Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Oh Beautiful Jars!! Stocked and Ready For Gawking

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One of the jobs on my “To Do” List was to refill all of the jars in my pantry so that I’d have easy access to all of the staple ingredients I reach for so often. Since I typically purchase these ingredients in 25-50 pound quantities, I store them big buckets, and pour a smaller portion into easy-access jars in my kitchen, refilling as needed. (Read more here about where I purchase most of my food, and scroll through these posts to learn more about my bulk shopping and storage.)

My favorite part of this system, besides the fact, of course, that this just makes my life easier and saves us money while we strive to eat a whole foods diet is this:  I love staring at my jars full of pretty food.

It’s a slight obsession. A major obsession? Yeah, probably something like that.

Well, after just a few minutes of going back and forth from storage room to kitchen, lugging buckets and bags of dry goods (a great upper arm work-out!), all of my jars are re-stocked and ready to go. Pasta, sucanat, wheat, salt, beans, corn, and rice. Oh so beautiful.

 This is the part of my pantry I stare at when I most need a fix:

Hey, it’s much healthier than my former Pepsi addiction, right? :)

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Be Efficient in the Kitchen – {Eat Healthy ~ Save Time}

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I am often asked, “How do you do it all?” 

Oh my. Without a doubt, my answer to that question is always, “Mercy, have you seen my closets?” (or cabinets, or laundry pile, or toilets, or pick your messes depending on the day…)

I don’t do it all. I don’t even do half of it all. In fact, it’s almost 6 pm as I’m trying to write this. I still haven’t done my breakfast dishes and I haven’t started to make dinner. For the first time today, I finally got a chance to sit down and work on my website at 5:35 – and I’ve had three interruptions since I started. I think I forgot to have the boys put the laundry into the dryer, which means that the clothes might start to smell sour soon. I didn’t make my bed this morning. I didn’t hang my dress up after wearing it on Sunday. My hair looks kinda funny. And it seems that I have misplaced all of the pens that are supposed to be in my cute pen basket in the kitchen. (FYI:  It does not work to write a check with a fat sharpie or an unsharpened pencil.)

But for all of my unmade bed and missing pen issues, one thing I feel that I am getting figured out is efficiency in the kitchen. I believe that one of the reasons I am able to feed my family a (mostly) healthy diet while keeping up with a very busy schedule is because I try to make very good use of my time in the kitchen. I’m not sure I could make it work otherwise. (Although some days, no matter what I do, nothing works, of course. Those are my pancakes and creamy mac and cheese fall back days.)

Here’s what works for me:  Hardly ever do I just stand and do one thing at a time. I grind flour while I’m washing dishes; prepare a casserole for dinner while I’m making lunch; bake breakfast muffins while I’m finishing dinner; chop veggies while I’m waiting for butter to melt; shout out spelling words while I’m stirring noodles; get out ingredients while going back and forth to the stove to brown meat…

(And if my boys are capable of doing any kitchen or cleaning chores that need to be done – and at their ages, they definitely are capable of much! – I pull them in with me to help cook or cleanout the dishwasher, or send them upstairs to do some cleaning. It’s multi-tasking at it’s finest! Those of you with little bitty ones, hang in there. It does get easier as your children get older!)

Want to know one of my favorite ways to save time in the kitchen? Make one big mess. (This sounds sooo efficient doesn’t it?)  What I mean is – there are some kitchen tasks that are pretty messy or take a while to clean up after. Take homemade peanut butter for example. Making peanut butter isn’t difficult at all, but I have found that washing my food processor afterward takes quite a bit of time. Therefore, I have begun to make two or three or even four batches of peanut butter while I’ve got the food processor already peanut buttery. It keeps just fine in the fridge, so if I’m going to make a mess, why not make plenty of peanut butter so that I don’t have to wash the food processor as often? Makes sense to me. (Kinda sounds like my lasagna making process, huh?)

