Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting
Here’s your friendly reminder that today is the final day to get our Real Food Menu Planning Package for just $8!
Be inspired, be guided, and have fun!! Oh, and save loads of money too. Menu planning saves our family hundreds of dollars every year!
Real Food Menu Planning Resource Package
$8
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Ready to save some grocery money by cleaning out your pantry and freezer? You’ll be amazed at the great food hiding in there!
Since I’ve been doing my “eat from the pantry and freezer instead of buying groceries” challenge for exactly one whole day, I thought it was high time I posted an update about how it’s going so far. That, and I thought this idea of “using what you have” fit perfectly into our Money Saving Monday series. ;)
So there you have it. Today’s Money Saving Monday tip is: Challenge yourself. Instead of running to the store for ingredients, try creating a few meals and snacks from what you have stored in your pantry and freezer. This can save you quite a bit of money in the long run!
So far, all one day of this challenge has been very fun for me. By the end of the month, I might not be as enthusiastic. Either way, this is a good practice to bless your grocery budget and to help ensure that you don’t waste food.
Sunday after church, we invited several college students over to eat with us. Matt and I worked together to make a mountain of Whole Wheat Waffles, scrambled cheesy eggs, Homemade Hashbrown Patties, and fruit. I was planning to make Peach Syrup but would you believe? We only found one little bag of frozen peaches in our freezer. (I guess the “eat all the frozen peaches” part of the challenge was completed before the month began.)
I decided instead to put that small amount of peaches into a pot with all the frozen berries I found hanging out in all my freezers. Therefore, using this Peach Syrup idea, I made a Peach-Strawberry-Raspberry-Blueberry Syrup. Matt declared it to be the best part of the meal. And now I’m completely out of frozen fruit (except for pineapple). Well that didn’t take long. :)
Here’s all that was left after our feast, but I’d say there are enough waffles there to give us an easy breakfast this week:
For High School Huddle Sunday night, I made a huge pan of Apple Crisp from the bags of apples I’d sliced and frozen this fall. How easy was that?
I will say that after just one day of this, I am really recognizing how much food we go through during a 24 hour period – especially when we invite others to join us. That’s the point though. We have plenty of food – and we are happy to share! If this challenge only lasts a week or two before I need to start stocking up again, so be it. That will be one or two weeks of grocery savings, and it all adds up!
Give this idea a try – I dare you. :)
Leave a comment, inspiring us with what you have creatively come up with in your kitchen when you’ve avoided going to the grocery store!
I’ll just bet you have the ingredients for most of these hanging out somewhere in your kitchen. If not, mix and match and get creative to see what you can come up with!
You’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn how easy these are to make!
What are your favorite foods to make when you clean out your pantry and freezer?
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Now that we’re back from our holiday travels, I have felt the need to clean out some of our pantry and freezer items. Buying in bulk and buying ahead really works well for our family, but I’m thinking it may be a good idea to dig down to the bottom of my storage containers and freezers to see what random items I’ve kept pushing to the side for the last few months. I have plenty of meat, plenty of frozen vegetables and fruit, plenty of pasta, plenty of so many food items!
So I thought to myself, “What if? What if each week during January (and maybe February?) I only buy fresh produce from the store, eggs and milk from our local sources, and (wait for it)…nothing else? What if I forced myself to think simply, to use what we have, and to be creative?”
I’m really not sure if this little experiment is going to work for me. The beauty of buying in bulk when I come across a sale is that I pretty much never run out of anything we need and pretty much never have to pay full price for anything. One or two months of eating from our food storage and not taking advantage of deals might set me back a little bit. Plus, whatever shall I do if I run out of applesauce?!?!??!?!
Right. I am not going to run out of applesauce.
There are dozens more jars where this came from. We had a great apple year.
Recovering from my bulk-food-obsession-panic, I realized that there will likely be good deals to be found in February and March when I’m ready to stock up again. Duh. In the meantime, I think we’ll see some big grocery budget savings. Sweet!
Our menu this week reflects all the food I have ingredients to make without having to shop. Because this is the beginning of our experiment, I have plenty to work with. And who am I kidding? My family could probably eat well for more than three or four months with all the food I have stored away. It’s like a Coppinger Family Grocery Store in my back room. I’d show you a picture, but it’s freezing in that room and therefore a terrible mess because it’s too cold to organize, and I’m not humble enough to share the insanity all over the internet.
