Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Menu Plan for the Week

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A big pat on the back goes out to everyone who was able to participate in the Freezer Cooking Challenge last week, whether it was to get just one extra food item made, or whether you spent hours and hours getting ahead! I’m super impressed with all of you and grateful that you joined me in the effort to make healthy convenience food.

Rebecca sent me this picture and wow was I blown away by everything she got done!!

Rebecca, what time should I come over for some samples? I’ll bring my own butter.

Here is our menu plan for this week:

Sunday, May 15
Giant breakfast cookies, cantaloupe
Chicken alfredo sauce with pasta, steamed broccoli
Sourdough pita bread with tuna salad, baby carrots, apples

Monday, May 16
Simple soaked pancakes, blueberries
Corndog muffins, watermelon, carrot sticks with ranch dressing
Cheesy Salsa Enchiladas, tossed salad

Tuesday, May 17
Chocolate chocolate chip muffins, applesauce
Taco potatoes, pears
Three cheese garlic chicken pasta, tossed salad, peas

Wednesday, May 18
Fried eggs on toast, oranges
Tacos in a sleeping bag, fruit salad
Baked chicken and artichoke penne with sundried tomatoes , green beans

Thursday, May 19
Honey whole wheat bagels, apples
Cheddar ranch burgers, homemade hashbrowns, peas
Chicken veggie quesadillas, tossed salad

Friday, May 20
Homemade crunchy oat cereal, dried fruit and milk
Grilled cheese sandwiches, fruit, carrots
Popcorn chicken, homemade fries, peas

Saturday, May 21
Homemade whole wheat donuts, bananas
Leftovers
Brats, creamy cole slaw, fruit salad

And with that, we’re off to more soccer games. What’s on your menu this week?

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A Freezer Cooking Pep Talk (Podcast #11)

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Too nervous to take on extra cooking? Feeling like you can’t possibly accomplish anything extra in the kitchen? Wondering how this Freezer Cooking thing works? I understand all of these hesitations, but I really want you to join me this week for my Freezer Cooking Challenge!!!

Therefore, in today’s podcast, I’m offering a nice, loving pep talk with lots of tips to encourage you to jump on board with me to get some extra food made to put into your freezer. Even if you just have a little bit of freezer space, you can put one or two extra items in there that are healthy and that will provide convenience for your busy days!

To go along with the podcast today, I have created a free, downloadable Freezer Cooking Pep Talk page for you to print off and smack onto your fridge. This is my list of freezer cooking tips that you can have at easy access in your kitchen to help keep you motivated!! C’mon…you can do this!!

Grab your Free, downloadable Freezer Cooking Pep Talk Page, full of tips and big bully encouragement from me. ;)

 

As mentioned in the podcast, here is my Make Ahead Meals link that you’ll want to be sure and look through. You’ll find all kinds of recipes and help in the Make Ahead Meal section of our site!

And now, I invite you to join me as I share my favorite tips for making Freezer Cooking easier!!

Freezer Cooking Pep Talking Podcast

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It’s a Freezer Cooking Challenge!!!

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Once A Month Mom

Except for a couple of big bags of Turkey Sausage that I made and froze recently, my freezer holds nothing of convenience. (Unless you count a few packages of soy free chocolate chips convenient. I could conveniently eat chocolate chips for lunch sometime.)

If you’ve been reading here long, you know that I love creating healthy convenience foods for my freezer so that when I’m facing a busy day, my family still has healthy food to eat. You can scroll through this series of posts entitled Make Ahead Meals to learn more about how I make food ahead for the freezer! I can’t say enough about how wonderful it is to take the time every once in a while to work ahead in the kitchen. 

Because my frozen Turkey Sausage (and chocolate chips) are lonely, and because I’ve been working on a big project for Heavenly Homemakers which is taking a lot of my time (yes, I’m going to leave you hanging on this one for now), I’m anxious to spend a few hours this week putting some extra food in the freezer. 

This time for my freezer cooking endeavors, I am very excited to be teaming up with Tricia from Once a Month Mom. Have you been to the Once a Month Mom site? If you’re interested in doing some cooking and baking ahead for your freezer, you MUST take advantage of all the free and wonderful information you’ll find at Once a Month Mom. Her site is full of great tips and recipes that are perfect for making food ahead and freezing it for future convenience.

