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How to Make Nutritious Stir-Fry QUICKLY!

March 29, 2020 by Laura 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Stir-Fried Veggies are one of our favorite ways to eat veggies! Here’s how you can make a nutritious stir-fry quickly!

We’ve been eating a lot of stir-fried veggies lately! It’s been a great way to up our veggie intake as stir-frying them gives them such an incredible flavor!

Not that it’s terribly difficult or time consuming, but cutting up veggies for a meal does take more time than simply opening a bag of frozen veggies or grabbing mixed greens out of the fridge. So here’s what I’ve tried to do if I have a few spare mintues (read: if the babies are in their high chairs eating breakfast, safe from running in two different directions, and therefore safe from climbing precariously on the furniture while my back is turned)…

How to Make Nutrious Stir-Fry Quickly

The advice is a no-brainer really. Simply spend a few minutes – when you can find a few minutes – washing and cutting a bunch of veggies for stir-fry. Mix them all in a large ziplock bag and pull them out to cook at meal time!

Recently, I spent about 15 minutes washing and cutting sweet peppers, onions, broccoli, asparagus, and carrots. We then had a 2-gallon bag of prepped veggies in the fridge! So for the next few days, we have delicious stir-fry meals or stir-fried veggie side dishes with our meals!

Here are three ways we like to eat stir-fried veggies:

1. As a delicious side dish to go with whatever meat we are eating.

2. Stirred into cooked spaghetti noodles like this. Sometimes we add cooked meat, sometimes we don’t.

3. Stirred into Stick-of-Butter-Rice. Again, sometimes we add cooked meat and sometimes we don’t.

The Easiest and Most Flavorful Way to Stir-Fry Veggies

How to Make Nutritious Stir-Fry QUICKLY!
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
  • 2-4 cups fresh or frozen veggies of your choice (broccoli, carrots, peas, peppers, corn, zucchini, squash, etc.)
  • 3 Tablespoons olive oil, coconut oil, or palm shortening
  • 1 clove minced fresh garlic or ½ teaspoon garlic powder
  • Soy sauce (to taste)
  • Sea salt (to taste)
Instructions
  1. In a skillet, toss vegetables, garlic and olive oil together - cooking on medium heat until veggies are tender.
  2. Add soy sauce, stirring until the veggies are barely coated.
  3. Add sea salt (and more soy sauce) if desired.
3.5.3229

 

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Two Simple Tricks to Get Your Kids to Eat Green Beans

April 25, 2019 by Laura 6 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Well now, isn’t this interesting? I’ve been feeding kids green beans since 1997. All my bio-boys love them because of the “bacon grease trick” my mom taught me years ago (more details below). But I just learned a new trick to add to my back pocket, which has finally helped our 5-year old Bonus Boy learn to love green beans too! Without further ado, how to get your kids to eat green beans…

How to Get Your Kids to Eat Green Beans

1. First, let’s talk about green beans and bacon.

Bacon makes everything better, of course. And you know me. I’m not afraid of fat if it is from a natural, real food source. Our family enjoys plenty of real butter and coconut oil, whole milk and red meat, real cream and yep – bacon.

All of these fats are recognized by our bodies, and are therefore easily digested and utilized for nourishment and energy. (Low on energy? Eat butter and bacon. You heard it here, folks. Now who’s your best friend??)

You can throw a slice or two of bacon into your green beans as they cook – or you can do what I believe is easier and faster! Drum roll please:

Save grease from cooked bacon to add to green beans anytime you need it!

Each time I cook bacon for my family, I let the bacon grease cool, then put it into a jar. I store this in the fridge, then add a scoop of bacon grease to a pot of green beans along with a little water (or chicken broth!) and Redmond Real Salt. Then I steam them to perfection. The bacon grease adds wonderful flavor to the beans, and of course, the fat makes the vegetable so much more appealing!

How do I cook my bacon?

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I’m so glad you asked. Here are my two favorite, most efficient methods of cooking bacon:

  1. Bake bacon in the oven. Then I freeze it to use as needed. This is so easy and helpful to have on hand for all your bacon needs! ;)
  2. Cut it into Bacon Bits. Once cooked, I put the bacon bits into a bag to freeze and pull out for salads, scrambled eggs, or BLT Wraps.

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2. Now let’s talk about what kind of green beans seem to be the most appealing!