Oh, and since we are on the topics of peanut butter and kitchen efficiency, you will be glad to know that while my peanuts are whirling about in the food processor becoming peanut butter, I am busy stirring up a batch of muffins, slicing fruit for a salad, or standing on my head trying to get a pyrex dish out while it sits at the bottom of a heavy (and slightly unorganized) stack of dishes in the cabinet. Why not? The peanuts don’t need help turning themselves into peanut butter. A watched food processor never boils you know. Or at least I believe that is how the saying goes. 

What tasks have you found that you can do in the kitchen to keep you efficient with your time?

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Putting Up Green Beans From Our Garden

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Our green bean plants are beautiful this year. Matt and the boys have been picking beans like crazy. I guarantee that when they bring a bucket of green beans in to me, I display a much more excited reaction than if they were to bring me a bouquet of flowers. Garden produce makes my heart flutter. :)

Here was our counter-full of beans last week once we picked, snapped, and blanched them for the freezer. (Don’t you worry. We ate a bunch of them too.)  :)

You can learn more about how we prepare green beans from the garden here. Even if you don’t grow your own beans, I’d recommend looking into purchasing fresh beans from your local farmer’s market or another resource near you. They are soooooo good!

If you have any fun homemaking tips, we’d love for you to share them in the comments section or link them up here today. Feel free to share kitchen tips, cleaning solutions, recipe ideas, cooking short-cuts, household money-saving suggestions, decorating ideas, gardening tips, or anything else you feel fits this category. (No product reviews or giveaways – thanks!) As always, when linking your blog post, please post a link back to this blog so that your readers will know where to find more Homemaking Hints.

 

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Gratituesday: Garden Beauty

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Several have requested to see pictures of our garden this year. I figured what better day to share them than Gratituesday?!

I can take very little credit for our beautiful plants this year. Matt and the boys have been working hard with little help from me out in the garden. Matt does such a good job keeping up with it and has some great veggies planted. 

He planted quite a bit of okra, so we’re hoping to get a nice crop so we can eat a bunch and freeze a bunch. Okra sliced and fried in a little olive oil is the best!

Here’s a shot of part of our peach tree, which is loaded with fruit this year.

Our tomato plants aren’t very big yet, but they are starting to get little yellow flowers all over them, and you know what little yellow flowers means on a tomato plant right? (BLTs – of course.)  ;)

Here are Matt’s babies, the sweet bell peppers, which he planted in a raised garden bed that he built. We can’t wait until these are ready to pick and eat!

This is kind of a funny shot, so let me explain. Matt planted four long rows of green beans. For whatever reason, one row is doing awesome, as you can see. The other three rows decided to be rebellious. However, we ate our first picking a few nights ago and they were so delicious I thought I might pass out. Here’s hoping the one long row that actually grew will continue to provide lots of beans!

Malachi planted one pumpkin plant, and is very excited to see a yellow blossom growing. He has plans to grow the biggest pumpkin ever, but hopefully he’ll settle for a regular ol’ pumpkin when the time comes. :)

I’m so grateful for my family’s hard work in the garden, and so very grateful for God’s goodness in how he always provides for us!

Share how God is working in your life on your blog, then come link up with us here. If you don’t have a blog, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for! Please read through the Gratituesday Guidelines so that you understand what kinds of posts you can link up to share here. Posts that are linked but do not fit our Gratituesday theme will be deleted.

