Picking Strawberries

strawberries

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Real Food – Starting My Journey

real {fast} foodI was interested in Trina’s book over a year ago when she first approached me to help her edit the video about her ebook Real Fast Food. I was also a bit intimidated, and busy with only a small kitchenette and apartment size refrigerator. I did not cherish kitchen time one bit!

Now I’ve started buying from a local farm and making little changes to rid my house of chemicals. I have a new-to-me kitchen with brand new counters and a regular size fridge – even if my oven is still small. I’ve eliminated all non-stick pans due to having pet birds and not wanting to poison them with the toxins put off by the non-stick. [Which also brings to mind the question, "If the fumes from non-stick will hurt the bird's lungs, what is it doing to mine?"]

The time is right for me to get Trina’s book. She is doing a “book tour” via blog posts and agreed to send me one as a review copy. Yay! Even so, the link sat in my email for about a month. Her whole concept is to simplify the process of eating healthier, closer to how God made them foods even as a busy mom of little ones – and without a large grocery budget. Why is it so intimidating to me? Can she help me replace the quick frozen pizza meals with something else that we like? [Read more...]

Frozen Pizza That Tastes Good

Freschetta PizzaThis week is a busy week with meetings at church every night, school every morning, etc. When planning my dinner menu for the week I remembered that I had two coupons for free Freschetta pizzas. We bought them and ate them the same day!

I was introduced to Freschetta pizza at the SheStreams Conference. We had them for lunch one day, but sadly they were over-cooked. They were still ok – just tasted like the times at home when I got busy helping a kid and forgot to get the pizza out of the oven.

This time – cooking the Freschetta at my house – I was very vigilant, plus I set a noisy timer. I put the 5 Italian Cheese pizza on the cooking stone on the higher oven rack, and the Pepperoni and Italian Cheese pizza right on the lower oven rack. The pizza on the lower rack got one black edge, but was still edible and the one cooked on the stone was done just right. They tasted much better than at the conference.

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Don’t Panic Cookbook – Quick, Easy, & Delicious Meals | Book Review


I’m REALLY getting out of my normal style of book review for this one. It’s a cookbook! An honest to goodness, real, printed, cookbook. And I actually used it. I know that there’s a bunch of you that have cookbooks that you haven’t ever used, and some that you haven’t looked in for years. Get rid of them! End rant.

I agreed to review this one because of the title: Don’t Panic–Quick, Easy, and Delicious Meals for Your Family. I am good at the panicking part. Yup. Plus I like quick and easy. [That just doesn't sound right, but you know what I mean...I hope.]

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Meal Planning

Sneaking in late to Menu Plan Monday…

menu plan monday

In the video at the bottom I talk about how I like to plan 3 weeks at a time. [My main reason is so I can avoid grocery shopping.] Now and then I drop the ball for about a week, and we eat some pizza and subs. Then I get guilty for spending extra money and taking up extra time each day for food decisions/prep. So I make myself plan at least one week and soon I’ll be back in the groove for several months. Today I planned this week’s menu, and that tells you where I’m at in the cycle.

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