Candy Corn Cheese

First, let me apologize for this picture.  I was trying to finish the lunch for the kiddos and this was a last minute thought.  I wanted to add some cheese to their lunch, but I was growing tired of just using cookie cutters.

I cut slices of: Vermont Cheddar (Orange layer), Kraft American (Yellowish layer), and Baybel in the red wax (White layer).

Cut rectangles all the same size and stack on top of each other.  For this, I did 6-7 rectangles for each of the orange and yellow layers.  Next, unwrap the Baybel cheese and cut in half.  Depending on how thick your orange and yellow layers are, you may have to shave off some thickness from the Baybel wheel.  Line up as shown and then using a knife, cut two 45 degree angles making the signature triangle shape of a candy corn.  I slid the knife under this to transfer it to the lunch plate and bento.  

In the bento, I placed it on top of a chunk of apple underneath the cheese so that it would sit together nicely - and who doesn't love apple and cheese together? YUM!

Halloween Pocket Sandwiches

I purchased some frozen bread dough as a back-up on one of my other experiments, but it ended up coming out alright - so I had these sitting in the freezer, collecting crystals.

You just need to defrost this bag and even though the pieces are sectioned off for you already - feel free to use more or less, depending on your sandwich.

Once its nice and soft, stretch it out to a thin square and then begin pressing into the mold. Don't worry about filling in every crevice - as it bakes it will shape perfectly.  Pinch away the excess as necessary.  If you are happy with it, then take some of your deli meat (and if you are using cheese) and roll it up to fit in the center.  For this, I used deli ham and white cheddar - rolling up together. 

Take another piece of the bread dough - again making a thin square and place over the mold.

 Finally, pinch everything in sealing it up the best that you can.  Bake at 350, for about 12 min. I noticed that if I left a little escape hole when pinching it together, some of the oils would drip down in the mold making the shape nice and brown.  Therefore, you may consider brushing the inside of the shape with a little butter.

Ta-da! The end result. 

The fun thing about this is that you don't have to fill them with anything!  You could actually take the dough and push in whole to make some fun themed dinner rolls!  But, the list is endless for fillings - you could do pizza sauce and cheese, any dessert pie filling, cookie dough - maybe?  Oh, I'm just going to get myself into trouble with these.  Guess I will need all of the seasonal baking pans!

So if you have other ideas on what to do with these, please leave a comment! Don't be shy! We are all here to learn, right?

Yay - I'm a stay at home mommy!

Well, it's official.  I left my job two weeks ago and have moved to the east coast.  My husband just started his 1 year school program and so I get to stay at home with our children.  It's been fun ...will take some more adjusting of schedules, routines, making sure I get out of the house, etc...but for the most part wonderful.

Tonight, I made my husband some yummy granola bars to take with him to class.  I got the recipe from this fabulous blog:
http://www.gwens-nest.com/family-favorite-recipes/granola-bar-recipe

I'm also getting into Bento Boxes.  But I need more practice in my artistic design, so more pictures later.

Nesting

In my days leading up to childbirth, it appears that I was experiencing nesting.  And although I mostly knew that, I had no idea how much.  I did successfully plan out approximately 3 months worth of menus and saved my family a significant amount of money because of cooking dinner at home and bringing lunch to work everyday.  However, I am now off on maternity leave and all of my pre-plan cooking has been to our advantage.  But it has also occurred to me that starting this blog was probably due to part of that nesting. Strange that they say if you do something for 21 days it'll become a habit. ...clearly I dropped off though.
 
My husband is still home with me on "paternity" leave for one more week.  That being said....it's time to get back on the horse and menu plan again.
more to come...

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally...

Remember that from school days with mathematics?

Anyways, in the slightest reference I can make towards math - where 3+1=4, I had baby recently...so I've been absent from the blog world. I promise to come back soon with more menus, and lessons learned on preparational (word?) cooking...that is to say, I prepared meals while I was feeling good in the last week before having baby and we've been eating on those since. Comes in very handy.

Anyhow, patience please and I'll be back soon.

Menu for week of March 21

I completely missed the boat last week, as I was trying to get my house in order, baby clothes washed and preparing for my mom to visit. I'm just down to a waiting game for new baby to arrive, so please forgive me for lack of posts.  I also haven't been as busy in the kitchen lately because the weather is nicer and I want to be outside more.  Plus, I don't like being on my feet so much these days.

I invested in a new iPad, which I thought would help my blogging, but come to find out that it doesn't like the features that help you compose posts, and so everything has to be done in HTML. I do know HTML, but I'm trying to keep it simple...trying to find alternatives. 