My family LOVES fresh green beans from our garden in the summertime. But alas, we live in Nebraska and can only enjoy these for a few months out of the year. If we grow enough, I blanch and freeze them to pull out and use during the cold months. But the past few years, we’ve been eating them as fast as they grow, leaving no reserves for the freezer!

Therefore, I typically buy frozen green beans in bulk from Azure Standard. Frozen green beans are much more flavorful and nutritious compared to canned beans. Still, even when cooked in bacon grease as described above, our Bonus Boy wasn’t very interested in this veggie side dish.

But, I’ve recently discovered a simple new trick! Instead of buying frozen “cut green beans” as I had been doing, I picked up a back of frozen “whole green beans” one day. I steamed them along with bacon grease and salt, and wouldn’t you know it? Bonus Boy ate them, and ate them, and ate them! We all did!

Who knew that simply switching from short and stubby beans to long and skinny beans would somehow make green beans taste so much better!

Now I stock up on frozen whole green beans and we all devour them!

So there you have it. Long green beans apparently taste better than short ones; and bacon grease makes beans taste amazing!

How do you and your family enjoy green beans?

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“We eat a lot of veggies because they’re cheap” – A Young Bride’s Perspective

February 22, 2016 by Laura 5 Comments

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Veggies are cheap? How’s that for a young bride’s perspective?

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She said it as she sat in our living room beside her fiance. Matt and I have been meeting with them once a week since November, offering mentor-ship and guidance before they tie the knot in March.

This particular visit, we were discussing finances. Were they on the same page about spending and saving? Did they have any questions about necessary line items in a budget? Did they plan to have joint accounts? How did they plan to communicate about spending? How might they handle potentially lean times? What challenges had they already encountered? What might offer the most financial peace in their marriage?

Somewhere in there, one of them brought up grocery shopping. They already cook many of their evening meals together, either at her apartment or his – so beyond paying for all the aspects of an upcoming wedding (oy!) they had definitely experienced times of figuring out money and spending and budgeting together in the area of food. Imagine our shock, then, when this young couple offhandedly said, “Whenever we find we’re spending too much money on food, we also recognize we’re eating less healthy, too. So we cut back by buying more vegetables since they’re so cheap. Then we’re saving money and eating better too!”

I guess she hadn’t heard (the myth) that it costs too much to eat healthy. That they needed to skimp on the grocery budget by avoiding the fresh produce. Instead, she’d already figured out the truth:

Vegetables are a great way to stretch the grocery budget and stay healthy too.

This young bride-to-be went on to share that she’s found it easy to buy several different kinds of veggies to make soups and stews and stir-fries for very little money. Certainly this is much cheaper than eating out! But they found that it was also cheaper than shopping most of the aisles in the grocery stores. When they stayed on the outskirts of the grocery store – mostly getting veggies, fruits, meat, and dairy – the savings really showed.

As far as I could tell, this couple hadn’t read this information in any article or book. They’d simply learned by experience. Eat out – spend more, feel worse. Walk the aisles and throw tempting boxes and packages into the cart – spend more, feel worse. Fill the cart with vegetables and a little meat then make homemade meals – spend less, feel better.

I’d say “out of the mouths of babes” but I believe this really is more of a case of “wise beyond their years.”

Great Ways to Save on Fresh Veggies and Fruit at the Store

Gardens, farmer’s markets, and orchards aside – here are the best ways I’ve found to save oodles of money at the store on produce.

1. Comparison shop or price-match.

Last week, a pint of blueberries was marked at $3.54 at Walmart. A store within my price-matching range had them priced at $1.69/pint. Yes, please. I bought four. Twice.

2. Buy “in season.”

When it’s strawberry season, I can get them for $1.50 or less per pound. When it isn’t strawberry season, they look terrible and cost almost $6.00!

3. Consider the staples.

Carrots, onions, cucumbers, and lettuce (different varieties) are almost always low in cost – on sale or not. We keep those on hand at all times and we go through them like crazy. While not fresh – I’ve found that it’s also financially savvy to always have a supply of frozen peas and green beans on hand. I supplement these staples with produce in season and on sale – but I know that if all else fails we have carrots and green beans.

What ways have you found to be most effective to save money on vegetables and fruit? Do you find that buying fruits and vegetables actually helps you save money?

