Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting
I decided, last minute, to add these Cheesy Cauliflower Cakes to our lunch menu. They are SO good.
Apparently, I thought I should let you know more about what I’m fixing for lunch today. Carry on.
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Every day this week, our family will be waking up to a healthy breakfast that has already been prepared. You wanna do the same? Here are all the plans to make this happen. You are going to love this!
Speaking of breakfast, you should know that I made the worst breakfast ever yesterday. I think my hair is still holding on to the smell from the nastiness I put in front of my family to eat. I had grand plans to fill us all full of good protein by making a hearty (but quick) meal of Bacon Cheesy Eggs before soccer games. Therefore, I already had the bacon chopped up and cooked ahead of time. While getting eggs cracked open and whipped, I started rewarming the bacon in the skillet – on high heat. Within just a few seconds, it started smoking and smelling up the kitchen. Oh well, I thought. I’ll just quickly add the eggs, scrambled them up together, and all will be well.
If only.
That bacon was apparently beyond repair, making the bacon/egg/cheese mixture taste like ashes. Not that I’ve ever eaten ashes.
We sort of choked it down, because it is very hard to throw away farm-fresh eggs, even if they do taste like burnt fire wood. And that is how I sent my children off to the soccer fields so that they could run several miles and attempt to do fancy footwork. It was not one of my finer moments. But as Asa (our 16 year old) said with a grin, “Well, the cantaloupe sure is good. At least you didn’t burn that.” Yes, at least. :)
These Raspberry Oatmeal Bars aren’t in our freezer cooking plan for this week,
but they are another example of a great recipe you can make the night before
to serve first thing in the morning. We love these bars!
Here’s what I’ll be trying not to burn this week:
Sunday, April 13
Raspberry oatmeal bars, applesauce
Cheesy beef and pasta casserole (recipe in {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook), tossed salad, green beans
Small Group potluck
Monday, April 14
Easy breakfast casserole, cantaloupe
Chicken patty sandwiches, lettuce and tomatoes, pickles, carrots, fruit smoothies
Cheeseburger macaroni, tossed salad, roasted asparagus
Tuesday, April 15
Poppy seed bread with orange glaze (recipe in {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook), eggs, strawberries
Rice and veggie stir fry with zucchini, carrots, and broccoli
Chicken tacos, fresh pineapple
Wednesday, April 16
Sweet pecan French toast casserole (recipe in {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook), kiwi
Sloppy joes, creamy coleslaw, cucumbers and carrots with ranch, blackberries
Lamb chops, baked potatoes in the crock pot, tossed salad, peas
Thursday, April 17
Poptarts, bananas
Popcorn chicken, potato wedges, steamed carrots and broccoli
Tuna casserole, peas, roasted asparagus
Friday and Saturday – travel days (packing some food for the road, especially fruits and veggies)
Please make plans to join us this week for the Freezer Cooking Breakfast Challenge. You’ll love getting ahead for the morning!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!
I’ve shared with you before that while I am a morning person, I’m not a fan of standing at the griddle flipping pancakes for an hour. After all, there are all kinds of other important things that need to be done to get the day going. Making breakfast the night before or pulling breakfast out of the freezer rocks my world and makes me a much more lovely person in the morning. (Lovely at heart, that is. I’m not saying a word about my frizzed, right-off-the-pillow hair.)
Let’s keep our mornings simple, while feeding our families healthy food too! That’s why we’ll be focusing our Freezer Cooking Challenge around breakfast foods this week.
Here’s what I hope you’ll love about this week: Each day we’ll be making something new from the list below. We’ll put part of it into the freezer for another day. But we’ll be saving one meal’s worth to serve for breakfast the following day. That means each day this week we’ll all wake up to a breakfast that is already prepared! Once you get into this habit, I think you’ll love it as much as I do! Then we can all be lovely at heart in the morning. And for those of you who naturally roll out of bed with pretty hair, you can be lovely in appearance too. Some of us just have to live with the frizz.
Here’s what I have planned to make this week:
I always serve fruit with breakfast, and I often serve eggs. Keep that in mind as you plan your menus!
Want to join in? Here’s what you’ll need:
Be sure you have:
Looks like a lot, but these groceries will provide you with 10+ meals!