If you are linking up a blog post for Gratituesday,
please copy and paste the following sentence into your post! Thanks!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

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Menu Plan for the Week

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Lookie how pretty this is. I love this Gratitude plate from Blessings Unlimited. What a great way to start my day, with a reminder to be grateful. And well, hot pancakes and fresh milk – what’s not to be grateful for? :)

Here is our menu for this week:

Sunday, June 24
Oatmeal, fruit
Roast, carrots, potatoes, gravy
Leftovers

Monday, June 25
Peanut butter pancakes, bananas
Taco corn fritters, pineapple
Grilled bbq chicken, okra, green beans

Tuesday, June 26
Coconut flour banana muffins, apples
Tuna salad, tomatoes, crackers, carrot sticks
Chicken fried steak strips, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas

Wednesday, June 27
Granola, dried fruit, milk
Black bean taco salad, fruit
Burgers on the grill, watermelon, green beans

Thursday, June 28
Scrambled egg sandwiches, oranges
Meat and cheese burritos, cantaloupe
Italian chicken, asparagus, steamed carrots

Friday, June 29
Peanut butter honey toast, applesauce
Calzones, grapes
Nacho bar

Saturday, June 30
Easy egg casserole, fruit
Pulled pork (family gathering), cheesy potatoes, green beans
Hamburgers, fruit, carrots

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Menu Plan for the Week

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This is our last week to host High School Huddle for this school year. :(  We’ll pick back up in the fall again. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed feeding these kids and having them in our home each week for fellowship and Bible study time. What a great group.

In an effort to treat these kids right on our final huddle night, I thought Cheesecake Brownies were in order (along with a big pasta bar). I made three batches of the brownies to make sure there would be enough.

I have noooo idea what happened to that brownie in the bottom right corner.
Weird things like that happen in my kitchen sometimes. ;)

Speaking of brownies, this weekend was apparently the weekend of the brownie. I went through a lot of cocoa in two days! In addition to Huddle, there was a graduation party, and a ministry meeting we needed to go to. I decided to take brownies to those events, and actually made one batch of brownies from a box so I could time myself to see which took longer – homemade brownies or boxed brownies. I’ll share the results of that experiment later this week. :)

Here’s what our menu looks like this week:

Sunday, May 6
Oatmeal, fruit
Ministry meeting – taco bar, brownies
High School Huddle – Pasta Bar with a variety of noodles, alfredo sauce, spaghetti sauce, chicken, tossed salad, bread, and cheesecake brownies

Monday, May 7
Whole wheat waffles, blueberries
Corndog muffins, fruit-kefir smoothies
Italian cream cheese chicken, tossed salad, green beans

Tuesday, May 8
Crepes with jelly, applesauce
Cheesy salsa enchiladas, tossed salad
Sweet pepper fritata, strawberry bread, oranges

Wednesday, May 9
Whole wheat biscuits, turkey sausage gravy, fruit
Popcorn chicken, ranch potato wedges, peas
Shepherd’s pie, tossed salad

Thursday,  May 10
Coconut flour muffins, smoothies
Tuna salad on crackers, grape tomatoes, baby carrots, pickles
One dish meat and potato meal

Friday, May 11
Chewy granola bars, apples
Nachos
Homemade pizza, fruit

Saturday, May 12
Scrambled eggs, oranges
Leftovers
Taco potatoes

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Menu Plan for the Week

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Last week, on a whim, I decided to put together a bowl of Tammy’s Chicken Pasta Salad after breakfast. It was a warm day, plus we had soccer games that evening. I can’t tell you how grateful I was that I had quickly made this salad that morning. Just before game time in the late afternoon, we all dished out bowls of salad, then headed out to the soccer field. It was convenience food at it’s finest! That meal is a perfect example of how you can”Eat Healthy and Save Time“. :)

Tonight for High School Huddle, I decided to try a variation of these Oatmeal Butterscotch Chip Cookies. I mixed up the recipe as directed, except I added chocolate chips instead of butterscotch chips. Then, I spread the batter into a 9×13 inch baking pan and baked them for 25 minutes. They were a hit!