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The Easiest, Healthiest Side Dishes

January 15, 2016 by Laura 5 Comments

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After I finish detailing my favorite healthy side dishes to serve my family, you are going to be so unimpressed and bored that you will fall asleep on the spot. This post is like a lullaby, sung sweetly to you after you’ve had a warm bath and a mug of milk. Pin this post. You will want it to refer back to on the nights you’re anxious to relax and have a good night’s sleep.

See, the thing is that I’ve simplified my real food kitchen life so much during the past few years that I barely think about or plan ahead for side dishes anymore. Do I serve them? Absolutely! In fact, I serve at least 2 if not 4 side dish options at almost every lunch or dinner. But here’s my trick:

I set out a variety of fruits and vegetables based on what I have and what will offer healthy options for my family to choose from.

That’s it. I rarely mash a potato anymore. For me, side dishes are no longer something that require much work. There is no time!! The main dish gets my attention and the side dishes are a variety of fruits and veggies that make our plates pretty and offer oodles of nourishment.

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Every once in a while I go all out and steam some broccoli and carrots. Phew. Big day. Otherwise, I do something like wash some berries, slice some pears, and throw some frozen peas in a pot to cook (which they do all by themselves in about 4 minutes).

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More often than not, prepping the side dishes is the job I hand my boys. “Peel 6 clementines.” “Cook some green beans, please.” “Wash the raspberries.”

Do you see how easy this is? Side dishes at our house get pulled out of the fridge or freezer just a few minutes before the meal is served. They take very little prep, yet they are the most nourishing part of our meal. Side dishes are almost always served in the container they came in or the pot they were steamed in. In case you’re wondering why I ask a boy to peel clementines when we could all just peel our own (which we do sometimes) – it’s this.

You might also be interested in another post I wrote recently about How to Easily Add Fruits and Veggies to a Meal.

Easily Add Fruits and Veggies to Your Meal

Healthy, easy side dishes come down to these three rules at my house:

  1. Buy fresh fruits and vegetables that are in season and affordable. (You can’t serve ’em if you don’t buy ’em.)
  2. Keep frozen veggies in the freezer ready to steam quickly before a meal.
  3. Be intentional about offering a variety of these goodies with every meal.

Every week, I buy big containers of mixed greens and fresh baby spinach. Boom. We have salad.

I buy whatever berries are on sale, which we wash and plop on the table. I buy grape tomatoes in season (or grow them when it isn’t -3°). I buy apples and pears, which can be washed and sliced in 30 seconds. I buy heads of broccoli, big bags of carrots, and lovely cucumbers – all of which can be prepared for cooking or served raw in just a few minutes. I always have jars of homemade applesauce or homemade pickles to pull out.

Below are some pictures I came across that show the variety of easy side dishes I serve. Notice how little prep these took:

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alfredo leftovers 2

Cream Cheese Chicken

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colorful plate

And there you have it. Nothing terribly exciting – just simple side dishes that our family eats regularly. We get a variety, we get plenty of nourishment, we don’t wear ourselves out making the prep work tedious. That works for me!

So what works for you? What are your favorite side dishes?

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Simple Pumpkin Pancakes

November 21, 2014 by Laura 7 Comments

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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 PancakesYum

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.

Simple Pumpkin Pancakes

Other pumpkin (or butternut squash) recipes you’ll find here:

  • Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread
  • Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
  • Pumpkin Donuts
  • Warm Pumpkin Custard
  • Multi-Grain Pumpkin Waffles and Pancakes
  • Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake
  • Pumpkin Pecan Pie Squares
  • Pumpkin Pie
  • Pumpkin Breakfast Cake
  • Pumpkin Cheesecake

What’s your favorite way to use pumpkin (or butternut squash)?

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Menu Plan for the Week and What to do With Beets??

November 9, 2014 by Laura 54 Comments

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You know how dads are supposed to “bring home the bacon?” Well this week, my husband brought home some beets and collard greens. That’s almost the same thing as bacon, right?

Matt’s been working over at a gentleman’s house, painting a shed. As he was leaving Friday, a neighbor handed him an arm full of awesome produce. Awesome – except for beets and collard greens are two veggies our family isn’t very fond of. We’re determined to find creative ways to eat them though as we know they are very good for us. That’s where you come in. A little beet and collard green help please??

