Meal Planning

Whether you’re short on money or on time, meal planning can be an essential part of life. I’ve been doing it off and on over the past few months and while not perfect at it yet, here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

1) Pick One Main Ingredient - If you pick one ingredient (based on sale price, personal inclination, and/or practical reasons), then you can buy it in bulk and use it in every recipe. The ingredient can be anything: meat, vegetable, seasoning, bread, etc. Just make sure it’s versatile enough to make interesting and at least somewhat healthy meals for yourself.

2) Find Recipes with Similar Ingredients - Remember, just because a recipe has similar ingredients, doesn’t mean they taste the same. On that note, if the recipes have similar ingredients, not only if money saved, but prep time is cut down as well since most items get prepped the same way. It’s only in the cooking itself it changes, but green peppers still need to be seeded, potatoes need to be cleaned and peeled, etc.

3) Variety is the Spice of Life - That old saying is true, so use your spice rack to the best of your abilities. Feel free to experiment with your spices and if you don’t have a full spice rack, starting building one up. Not only will it be good for your meal planning, but in the long run, it’ll help keep your kitchen well stocked.

4) Pre-Made Items = Friends - Bags of salad, cans of soup, etc. are great for lunches or additives to bigger meals and can be easily modified. These are cheap, generally healthy, and quite easy/quick to make and eat. I wouldn’t recommend eating them for all meals, since they aren’t as hearty and tend to be full of preservatives, but everything in moderation, as they say.


5.) Stocked Cupboards - Another thing to keep in mind is to keep well stocked cupboards of nonperishables, like box mixes, canned foods, noodles and rice, which can make meal planning even easier. It’s easy to change up mac and cheese by adding even just chicken and chances are, spaghetti or rice will be used often. So when cost effective, buy these items when on sale and keep them in the cupboard. Worse comes to worse, you can use one of these items as a main ingredient or it’ll just keep you from spending too much for an item later on.

6.) Budgeting - Also, making a specific food budget for the month would help keep costs at bay. Meal planning shouldn’t be more costly than willy-nilly buying meals, in fact, it should be much less costly. At the moment, I try to keep between $20-$30 a week and honestly, that can be pretty easy with the amount of brand competition there is any more.

Feel free to share your tips as well.

Good meal planning, every one!

Dust off those Cookie Cutters

Let’s face it, we all have large tins of various cookie cutters that we can’t bare to part with, but at the same time may use every other Christmas, if that. Or maybe I’m the only one guilty of that. Even so, there are plenty of other uses for cookie cutters that span not only food uses, but also some fun non-cooking uses.

Cooking Uses:

Shaping Eggs- You can buy an egg shaper made out of the same metal as your trusty cookie cutters, but why not have fun shaped eggs? A lot of cookie cutters even have little handles to make this an even easier project. Just make sure you only use metal cookie cutters and use every precaution to keep yourself safe.

Sandwich Shapers- Stores are making money off of basically selling cooke cutters for sandwiches. While they may be specifically shaped for sandwiches, why spend the extra money if you already have cutters at home?

Bento Boxes: There’s limited room in every lunch box, whether you have a special bento box or just plain tupperware, but cookie cutters help make the most of that space and keeps the foods separate. Not only that, but it helps bring a little bit of colour and flare to any lunch.


Non-Cooking Uses:

Ornaments- Whether you just tie a ribbon on them or actually drill a hole for a ribbon, cookie cutters make awesome ornaments for any holiday, party or day that just needs a little bit of decoration. Best thing is being able to still use them for cookies after.

Soap Molds- Making soap is fun in general, but making shaped soap just takes a little bit more effort and makes the soap more interesting. I wouldn’t recommend using the cookie cutters on food again unless you’ve done a heavy duty cleaning on them, but if the cookie cutters are rarely used for food anyways and you’ll use them on soap making more often, then go for it.

Cross-Posted on my other Blog.

Grilled Chicken Wrap

Some days we all want something home cooked, but that does not mean we have time to pull out several pots and pans to slave in a hot kitchen. Honestly, who really has any time these days?

This latest recipe is something home cooked with out the hard labor, which was nice especially since I actually cooked it while I was in the middle of cooking several other things. It’s quick, simple, easy clean up and tasty. Who could want more?

Grilled Chicken Wrap
2-3 Servings

2 Chicken fillets, season to your taste
½ of a red pepper
½ of a green pepper
½ of an onion
3 tortillas (Or however many are needed, in my case there was enough for 3, but my tortillas were tiny.)
Shredded Cheese to taste

Step One: After seasoning the chicken, grill it until it is finished cooking. Feel free to cut open the chicken to check how done it is, since later on the chicken will be cut apart anyways.

Step Two: While the chicken is cooking, slice the vegetables. I sliced enough for two pieces of each vegetable per tortilla, but again, if you have bigger tortillas feel free to add more of each vegetable.

Step Three: When chicken is done and cooled enough to touch, slice the chicken and divide between the tortillas. Add the vegetables, followed by the cheese. Finish wrapping the tortilla, use a toothpick if desired to hold it closed.

Step Four: Place back on the grill to warm and melt the cheese. If there’s enough cheese, it will hold the tortilla closed and the tooth pick is no longer needed. Serve with a dipping sauce that compliments your seasonings.

If you have time: Saute or grill the vegetables as well.

Also try: adding other vegetables, seasoning the tortillas, other meats, marinating the chicken.

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the Spider to the Fly

So no spiders and no flies are mentioned in this post (and none were involved either), but rather a quaint little restaurant called, “The Parlour” in Jackson, MI. My mother and stopped there this past Saturday after a day of wonderful wine tasting (Do not worry, I will talk about glorious wine tasting soon enough). From the pictures, it’s easy to tell the place looked quaint and rather old timey.

