Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Check This Out! My Favorite New Bread Pan

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I have decided to begin doing product reviews here on my blog, since I keep thinking of cool things I want to brag about to you. Have a product in your shop or on your site you’d like me to review here at Heavenly Homemakers? Email me! 
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I recently broke down and got something I’ve been wanting for a long time: These very cool Pampered Chef bread baking crocks.

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I love these crocks for several reasons. 

1. I love baking in stones no matter what I’m baking. Stoneware bakes breads and pizza and cookies wonderfully. I have a round pizza stone, regular loaf pan stones and a big rectangular stone. And now I have these cool round baking stone crocks! I know my food is safe when I bake with stones.
2. These crocks really produce a nice loaf of bread. I think it’s something about the way the dough just has to rise upward instead of sideways and upward. (You now know by that explanation that I’m not a scientist.) 
3. You’ll find them inexpensively at the Pampered Chef Outlet (the regular catalog doesn’t carry them anymore). I was so excited to only pay $7/crock. That’s a great price for stones! 
My favorite reason to love these crocks…
4. They make awesome round slices of bread. Which are the perfect shape for sloppy joes or hamburgers. I LOVE that about these crocks. And, having round slices of bread…well…that’s just fun!

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One or two draw backs to these lovely crocks…

1. They aren’t the easiest to clean…which really just means that it takes 45 seconds to wash it instead of the 30 seconds it takes to wash a regular loaf pan. Woe is me.
2. You have to take the top rack out of your oven to bake the loaves…otherwise your bread hits the top of the oven and gets stuck and you feel like you may never get it out and when you finally do, it looks like this:

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Or it’s dented like this:

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And we all know that having dented bread is just tragic. ;)

Ooh, and if you want to bake yourself some of this delicious Honey Whole Wheat Bread, you’ll find my recipe here. I’ll try to do a tutorial for you soon about how I bake bread. Because if you don’t know how, you really should learn…because it’s not hard and there’s NOTHING like freshly baked bread. With butter. Melted all over it. On a cool fall day. With a glass of milk. Ahh….

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Menu Plan for the Week

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We got back from our camping trip today…filthy, smelling like a camp fire and worn out, but totally refreshed from a great weekend spent in fresh air and with friends. I must admit that I enjoyed this camping trip more than any other one I’ve ever been on. I think it had something to do with the fact that the weather was absolutely perfect…and the fact that I took an entire kitchen with me. Wow, did I ever feel spoiled. It was great.

As we were packing up to come back home, Matt and I were commenting to each other about how well it actually worked out to take our concession trailer. Sleeping on the floor in there wasn’t so bad. As long as the boys aren’t planning on growing any taller (yikes!), we all fit in there just fine.

I was going on about how we had all the comforts of home. And then I said, “Well, except without the computer…” And he looked at me and said, “Um, yes…and showers.” (Apparently I favor my computer over having a shower. Hey, I like both….)

Now that we’ve all showered…I’ll share our upcoming menu for the week. We have not one but TWO field trips this week and quite a few soccer games too. It’ll be a fun, full week!

Monday, Sept. 29
Peanut butter honey toast, clementines
Pizza, apples
Spaghetti, corn on the cob, tossed salad

Tuesday, Sept. 30
Applesauce bread, bananas
Cheesy quesadillas, peaches
Turkey ham with scalloped potatoes and carrots

Wednesday, Oct. 1
Whole wheat waffles
Hearty bean casserole, bread and butter, fruit salad
Honey mustard chicken, baked potatoes, peas

Thursday, Oct. 2
Scrambled eggs, oranges
Hamburger patties, corn on the cob, strawberry-peach slushies
Potato soup, carrot sticks

Friday, Oct. 3
Giant breakfast cookies
Going to Pumpkin Patch! Sandwiches, apples, carrots, peach fruit leather
Tacos

Saturday, Oct. 4
Whole wheat cinnamon rolls, fruit
Homemade mac and cheese, steamed carrots
Stir fry – chicken, carrots, broccoli, rice

Here’s the link to our free downloadable fall menu planners. Hope to see you back for a week of fun blogging! I’ll share our camping pictures on Gratituesday!

Be sure to visit Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas.

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Schedule Schmedule…Homeschool Hubbub…and a Confession

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As I began writing a post to explain our usual daily schedule to you…I realized that first I should write a post with a few details about our lifestyle so that our schedule, especially the homeschooling part, will make more sense to you. 

