the girls to as many different kinds of foods as I possibly can, and I get super sick of the "same ole same ole". So a couple weeks ago I compiled a menu for 3 weeks and tried to stick with ingredients that went together so that when I bought something I could use it ALL. Do you follow me? Like if I was using 1/2 an onion in 1 recipe I would find another recipe that I could use the other half. Oh and I try and only plan 3-4 meals per week, cause we like left overs here, and honestly with our schedule I cant cook every night!
So here is what I came up with.....

last week was
Pasta with Pancetta and Leeks with grilled chicken
Holy Moly this dish is ridiculously tasty. Best part is it is SUPER easy to make, and only has a couple ingredients (other than ones that you would typically have on hand anyways). This dish is going to be a staple in our diets from now on! Thanks to an awesome friend for giving me the idea to try this recipe.
Vietnamese salad rolls and fried rice
I have to admit, I can make some mean fried rice, but I cheated on this one and made the frozen store bought kind. I couldnt resist getting the Contessa meal that is usually like 10 or 12 bucks for $3 after coupons, sales, and in store deals! Oh and the Vietnamese rolls were a bit too much work for me. I wouldnt really recommend this recipe (unless you have, say.....1.5 hours to spare cutting stuff up!). I am in search for a different recipe, so if any of you have one up your sleeve send it my way. But they were MIGHTY tasty!
Steaks served with turnip gratin and brown sugar carrots
My husband did a fabulous job grilling those puppies, they were cooked to perfection......hes good for some things. The turnip gratin, now here's a story (or 2).......my mom and dad went up to the St Louis area to visit family, and apparently my aunts/uncles/cousins grow turnips and had a bunch extra so they sent home a couple bags with my parents. My mom called me on the way home, when I happened to be in the middle of menu planning, and asked if I wanted any turnips. So I began the search for a recipe, since I had never eaten them before. After finding the recipe i mentioned it to my SIL and did not get the greatest response. Basically she said that turnips were second to last on her "worst foods" list, as in she HATES them! So I got a bit worried, but pressed on with my recipe, trusting in PW (the woman Ive never even met), and I have to say she did NOT disappoint! Oh and the brown sugar carrots, are my "fail safe" side dish, basically just steamed baby carrots then saute them in butter and brown sugar (it is a favorite when we have company).
Halibut with avocado sauce served with risotto
Ok now this was not only my first time cooking halibut, it was my first time to ever eat it too! I wast too much of a fan of the recipe, but I definitely want to try halibut again in a different recipe. The risotto was really good too. I make A LOT of risotto around here, but this one had a different twist than my typical, so it was nice!

This week's plan is.....
Burgers served with stuffed jalapenos, onion strings, and corn/avocado salsa
I made this for Marcus' birthday dinner tonight, we both are now in love with all these recipes! Since I am being honest here, my burgers SUCK! I have never made a decent burger in my life, so I totally need burger lessons! But the other items where fabulous, as usual with PW's recipes. I prepped everything during nap today (except the jalapenos, since I ran out of time, when BOTH girls decided not to take good naps). The onion strings barely made it to our plates before we devoured them, and surprisingly I really liked the "bacon-wrapped jalapeno thingys", I swear I love how PW writes, who else wouldve named them that? And the salsa it was delish too. All those items just really seemed to work well together! And again the best part is minimal ingredients, and reasonable work involved. The best part about the jalapenos were you could make a bunch and freeze the extras (before cooking) for another meal.
Salmon served with risotto and salads
I cheated with this one......it was really just a way to get a fish meal into this weeks menu. I cheated with the salmon and used some my dad picked up for me that were already marinated. Threw some salad stuff in a bowl, and had the left over risotto from the halibut meal.
Chicken Picatta served with peas (or any veggie that feels right to me)
I am going to make this probably Friday night, wait it might have to wait til Saturday night, not exactly sure. But I havent tried it yet, so i cant really vouch for it, but I will let you know when I do and how it is.

Since Thanksgiving is next week I guess my menu plans will have to be postponed until the following week, cause I will be eating me some FRIED turkey Thursday through (at least) Sunday. My dad makes the best fried turkey ever! I wont reveal next weeks (actually 2 weeks away) menu until after we have eaten all the meals. But let me just tell you there are some good sounding meals to be made and eaten!

so who wants to join us for dinner?