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Fruit and Veggie Sides (I serve 1-4 with every meal)
Have you ever done an “Eat from the Pantry and Freezer” Challenge? Anybody care to join me in this little experiment? That way, on January 31 at the end of this challenge, together we can enjoy eclectic meals of whatever is left of our rice, tuna, and of course, applesauce. Don’t forget the applesauce.
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!As the old saying goes: Where there is no plan, there is no casserole.
I think that’s in the Bible somewhere. Or maybe I just made it up twelve seconds ago. How about this one: A frozen chicken will remain frozen if left in a frozen environment. I definitely made that one up.
All this proverbial insight to say: Menu plans are really nice. They help you save money. They help you eat healthier. You should make meal plans.
For all of you (and I know there are some) who find that meal planning hurts instead of helps you – I say keep doing what you’re doing to put healthy meals on the table. No need to fix what isn’t broken.
For everyone else, I’m determined to do all I can to encourage whatever it takes for you to prepare simple, healthy meals that don’t break the bank. Menu planning can be a big help, but it can also be overwhelming if you haven’t found your menu planning comfort zone.
Before I say more though, first let me share this: You should read the post Cooking Healthy Meals When the Menu Plan Fails. Even with the best of intentions, there are times my frozen chicken is still frozen at dinner time. It happens. No need to freak out, feel like a failure, or call for take-out. These ideas have saved me many times when my plans didn’t fall into place perfectly. (Hello, Life. You sure are busy.)
I want to help set us up for menu planning success as best I can. I don’t actually like the word success because we seem to think that the opposite of success is fail – and that isn’t true (see paragraph above, in which I use the word fail, but wish I didn’t and there’s nothing I can do about it now). So let’s go with menu planning empowerment, how does that sound?
By the way, what I’m about to share will not only give you insight into how I prepare healthy meals for my family every day, it will also help you understand how it is possible for me to feed a houseful of teenage boys (and often their friends) without having to sell my furniture as a way to afford it. Planning ahead saves us hundreds of dollars every year. I can’t not plan. I can’t fall back on take-out. Keeping food costs down is very important when there’s already a comma in the grocery budget dollar amount. (They eat so much foooooooood. But love them, they’re worth it, and all that.)
1. One of my favorite ways to be inspired and gain ideas is to look at recipes. I look at cookbooks and on Pinterest, but mostly, I scroll through my dropdown menu of the hundreds (maybe thousands?) of recipes right here on my website. They are categorized, alphabetized, and even though I’m the one that put them there, I still come across recipes I forgot existed. It’s fun!
Doing this offers variety to our menu and gets my food planning creativity flowing. I typically pick seven recipes in each meal category and plug them into my menu for the week. There is flexibility, of course. There is always flexibility. My menu plan doesn’t own me, it simply acts as a guide.
Below is a screen shot of the dropdown menu on my website when I’m holding my cursor over the word RECIPES in my header. Do that, then click on any page you need. You’ll see lovely lists of real food recipes to pick from. Let your family help choose recipes to try if you like!
2. I’ve written and shared hundreds (maybe thousands?) of menu plans here through the years. They are all in my archives, found at this Menu Planning Archives link. These are fun to look through for inspiration because they are complete menu plans, full of ideas for ways to pair side dishes with main dishes.
3. Our Heavenly Homemaker’s Recipes – Search by Ingredients feature is a really fun way to plan meals based on the ingredients you have in your home. If I’m at a lost as to what to plan, I simply type in a few key ingredients I want to use (such as beef, cheese, tomatoes), then scroll through the recipes that pop up for me. You’ll see this special search box at the top right of my side bar. Use it! It’s fun and helpful!
4. I’ve put together three very thorough menu planning resources through the years: 40 Real Food Menu Plans; 1-2-3 Meal Planning; and Build Your Menu Planning Notebook. The first two share all my best tips and strategies for planning meals, plus they include tons of meal plan ideas. The thinking is already done for you!