While known for it’s ice cream, we ate dinner as a pre-cursor to the tasty ending. I ordered “The Parlour Signature” burger ($6.95, the most expensive burger). This burger had a ⅓ lbs beef patty and was topped with onions, lettuce, swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, tomato, mushrooms, bacon and ham (Yes, it had a slice of ham on it)! While I opted out of the cheddar cheese an tomato, this hamburger was delicious. Admittedly, I was expecting a much greaser burger, but I was pleasantly surprised at the very minimal amount of grease and even that was just juice. Just see for yourself how tasty the burger (and fries!) look:


But the best part, however, was the “Sundae of the Month”. The sundae this month contained one scoop vanilla, one scoop cinnamon, and one scoop pumpkin spice ice cream ($5.95). Than it was topped with two cherries, a mound of whip cream, and the topping of our choice, which was caramel at this case. No one in their right mind could resist this (Not even my vegan brother):


As if this was not amazing enough, they have their “Dare to be Great” challenge. For $29.99 you get 21 scoops of ice cream and multiple toppings, but if you alone finish it with in an hour you can get it for free! They also have the “Baby Dare to be Great” which we saw a great grandpa treating three rambunctious boys which is 10 scoops instead of 21.

If you’re in Jackson, MI, this is a cute place to check out with decent food, great ice cream and good prices.

Roasted Garlic, Mmmm

Recently I have been all about roasting garlic. Granted, I have always been all for garlic, but lately roasted has stolen my heart. Maybe it is the amazing garlic roaster I just put an order in for from Avon (Yay for my Aunt being an Avon Rep!)* or the fact that some how my boyfriend and I keep finding restaurants that have roasted garlic in our meals, but any way you slice it (or roast it... bad joke, please bare with), roasted garlic is amazing.

Yesterday I roasted garlic for the first time using tips from these two blogs/websites:

The Hungry Mouse
Simply Recipes

I love the fact that The Hungry Mouse (Such a cute name!) not only shows an obvious infatuation with garlic just like me, but also shows multiple ways of using roasted garlic, including garlic infused oil and compound butter. Plus all the pictures let me know I am doing it right. Let’s face it, I am a highly visual person, sometimes I just do not get written directions. While sometimes her written directions are hard to follow, the pictures helped me at least, keep me on the right track.

Simply Recipes just had the most amazing tip: put the garlic in a muffin tin. It not only holds the garlic straight up, but it is perfectly sized for garlic. The only issue? If you are trying to infuse cooking oil at the same time, it is a hell of a feat to get the oil from the muffin tin into a container. Nearly darn impossible… Trust me, I tried it yesterday and mess one big mess.

Now some of you might be asking the most important question: Why roast garlic?

First off, it tastes amazing, alone or with other food. Secondly, it is a healthy alternative to butter. Thirdly, it keeps the sparkly weirdos far far away, as well as their squeaky fan girls. Fourth, you can easily turn it into a garlic paste and use it mashed potatoes, with vegetables, mix with butter, etc. I am sure I am missing some fantastic reasons to roast garlic. So feel free to share your ideas with us!

* Speaking of Avon, if you are ever looking for an Avon lady, I know a swell one. Just let me know and I will get you in touch with her.

Mustard is Evil

I hate mustard. Plain and simple. Never have liked, never thought I would, but lately some recipes have opened up my mind to the possibility of maybe, perhaps, kind of sort of liking mustard. Not plain mustard, mind you, but the wonderfully flavored mustards.

This recipe uses an amazing mustard my boyfriend and I found at the Michigan Renaissance Festival this year. The company, Garlic Festival, is aptly named considering the wide variety of garlic based products they have: seasonings, salsas and dips, marinades, sauces, pickled garlic, and of course, garlic mustard. This particular garlic mustard, is a garlic jalapeno mustard that is quite amazing.

The following recipe uses that mustard, though any other mustard can be used as a substitute.

Garlic Jalapeno Mustard Chicken
2 Servings

2 Chicken Fillets
4-6 Tablespoons of Garlic Jalapeno Mustard
4 Medium Sized Carrots, Sliced
1 Onion, Sliced
Minced Garlic to Taste
Oil or butter for the pan

Step One: Marinate chicken in the mustard for about an hour at least (I really just rubbed the mustard on the chicken and let it sit for a while to soak up some of the flavor.).
Step Two: Heat pan with oil or butter, than add the chicken fillets.
Step Three: Once the chicken fillets have started cooking, add the carrots a few minutes after. Add the onions one the chicken fillets after about half to 3/4s cooked through. Add minced garlic when desired (it all depends on how strong you want the garlic flavor and how well you want the minced garlic cooked).
Step Four: It is finished when the chicken is cooked through, the carrots are soft, and the onions are translucent.

Serve with extra mustard for dipping on the side.

Things to add: Salt/Pepper (this is a definite, I’m fairly certain a touch of both work have done the recipe wonders), other vegetables, more jalapenos.

Breaking News: A New Addition to my Cooking Family!

Of course, when I say "Cooking Family", I mean all my fun utensils and gadgetry that can be found in my kitchen. This new addition I have been threatening to adopt for a long time, but my human family beat me to the punch by literally just a couple of days by giving me one of these babies for my birthday:

20-Cup Cool Touch Digital Rice Cooker

And this baby is not just any rice cooker. She is also a steamer and can make rice while steaming meat and vegetables. Besides that, she can be used as slow cooker (which is great for when I go to make my wonderful soups) and has a time-delay for up to 15 hours (which is amazing considering how busy I get).

Oh my little cooking family has grown! I will be sure to use her to make some lovely new recipes to share and I will definitely let share how well she handles once I do!