After an internet search Friday night, I made smoothies with shredded beets, pineapple, orange juice, avocado, spinach, and strawberries. They were actually pretty tasty, and the beets made them beautiful. I’m not sure my family will go for another round of them though. Tell me what you do with beets and collard greens. :)

In other produce news, I loaded my cart at the store on Saturday so that I’d have plenty to work with for our meals this week. A lady at the check-out was like, “Wow, stocking up?” I’m so used to plowing through loads and loads of food each week, I forget what my cart-fulls must look like to others. I had to tell her, “Nope, I have teenage boys. This is all for just this week.” ;)

Sorry about the picture quality. The sun was shining on our kitchen table (yay sunshine!!), which caused a glare on my plastic containers. Below, if you could see beyond the glare, you would find:  Baby Spinach, Mixed Greens, Petite Carrots, Carrots, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Romaine Lettuce, Raspberries, Zucchini, Asparagus, Clementines, Cabbage, and Sweet Peppers.

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I’m excited that at least for right now, our Wal-Mart and another small local grocery store in town  are carrying more organic varieties of produce for very reasonable prices. Here are the meals we’ll be eating this week:

Sunday –  Matt teaches a college age Bible class on Sunday mornings, and I try to take home-baked goodies to share with the students. This week I’m taking Apple Crisp. We’re having company after church, so I’m making Chicken Noodle Soup, a plate of Carrots, Sweet Peppers, and Cucumbers, Olives, Dill Pickles, and Butterscotch Bars. Tonight there is a church fellowship, so I’m taking two Apple Pies. (Yes, we still have lots of apples at our house!)

The rest of the week, here’s what we’ll be working with:

Breakfast

  • Bacon Cheese Muffins
  • Blueberry Coffee Cake
  • Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Breakfast Cookies
  • Crepes with fruit and/or Cream Cheese Filling
  • Scrambled Cheesy Eggs
  • Pumpkin Pie (will be a great breakfast since I’ll be cutting down the sugar in this recipe quite a bit)

Lunch

  • Hamburger meat cooked with cabbage and onions, served on a bun
  • Corn Dogs (hoping to make extra to stash in the freezer)
  • Chili with cheese on baked potatoes
  • Chicken Salad
  • Hamburger Sauerkraut Dip with chips
  • Leftovers

Dinner

  • Chicken Pot Pie
  • Cheeseburger Macaroni
  • Flounder (Thanks to you, we tried this last week. It turned out ugly, but delicious!)
  • Italian Pasta Bake
  • Homemade Pizza
  • Salmon Patties with rice

Fruits and Veggie Sides and Snacks

  • Clementines
  • Apples
  • Raspberries
  • Cheesy Cauliflower Cakes (If you haven’t tried these yet, you should. Amazing!)
  • Sweet Potato Fries
  • Roasted Asparagus
  • Spaghetti Squash
  • Green Beans
  • Peas
  • Mixed Greens
  • Spinach
  • Stir fried broccoli, carrots, asparagus, and zucchini
  • Applesauce
  • Homemade Dill Pickles
  • Fresh Pineapple
  • Beets and Collard Greens, apparently  ;)
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How to Cook Spaghetti Squash

October 21, 2014 by Laura 24 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

If you’ve never tried Spaghetti Squash, I highly recommend you add this to your veggie eating repertoire.

For the record, I don’t think I can pull off correctly pronouncing the word repertoire. I just thought that sentence sounded better than me simply stating, “Yo. You should totally eat Spaghetti Squash.”

We were blessed with several fantastic spaghetti squash in our garden this summer and fall. I’m not sure there’s a better meal than home grown spaghetti squash, served with sauce made from home grown tomatoes. It’s delicious! Plus, practically free. Plus, super healthy. It’s merveilleux! ( I can’t pronounce that either, but it means “wonderful” in French. In other words: YUM.)

How to Cook Spaghetti Squash

1. Rinse outside of the squash.
2. Poke squash with a knife or fork 3-4 times.
3. Place squash in a baking dish, uncovered.
4. Bake in a 350° for 45-60 minutes or until squash is tender.
5. Cut squash in half to open.
6. Pull out seeds and discard.
7. Use a fork to pull “spaghetti” away from the inside of the rind. (This is the fun part!)
8. Serve cooked spaghetti squash as is, or serve with your favorite red or white sauce.

How to Cook Spaghetti Squash

Beyond Spaghetti Sauce, we love this squash with Alfredo Sauce and Italian Cream Cheese Chicken.

Are you a fan of Spaghetti Squash, or is this something you’ve not yet added to your veggie repertoire? What’s your favorite way to serve Spaghetti Squash? Can you pronounce the word repertoire?