Once a Month Mom has great menu plans each month all laid out and ready for you, complete with recipes, grocery lists and freezer instructions. You’ll find a plan for Whole Foods Cooking, Gluten Free/Dairy Free Cooking, even a menu for Baby Food Freezer Cooking. 

I have had a lovely time clicking through all of the recipes on the Once a Month Mom site, picking some new and fun recipes to try for my family for my freezer cooking plans this week. Here are the recipes I chose this time:

I can’t wait to start playing with these new recipes (yes, because for me, trying new recipes is like playing with new toys!!). I was hoping maybe you’d all like to “come over and play” along with me this week. Want to?! (Yes, you do. You want to. Say yes.)

For those of you who are new to freezer cooking, or for any who might just need a little motivation to get some extra food in the freezer, I thought I’d extend a little challenge of sorts. Here’s how it will work:

  1. Pick a recipe (or more) from Once a Month Mom or from here at Heavenly Homemakers.
  2. Find some time this week to make the recipe(s) for your freezer.
  3. Blog about your cooking experience, if you have a blog, so that you can come link up with us here on Friday when we’ll all report back to share how our freezer cooking went. If you don’t have a blog, you’ll be given the opportunity to share about your freezer cooking in the comments section of our round up post on Friday, so please join the fun whether you have a blog or not!
  4. Each person who links up or leaves a comment on the Friday Freezer Cooking Round Up post will be eligible to win a free recipe ebook of choice ($7.95 or less) from the Heavenly Homemakers Shop.
  5. The more recipes you make and share with us, the more chances you have to win! (But don’t over-do…we would like to keep this fun. Please, we don’t want any reports that women across the world fainted from Freezer Cooking Exhaustion.)

Okay…so  who’s in?!  Look around at Once a Month Mom and at all of our Make Ahead Meals to get some new recipe ideas. Get your Freezer Cooking game on and join us for our fun cooking challenge this week!

What recipes are sounding good to try?? Which ebook might you pick from our Heavenly Homemakers Shop if you win?!

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See My Sourdough Bread! and Menu Plan for the Week

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Well…I did it. I followed along in my Sourdough A to Z eBook and here is the bread I got. Never mind that it took my chilly kitchen twelve hours to raise my dough. That’s all a part of the sourdough bread making process – waiting. Just in case you were wondering, waiting for bread to rise is not very labor intensive. I just started my bread first thing in the morning, did a bunch of other work all day while I left my bread dough alone, and finished it last thing at night. The next day we ate bread. Easy!

I was very pleased with how well the bread sliced. It was a little more dense than we prefer. I think that as I get more used to making this bread, I’ll get a better feel for working with it and I’ll be able to get it to the consistency that we like. Still, within two days, these two loaves were gone. :)

What I’m even more excited about are the Sourdough English Muffins I made from the Sourdough A to Z eBook!!! These could NOT have been any easier to make and my family devoured them! I made enough that we now have some in the freezer for this week, which is an added bonus. I’ll for sure be making these English Muffins on a regular basis. They are fantastic!


I know I already showed you the sourdough muffins I made last week, but they wanted me to show you again so they wouldn’t feel left out of this sourdough posting experience. These muffins were also super easy to make, and my family loved them!

Here is our menu for this week (which, not surprisingly, does include some sourdough items):

Sunday, May 8
Coconut flour muffins, home canned peaches
Dad and the boys grilling for Mama  :)
Whatever leftovers the boys find  :)

Monday, May 9
Whole wheat waffles, blueberries
Taco corn fritters, carrot sticks with ranch dip, applesauce
Cheesy beef and rice, green beans

Tuesday, May 10
Fried eggs on toast, pears
Chicken chef salad with peas, boiled eggs, cheese and homemade dressing
Teriyaki chicken and veggies over rice

Wednesday, May 11
Sourdough muffins, bananas
Homemade pizza pockets, fruit-kefir smoothies
Chicken veggie quesadillas, tossed salad

Thursday, May 12
Sourdough English muffins, scrambled eggs, oranges
Cheeseburger macaroni, steamed broccoli and carrots
Sloppy joes on homemade whole wheat buns, ranch potato wedges, peas

Friday, May 13
Peanut butter honey toast, applesauce
Black bean salsa with organic corn chips, clementines
Italian roast wraps, tossed salad

Saturday, May 14
Whole wheat donuts
Leftovers
OAMM’s BBQ Chicken Pizza, fruit salad

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Say Mmm is a great, free resource to help you with menu planning!