The Notebook? Oh my goodness. That’s how I put it all together. Not only is it mega helpful, it’s cute and fun and made to order. Yours probably won’t look like mine because your menu planning needs and design preferences are likely different from mine. That’s the beauty. You print and put yours together the way it will work best for you. :)
To bless your menu planning efforts this New Year, we’ve packaged up our three menu planning resources and knocked them down to half price. Now’s the time to get into a good menu planning routine! Save yourself some time and money, letting these resources guide you.
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Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!
Our family has been driving, and driving, and driving some more. Today we’re on the home stretch! After four days in the car driving home from California, we will be home tonight. Can’t wait!
I’m excited to get back into the routine of posting Money Saving Monday tips around here. Today, since I haven’t been able to write a tip, I thought it would be great to hear from all of you instead!
We all have different ways of saving money along our healthy eating journey. Leave a comment to share what works for you!
I’d like to put together a free downloadable resource filled with all your great ideas. This will bless so many who are striving to feed their families well.
Thanks in advance! Can’t wait to hear all the great tips you have to share!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!We’ve been on the road for many days. My husband’s family is from California, so once every two years we make the long journey to visit them. Flying and renting a car would be super expensive for the six of us, so a three day road trip (one way) it is! Phew, what a trek.
We are en route right now, getting hungrier and hungrier for home cooked meals as we go. Once we arrive at home, here are the meals we look forward to (depending on what fresh produce I’ll be able to pick up at the store):
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Fruit and Veggie Side Dishes (I serve 1-4 per meal)
Be sure to get your free shipping and BOGO coconut oil this weekend!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!You know what’s bad about feeding my family beans? (Well, besides that.) It’s that I almost always forget to soak the beans ahead of time. This does not work, even a little bit, unfortunately. Crunchy beans do not make good chili.
As you can imagine, then, when it comes to making Tapioca Pudding, I am never prepared. Every recipe I’ve found calls for soaking the tapioca pearls overnight or longer. Then, most of them tell me to cook the tapioca pudding for a bazillion minutes in a double boiler.
See, I’m just not into recipes that require all kinds of thought and effort. Plus, I don’t even own a double boiler. My rebellious “yeah, I don’t want to go to the trouble to do it that way” recipe reading self sometimes gets into trouble. Usually though, I find that I can take short-cuts and still turn out a good product.
Real food recipes become easy, time consuming tasks become effortless, and recipes with twenty-seven steps become no-brainers. This is how this Tapioca Pudding recipe came to be. I suddenly got hungry for the comfort food Tapioca Pudding…and I wanted some right now. “Soak the tapioca pearls in milk then cook it in a double-boiler until Christmas morning 2019” just wasn’t going to cut it. What if? I thought. What if I just pour the tapioca into the milk along with my other delicious ingredients, and start cooking it in a plain ol’ saucepan?
But then the Follow All Instructions Exactly Police showed up at my door, so I’m actually writing this post from prison.
At least we can now all benefit from knowing this is super easy and delicious way to make Tapioca Pudding. Here’s how I did it:
I have yet to convince my boys that Tapioca Pudding is the bomb-diggity of comfort foods. You’d think me calling cooked tapioca pearls “eye-balls” would have at least intrigued them a little bit, but nope. They think those tapioca things are weird. My youngest actually suggested that perhaps Tapioca Pudding might taste good “without those tapioca things.” Oh well, more for me.
Do take heed of the “stir constantly” instructions in this recipe. While I’m obviously always eager to break rules and go about cooking my own way without following recipes word-for-word, walking away from your cooking tapioca pudding would be a very, very bad idea. Scorched milk, crunchy uncooked tapioca pearls, and black floaties in your pudding really will cause the I Told You So Police to show up at your door. Ask me how I know.
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!It’s easy, filling, healthy, and delicious – a perfect treat anytime, but especially during the Christmas season. Serve a Peppermint Milkshake for a perfect side dish or snack!
Easy Peppermint Milkshakes
2 cups milk
1 Tablespoon real maple syrup
¼ teaspoon peppermint extract
Blend and serve!
