One lady talked and talked about how she used the items for cooking – now she didn’t have to cut veggies for soup or casseroles, and she’d use the nuts on muffins. The other lady; I don’t know, she wasn’t a talker. Maybe she was just having a salad.

In any case, using a salad bar once in a while is a good time saver. It does save you having to chop, shred, and slice. With soup and bread, salad is a quick dinner option too. I think it’s more costly to use a salad bar, but maybe not if you just need a few special things, like shredded carrots and some spinach.

Have you ever done this? 

Post from: Blisstree

Quick Time Saving Tip: Salad Bar Cooking

For example: 

• Monday: Chicken, rice, and veggie night
• Tuesday: Soup, bread, and salad night
• Wednesday: Fish and veggie night
• Thursday: Left-over night
• Friday: Pasta and salad night

This is flexible enough to be open to interpretation; for example, you could buy cheese or Spanish rice for Monday, and have fruit salad instead of veggie salad on Friday; but at least you have a general idea of what to shop for and what you’ll be cooking. This works better than an inflexible menu plan, because people seem to hate being tied down to food.

Another perk of this plan is that anyone can follow it – your spouse, your older child. Whoever is home knows what they need to get started for dinner.

On the weekends go nuts and do whatever. If you want to streamline even more, create a plan for breakfast and lunch as well – waffles on Mondays, tuna on Tuesdays, and so on.

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

Back to school tips – managing mealtime madness

To organize your farmers’ market trips, and save time, try the following: 

Choose one farmers’ market and stick to it. If you’re making tons of trips to various markets, you’re not saving time, or money considering gas. If your city has plenty to choose from, find the one that fits your family’s needs and stick to it.

Go early or late: Midday is when most people hit farmers’ markets. If you go early or late you’ll avoid lines. If you go early expect to pay more, but you’ll have a better selection. If you really want a special blackberry honey, and you know it sells fast, then choose mornings. If all you need is soup or pie produce (i.e. no one will see the produce) go late in the day to save both time and money.

If you take the kids give them a bag to hold. It’s hard to shop farmers markets with kids. Mine liked to run off to see it all. If you give them a bag to fill with produce, and note that they must hold onto it, it can help your kids to stick by you, and you’ll make better time.

Don’t go with a list. Whenever I take a list to the farmers’ market, I waste time hunting down that one item I think I need or want. Because markets change week to week, you can actually save time by leaving the list at home and taking your open mind instead. Cruse the market in an organized fashion and pick up what looks good; don’t waste time lamenting the fact that there’s no baby carrots this week.

Park far away. Parking reasonably far away may seem like a time waster, but have you ever tried get through traffic (both people and cars) close in to a farmers’ market? It’s nuts. Park further away. You’ll spend time walking, but save more then if you drive in close. Plus, come on, the exercise is good for you.

Do you shop at farmers’ markets? Do you like to linger or get in and get out? 

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

Save time at the farmers’ market

Today let’s look at family meals. It’s hard enough (or so it seems with the families I know) to sit down to dinner together during the summer. Add in busy school schedules and family meals can get even harder. Following are some tips.

Make family meals a number one priority. If you have time for TV, extra shopping, golf, or any other extra curricular activities, then you have time for a family meal. This is something you shouldn’t skimp on. Families that eat together, stay together, connect better, and learn the importance of family time. Also studies show that kids who eat with their parents tend to eat healthier meals overall.

Try a different meal: Personally, if you work at it, you can have two meals a day together with your family. However, if that’s stretching it, aim for one, and it doesn’t matter which. If it’s easier to rustle up the gang at breakfast time, then join together in the morning.

Make weekend meals non-negotiable: If weekdays are stressed, you can make family meals on the weekends a must attend event.

Eating not required, but table time should be: If you have young children, or a partner who gets home later (like 8pm), make sure that everyone still sits together. If the kids eat at 6 and the adults eat at 8, give the kids dessert, a coloring book, or a puzzle, and have them attend the adult dinner, this way everyone still gets to connect, whether or not eating is happening.