Here is our menu for this week:

Sunday, April 29
Oatmeal, fruit
Church potluck:  Pizza casserole, butterscotch bars, mixed veggies
High school huddle:  Italian pasta bake, green beans, corn, french bread, oatmeal chocolate chip bars

Monday, April 30
Whole wheat waffles, raspberries
Bbq chicken sandwiches, green beans
Teriyaki chicken and vegetables with rice

Tuesday, May 1
Baked oatmeal cups, applesauce
Corn dog muffins, raw veggies with homemade ranch
Roast, potatoes, carrots, gravy

Wednesday, May 2
Cream cheese pastry, bananas
Bean dip with chips, tomatoes, oranges
Creamy crock pot chicken and rice, carrots

Thursday, May 3
Chocolate chocolate chip muffins, apples
Chicken veggie quesadillas, pineapple
Sloppy joes, ranch potato wedges, peas

Friday, May 4
Honey whole wheat bagels, oranges
Hamburger cream cheese dip, organic corn chips, fruit
Homemade pizza

Saturday, May 5
Scrambled egg sandwiches, clementines
Leftovers
Chicken noodle soup with carrots

Anything fun on your menu this week?

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“I Don’t Have Time to Eat a Healthy Diet”

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It’s an easy excuse to give:  “I don’t have time to eat a healthy diet.”

I get it. I understand. There is a lot going on in life. People are super busy, running from here to there. Many of us are raising children, working full time jobs, and spending a good deal of time going to and from various activities. Cooking and creating healthy meals can take significantly longer than throwing a frozen pizza into the oven or making some ramen noodles. All of this is true.

However…

I really, really, really believe that we can all eat a healthy diet, no matter what our situation in life may be. No excuses.

I didn’t say that we all have to eat a perfect diet. I’m not even sure how that would actually look. But how about we all do the best we can with what we have so that we can be as healthy as possible? Yes?

The way you eat and the way I eat may not look the same. As a matter of fact, the way I eat and feed my family during busier seasons in my life may look different than the way I eat when life is a little more settled. During soccer season, I buy a few extra “compromise” foods just to keep my sanity. And on days when I can’t even tell which end is up? I buy a couple of Wal-mart take and bake pizzas. Those times are rare, because we have made healthy eating a priority in our house. But when all is said and done, I figure that God would prefer me to continue smiling at my children while putting store-bought pizza on their plates, than to be grumbly and stressed while I slap down nutrition-packed asparagus souffle onto their plates. (No, I don’t have a recipe for asparagus souffle, but it does sound like such a healthy choice, doesn’t it?)

Give yourself a break from the guilt of not feeding your family perfectly.

But don’t let the “I’m busy and don’t have time” excuse pull you away from making healthier choices. Most days, I feel like I wrote the book on “busy”. But I’ve decided to make healthy eating happen anyway because it is important to me.

Overall, I have found that healthy eating doesn’t take much more time than eating junk food. It doesn’t take any extra time out to make the choice to use real butter instead of margarine. Or how about the time it takes to grab an apple instead of a cookie? Buying real cheese instead of processed cheese? Eating a salad instead of french fries? Putting a roast and veggies into the crock pot in the morning instead of waiting in line at a fast food drive through at night?

You may not have lots of extra time at home to make all of your meals from scratch, grind your own flour to make bread, raise food in a garden and preserve the produce by canning and freezing – but that doesn’t mean you have to eat junk. All of us, no matter what season in life, no matter what situation – can make healthy choices to improve our diets! Even if you’re just taking baby steps, at least take some steps. (Here are some ideas to get you started.)

Oh, and P.S. Grinding flour is the easiest thing in the world. What? You think I’m grinding it by hand or something?? :)

What are some simple ways you have found to improve your diet that have not taken much (if any) extra time?! What have you found to be the biggest challenges in regard to taking the time for healthy eating?

Guess what? I’ve got loads of healthy eating, time saving ideas to share with you.
Watch for this new feature in upcoming posts!

 

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Preparing My Kitchen for Soccer Season

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Bring on the soccer games, the soccer practices, the soccer referee schedules (for our older boys), and the general soccer craziness at our house! While the spring soccer season isn’t as intense as the fall season (college soccer takes place in the fall on top of our boys’ soccer) – I still find myself running a little bit ragged trying to keep everyone in clean, matching soccer socks during these weeks of games.

