We Went Out to Eat

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

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This happens more often than one might think. First, we like going out to eat. Second, we think its good to keep our kids in practice. We eat out roughly twice a month. How?

We usually go at lunch. It’s not just that prices are better at lunch (kids meals are generally the same). The real reason is that the restaurants are emptier so there are fewer people to bother. And, the kids are more rested and thus less bothersome.
Some folks with kids go to noisy restaurants so they don’t stand out. We don’t. We like to hear each other. That being said, we don’t take them to overly stuffy places either. Pretty much anyplace that could be attached to a mall works for us.
I don’t bring entertainment. Most places have crayons. Most places have bread/chips/crackers/etc. Those work fine.
All kids out of diapers have to go to the bathroom after we order. Inevitably someone will have to go again after the food arrives, but this helps cut down on the disruptions and there’s nothing else to do then anyway.
It’s not always the case. But, we’d prefer to go someplace where they make things we don’t have at home and the kids like – like sushi.

We planned to go out to eat this time because we knew we’d have everyone in the cars at 5:30 coming home from various activities. Obviously we could just have met up at home. But, it was a good excuse to go out. There’s no grand plan to all of this, but thus far things have worked out fairly well.

Menu Plan

20 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Nora in Groceries, Menus

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I finished up my four weeks of $50 purchases at Stop & Shop this week. I admit, the first three weeks I was higher than necessary; restocking, I imagine. But, it went lower each week. This week I got to $42 with what I actually needed. I needed to get to $56 to use all my coupons so I stocked up on bread, which was on sale. I ended up with the following for $42.44 after coupons.

Here’s the plan for this week.

Saturday:
BBQ ribs
Corn on the cob
Pasta salad

Sunday:
Out

Monday:
Tacos

Tuesday:
Kids: macaroni & cheese
Adults: homemade pizza

Wednesday:
Baked cod
Green beans
Carrots
Salad

Thursday:
Stuffed chicken breast
Rice
Salad

Friday:
Kids: poached eggs
Adults: homemade pizza

Classic Banana Bread

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Nora in Recipes

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Banana Bread

This is a slightly modified version of Cooking Light’s Classic Banana Bread. I purchased a batch of #2 bananas for roughly $0.10 / lb. This gave us a few to eat plus enough for 4 loaves. I split these into two sets based on ripeness.

Since I don’t like doing dishes and we can easily eat this, I prefer to make two loaves at a time. To set up I have two sets of dry ingredients, two mixer bowls, two greased loaf pans, two sets of mashed banana on the counter.

I put a plate for the reuseable utensils (I forgot the spatula in the picture.) next to the mixer with the wet ingredients. In this case I’m using yogurt that had been premeasured and frozen, but usually the tub of yogurt is there with a measuring cup.

I beat one set of butter & sugar. I add the eggs, banana, yogurt, and vanilla per the recipe. Then I take that bowl off the mixer and repeat with the second bowl. This gives me two bowls of wet and two sets of dry ingredients. I mix in the dry ingredients by hand, pour both in the pans, and place in the oven. This way one isn’t sitting around combined very long. It also helps to delay the combination if I get distracted by the kids for any reason.

Classic Banana Bread (Cooking Light magazine)
2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
¾ cup sugar (CL calls for 1 cup)
¼ cup butter, softened
2 large eggs
3 mashed ripe bananas (CL calls for 1 ½ cups, which is about the same)
⅓ cup plain low-fat yogurt (vanilla works fine too)
1 tsp vanilla extract
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350°.
Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt.
Place sugar and butter in a large bowl, and beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 1 minute).
Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
Add banana, yogurt, and vanilla; beat until blended.
Add flour mixture; beat at low speed just until moist.
Spoon batter into an 8 ½ x 4 ½ – inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray.
Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

The Garden

16 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by Nora in Home

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The weather is turning so I’ve harvested the last of the foods for this year. I’ve still got celery and a few carrots in the ground we can use, but otherwise its been picked. While I didn’t end up with too much this year, it succeeded as a summer project for the kids. Also, we were gone a bunch so we were reliant on whatever fell from the sky and we missed the corn harvest entirely.

I’d do corn again, though. It came up well, we just left a week or so before it was ready and it was gone by the time we got back. I truly recommend celery as its great to go get one stalk when that’s what you need for a recipe; we’re not big celery eaters. Carrots take up a lot of space for not much return so I probably won’t do those again (but the boys pick so one never knows). I had that same issue with broccoli last year. I was fairly sure I’d purchased a yellow pepper plant, but they never moved beyond green. The peppers were very good, but yellow would have been better.

The squash took over the yard. We ended up with 1 butternut, 2 delicata, and 1 pumpkin (which is big but doesn’t seem to want to turn orange). We only had one plant of each type, and my kids don’t like squash of any sort, so I’m not complaining. The last time we planted squash we got 9 off one plant and had it all winter.

Feeding Solid Foods to Infant Twins

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Nora in Twins

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The question of how to get twins started on solids came up recently. Here are my thoughts:

1) Just because you’ve been given the ok doesn’t mean they’re actually going to take to solids. I’ve tried all of mine at the 4/5 month mark, but some didn’t get it until closer to 9m. If they don’t get it just stop and try again in a few weeks.