Find meals that cook up fast: To ease family mealtime routine, try take out two nights a week, sandwiches and soup another night, and locate some fast cooking ideas for the other nights. It’s honestly not the food that matters so much as the time you spend together. Check out the following for fast recipes:

• Dinner Tonight
• Quick, fast, and easy recipes
• Quick & Easy from Cooking Light
• FamilyFun’s Month of Meals

What do you do to maintain family meals once the school year sets in?

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

Back To School: Plan for Family Meals

Now, I don’t BBQ, or even own a grill, mainly because I don’t eat meat. That said, I’m a fan of grilled veggies, and also have known my fair share of grillers. However, if I say something crazy, now you know why.

Quick clean up: Place a tub of soapy water next to the BBQ. As you need to, toss used spatulas, plates, and so fourth into the water. MAKE SURE you use a container with a lid if small children will be at the BBQ; open water and kids, well, they don’t mix. Also make sure you don’t stick your hand into the soapy water and stab yourself with a skewer; which frankly sounds like something I might do.

Get your spice on: Yeah, I never spice up meat, but even I think this spice stick is ultra cute and handy. Fill it with BBQ spices and hang it on the grill – too easy.

Get the kids to do almost everything: They’re young and healthy, they can take it. Let them shuck corn, snap beans, set the table, make lemonade, peel fruits, and clean up at the end. One it’ll keep them busy. Two, it frees you up time to spend on cooking and relaxing. Three, it builds character.

Got grill trouble?: Icky grills with rusty parts can be quickly fixed up with one good old can of coke. Scrub it on and see results. I’ve never actually coked up a grill. However, on one of my road trips my car broke down somewhere near Moab. The AAA car guy just poured coke on my rusty, gross battery, and my car was as good as new. Yay coke. Just don’t drink it. Now that you know it dissolves rust; do you really want to drink it?

Turn your hosted BBQ into a potluck: This obviously cuts down on any organizing and planning you need to do. Ask for food and you shall get it.

What other ideas do you have for getting your summer grill events organized?

Post from: Blisstree

Five tips to help you organize your summer BBQ

Then however, I had all these magazines left over. What to do? I don’t like reading them, so that’s out. I actually came up with lots of ideas about what to do with my old magazines, but my most used idea is my cookbook idea.

A lot of those magazines were women’s magazines (yawn) but most do have a rush of cool recipes. I spent a couple of hours ripping out all the recipes I wanted, then inserted them into plastic page protectors. Then I simply put them in a few notebooks (one each for, main dishes, baking, sweets). In each of the notebooks, I added some tabs to divide dish types – rice, beverages, cupcakes, etc.

Now I have these totally cool, very brightly photographed cookbooks. Much better than cookbooks you can buy. A bonus of my cookbooks is that the plastic page protectors keep ingredients off the pages. We all spill pumpkin pie mix sometimes.

My total cost: About $15 (it took a lot of page protectors) but that’s way cheaper than cookbooks full of stuff I won’t make.

If you don’t have magazines stock piled you can get some SUPER cheap:

• People always used to give me magazines for free, so you can ask your friends and neighbors.
• Thrift stores sell old magazines for soooooo cheap, like 10-50 cents per issue. Just make sure you don’t only get magazines from 1978 when whole fats were still all the rage
• Garage sales – many have cheap magazines.
• Free! Your doctor’s office (at the end of a month), your library, the dumpster or recycling center, the hair salon; plenty of places buy magazines and if you ask nicely you could score some.

This has actually helped me organize mealtime, because I didn’t add anything to the cookbooks that I wouldn’t be willing to make. It takes time to flip through a real cookbook, when half the recipes look lame. It also helped to split the books into categories. I never half to search for pasta sauce, because they’re nicely altogether. This project also gets bonus points for being green – you reuse magazines instead of tossing them.

Have you ever done this?

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

Organize A Super Cheap Cookbook

Here’s the rub (yes, there’s another). I hate organized exercise. I like to inline skate, hike, and play frisbee, but really there comes a certain age where you’re going to have to pick up those arm weights, and sort of make sure you eat less chocolate. When I decided to start exercising more regularly, I knew that I’d need some sort of system (of course). I tried a paper system for a while, but that was a lot of paper. Plus, it was really time consuming to have to calculate calories burned vs. food ate, vs. time, etc.