Having a few extra food items ready to warm up quickly to feed the family is helpful during any time of the year. But during soccer season, I find it especially helpful. Therefore, last week, I spent a few hours each day working to get ahead. As a result, I’ve got a freezer packed with healthy, easy to grab and heat meals.

In case you’re interested in seeing a few photos to document my efforts (and some recipe links to motivate you toward getting some food in your freezer too!), here you go:

I made a double batch of Taco Corn Fritters for lunch one day. We ate half, then I froze half. These will warm up great in our toaster oven.

I made two Green Bean Casseroles (using a recipe in this holiday ebook), but I added some hamburger meat to make it an “all in one meal”. These will be perfect to throw into the oven before or after a game. (And by throw, I really mean “carefully slide”. Please do not throw casseroles into your oven, especially when they are in glass dishes.)

These Creamy Chicken and Rice Casseroles didn’t make it into my freezer, as I served them all for High School Huddle on Sunday. But since I put them together during my “extra cooking days”, I decided they would feel left out if they didn’t have their opportunity for a photo shoot.

I prepared seven pounds of Chicken Fried Steak Strips, froze them on parchment paper, then put the frozen strips into freezer bags. These are wonderful to have on hand to grab out and cook up quickly. I was lazy and put several layers on one cookie sheet just to see if it would work. Yay! It worked. (Good thing too, or I would have had seven pounds of chicken fried steak in one huge rectangular chunk!)

We all love these Raw Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites – which sound like a dessert – but are really a high protein, healthy snack. They freeze well, or store well in the fridge.

The following picture is not meant to be motivating at all, but rather posted so that you can feel very sorry for me and say nice things about how awful it is that a mess like this happened in the middle of my hard working cooking time. (Woe is me.)  I had a pint of cream sitting on my counter that I knocked off with my elbow while grabbing a spoon. It was so very sad. :(  And for the record, cream really does splatter quite a long distance across a kitchen.

In happier news, I made Chocolate Chip Cookies for “just in case”. It’s always great to have a batch of cookies in the freezer to grab at a moment’s notice. However, these never made it to the freezer. I ate all 24 of them while consoling myself after I knocked the cream off the counter. Just KIDDING. I packaged them up and sent them with Matt to give to some college students. I think I did eat one or three first – just to make sure they tasted good.

I put my boys to work scrubbing 10 pounds of potatoes, which we baked and turned into frozen hashbrowns. Wow, it’s nice to have these in the freezer for a quick addition to meals.

I put together two big Lasagna Casseroles, which freeze very well and can be baked on a busy day.

Malachi was hanging out with me during one of my cooking times and asked me to take a picture of him doing his math. Hey, if a casserole dish is picture worthy, I’d say my seven year old deserves some camera time too. And no, we don’t require our children to wear fancy button-up shirts while they do their school work. But Malachi absolutely loves his shirt and tie combo and would wear it every day if we let him. Shucks, sometimes we do. Although I do try to wash it occasionally.

Here you see 48 Pigs in a Blanket. They are put together, but unbaked and now in freezer bags waiting for a day when I need something fast to throw into the oven. Oh dear – there I go throwing things into the oven again. Disclaimer:  No pigs will be thrown into my oven at any time during soccer season. After soccer season is over, no guarantees. Kidding. I’m kidding.

Last, I made a double batch of Chewy Granola Bars. These are awesome grab and go snacks. Shucks, if you need to throw these, it’s perfectly fine. Throw them into your purse or a bag, or even throw them across your mini van at your kids. Carefully, of course. Here is a picture of the bars right after I poured them into a pan, before refrigerating and slicing them.

Been throwing anything into your oven lately that we should know about? What are your favorite freezer meals? Do you feel sorry for me that I spilled all that cream?