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Gratituesday: Everything But Raspberries

June 23, 2014 by Laura 15 Comments

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You know how I mentioned that we’d been traveling and that my body is craving fruits and vegetables? And you know how I mentioned that I was really, really hungry for raspberries? Try as I might, I can’t find one decent raspberry in all of York, Nebraska.

Correction:  I can find a decent raspberry. But they are either in a package that also contains moldy raspberries, or they are in a teeny-tiny container that costs $3.48. As much as I’m craving raspberries – for that price, I just can’t do it.

Elias (our 12 year old) and I drove to our two grocery stores today, after striking out at Wal-Mart last night, on a mission to find raspberries. I guess it just isn’t meant to be. Maybe in a few days, after stores re-stock and sale prices re-set???

In the meantime, as the boys and I were unloading our other groceries and talking about all the goodies I bought yesterday on our way back into town, it occurred to me that while I don’t have any raspberries, I do have pretty much everything else delicious under the sun. I shall whine no more. We’ve found great deals on tons of summer produce, loaded up our kitchen once again with wonderful fruits and vegetables – and we are enjoying all kinds of deliciousness. Everything but raspberries? Well, I am just all kinds of blessed.

You can see all the yummy food I picked up last night in this post. Now take a look at what Elias and I found this morning at a local grocery store:

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Grapes were on sale, plums were on sale, there were organic tomatoes and mushrooms to be had – and look at all those bags of frozen veggies! Those babies were on sale for just 80¢ each! We filled the cart…as you can see. :)  100% juice was on sale, so we stocked up so that we can make fun popsicles the rest of the summer. We grabbed sweet peppers and splurged on a loaf of bread so we could have an easy meal of sandwiches for lunch. Everything but raspberries? Blessed, blessed, blessed.

We got home from the store and set out this wonderful spread of food. After traveling and eating fast food, I can’t begin to tell you how delicious this all tasted.

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Oh beautiful, colorful, delicious plate. God is so good.

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What’s more? For breakfast we had big bowls of berries with Chocolate Whipped Cream. It was a perfect way to begin our day.

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Well, I actually started my day with an awesome cup of coffee, too. :)  Asa brought back a bag of coffee for me from Ecuador. Oh my goodness: best coffee EVER.

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This afternoon, Matt went to the garden and brought in a plate full of awesome lettuce. Remember how I shared that a big hail storm took out our garden a few weeks ago? Many of you suggested that it might perk back up. You were right! Much of our garden has bounced back. We are so thankful!

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This afternoon, I enjoyed a generous serving of Chocolate Whipped Cream in a cup of coffee. Happiness in a mug, I tell ya.

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Before dinner, we were “too hungry to wait.” Therefore, we sliced up a couple of peaches before I cooked dinner. These were the first peaches of the season we’ve had. Ahhhhmazing. Obviously, two was not enough so I had to slice up more. :)

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We thoroughly enjoyed the lettuce from our garden with our dinner of Pasta Alfredo with steamed veggies tonight.

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So what’s all this about wanting raspberries? We are so blessed with an abundance of delicious foods that I have absolutely nothing to complain about and absolutely everything to be thankful for. I’m sure I’ll find a nice package of raspberries for a decent price eventually. Maybe I’ll even find some fresh berries at the farmer’s market this week. But no matter. Today, my table is overflowing with goodness. I have everything I need and then some.

What are you thankful for? Leave a comment to let us know something God has done for you recently!

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Gratituesday: Our 2014 Garden

June 2, 2014 by Laura 25 Comments

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gratituesday[2]

It’s that exciting time of year when we start to see little plants popping up in our garden. Want to see how my garden grows? Here, I’ll show you my garden plot(s), then I hope you’ll tell me about your garden if you’re growing one this year too!

We’ve already enjoyed lots of spinach and green leaf lettuce. See the jungle of spinach behind the lettuce? It looks terrible – but we’ve actually let it go on purpose. It will re-seed all by itself this way, then give us another crop in the fall. Then, it will come up again on its own next spring. It’s a pretty nice system. (We do the same with the green leaf lettuce.)

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It doesn’t seem like much to look at yet, but we have several rows of green beans. We see some gaps in there that tell us we’ll need to replant a few.

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This year, we’re trying okra again. It takes a lot of heat and sun for okra to grow well, so it doesn’t always work here in Nebraska. Here’s hoping!