We always add organic, farm-fresh raw eggs to our milkshakes for added nutrition. I believe this simple recipe would work great with coconut milk as well. :)
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!It might be apparent to you at this point that I am on a big pumpkin kick right now. First Pumpkin Breakfast Cake, then Pumpkin Cheesecake, now Simple Pumpkin Pancakes. It’s just one more way to add vegetables to our table, plus it’s delicious – so why not? That, and I have oodles of pumpkin puree at my house right now, so I’m making everything I can think of. My family rejoices.
It is important to note that I often use butternut squash in many of the pumpkin recipes I am making. Pumpkin and butternut squash are interchangeable in recipes. Many a pumpkin pie at my house is actually butternut squash pie, but don’t tell.
Want to know how to easily cook a pumpkin (or butternut squash)? Cooking them whole is the easiest way I’ve found to cook them to make puree. Once pureed, I use it right away or freeze it until I need it. Awesome, nutritious goodness!
These Pumpkin Pancakes stir together in just a few minutes and taste fantastic. Veggies for breakfast…woot!
Simple Pumpkin Pancakes
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (I use freshly ground hard white wheat)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 eggs
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup melted butter
Whisk ingredients together until smooth. Cook on a hot, buttered griddle, flipping once the pancake becomes bubbly on the first side. Serve with applesauce or real maple syrup. Makes about ten 3-inch pancakes.
Other pumpkin (or butternut squash) recipes you’ll find here:
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Here’s a little something worth noting: Our work as homemakers and mothers is glorious, but rarely glamorous. I spent some extra time online this weekend, researching new recipe ideas for the holidays. All of the pictures I came across were so pretty, the end result of the recipe was so perfect, and I almost started feeling overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the Joneses (or the Pinterest Queens as the case may be).
Then here I was, ready to post pictures of some of the very simple (but ever so helpful) tasks I got checked off my list this weekend so that I can try to better manage my wife/mom/school/work/ministries life next week. None of my pictures even look exciting, much less pretty or pin-worthy. And don’t look now, but I was so busy cooking and writing on Saturday, I never even made it upstairs to change out of my pajamas. Glamorous? Not even a little bit. Glorious? Absolutely. I love the life God’s given me.
Here are some snapshots of my not so glamorous, but absolutely glorious (or at least practical) weekend:
Friday afternoon I washed and poked three lovely squash our neighbors had grown in their garden and shared with us. Into the oven they went.
Then, I pulled out the chicken carcasses I’d saved from last weekend and set them to boiling for broth. You’ve got to admit, a picture of chicken carcass floating in water is almost glamorous, yes?
About 1.5 hours after I put the squash into the oven, I pulled them out, took out the seeds, scooped out the inside, and pureed it. I now have five 2-cup portions ready to use for upcoming baking projects. I use this squash in any recipe that calls for pumpkin. No one can tell the difference.
Friday night after the broth was finished, I strained out the bones and cooked rice directly in the broth. I also threw tons of carrots and spinach into the pot. Once cooked, I stirred in chicken and other ingredients to make Creamy Chicken and Rice Casseroles. One went into the freezer for another time. The other went into the fridge for my family to eat this week.
Saturday we ate leftovers all day (a perk to having only three people at home all weekend). I was barely in the kitchen at all except to make a quick batch of Chili and double recipe of Coconut Fudge Bars for this week.
Oh! And I finally finished the “Build Your Menu Planning Notebook” I’ve been working on for the past several months. I’ll be sharing all the details about this on Monday once I get it uploaded into my shop. You are going to love this new fun and helpful resource!
Nothing about meal planning is particularly glamorous, but saving your family money and feeding them nourishing meals? It is glorious. I can’t tell you how much fun I had printing and putting together my own personal Menu Planning Notebook! I got seriously giddy as I picked from all the pages and then built a notebook to suit my needs. Details soon!
Sunday night, about 30 youth and adults will be meeting at our house for High School Huddle. I’m making baked ham, green beans, fresh pineapple, relish tray (carrots, cucumbers, sweet peppers, and ranch dip), French bread (store-bought, yay me!) and butter, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
As for this week’s menu, here’s what we’re look at eating:
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Fruits and Veggies to Work With (I serve 1-4 with each meal)
Here’s to floating chicken carcasses, a simple pot of homemade chili, menu planning, and the glorious lives we can all be thankful for as homemakers!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!