See, there’s this little thing called flexibility that, while it doesn’t come easy to me, I have learned to embrace, enjoy and cherish. Flexibility is one of the biggest blessings of homeschooling  (not to mention the fact that I can smooch my kids’ cheeks WHENEVER I want to ALL DAY LONG…). I’ve decided that learning to be flexible just makes things so much simpler. I do not like to be uptight…but oh, can I get uptight. I’m working on it.

So, we have a schedule on paper, sort of…and it makes our life go more smoothly when we work to follow it. And we get a lot of work done when we follow it. And most days we are able to follow it, mostly. But we rarely, if ever, follow it to the letter.

Sometimes Daddy needs us to do something for him. Sometimes we have a headache. Sometimes there’s someone who needs a meal taken to them. Sometimes we need to read some extra chapters of History today, knowing that tomorrow we’ll have to be out the door by 10:30 and we won’t have time to read. Sometimes  we are feeling creative and just get out the paint. Sometimes we have a gajillion apples waiting to be made into applesauce all over the kitchen…

Yeah, it’s called life. And my kids are learning about it.

And Matt and I want it to be that way. We feel like their education happens around the clock…not just when the school books are out. And we’re trying to help our kids understand that too. We want them to understand that they’re learning when we make lists together to organize our camping trip. (Yes, it’s important for me to teach my kids early in life to make lists!!)  We want them to understand that when they’re helping mommy cook, they are learning. And even when they’re playing with legos…they are learning. 

Just wanted to talk about that a little bit before I go into our daily schedule explanation in a future post.

And I also feel like I need to confess this to you…. (yikes, this is kind of hard)

I often see a person’s daily schedule and it says something like “Get up at 6 am…read Bible”. I think that’s so great that people have their Bible reading time scheduled into their day like that…first thing in the morning. 

Yeah, I don’t have that. I don’t have Bible reading time scheduled into my day. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m taking that flexibility thing too far? Everyday is a little different around here depending on what we need to get up and do…or depending on how late we had to stay up the night before. I don’t have a set time that I get up in the morning. (I despise alarm clocks.)  I get up when I get up (usually between 6:30-8:00). And I’m thankful for that flexibility (oh, so thankful). 

I do wake up talking to my Father and spend most of the day visiting with him right up until I fall asleep each night. But since I don’t have Bible reading time scheduled directly into my day…some days it doesn’t happen. And some days it does. (And most days I read it to my kids…and we work on memorizing scripture…I guess I kinda forgot about that part…but I’m talking about my personal time in the Word.)

So, I guess I felt like I needed to tell you that. Because when you see my schedule, you won’t see “Personal Bible Reading” time scheduled in there. When I began writing out my schedule, I realized that. I am working on it.  And I’m really working on it with my kids so that they establish a good routine of daily Bible reading early in life.

Thank you for providing safety for me to be real with you. I’d love to hear what works for you in this area. Please do share how and when you manage quiet Bible study time. 

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My Randomness Returns

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First, I finally put a search box on my site for you so that if you’re looking for say, my whole wheat pretzel recipe…you just type the word “whole wheat pretzels” into the box and it’ll find the recipe link for you! You’ll find it on the left hand side of my blog, right under all the categories. No, your other left. Yep, you got it. Now you can search to your heart’s content. It’s about TIME I did that, huh?

Second, after peeling 300,000 peaches (give or take) to freeze for smoothies, I finally took Lindsay’s advice and just left the peelings on. And guess what? The peelings just blend right up into the smoothie and you can’t even tell they’re there. They’re more nutritious that way of course. And, oh my word, does the freezing process ever go faster! Now if you’re canning them, you’ll need to peel them, but if you’re freezing them, for the love of all things sane, just slice ’em and flash freeze them.

Third, I have no idea what I used to do with my time before I began canning and freezing and fruit leathering. I don’t remember my life before this fall harvest. I think I remember something about cooking a meal without having to step over boxes of apples or scooting jars out of my way so I could mash some potatoes. And  I wish I had a dollar for every phone call I’ve gotten asking if I need any more apples. Ooh, better yet, I wish I had a dollar for every APPLE I’ve had in my kitchen during the last few weeks. It has been some year for apples around here. Wow.