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Only one day left to sign up for the $50 Gift Certificate from FBS Books!

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No More Bricks! with help from BreadClass.com

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Announcing!!! Heavenly Homemakers new Gluten Free Summer eBook! (Plus a Giveaway)

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Yum

Okay, first…for all you NON-Gluten Free people out there – don’t stop reading this post before you even start reading!! (By the way, all of us who are “non-gluten-free”, shall we just call ourselves Gluten-Full?) 

Even if you can eat gluten, I think you still may be interested in this new ebook. Let me just say…there are Chocolate Mint Truffles involved. Who said truffle (and salad and dip) recipes were only for the Gluten Free among us? :)

The beauty of this newest ebook here at Heavenly Homemakers is that every single person can enjoy it and benefit from its tasty summertime recipes…but we wanted to make sure that all of you who need to eat a gluten free diet will know that all of these recipes are safe and healthy for you too!!

I’ve teamed up with my friend Kimberlee again, who is sweet, fun and also a gluten free recipe expert! She’s been feeding her family a gluten free diet for eight years and her kitchen is overflowing with excellent recipes. Because our Gluten Free and Good For You ebook was such a hit, I asked Kim to help us all out with her best tasting (and healthy) summertime dishes.

And again, just like with our Gluten Free and Good For You ebook, all of these recipes call for normal, everyday ingredients. I wanted to be sure these were recipes that could be used by everyone at anytime, so that none of us have to turn somersaults to find “special gluten free” ingredients many of us have never heard of. 

This way, even if you aren’t used to cooking gluten free foods exclusively, if you are hosting someone or feeding someone who requires a gluten free diet, you’ve got some great recipes that you know will be safe for them to eat! I love the idea of making hospitality toward our friends or family with this food sensitivity a simple possibility!

Gluten Free Summer will go on sale in the Heavenly Homemakers Shop next week, after my hunky editor (yes, that would be Matt) finishes going through it with a fine tooth comb.

In the meantime, we’ll be giving away three copies of Gluten Free Summer ebook. It contains 35 recipes for cool summertime salads, dips, lunches and suppers, beverages and treats…for the gluten free and the gluten full among us. :)

Want a chance to win a copy? Leave a comment here on this post for a chance to win! I’ll draw three random winners on Wednesday, May 11.

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Menu Plan for the Week

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Here are the Honey Whole Wheat Bagels I made over the weekend. Several of you commented that yours shrivelled and didn’t look nice – mine did that this time too. They were quite dense. I have no idea why. They still tasted good. SO, if your bagels don’t turn out perfect, don’t worry a thing about it. It’s tough to get a perfect bagel every time! What’s been your bagel baking experience?

Here’s our menu plan for the week:

Sunday, May 1
Easy breakfast casserole, oranges
Sloppy cornbread muffins at soccer games with fruit and carrots
Italian pasta bake, tossed salad, corn

Monday, May 2
Simple soaked pancakes, blueberries, whipped cream
Salmon patties, ranch potato wedges, peas
Cheddar ranch burgers, oven roasted asparagus, steamed carrots

Tuesday, May 3
Turkey sausage, scrambled eggs, creamy orange cooler
Chicken chef salad with homemade dressings
Teriyaki chicken wings, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli

Wednesday, May 4
Mini breakfast pizzas, applesauce
Homemade corndogs, potato salad, apples
Tacos with homemade tortillas

Thursday, May 5
French toast, peaches
Quesadillas, fruit-kefir smoothies
Swiss steak over rice with carrots

Friday, May 6
Fried eggs, turkey bacon, fruit salad
Grilled cheese sandwiches, chips and salsa, veggies
Homemade pizza

Saturday, May 7
Homemade poptarts, bananas
Leftovers
Lamb chops, baked potatoes, green beans

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Visit Say Mmm to help get a kick start on Menu Planning!

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New to bread baking? Or, have bread baking questions that need to be answered? 
Visit BreadClass.com!

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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!

Menu Plan for the Week

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I’ve been having a lot of fun experimenting with a variety of grains while we’re doing our Gluten Free Experiment with Malachi. This has been so good for me to learn to branch out and get away from only using wheat in so many of my recipes. Whether or not we’ll need to continue a gluten free diet for him or not, I am so thankful for all I am learning and for how our family has been introduced to new and different healthy foods!