I’ve created a downloadable and printable grocery list for you here: Freezer Cooking Grocery List Three
Important Note: If you purchased {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook before March, 2014 – I’ve since edited both the Sweet Pecan French Toast Casserole and Poppy Seed Bread with Orange Glaze recipes to cut the sugar (sucanat) in half. Those recipes taste just as yummy without all that sugar!
Your first assignment in this week’s challenge is simply to purchase all groceries, and/or make sure you have all ingredients on hand. On Monday, we’ll begin prepping these great breakfast foods to serve and freeze. It’s gonna be a great week!
Let’s Do This! eCourse and {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook are discounted to just $5 for the whole package. The recipes included in that package are some that we use all the time at our house to get ahead!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!So…freezer cooking this week. Are you in? Most importantly, do you have your chicken? :) You can check out all the plans, download the grocery list, and access the recipes here. Make plans to join us this week!
Here’s our menu plan for the week, which of course, includes a lot of chicken. I also added in some coconut flour recipes since I found such a great deal on coconut flour yesterday:
Sunday, April 6
Homemade instant oatmeal, pears
Sloppy joes, carrot sticks, fruit
Small group fellowship: Nacho bar
Monday, April 7
Green machine milkshakes, coconut flour muffins
Chicken chef salad with tons of veggie choices, crispy cheese crackers
Pizza boats, fruit salad, raw veggies
Tuesday, April 8
Scrambled eggs, quick mix biscuits, kiwi
Black bean chicken nachos, fresh pineapple, sweet peppers and cucumbers
Shepherds pie, tossed salad, strawberries
Wednesday, April 9
Whole wheat waffles, blueberries, whipped cream
Crock pot barbecue chicken breast sandwiches, creamy coleslaw, carrots and cucumbers with ranch, peaches
Tuna casserole, peas, tossed salad
Thursday, April 10
Poptarts, fried eggs, bananas
Taco corn fritters, pineapple mango smoothies green beans
Bacon wrapped cream cheese chicken (recipe in {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook), tossed salad, roasted asparagus
Friday, April 11
Pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, applesauce
Turkey ranch pinwheels, chocolate milkshakes, grape tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers
Potato soup, sweet peppers, tossed salad, coconut flour cheddar drop biscuits
Saturday, April 12
Cranberry white chocolate chip breakfast cookies, fried eggs, oranges
Leftovers
Chicken noodle soup, tossed salad
Did you sign up for BudgetFocus and take advantage of the big discount they’re offering? Budgeting made simple!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!How’s the freezer cooking challenge going for you at this point? Hopefully you’ve got your groceries purchased, browned your hamburger meat, and put together your first casseroles:
If you haven’t checked all this off the list at this point, no problem. Feel free to jump in on the challenge at any time!
Today, we’ll continue on with the next phase of our freezer cooking for this week. Get ready to make Creamy Salsa Enchilada Casserole (recipe in Let’s Do This! eCourse, Lesson 2). Or if you prefer, you can make the Cheesy Salsa Enchiladas version of this recipe.
If you already have your meat browned, this is going to be a very easy day for you! Simply scoop out two pounds worth of cooked meat, stir in salsa, sour cream, and spices – and put your casseroles together according to directions. You can cover and label one casserole to put into the freezer. Then, plan to serve the remaining casserole for dinner tonight along with some yummy fruit and veggie sides!
We actually already ate both of the Creamy Salsa Enchilada Casseroles I made when guests came over on Sunday after church. Freezer cooking is meant to be shared, right? This made for a super simple meal for company.
A note about cooking your frozen casseroles when you need them: My favorite way to cook a frozen casserole is to put it directly into a cold oven in its frozen state, turn the oven on to 250° and let the casserole thaw/cook for about three hours. So easy!
Okay, head on into your kitchen to get these casseroles made. Stay tuned for one more freezer cooking assignment coming up this week. Here’s the run-down of our remaining plans. Then next week we’ll focus on Chicken Recipes!
Just a reminder, Let’s Do This! eCourse and {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook are discounted to just $5 for the whole package.
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Here’s hoping you got all your grocery shopping done for this challenge. If not, you can certainly join this challenge at any time!
Did you brown 8 pounds of hamburger in preparation for the freezer cooking? How long did it take?