Fourth, the past few weeks, I’ve been reading Little Britches to the boys. Have you READ that book? It is SO good. I fell in love with the family and how the daddy and the son worked so hard together…and it made me want to buy a ranch and some horses and go back in time 100 years (but I would, of course, take my computer and electricity with me). Anyway…when we got to the last two chapters…it got so sad and I could not read it anymore because tears were streaming down my face and my voice was all messy. I handed the book to Matt and he finished reading it to us. It was all I could do not to sob loudly as we sat around the table and listened. I’m still not over it. Oh, but it was a good book.

Fifth, there is a big chorus of crickets blessing my home. (Do you all have tons of crickets too, or did they all decide to move into my house?)  They are singing so loudly right now I can hardly concentrate to write. I don’t mind them too much (because I’d rather have crickets than say, termites) but I do wish I could turn their volume down.

Sixth, I’m going to start doing product reviews on my blog. Because I have a bunch of stuff that I’ve been thinking about that I want to tell you about and brag about to you and encourage you to have. (Like a blender. You should all really have a blender. Between making applesauce, fruit leather and lots of smoothies and milkshakes…I been using my blender three times a day. I highly recommend blenders.)  But seriously, I’m excited to start recommending other useful kitchen tools and homemaking helps. If you have a product from your home business or etsy shop or whatever that you’d like me to review…email me!

Seventh, I could continue to be random and write about the little lego people on my steps just asking to be stepped on or something like that, but the crickets are distracting me. And really…I should go start getting busy with those apples again. Anyone have anything random to share? Hopefully I’ll be able to hear your comment above the Cricket Sing Along…

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Getting Real With Food: Keeping the Peace

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I have two friends.

Okay, I have way more than two friends…but right now I’m going to be talking about two friends.

These two friends are named Ima and Erma. (While these may sound like ficticious friends…they aren’t…the friends are real…I just changed their names so as not to embarrass them on my blog).

Ima’s husband has had poor health for years. Once when Ima was visiting with me in my kitchen while I was making honey whole wheat bread she looked into my pantry at my whole foods and said, “Oh, you do try to make everything healthy don’t you? My husband is always on me to cook more like this. I just don’t want to.” Then Ima shrugged. 

Here’s my advice to all the Ima’s out there who have husbands that want to eat healthier:

If your husband wants to eat healthier…then I would certainly think that as his help meet you would want to work to learn a few things about healthy eating. It is not as difficult as you might think. What a great gift you would be giving your husband…which would be a blessing to your marriage and your entire family. 

Now, on to my friend Erma…

Erma has a husband who sort of understands that eating healthy is a good thing…but the guy just really likes his junk food. And he loves to eat out. And he really likes giving their kids fun treats like “Fun Dip” and popsicles and hot dogs, because…it’s fun. Erma is totally into healthy eating and has had a very hard time with the way her husband likes to eat because she knows that licking colored sugar off of a sugar stick (Fun Dip) is not a good snack for her kids. And it really bothers her.

For a while, Erma fought her husband on this. She got mad at him everytime he brought home sugary cereals and white bread from the store. The kids started noticing that that Mommy got mad about the suckers Daddy would bring home for them. It was causing bitterness within Erma and tension in the family.

Finally Erma realized that her husband and kids did also eat the healthy food she prepared. The treats her husband brought home were rare…and he did it because he wanted to do something fun for his children. It was a special thing for Daddy to do. 

So Erma decided that it was more important to have peace in the home than to have a perfect diet. She knew it was better for all of them to eat healthy foods…but the trouble she was creating by fighting her husband all the time about it was not worth the “unhealth” of the family. She began smiling at him and thanking him when he brought home pizza so that she wouldn’t have to cook. And she’d fire up the grill when he brought home hotdogs for a fun cook out. (And she’d get out carrot sticks to go with the hotdogs)  :)

It is amazing the transformation that happened in the family when Erma just lightened up and worked to follow her husband’s lead about food. Now he even works a little harder to make sure the kids eat their veggies!

Erma, you rock. 

I wanted to tell you about my friends because I’ve heard from several of you out there whose husbands aren’t as excited about making healthy changes as you are. I want to just encourage you to follow their lead. Move slowly and try new things. Make tiny changes. Make their favorite foods, just try to make them with the best ingredients that you can. Try healthier foods that are fun (like my Giant Breakfast Cookies or Donuts).

Above all, be cheerful about it.  And don’t give up.  As long as he’s okay with it, keep making small changes to your diet so that your family is given the nourishment they need. And, if he brings home a package of oreos…pour everyone a glass of milk and just sit yourself down and enjoy them! 