I need to figure out how to make these Pancake Sausage Muffins with different grains. Any suggestions? Millet, rice flour, buckwheat? I should probably just make these Coconut Flour Muffins and add turkey sausage, huh? That would be an easy solution!

Here’s our menu for this week:

Sunday, April 17
Easy breakfast casserole , cantaloupe
Cheeseburger macaroni, green beans
Veggie chicken stew, cornbread

Monday, April 18
Millet-buckwheat-rice pancakes, blueberries
Popcorn chicken, ranch potato wedges, strawberry peach slushies
Lamb roast, carrots, potatoes, gravy

Tuesday, April 19
Mini apple pies, cheese
Turkey sausage , hashbrowns, peas
Stir fried chicken and veggies

Wednesday, April 20
Veggie egg scramble, bananas
Taco corn fritters, mock frozen yogurt
Tuna casserole, roasted asparagus

Thursday, April 21
Coconut banana muffins, applesauce
Hamburger patties, rice and veggie stir fry
Italian pasta bake, tossed salad

Friday, April 22
Giant breakfast cookies , creamy orange cooler
Chicken cheese quesadillas, carrot sticks, apples
Waffles, scrambled eggs, fruit

Saturday, April 23
Sweet potato streusel muffins , pears
Turkey and cheese sandwiches, apples, raw veggies
Leftovers

Say Mmm is a great resource you help you with menu planning!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Getting Ahead in the Kitchen (kind of but not really but maybe a just little bit)

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Our boys are now 6, 9, 11 and 13 1/2. I know that in a few more years, I’ll look back on these days of “how much they ate” and laugh because they’ll soon be eating even more than they are now. But wow. It is a fact that our family went through SIX DOZEN eggs last week. Six. Dozen. That’s seventy-two eggs. And I had to ration them or they would have been gone before the week was up. (I think we may need to take another look at our 2011 Grocery Budget!)

The boys seem to all be going through growth spurts lately and I’m not sure I’m going to able to keep up. Even if I can, I’m not sure the chickens can. I hate to ask my friends with chickens to squeeze their flock just a little bit harder so that they can keep up with the Coppinger boys, but I’m afraid I may have to. 

I decided over the weekend to get a bunch of food made up to make life easier during soccer season, and I think I got ahead a little bit…but with the way my family has been eating lately…I’m not really sure how “ahead” I actually got.

For instance, I made a double batch of Taco Corn Fritters, knowing they would be great for “grab and go” meals and snacks. I let the boys eat them for lunch that day, thinking that at the very least, we’d have 15 or so fritters left over for the freezer. Nope. There were four left. Emphasis on the word were, because now I think we’re down to one. So much for freezing our corn fritters. :)


I also re-created our Easy Breakfast Casserole and made Mini Breakfast Quiches as one of you ladies suggested during our Gluten Free Recipe Parade. I’ll share the recipe in a few days, but I used a dozen eggs, made 24 quiches and there are exactly zero left. I believe I, myself, got to eat a grand total of one quiche. It was good, if I remember right.

Ah well. This appears to be the new norm. I will embrace it and run with it and continue making mountains of food. God gave me boys and He gave me a love for cooking. I’m pretty sure He knew just what He was doing!

I made a batch of Breakfast Cookies, sending some home with a friend of ours who came over to celebrate his birthday. You’ve gotta love being able to give the gift of a plate of Breakfast Cookies. It was his request, after eating some at our house another time. 

Here are a few other food items I was able to make and HIDE from my children so that they would actually make it into the freezer:

I cooked a whole chicken so I’d have a nice container of chicken and some broth for future meals. I also made a TRIPLE batch of Whole Wheat Tortillas. Yay, a tower of tortillas! (I have some rice tortillas in the fridge for Malachi to use right now.)

I made a quadrupal batch of Sloppy Joe Meat for the freezer. Then I adapted our Popcorn Chicken recipe to make Rice Flour Chicken Strips. They aren’t the prettiest things in the world, but now I have chicken strips to use this week for chef salads and tortilla wraps!

I was kind of on a roll with meat apparently, so I made six pounds of Turkey Sausage. I froze some of it in patties so that I can cook it up quickly for breakfasts and lunches. I cooked up the rest of it and froze it in meal sized bags. These bags of Turkey Sausage are wonderful to have on hand for Easy Breakfast Casserole and Pancake Sausage Muffins.