2) I found high chairs (we have Fisher Price) to be much easier than bouncy seats. You can start them slightly reclined and sit them up as they get a bit older.

3) Your friends with singletons will gasp, but use one spoon and jar/bowl and just go back and forth. You may need to feed them one at a time at first. But, once they get the hang of it it’s much easier to feed them at the same time. And, you’ll never be fast enough for them if you try to have two spoons/bowls going. I never had mine use the pouches as I didn’t really want to have to break that habit.

4) Buy the smallest box of rice cereal. It’s very bland and you probably won’t use all of it even with twins. For my younger two I just started with oatmeal and never did any other grains.

5) Thicken it up quickly. If you mix per the box, it’s barely above liquid.

6) I did all the veggies before fruits starting with sweet potato.

7) Pureed carrots stain horribly so I try to minimize how much of that they have, including meals with carrots.

8) What cereals/purees they eat bears little resemblance to what finger foods or table foods they eventually eat. So, congratulate yourself if they’re great eaters, but don’t stress if they’re picky or just don’t want it at all. You can switch to finger foods by 9 months so if they don’t take to the purees just try each for allergic reactions and move on.

Preschool?

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by Nora in Family

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It’s preschool registration time where I am. Since we don’t home school, there was the question of preschool. I’ve started all of mine at 3. Some of it was because I did as a kid and, therefore, I guess I expected to. Some of it was also that my oldest had been in daycare until the twins were born and it seemed better to transition directly from daycare to preschool vs taking a year off; then I just did the same thing with the younger ones.

It’s nice to have those few hours to oneself; we just did twice a week. For me, its not so much self time as focused time to get everything done that’s so much easier to do without them in tow.

Overall, I would recommend one year of preschool to anyone in my general area. (It may well be different in other parts of the country.) In kindergarten, it is easy to spot the kids who didn’t and it can make it harder for them the first few months. I know a few families who skipped preschool entirely and they were dealing with separation anxiety big time and regretting having not taken the step sooner. That being said, 2-3 half days a week would accomplish this, vs 4-5 like many preschools seem to be set up for pre-K.

Food Plan & BJs Update

13 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Nora in Groceries, Menus

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It’s been 4 weeks since my attempt at monthly BJs shopping and I didn’t quite make it. I went last week. It turns out that I desperately underestimated the amount of baby cheeses and shrimp my guys will eat. And, I have to go again in 3 weeks to pick up fruit for soccer snack. Six weeks is just too long to shop for so I’m doing two 3 week chunks this time. I didn’t realize that when I set my original goal. And, I am due for the occasional Target run. I put those together because they’re near each other and not so much my house. Here’s what I got food-wise at those two stops.

Beforehand, I sorted our pantry. Here are the before pictures.

I took out all the paper party stuff that is rarely used and put it in a box elsewhere which freed up an additional shelf so I could spread out a bit. I also reorganized and regrouped, especially on the lower two shelves. In so doing I realized that I overbought white sugar and turkey gravy during the last holiday periods. But, I underbought flour (one of the reasons to go to Target). I’ll try to guesstimate better this year. I also have way more cumin than I’ll use anytime soon. Here are the after pictures.

Here’s the plan for this week. We still have some lasagna and will have a lot of chicken pot pie, so leftovers twice this week.

Saturday:
Chicken pot pie
Green beans

Sunday:
Leftovers

Monday:
BBQ chicken
Deviled eggs
Coleslaw
Wax beans
Corn on the cob

Tuesday:
Macaroni & cheese

Wednesday:
Leftovers

Thursday:
Shrimp
Broccoli
Sweet Potato
Salad

Friday:
Kids: poached eggs
Adults: homemade pizza

Unsolicited Product Review – Skunkies

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Nora in Product Reviews, Sports

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Skunkies

And, I have to put in an unsolicited product plug. We checked the cleat supply a month ago and discovered a solitary, very stinky pair that didn’t fit anyone. I wasn’t sure if I should throw it out right then since I have four more who will pass through that size. But the smell! Well, when I put the cleats back in the basement, I put a set of Skunkies in them. Never used them before, but I had them as a BBB add-on purchase to make it to a coupon amount. Amazingly when I pulled them out with every intention of adding them to the other pairs hitting the trash they had no smell at all. So, I put them back and will check again when one of mine actually needs that size. I don’t know if they would really work for daily use, but apparently they’re great for long-term storage.

Save it Sunday

09 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by Nora in Groceries, Home

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I’m not planning to make this a regular occurrence, but I had a bunch of stuff that needed using up in the fridge this week. And, I got to it on Sunday. So, in spirit of #SAVEITSUNDAY I took a picture of what I saved. I froze 1 cup of mashed potatoes, 1 dose of heavy cream, and 7 doses of yogurt measured for potato bread, chocolate icing, and banana bread respectively. I still had a bit more cream so I replaced 1/3 of the milk in the corn muffins to use it up. And, I had a leftover ear of corn so I cut off those kernels and threw them in the muffins also.

Something is Working

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Nora in Home

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I’m doing ok on my plan to throw out 5 things a day. I admit to having missed two days last week, but I think I made up for that by having someone come in to haul out a huge pile of junk from the backyard.