What’s it like at your house? Are you and your husband “on the same page” when it comes to eating healthy?   And…what’s it like teaching your kids to eat healthy foods? I’ll be talking about that soon!
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Read more Works for me Wednesday posts here.

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Gratituesday: My Burden is Light

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Every day we have to make decisions. And some of them are hard.

Matt’s boss is looking at possibly moving soon, although we don’t know how soon. We’ve know about this possibility for a while, so for several months, Matt and I have been talking  about our future…what would be best for us to be doing as a family as we raise our boys into godly men…what ministries our family should be involved in that would work for our family as well as be a benefit for God’s kingdom… 

And also, we need to be able to make a living, so that we can eat and all that stuff. 

There are so many good ideas, so many great things to think about…so many hurting people out there who need love from Christians and the hope of Jesus. So whatever we choose or whatever job works out for Matt, we know that it will be one that will glorify God.

And because of that…I’m not even worried. I don’t have stress over the fact that Matt may need to find another job soon. (Okay, maybe I have a little stress…but mostly I don’t.) 

When I look at all the ways God has continually taken care of our family…ways He has provided for us and given us more than we even need…I can’t help but feel peace about it. My husband is a hard worker full of ideas and vision for our family. (BTW, for those of you local readers…we feel pretty strongly that God wants us to stay here. Just so ya know.) 

So, while we know we’ll be making some tough decisions in the near future, we know that God takes the pressure off by opening and closing doors as He sees fit. And that’s a really good thing, since we really have no idea what direction we should be taking. 

We’ll just pray and listen and wait and watch for His direction. I’m so grateful that really and truly, God’s yoke is easy and his burden is light! He knows the plans he has for us! 

Why, it’s all rather exciting, isn’t it!
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Please join us for Gratituesday! Read the details here, then come link up with Mr. Linky below. Don’t have a blog? Please leave a comment telling us about something you’re grateful for!
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The Kitchen Overflowing With Fruit Whips Out Some Homemade Fruit Leather

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When you look at an apple tree and see that it is loaded with fruit…it’s all so very pretty and exciting. So you begin to pick the apples and load your boxes…and it gets even more pretty and exciting. And then you go overboard because all of it is all so pretty and exciting that you just can’t stop picking.

And then, you go home with all of your apples, and someone else calls you on the phone and asks if you want some more apples. And you say, sure, because you just hate to turn away good (free) food. So then, you have even more apples.

And then someone else calls you (in the same day) and asks if you want some peaches. Like FOUR banana boxes full of peaches. And you get really excited (forgetting briefly about all of the apples) and say, yes, you’d love to have all those peaches. (And then you share some of the peaches because really, four banana boxes full? Have you seen a banana box?)

And then you get started in your kitchen making applesauce and canning and freezing peaches…and you keep working until everything, including your children, begin to look like either an apple or a peach. Sad, but true.

You decide that you’re kind of tired of doing the very same things with your fruit, so you try to make some fruit leather. And it works, and it’s yummy. Everything and everyone around you still looks like an apple or a peach…but at least now, you have another kind of snack stored away in your pantry for the winter. Hooray!

Homemade_Fruit_Leather

Here’s what you would do…

Apple Fruit Leather

1. Make applesauce as shown here.
2. Put a piece of buttered parchment paper on a cookie sheet and spread the applesauce about 1/8 inch thickness on the cookie sheet.

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3. Put it into a 170 degree oven for somewhere between 10-18 hours or longer, depending on your oven. Your fruit leather will be done with it is no longer wet….just sticky and leathery.

You can add some kind of sweetener to it or maybe some cinnamon or nutmeg if you’d like…I just left mine plain and it is sweet and yummy as can be!

Peach Fruit Leather (So Easy!!!)

1. Wash peaches
2. Cut them off of their pit and throw them, skin and all, into the blender.
3. Add a shot of water and puree them until there are no chunks.
4. Spread it onto a piece of buttered parchment paper on a cookie sheet, about 1/8 inch thick.

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5. Put it into a 170 degree oven for somewhere between 10-18 hours or longer,  depending on your oven. Your fruit leather will be done with it is no longer wet….just sticky and leathery.

***A few things to note about making the fruit leather.

*While you are making it you might think that it is taking FOREVER. And you’d be right. It does. Be patient.
*My fruit leather didn’t dry evenly in my oven…so sometimes I would cut off the sections that were dry (so that they wouldn’t get overdone), and stick the rest back in the oven. This meant I had some weird shaped fruit leather, but I was going to cut it all up to store it anyway, so it didn’t matter.
*I loved it that I could put this in the oven in the late evening, then I could go to sleep and have it be all done, or almost done, when I got up in the morning!