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I Can’t Find Healthy or Organic Foods Where I Live! {No More Excuses}

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I live in a small town in rural Nebraska. I am surrounded by smaller towns, and tiny towns, and lots and lots of big, huge corn fields. We can drive to Lincoln to a Trader Joes in one hour, or to Omaha to a Whole Foods store in two hours. Neither of those options is convenient since we don’t make trips to Lincoln or Omaha very often.

Therefore, I just assumed that eating healthy foods would be out of the question for our family. Where was I supposed to buy high quality food without having to drive 100 miles to go shopping? And then, would I even be able to afford the food at those specialty stores?

For our family – thinking outside the box when it comes to finding healthy food resources has been a very good idea. There are healthy food options all around us – we just had to go about our grocery shopping adventure a lot differently than what we considered to be “normal”. We do purchase a few items at our local grocery stores and at Walmart – like bananas, clementines, and a few other organic produce items that they might carry occasionally. Otherwise, here is how our family now purchases groceries:

We order from a health food co-op.

Azure Standard has been wonderful for us. We order online once a month, then pick up our food when it is delivered right here in town. Their prices are unbelievably good. I encourage you to look into joining a health food co-op as a way to find whole foods at a reasonable price. If Azure Standard doesn’t deliver to your area, look through all the comments on this post to learn of a health food co-op option that might be available where you live.

azure_standard

Here’s a sample of what our food co-op order looks like.

We order food online.

Ordering groceries online has been an incredible help and money saver for us. Not only has this been super convenient, it saves us money and gives us all kinds of wonderful whole food options – right at our fingertips. And having groceries delivered to our front porch – it does not get any easier than that! Tropical Traditions, VitaCost, Mountain Rose Herbs, Cultures for Health, and Amazon
are our favorite go-to online resources. We watch for sales and free shipping deals, and have learned the best way to get good prices while shopping online. Here is a detailed list of what food we purchase from each of these online resources.

We buy food from local farmers.

We are blessed to have friends and farmers around us who raise animals in a way we appreciate (grass fed, free range, no hormones or antibiotics, etc). Our eggs, milk, beef, lamb, and chicken all come from sources close-by. North Star Neighbors is located a bit far away compared to our milk and eggs sources, but our town happens to be right on their delivery route. Yep, for a small delivery fee, North Star Neighbors delivers meat right to our doorstep. We pick up our milk and eggs once a week from friends. In addition, we take advantage of our farmer’s market each summer and fall. If you’re looking for local healthy food options, I encourage you to check out LocalHarvest.org to see what resources are available where you live. Also, start asking around to others who you find are interested in healthy eating to see what their food sources are. You might get a few crazy stares from people, but hey, you might also find out who sells raw milk or grass fed beef in your area!

We grow food in our own garden.

Our garden provides us with green beans, tomatoes (for sauce and soup), peppers, potatoes, corn, and a variety of other yummy foods that are simple to preserve. Also, if we don’t have space to grow something, but others around us do, we aren’t afraid to make a trade or work out some sort of deal in exchange for picking some produce in their garden or on their fruit trees. Again, it never hurts to ask! Often, we get garden/tree produce for free when people have an abundance. Then, we get to work, canning, freezing and dehydrating all the produce. Here are all of my posts detailing what and how we preserve foods.

We work with our local grocery stores to special order food.

Have I mentioned that it never hurts to ask? In the past, we’ve talked to our local grocer about special ordering cases of food for us, and they’ve been happy to accomodate. They have even given us a good deal on these purchases since they know that since we’re buying the entire case, none of that food will spoil on the shelves.

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As always, remember that we are all different, our food sources are all different, and we all have different family sizes and budget amounts. We’re all on the same team here, just looking for ways to encourage one another on our healthy eating journeys.

What are the best healthy food options where you live? Have you found ways to think outside the box when it comes to whole food purchases?

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