Wait. You didn’t time yourself cooking the hamburger meat? It’s possible that you aren’t as much of a food geek as I am. Be thankful. I just get a kick out of knowing how much time it saves to double – or octuple, as the case may be in this beefy situation – in order to get ahead.
Today, we’re going to make both Cheesy Beef and Rice and Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole.
Why are we making both recipes in one day? Because they both call for rice. It makes sense, then, to cook up all the rice we need for both recipes, then divide it up and make our four casseroles. Oh the efficiency. Oh the productivity. Oh the smell of bacon…
Yeah, by the way, prepare yourself for the fact that your family will likely get excited about eating bacon once they smell it cooking today. If you weren’t planning to serve the Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole tonight, you may need to change your plan to accommodate all the bacon sniffers and the sad I can’t believe you’re making bacon and we can’t eat it faces in your home.
So let’s get started.
I’m assuming you’ve already cooked your meat. If not, well – cook your meat. Because we’re making four casseroles today, you’ll need four pounds of cooked hamburger.
Now, begin by getting the rice cooking since that’s what takes the longest. The beauty of this: while your rice cooks, you can do 45 minutes of other work or play. Unless, of course, you want to stand at the stove watching your rice get plump and tender. snore
We need 5 cups of brown rice for these four casseroles, so measure out 10 cups of water and bring it to a boil. Stir in 5 cups of rice, turn down your burner to simmer, cover the pot, then walk away. Here are more detailed instructions on cooking brown rice.
There it is. It can cook all by itself and will actually turn to mush if you stir it.
So put the lid on, set a timer, and walk away.
In the meantime, you can cut your bacon into bite-sized pieces and get it cooking. You can also get out your casserole dishes, set out your other needed ingredients, and trim your fingernails – though not all at the same time or all in the same place.
Once your rice and bacon are finished cooking, divide the rice according to the recipes. Stir in remaining ingredients to create your four casseroles. I found that it was easiest to use two huge bowls – one for each recipe. Then I divided the contents of the bowl into two casserole dishes for each recipe.
You might notice that since I was making so many cheesy casseroles this week, I cheated and bought a big bag of pre-shredded Colby jack cheese. I know. There are healthier options, and I always recommend the healthier options. But it’s still cheese, right? At least I didn’t purchase a pre-shredded Snicker bar (which doesn’t even make sense, but I was trying to divert your attention away from my orange cheese).
Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole x2
I actually made these four casseroles over the weekend so that I could get ahead a little bit on putting together these challenge posts. How lovely it was to put a Cheesy Beef and Rice plus a Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole into the freezer. I then put one Cheesy Beef and Rice into the oven too cook and serve for dinner, and put the additional Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole into the fridge to serve another day this week. One big mess, four great meals!
See how easy it was to set out delicious and healthy veggie and fruit side dishes with this Cheesy Beef and Rice? I cooked some frozen green beans, set out a package of mixed greens along with some homemade dressings that were already made and in the fridge, sliced a couple of pears, and called in the family. Except for about one serving of greens, this entire spread was gone in about a half hour.
Need more Pyrex? I found a 9×13 dish with lid for just $11.79 with free shipping if you have Amazon Prime. If you order today, it would arrive in two days, which works out great for this challenge!
Be sure to leave a comment letting us know how you’re coming in this challenge!
Just a reminder, Let’s Do This! eCourse and {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook are discounted to just $5 for the whole package.
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Since the Freezer Cooking Challenge plan for this week includes making food for each evening, along with making extra for the freezer, you’ll see all of those casseroles sprinkled into this week’s menu plan. I love the simplicity of this getting ahead system! (Please make plans to join us for this challenge! Tonight I’ll post the next steps we’ll be taking.) If my freezer cooking plan gets shifted around, I’ll simply shift around my menu plan.
Notice all of the easy fruit and vegetable side dishes that go along with our main dishes. It is so much fun to fill the cart with fresh or frozen produce, and then to load the table with a variety of these great and colorful foods during each meal time.