I let us all have a sample taste….then I put it into a jar and into the pantry (should be stored in a cool, dark place). Right now we have so many fresh fruits available to us that I’m sort of hoarding the food I’m preserving. I’ll pull out the fruit leather on some wintery day when fresh fruit is not so abundant! THEN it’ll really be a treat!

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Okay, I’m off to go start peeling more apples… :)

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Menu Plan for the Week *Updated*

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This weekend I received more apples and more peaches. A TON more! Oh, and some grapes! So, guess what I’ve been doing all weekend? 

Yep, going to soccer games.

Oh, and making applesauce and canning peaches. And experimenting with fruit leather. (**UPDATE** I just posted about making fruit leather here!)  And making jelly. What a great year for fruit! Go God!

So this week, we’ll be eating apples, peaches and…

Sunday, Sept. 21
Oatmeal, fruit
BBQ chicken, cheesy mashed potatoes, green bean casserole
Bean dip with chips

Monday, Sept. 22
Whole wheat pancakes
Fried chicken legs, potato pancakes, peas
Tacos, pineapple

Tuesday, Sept. 23
Fried eggs on toast, clementines
Meatballs, corn on the cob, tomatoes, fruit salad
Chicken alfredo, tossed salad

Wednesday, Sept. 24
Sourdough biscuits with butter and honey, kefir-fruit smoothies
Beans and rice with salsa and creme fraiche (homemade sour cream)
Swiss steak over rice, broccoli

Thursday, Sept. 25
Applesauce bread
Turkey sausage, fried potatoes, mixed veggies
Beef stroganoff, green beans

Friday, Sept. 26
Breakfast burritoes
Hamburgers and onion rings
Cheesy Turkey Sausage Stromboli (hands down my family’s favorite dish), fruit salad

Saturday, Sept. 27
We just made plans to go camping with some friends…so I’ll need to figure out my menu plans for that…FUN!

Thanks to Organizing Junkie for hosting Menu Plan Monday!

If you haven’t signed up for my giveaway…head on over and do that!

And…guess what? 

I got me a new digital camera! Now you won’t have to see me in pictures like this. And…my new camera will let me take several minutes of video! For a LONG time, I’ve wanted to be able to put video tutorials on my blog for you. Hopefully I’ll be able to figure all of that out and post one soon! 

So, what I wanna know is…what are you most interested to see on a tutorial video?  (Just don’t ask me to stand on my head while chewing gum and singing Oh Susanna…I can’t do it.)  (You’ll have to pick a different song.)  ;)

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Schedule Schmedule…Making Lists and Being Organized

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I used to be BIG into list making. I had to have every detail of my day written out in order to feel organized. I loved scratching finished items off my list. And if it wasn’t on my list, but I did it anyway, I’d quickly write it on my list, then immediately scratch it off my list. Weird, I know. 

Somewhere in the span of having four kids…I stopped making so many lists. Funny, isn’t it, that now when I need to be even more organized…I have fewer lists. I guess it’s because most days I hardly have time to find a pen, much less make a list with it once I’ve found it. Somehow I’ve stayed organized anyway (mostly) (and except for my storage room) without my detailed lists. I guess all the lists are just somewhere in my head floating around all the time, because now it seems I’m just thinking hard all the time about all that needs to be done and what I’ll do next and who can help and who’s turn it is and what’s going on in the evening and what’s going on tomorrow and whether or not I have enough flour ground for the breakfast muffins and…

Please, would someone just hand me a pen!

Okay, really…I’ve got it all under control. Really.

And, let me interrupt this regularly scheduled program with a little detail about my organizational abilities. While I am quite organized in the way I plan and in the way I execute my plans, like with menu planning and school planning and schedule planning…and I’m able to get A LOT done in a day as a result…and everyone always tells me how organized I am…and it’s true…

I’m not altogether organized when it comes to having my sock drawer alphabetized and my cleaning supplies in rainbow color order. If you were to come into my house right this very minute and walk upstairs (carefully so as to not trip over any tinker toys) into my bedroom, you would see that I made the bed this morning, sort of, and only so that I could throw five loads of clean laundry onto it so that they could be folded. But they aren’t folded yet (because I’m blogging, for Pete’s sake…priorities, people). And if you went into my storage room (after you signed a waiver stating that you wouldn’t sue us if you injured yourself as you tried to walk through)…you would see that I’m not great about having everything in cute little bins with labels like Organizing Junkie, whom I think is the coolest. Oh, I wish I was that good, but I’m not. My organizational skills don’t go that far. So, while I’m pretty organized…I’m not always organized, you know?