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Here’s a close-up of one okra plant:

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Notice how we have plastic buckets and such around many of our plants? (And by we I mean Matt and the boys. I can take no credit for all this work!)  The protection around our plants is an effort to keep the bunnies from getting to them. Those “cute wittle wabbits” are sooooo stinkin’ not cute when they nibble and kill our plants. ;)

Matt uses our raised garden bed area for a variety of sweet peppers. These are his babies. :)

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Here’s a sweet pepper close-up. Surely the rabbits won’t be able to climb up the slippery tin surrounding the plants!

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Our back yard “L” shaped garden plot has all of our tomato plants this year. If we get a good crop, I’ll be able to make a year’s supply of tomato sauce, tomato soup, and some salsa.

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Somewhere in one of those plots, we also have a couple hills of spaghetti squash planted. We never plant cucumbers, summer squash, or zucchini because everyone around here always has plenty to share!

So how about you? Do you have a garden this year? If so, what are you growing? And what else would you like to share about this Gratituesday? What are you thankful for?

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Prepare Your Veggies For Quick Cooking (and a day in the life, sort of)

March 6, 2014 by Laura 11 Comments

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You might read this little time saving tip and say, “Hey, it takes the same amount of time to prep veggies no matter when you do it. This isn’t a time saving tip at all.” And yet, in an effort to save us all from walking wearily into our kitchens at 5:10, with no motivation to peel a carrot, much less prepare an entire healthy meal – I felt this was worth mentioning. While you still have to get this work done sometime during the day, at least this does save a few minutes of effort at meal time.

Following this simple method is always so helpful to me. My day is a big mixture of schooling, working at the computer, doing household chores, cooking in the kitchen, and keeping up with the kids’ activities. I often hop around from math, to mixing up a recipe, to history lessons, to answering emails, to phonics practice, to putting lunch into the oven, to helping with an algebra question, to answering the door, to responding to potential website advertisers. You can see why I always give people a deer in the headlights look when they say, “So what does your schedule look like?” Schedule? I don’t have one. I just work and parent and parent and work all day. I love it. Every day is different, yet it is very much the same. The kids know what they need to get done. Matt and I know what we need to get done. Our routine is un-scheduled.

Yet one thing is pretty constant about our days:  From about 3:00 to about 5:00 in the afternoons, the kids take turns having their “play Minecraft on the computer time” while Mom tries to write something that includes helpful information and complete sentences. Therefore, section 4 line 8 of the Coppinger Household Rules Handbook states:  “Do not interrupt Mom while she is in writing mode unless one of your brothers just blew up.” Since “Do not blow up your brother” is printed in large, bold letters at the beginning of section 2, I think we can all agree that there should be no reason to interrupt Mom while she is in writing mode. Okay then.

I tell you all of this life in the Coppinger house information for one reason:  As I pull out of writing mode and back into the hungry people will need to eat soon mode, I find that I am slightly weary and brain dead from thinking, making decisions, and working all day. I do not feel like cutting broccoli into cute little trees. I am not excited about preparing cauliflower for roasting. I do not want to do anything in the kitchen but the bare minimum. This is where all my Getting Ahead in the Kitchen practices are invaluable. The kids get to come in and help get dinner on the table (their reward for not blowing themselves up during my writing time). And since I’ve already prepped the veggies earlier in the day, all we have to do is roast them, stir fry them, or steam them. Hallelujah!

Prep Your Veggies for Easy Cooking

So the Eat Healthy, Save Time tip of the day is this:  Sometime while you have ten minutes during the day, prepare vegetables for steaming, roasting, stir frying, eating raw – or however you’re going to serve them at dinnertime. Cover and put them into the fridge for later. (Hooray for Pyrex bowls with lids!)  Pull them out and cook them quickly for dinner. Not home much during the day? I’d suggest doing some prep in the evening before bed. The next day, after you get home from a day at work, school, or running errands – pull out your prepared veggies to cook with your meal.

Prepping veggies doesn’t take long, and it isn’t difficult. But it is something that we have to be intentional about – otherwise we’ll likely skip the veggies…again. Don’t do it. Focus on the veggies (section 13 line 4).  Prepare them when you have a few spare minutes for effortless, brainless dinner prep later. Then, not only have the kids avoided blowing themselves up, our bogged down brains have not exploded either. It’s a win-win.

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