The Best Breakfast

The best breakfast pizza isn’t really a pizza at all. Easy Breakfast Pizza – Michelle prefers this over the Strata for One a la Food Julia.

Technorati Tags: breakfast, pizza, recipe, teens

Frozen Pizza vs. Homemade Pizza

Recently I started making my own pizza from boboli bread and packaged sauce. There is something about one of them that tastes kind of weird but I do like to put my own toppings on them. My favorite one is red peppers. I used to really like mini frozen supreme pizzas. I think that either are ok though. There’s a pretty good article at slashfood.com about which frozen pizzas are better.

Technorati Tags: pizza, frozenpizza, homemadepizza,

Strata For One

Sassymonkey posted about Food Julia’s Strata for One the other day and I decided this was something I needed to make with Michelle. So yesterday we made it. Of course we did not have a ramekin the right size for one or for two so we used an odd square baking dish and that was fine. We also used french rolls and not french bread which also worked fine. We doubled the recipe and of course we had no white wine or anything white wine like in the house soooo guess what we used – IKEA fruit juice and I think it was just fine. I enjoyed the dish quite a bit. Michelle’s initial reaction was “I don’t know how I feel about it”… let’s get her in here to comment now that a day has passed.


Technorati Tags: strata, strataforone, eggs, breakfast

Meal Planning

Today we had to go shopping at the grocery store. This time we payed $120 dollars for food. I had guessed $110. The past week or two I’ve been slacking and not planing breakfast or lunch and just making sure I have vegie burgers, bread, eggs and all the other stuff I usually use. This time I planned every meal. I’ve noticed that there’s a pattern with every other week where we spend more money and when I don’t plan out breakfast or lunch there is less money spent.

National Pancake Day/IHOP

Since Lent is coming up, today was the day to indulge. It has also been declared National Pancake Day. At IHOP they serve a free small stack of pancakes so Tarrant, My mom and I decided to go for lunch. I had never been to IHOP before. In fact I’m very anti-IHOP. My sister likes IHOP because she likes pancakes and hates Waffle House. So I’ve always kind of been pro Waffle house to spite her. The food was okay. I like my homemade pancakes better. As I got up out of my booth though to walk out of the door some black stuff fell on me and it was completely disgusting. I have no idea what it was but I’m NOT going back to IHOP again!

Meal Planning Week 2

This past week meal planning has had me grumpy. At first I was excited. I planned out some books from the FLB cookbook at this fan site for Francesca Lia Block. Then we went grocery shopping. I guessed that we were going to spend $95.00.  I guessed correctly too. It came out to be like 95.08 or something. And we even got extra things. Later in the week however, the little kids were here and the menu got really screwed up. I had to skip a lot of the meals because they ate all of the freaking food. And if I didn’t skip a meal I skipped ahead to a different meal. I hope this week I plan a little better.

Meal Planning Redux

We made it through week one with just a few bumps in the road.  $30 over budget.  Tons of food in the fridge and cabinets because we over-estimated our food needs.  And of course we didn’t properly plan for weekend "Michelle excursions" when she wasn’t home to cook or eat (which means her moms did not eat according to the pre-planned menu). 

For the week ahead, we have to plan differently taking care to plan for the following issues: Wednesday Michelle starts a sewing class, 6-8pm and we don’t get TW home from work til 5.  So something quick and easy is called for.  Friday – Sunday we have little kids to plan for.  Three meals plus snacks and believe me they won’t skip a meal because they didn’t have breakfast til 12:30!.

Here’s the menu we attempted to stick to last week:

Tuesday
B – Eggs, Toast, Juice
L – Cheese quesadillas, chips, salsa
D – Leftovers that were already in the fridge
S – Cheese nips and apples

Wednesday
B – Oatmeal and banana
L – grilled cheese w/tomatos and carrot sticks
D – Spaghetti, salad, garlic bread
S – cookies (baked from school band sale cookie dough), oranges

Thursday
B – Banana rolled in peanut butter and cereal
L – Leftover spaghetti
D – Veggie Burgers & fries
S – BLT dip and crackers

Friday
B – Cinnamon Rolls, banana
L – Taco salad
D – pizza (Boboli crusts)
S – Deviled Eggs, oranges

Saturday
B – Apple Fluff Pancakes
L – Grilled cheese w/tomatoes and apples
D – Veggie Lasagna, salad
S – Banana Bread

Sunday
B – Banana bread, oatmeal
L – Leftover lasagna
D –   Chicken w/dumplings, green beans
S – veggies, dip, oranges

Monday
B – French toast, oranges
L – leftover chicken & dumplings
D – Veggie stirfry w/rice
S – chips & Salsa

Due to the weekend excursion, we never made it to the stirfry so I am expecting this will be tomorrow’s meal, though Michelle seems inclined to choose recipes from Francesca Lia Block’s books (which is scaring the little kids – apparently pink mac & cheese does not sound good to them).  She used recipes from her Teens Cook book that TW bought her for Christmas a couple of years ago.  She was pleased with the bacon dip, but it needed more bacon.  The veggie lasagna had no red sauce and was surprisingly good.  The chicken & dumplings (moved to tonight) were a hit with the little kids but not with Michelle (TW and I did not eat those – vegetarians that we are).   The apple pancakes were a hit with everyone and should stay on our regular recipe list.

Technorati Tags: mealplanning, cooking, homeschool

Meal Planning

My most recent assignment, Meal Planning, has turned out to be kind of fun.

Monday night we sat down and planned our meals. After we were done
I was looking at the menu and knowing that we were going to go over. Tuesday my mother and I went shopping for our meals.  After we were done shopping we did go over by 30 dollars. We had to get three different bags of cheese each at 8 dollars and 3 red bell peppers were 5 dollars.

Other than going over, the meal planning has been a pretty good success. I don’t snack as much and I actually eat meals. And since I’m one of two people in the house that actually eats three meals a day I’ve been doing a lot of the cooking and cleaning. I like meal planning a lot though.

Technorati Tags: mealplanning, budget, groceryshopping

Food Budget and Meal Planning

We are finally beginning the long promised and long planned (at least on my part) month of homeschool meal planning and food budgeting.  Michelle seems less than enthused.  I’m hoping tomorrow when we begin doing, rather than reading and thinking and researching, she’ll show a bit more interest.

Here’s where we started: Shave $150 a Week….  From there, we explored the Hillybilly Housewife, focusing on the areas: Beginner Shortcuts and Shopping Strategies.

I am pondering the idea of playing The Grocery Game with her for a month, just for fun.  We shall see how it goes.

So tomorrow – planning one week’s worth of meals, for four people (the little kids will not be with us).  $75.  Can she do it?  With our "food needs"?  I think she can, maybe.  It will be fun though to see what she thinks we can give up and what we cannot give up. (As an aside, when we went to the grocery store yesterday we spent $140 on food that was just for the weekend – plus the 4 cases of soda and box of laundry detergent.  About $100 was just for the weekend food – for five of us – the 1/2 child and Michelle were gone all day Saturday and most of the day today). 

Stay tuned, Michelle will begin blogging about the topic tomorrow (or Tuesday since she’s a wee bit behind with chemistry).

Technorati Tags: homeschool, mealplanning, foodbudget, menus

Pumpkin Seeds

For Halloween I baked pumpkin seeds. I looked up how long I
should cook them and kind of winged it the rest of the way. I added ½ cup oil,
some salt, garlic salt, chili powder and honey. I kind of burnt the
seeds but other than that they were really good. I cooked the seeds for 45
minutes at 300. Yum.