Here’s our full menu plan for this week:
Sunday, March 30
Homemade instant oatmeal, blueberries
Cheesy salsa enchiladas, fresh fruit plate
Afternoon road trip, packing food to go
Monday, March 31
Cream cheese pumpkin muffins, scrambled eggs, applesauce
Creamy mac and cheese, peas, sliced cucumbers and carrots with ranch, strawberries
Cheesy beef and rice, tossed salad, green beans, pear slices
Tuesday, April 1
Honey cinnamon muffins, green machine milkshakes, apples
Potato soup, sweet peppers, sliced cucumbers and carrots with ranch, oranges
Bacon cheeseburger casserole (recipe in {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook), tossed salad, asparagus
Wednesday, April 2
Oatmeal Breakfast Bars, blueberries, clementines
Homemade tomato soup, cheesy cauliflower cakes, sweet peppers, canned peaches
Cheesy beef and pasta casserole (recipe in {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook), tossed salad, steamed carrots and broccoli
Thursday, April 3
Peanut butter pancakes, bananas
Spanish rice, strawberry peach yogurt smoothies, sliced cucumbers and carrots with ranch
Creamy salsa enchiladas (recipe in Let’s Do This! eCourse), tossed salad, fresh pineapple
Friday, April 4
Whole wheat donuts, clementines
Popcorn chicken, creamy coleslaw, sweet peppers, pears
Whole wheat pizza, tossed salad, pineapple mango smoothies
Saturday, April 5
Fried eggs on toast, oranges
Leftovers
Tuna casserole, peas, tossed salad
How is the Freezer Cooking Challenge going for you so far?
Just a reminder to go sign up for our BudgetFocus giveaway!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!It’s been a few weeks since we installed our Heavenly Homemaker’s Recipe Search By Ingredient Box. Have you used it yet? Has it been helpful to you?
If you haven’t used it yet, you’ll find it over at the top of my right sidebar, just waiting to help you. It looks like this:
Here’s how it works: Let’s say you have a lot of eggs in your fridge you want to use up for dinner tonight. You know you have plenty of cheese to go with it. You could just scramble up eggs with cheese (always tasty!), but what other ideas are there? Simply head over to the top of my sidebar, type “eggs, cheese” into the recipe search box – and it will pull up recipes from our site that will hopefully fit your needs.
It’s not fool proof. (Type in “cabbage” and you’ll get my Pudding Pops recipe since I talked about my cabbage patch doll memories in that post!) But our hope is that this tool will simplify your meal and snack planning, and help you come up with new, fun recipes for your family.
In addition, we feel that the Heavenly Homemaker’s Recipe Search By Ingredient Box will save you money! How? Well, we all have ingredients tucked away in our fridge that might go bad and be wasted if they aren’t used up. If you need fresh inspiration as to what to do with those ingredients, simply type them into the search box and see what comes up! No one wants to waste money by throwing away food!
The search box will also save you money by giving you meal ideas so that you don’t feel like you have to resort to going out to eat or picking up take-out. Seriously, sometimes we just want someone else to do the thinking for us so that we don’t have to figure out what food to prepare! Let the Heavenly Homemaker’s Recipe Search By Ingredient Box do your thinking for you, then have fun putting together one or more of our simple, healthy, and tasty recipes.
Go over to our sidebar and check it out!
P.S. If you type in “butter” you’ll likely get blasted with recipes. Go figure. ;)
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Every good and perfect gift comes from above. This includes the cold weather, right? Freezing temps, blowing snow, amazingly cold wind chill, frozen nose hairs – it’s all a part of living in a state that has long, cold, windy winters.
It’s so easy to complain when we’re too hot or too cold. As for me, I struggle to be content with cold weather by the time March rolls around. I’ve been cold since September, my wool socks now have holes in them, and I’m so ready for sunshine I tear up a little when I think about the rays beaming down on my (pale) face. I know that if I’m complaining about the weather, I’m grumbling against God, because He’s pretty much the one in control of what falls from the sky and blows across the plains. So I’m trying very hard to keep a good attitude and enjoy the fact that I live in an area that has four beautiful seasons. Spring really is coming. Sometime. Really. I know it’s true.
Well, all that to say that I’m doing everything I can to give my attitude a lift. This week, that’s going to include making Strawberry Shortcake. It is definitely not strawberry season here yet. But I found a decent deal on them at the store this weekend. They look nice, and have more flavor than those we get shipped to Nebraska in January. In a desperate effort to believe that spring really is coming, I bought two big containers. For breakfast tomorrow morning, we are going to have shortcake (made from whole wheat and honey). We’ll heap on the strawberries and whipped cream. We’ll pretend like it’s summertime. And we’ll drink hot tea, because clearly, it isn’t summertime and our toes will still be frozen. Fake it till you make it, right?