Now, back to the regularly scheduled program…which just happens to be about scheduled programs. Or just schedules.  Our schedule.

Several of you have asked how I am able to get everything done while I homeschool and cook healthy meals and go to soccer games and chase four boys and all that other stuff we all have to do in a day. So I finally was able to fit it into my schedule to work on telling you about our schedule. Coming up, I’ll share with you about our daily schedule, our school schedule, and whatever other schedule I can schedule in to tell you about.  (If I keep writing the word schedule in this post all clever like, it’s just not gonna be funny anymore. Kinda like when one of your kids tells you the same joke 47 times during breakfast and you can only fake laugh for the first 26 times, then you’ve gotta start telling the kid to please, please learn a new joke.) 

Knock knock? Who’s there? Schedule. Schedule who?  Schedule really be impressed that I thought of this joke all by myself.

Get it? Schedule is supposed to sound like “bet you’ll”…get it?

Yeah, okay, I should really go up and fold that laundry… :)  Alright, I’m on it.

But first, I’ve gotta know…do you make lists? Are you an organized person? How do you stay organized?

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Getting Real with Food: You Can Do it!!

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If you’ve missed the other posts in this Getting Real with Food series, be sure to go read them!

All this information about healthy eating can be SO OVERWHELMING…huh? Especially if you’re used to buying and eating mostly pre-made convenience foods. Now you’ve learned that you need to “find good healthy sources of milk and meat from cows that have gone to college and have a Master’s degree”. And you should become the little red hen so that you can “grow the wheat,  cut it, chaff it, and mill it” (Andrea’s fun commentary on what we have to do if we grind our own flour!). And “eat only organic produce that has nary a pesticide on it whatsoever and grew on a tree that was sung to sleep every night”. Please, can someone just hand me a poptart? 

NO! Don’t fall back on the poptart! Eating healthy doesn’t have to cause stress. That would be…unhealthy. :)

I love to cook and bake, and it comes pretty naturally to me. Even so, when I began making healthy changes for our family a few years ago, I also found it overwhelming to think about all of the ins and outs of it. Cooking macaroni and cheese from a box would take so much less time and be so much easier than making macaroni and cheese from scratch from wholesome ingredients, wouldn’t it?

Guess what I’ve found? It DOESN’T take much longer and it ISN’T much harder! 

Over the past few days, I’ve been charting some of the things I do in the kitchen…and guess what I found? All the work I do to feed my family a healthy diet really doesn’t take hours and hours. It really, really doesn’t!! You just have to get into the swing of things, that’s all.

Like, take for instance, the fact that I grind my own flour. This job consists of me pouring grain from a sack into my grinder…plugging it in…and turning the knob to “on”. Then, I walk away and do other things (like read someone’s blog, or check email!)…then I go back in and turn it off. Done. I’ve ground flour. Whew.

Or how about soaking the flour before you make your recipe? It hardly takes any time at all…you just have to plan ahead a little. Oh, and you have to stir.

And cooking a whole chicken? Well, yesterday I did this…and today…I’m not even sore. I stuck that bird in a pot of water with some veggies (that I didn’t even take the time to peel), shook in some salt…and walked away. The chicken cooked all day long, all by itself, and made the house smell really good too. Go chicken…go chicken.

And I could go on and on about the simple REAL FOODS you can make without difficulty. Cooking from scratch and preparing healthy meals doesn’t always mean that you have to labor in the kitchen for EVER. Often it’s just about planning ahead and getting the food started…then just waiting for it to be ready. 

And…the more you cook…the easier it will be and the faster it will go. (I can practically bake bread in my sleep now…and I’m pretty sure I have on occasion…)

You CAN do this!! YOU can do this!! You can DO this!!! And you can keep reading my blog for more help…and you can email me anytime you want with questions. I love it when you email me! It excites me to read about the changes you’re working to make and to see that you care enough to try and learn! 

So keep on making great changes and learning new things about healthy eating! Your good health and the good health of your family is worth it!

So…how are you doing on this healthy eating train? What’s going well for you? What’s overwhelming you? How are ya feelin’?
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Be sure to read more Works for me Wednesday posts here at Shannon’s awesome blog!

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