I started looking around for a good system that could help me keep my exercise plan organized. Research shows that the more you actually log about diets and exercise, the more you’re likely to follow though. I reviewed many pda versions – because I wanted it to be mobile. The program I finally settled on was Weight-By-Date pro.

Weight-By-Date is really cool. I more wanted it for the exercise tracking because I already eat pretty well, but I did end up liking the food tracking abilities of the program too. It is kind of fun to see how many calories are in a pear or cookie.

Here are some of the features:

Works for pda and desktop: I have the version that you can use on both. I enter items on my pda and then sync it with my computer. You can also get just the pda, or just the desktop version I believe.

Count carbs, calories, and all sorts of nutrients: You can set which nutrients you’re most concerned with as top nutrients. Since I’m a vegetarian, I choose nutrients I may be missing as my top ten, this way I stay on top of items like protein.

Food listing: You can choose from over pre-set 7,500 food items and add your own. A really great benefit of this program is that you can enter recipes. So, you’d enter everything to make soup and then the program calculates one serving’s worth of calories for you.

Exercise listings: Tons of exercises are listed and you can also add your own. This program automatically adjusts calories burned for your size; because a 200 lb person burns more calories during exercise than a 135 lb person. If you’re using this to lose weight, the calories burned again adjust as you lose pounds.

Log everything!: You can log daily meals, exercises, weight goals, and then see it all nicely calculated for you. Everything is on a handy calender view and their are plenty of color choices. So if orange motivates you more than say, blue, change the color view. There is also a section for entering body measurements, calculating body fat, BMI, and a really cool tool that will tell you how long it will take you to reach your goal according to how you’ve been doing. Also, if you’re self conscious, you can set a password entrance – so even if you share a computer, no one but you will know how you’re doing.

This program is really amazing; the best weight, exercise, health planner and organizing system that I’ve ever seen. It actually motivates me to exercise – and believe me, that’s huge. For under $50, with free upgrades, it’s an incredible bargain. Plus, they offer a 15 day trial so you don’t have to purchase until you try it.

To see all the screen shots up close and learn more visit Weight-By-Date.  

Post from: Blisstree

Organize Your Weight Loss & Fitness Goals

Here are 3 solutions for organizing your recipes:

1. Write down your recipes on a rolodex.

Divide the rolodex into sections such as poultry, beef, vegetables or main dishes, side dishes, breads, etc. A rolodex sits nicely on your kitchen counter and it is very easy to flip through to find the recipe you are looking for.

2. Create a filing system with a 3 ring binder.

If you frequently pull recipes out of magazines or print them off of the internet, create your own filing system with a 3 ring binder and page protectors. Use dividers to keep them organized into sections.

3. Purchase an already made system.

There are many places where you can purchase a recipe binder system that is already set up for you. All you have to do is write down your recipes in it. Most of them come with lined pages and tabbed dividers to keep everything separate. You can purchase a really nice one at Williams-Sonoma and C.R. Gibson Bon Appetit Recipe Organizer from Amazon.

Post from: Blisstree

3 Solutions for Organizing Recipes – Supper Saturday

The Meal Planner 101 System

Let me start off by telling you how much I love the Meal Planner 101 system. For $29.95 you get a notebook with a few pre-printed pages on it for menu planning, grocery shopping, family favorite recipes and so on. You get to choose which notebook you want and all the designs are great. As I always say, when something is appealing to the eye, you’ll use it more. I really enjoy using my notebook and making my grocery list and planning my meals with it.

The next thing you get is a DVD and this is the gold mine here. This DVD isn’t just a “plan your meals and life will be easier” type DVD. The creator of Meal Planner 101, Julie Sheldrup, takes you step by step through the whole process of great meal planning. It’s not just about making a list and a menu. There’s a lot more to it then that.

She starts off by showing you how she organizes her kitchen. When it comes to meal planning, an organized kitchen is a must! I have always been an advocate of that. She explains how to best organize your refrigerator and pantry area. This is where meal planning begins – with an organized kitchen.

Read the rest of my review below the cut.

She also explains in depth about how she plans her meals using that week’s grocery flier. She can see what’s on sale, plan her meals around that and save her family some money.She also shows you how to make a menu, do the grocery shopping and bring it all back home to start cooking delicious meals for your family.