I’d also like to pretend it’s summertime by grilling burgers and eating watermelon. Seeing as turning on the grill when it’s below zero is impossible, I’m going to have to stick with eating soup and being patient.
Here’s our menu for this week:
Sunday, March 2
Instant oatmeal packets, fruit
Clean out the fridge
Small group fellowship – I’m making baked potatoes and everyone else is bringing toppings
Monday, March 3
Strawberry shortcake and hot tea
Potato soup, sliced cucumbers and carrot sticks with homemade ranch dip
Sweet and sour meatballs (recipe found in lesson 5 of Let’s Do This! eCourse), rice, tossed salad, roasted broccoli and carrots
Tuesday, March 4
Whole wheat waffles, blueberries
Grilled cheese sandwiches, homemade tomato soup, blackberries, sweet peppers
Orange chicken, tossed salad, peas
Wednesday, March 5
Snickerdoodle muffins, applesauce
Easy noodle stir fry with broccoli, carrots, and zucchini
One dish meat and potato casserole, tossed salad
Thursday, March 6
Fried eggs on toast, oranges
Pigs in a blanket, fruit salad, cucumbers and carrots
Pizza casserole, tossed salad, green beans
Friday and Saturday – traveling for boys’ basketball tournament. Packing some food/eating out some.
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!There’s nothing very beautiful about pictures of soup bones and vegetables floating in water. And yet, here I am again, just like the time I showed you all the pictures of my chicken carcasses. Some people create adorable collages of their children. Me? I spent time yesterday crafting a collage of my beef broth. Isn’t it precious? Take note of the fatty bubbles floating along at the top of the jar. I’m so proud.
Beef Broth is as fantastic for your body as Chicken Broth. There are so many minerals we need that we can get from beef bones, such as calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, sulfur, and potassium – all in their natural, beneficial, and digestible form. The vegetables you add to the pot of broth are invaluable. And the best part? Making homemade broth is one of the most inexpensive ways to provide nourishment to yourself and to your family members.
Look into buying Beef Soup Bones. There’s still a little meat on the bones (more on that later), but mostly you’re just going to pay a small amount for a package of bones. Cook those mineral-filled-bones in a pot with water and veggies, and you’ve just created several jars full of nutritional goodness for a very tiny amount of money.
Here’s how I make Beef Broth. As you can tell from my collage above, my process is very fancy and exact:
1. Place thawed or frozen beef soup bones into a large kettle or stock pot.
2. Add, to your heart’s content, chunks of onion, carrots, leeks, celery and/or any other veggie you enjoy in your broth.
3. Fill your pot with water.
4. Sprinkle liberally with sea salt.
5. Cover and simmer pot of water/veggies/soup bones for 4-6 hours. Or more. Or less. Or whatever works for you.
6. Remove soup bones from pot. Pull cooked beef off the bones with a fork, and set meat aside for soup or salads.
7. Blend liquid and vegetables together until smooth.
8. Allow broth to cool, then refrigerate or freeze until you are ready to use it to make soup, cook rice, or add it to a recipe.
That meat you’ll pull off the bones? It tastes incredible because it’s right by the bone and has been cooked low and slow. I love it in chef salads. I also snack on it as I’m pulling it off the bones.
Why do I blend all the veggies into the broth? Because after 6 hours of simmering, they are mushy. When I blend them in, they just become part of the nutritious broth. Depending on the number of carrots I use, my broth might turn orange. No matter. It’s delicious.
Once you’ve made Beef Broth, what can you do with it? You can use it to make Beefy Vegetable Soup. You can also use it in any recipe that calls for chicken broth – like my Cheeseburger Soup or Pizza Soup. Cook rice in broth for extra nourishment and flavor in a side dish – or add that wonderful rice to Cheesy Beef and Rice. Follow my instructions for Chicken Noodle Soup, but instead use beef broth and the meat that came off the bones for Beef-n-Noodles.
What other ideas do you have? What ways do you use Beef Broth?
Isn’t this a wonderful way to be healthy and save money at the same time?!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!