I made up a new batch of Taco Seasoning Mix, and I’m happy to report that everything I made is still in the jar. Nobody seems very interested in snacking on a spoonful of Taco Seasoning for some reason. At least I got ahead a little bit in the area of food seasoning. Score one for Mom. :)

Been doing any extra cooking lately? Can you keep food around your house, or does it get eaten before you can even put it on the table?

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Menu Plan for the Week

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Last week was a blast and I appreciate all the great participation in the Gluten Free Recipe Parade! I got so many great new ideas that I’m anxious to try! Whether your family has gluten free needs or not, I encourage you to look over all of the great recipes shared last week. It’s so good to branch out and learn new recipe ideas!

For your convenience, I’ve put the gluten free button on our side bar (down toward the bottom) so that you can easily click and find all of our gluten free recipes!

I’d like to offer a little something as a “thank you” to those of you who have been sharing your gluten free recipes!! You know I love listening to Christian music in the kitchen!! I’ve been sent Rebecca St. James’ newest CD, I Will Praise You. It’s a fantastic CD, wonderful to listen to while I cook!! Her voice is beautiful, the words she sings are inspiring. She helps draw you to the Father through her music. I love it!

I have a second CD to offer as a giveaway, so as a thank you to everyone who linked to or posted a recipe in our Gluten Free Recipe Parade, I plan to do a random drawing from the list found there! If you haven’t shared a recipe in our parade, and would still like to so that you can be entered in our drawing, you have until Monday night at midnight! :) 

Here’s a look at our menu for this week! In case you’re wondering, while we’re conducting the Gluten Free Experiment with Malachi, I plan to cook normally, making simple GF substitutions for him (or for the whole family when necessary).

Sunday, April 10
Breakfast cookies, pears
Chicken tortilla wraps, carrots sticks, apples
Alfredo sauce with pasta, steamed broccoli

Monday, April 11
Mini breakfast pizzas, oranges
Turkey sausage, ranch potato wedges, peas
Italian pasta bake, tossed salad

Tuesday, April 12
Creamy orange cooler, toast
Chicken chef salad (lettuce, spinach, cheese, chicken, boiled eggs, peas, carrots and homemade dressings)
Corn dog muffins, , cottage cheese, applesauce

Wednesday, April 13
Coconut flour muffins, clementines
Hamburger patties, onion rings, raw veggies with ranch
Chicken fried steak strips, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans

Thursday, April 14
Omelets, oranges
Cheeseburger zucchini boats, fruit salad
Salmon patties, hashbrowns, asparagus

Friday, April 15
Mini breakfast quiches, grapes 
Taco potatoes, fruit
Teriyaki chicken and veggies

Saturday, April 16
Mock frozen yogurt, toast
Leftovers
Taco corn fritters, tossed salad

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Let Say Mmm help you figure out menu planning once and for all!!

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  • Mom Answers with Brit – because we’ve all got questions, right?!
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  • Wow, could I possibly use more exclamation marks???!!! It would appear that I really love my sponsors!!!

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Visit Organizing Junkie for more Menu Planning inspiration!

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Gluten Free Recipe Parade Link-Up!

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Yum

Wow, has it been a fun and busy week! I’ve loved sharing these new recipes with you, and I can’t wait to read all the great recipes YOU are going to share!!

Here’s a quick link re-cap of all the Gluten Free Recipes shared in this week’s parade:

And don’t forget about the great Stainless Steel Bakeware Giveaway from Paula’s Bread and the wonderful Food Giveaway from Tropical Traditions! Keep in mind that any comment left on ANY post with the Gluten Free Recipe Parade button (pictured at the top of this post) will be entered into a drawing for one of five $10 gift certificates to the Heavenly Homemakers Shop!

Now it’s your turn!!! Please share your recipes that are healthy and free of gluten.  This includes any recipe that does not call for wheat, barley or rye. If it calls for oats, we’ll just know that we need to use gluten free oats, right?!

If you have a blog, link up your recipes below, using the Mr. Linky feature. Please kindly make mention on your blog post that your recipe is linked to the “Gluten Free Recipe Parade at Heavenly Homemakers”…linking back to this post. You are welcome to link up more than one recipe. It is a parade after all!

If you don’t have a blog, please share your Gluten Free Recipes in the comments section of this post.

Let’s all bless each other and be blessed with new and wonderful recipes!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!