If you are a newlywed, new parent, or someone like me who was out of the routine of planning meals, I know you will enjoy her notebook and DVD.

What Meal Planner 101 Has Done for Me

Now, let me tell you how things have been for me the past two weeks. They have been great! I sit down on Sunday afternoons with the newspaper and clip coupons and go through the grocery store ad. I make my grocery list (which she has divided into sections for easier shopping), go shopping on Monday and have at least a week’s worth of food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

My kids have loved waking up every morning and knowing what they are having for breakfast. I have nothing against cold cereal, but my two oldest do. So I’ve been up early making muffins, waffles, cinnamon rolls,etc and I know they have been sit off to school with a full tummy.

I also know that I have enough food for their lunches for the entire week. That has been a blessing.

As far as dinners, since I know exactly what we are having, I have been able to remember to thaw or marinate the meat, let the rolls rise, and plan our meals around out busy schedule. I have our meals posted on a calendar and everyone can look and see what we’re having.

Surprise Guests

Another great thing about meal planning is that when you have surprise guests, you can just add some more food to the meal you already had planned. This happened to us last weekend. My father-in-law called and said he was stopping by. We saw him at Christmas, but he lives in Albania so we want to see him as much as we can while he’s in the states. I didn’t have to panic and wonder what and the world I was going to feed him or look in my pantry and cringe. I was able to set an extra plate at the table and just enjoy the fact that he was here with us. Now that was a wonderful feeling!!

Give Meal Planner 101 a Try

I highly recommend Meal Planner 101 and know that if you are struggling with meal planning, that this could be your answer. Julie’s personality is great also and you’ll enjoy watching her. Don’t turn the DVD off too soon or you’ll miss her adorable bloopers.

Stop by the Meal Planner 101 website and take a look at the company. I am very glad I stumbled upon their video on You Tube. I hope everyone is having a great Saturday. Oh and guess what..I know what we’re having for dinner tonight…do YOU?

Technorati Tags: meal planner 101,meal planning tips,meal planning system,julie sheldrup,how to plan meals,kitchen organizing tips

Post from: Blisstree

Meal Planner 101 Review – Supper Saturday

Alright, I plan on participating in OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday every week and I am really excited about it! I just received my MealPlanner 101 in the mail, so be looking for a review of it very soon. I can’t wait to tell you about it.

Now, my schedule is crazy so planning a menu was kind of hard. That’s been my problem – no time to cook in between everything, but I am doing whatever it takes to make this happen. This will take a lot of commitment, planning and organization.

Here’s a break down of my weekly schedule so you know what I’m talking about:

• Mondays are gymnastics from 4 to 7. I am usually only there from 6 to 7 so that gives me some time to cook a meal. I have to reheat whatever we have for dinner for my 8 year old, but he doesn’t mind. He loves gymnastics!
• Tuesdays are gymnastics from 5 to 6 and then small group from 6:45 to 8:15 pm. No cooking is happening this night.
• Wednesdays are gymnastics from 4 to 7. Are you seeing a theme here?
• Thursdays are….drum roll please…NOTHING! Wahoo!
• Fridays are acting class for my daughter from 6:30 to 8 pm. We eat before class.
• Saturdays – you just never know.
• Sundays – church at 10:30 am and again at 4:30 to 6:30 pm

And here’s my menu plan for the week:

• Monday: Homemade Chicken Pot Pie, cut up fruit
• Tuesday: Eat out night  – I think we’ll do Subway.
• Wednesday: Spaghetti and meat sauce, crescent rolls, fresh steamed green beans and fruit
• Thursday:  Marinated pork chops (I’ll marinate them Wednesday night and all day Thursday. Yum Yum.), corn, wheat rolls and fruit
• Friday: Date Night!
• Saturday: Baked Salmon with butter and garlic (I got this recipe from MealPlanner 101. It sounds so yummy!), steamed mixed veggies, fruit and rolls
• Sunday: Lunch: Soup and salad; Dinner: Quesadillas, mexican rice and veggie sticks

There you go! I did it and it feels SO unbelievably good to know exactly what my family is eating this week. It’s been awhile since I have planned out a menu.

Be sure and come join everyone over at Menu Plan Monday and share your weekly menu!

Post from: Blisstree

Menu Plan Monday #1 with OrgJunkie