THIS IS LUNCH:

Monday	Grilled Cheese with Bacon and Tomato Slices, Potato Chips
Tuesday	Cheddar Bacon Quiche with mixed greens salad and crasins.
Wednesday	Chicken Salad Sandwiches, Pringles, Yogurt, Jello
Thursday	Eating Out for Lunch
Friday	Cheese Quesadillas with Pico and Guacamole, Chips
Saturday	Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Sunday	FFY/Leftovers

THIS IS DINNER:

Monday	Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes and Whole Wheat Roll
Tuesday	Breakfast for dinner? French Toast, Sausage, Cereal, etc.
Wednesday	Pork Chops, Macaroni and Cheese with side of Mixed Vegetables
Thursday	Breaded Chicken Strips, Sweet Potatoes, Vegetable/Salad
Friday	Shrimp with Angel Hair in Garlic Butter Sauce (It's Lent season, but I am already burnt out on Pizza *gasp*)
Saturday	Cheeseburgers and French Fries
Sunday	Our night for Family Dinner - Tacos or Enchilladas

Thanks for stopping by!

Help, Help! I'm drowning from non-existent time management

Ok, so I'm a little disorganized this week.  Baby coming soon, house is crazy, job is busy, and life has just gotten in the way. More posted on Tuesday...I promise.

Menu for the week of March 7

Busy, busy, busy.  My husband started trial this week...err...let me say that different - My husband, an attorney, is on the defendant's side for his first trial this week.  Very nervewracking!  He's been able to settle or win on Motion to Dismiss on every other lawsuit for the past 5 years.  We were in bed last night by 10pm; whoa, does that feel strange. Our normal bedtime is usually 12/12:30AM

So many things on my to do list this week. I've been reading a lot about bloggers that have 15 minutes scheduled within their day to "plan" or "write down their to dos"  This seems impossible for me. I get writer's block - can't think of anything...yet I know I have things to do. I think of things on the fly and when I'm laying down in bed at night decompressing (that's when they come to me), but I fall asleep writing them down. Then I spend all night with ink on my sheets - or sleeping on a pencil...which is most uncomfortable. Will need to research more work-arounds on how to accomplish this task, because my life needs more planning and organizing.

Thoughts? Tips & tricks?  Please do share!

THIS IS LUNCH:

Monday	Eating out - Trial
Tuesday	Eating out - Trial
Wednesday	Hopefully Trial is over today:  Maybe I'll bring a salad - spinach with pears is sounding very yummy.
Thursday	Left Overs from dinner
Friday	Day off work - yay!  Grilled Cheese or BLTs
Saturday	Cheeseburgers - with the weather being nice hopefully we can grill outside and eat too!
Sunday	FFY

THIS IS DINNER:

Monday	Left over Pasta and Spaghetti Sauce
Tuesday	Chicken Sauteed with Bell Peppers Fajita style; tortillas; Mexi-Corn
Wednesday	Spinach Ricotta Cheese stuffed Manicotti - Homemade Alfredo Sauce
Thursday	Chicken Caesar Salads with Garlic Bread; small side of fruit
Friday	Pizza Night - possibly out because we'll celebrate victory from Wednesday
Saturday	Southwest Veggie Quesadillas (still have mix left over in the freezer)
Sunday	Family Dinner - at in-laws

Thanks for stopping by!

Menu for Week of February 28th

Well hello there!  I got a reprieve from my in-laws this weekend; they watched our two year old son on Saturday night and all day Sunday.  It was really nice to get a break, but we spent time getting the house picked up and re-arranged so we can start taking down the bassinet, infant car seat, and infant swing thing.  I feel bad that new baby won't have a true "nursery" waiting on their arrival, but 1) they'll have no memory of it and 2) why do that when we are about to sell our house anyways.

Keep it simple.  Although I didn't write that down as my new year's resolution, I think that I'm going to try and continue that as my theme for 2011.

Last week's menu was a truly budget conscious menu, although I am challenged to do even better. We only spent $67 of the $92 weekly budget we had set aside.  This week, we were in great shape to do it again, but our local supermarket had a GIANT meat sale. So we bought a lot of bulk and spent the time on Sunday (kid-free) to package it up and separate into the freezer. That's going to help a lot for the upcoming weeks that I am home on maternity leave. 

THIS IS LUNCH:

Monday	Taco Salads (Hubs said these were so good Friday he wanted them again!)
Tuesday	Baked Potato (Bacon, butter, sour cream, cheese)
Wednesday	Chicken Salad in Pita Sandwiches
Thursday	Cuban Sandwiches (bake 'naked' pork chops with Tuesday night dinner)
Friday	Open/BLT Sandwiches (Hubs wants to go out for lunch, I will probably just make easy sandwich)
Saturday	Left overs from dinner
Sunday	FFY

THIS IS DINNER:

Monday	Left over Lasagne
Tuesday	Breaded Pork Chops with Mac and Cheese, Mixed Veggies
Wednesday	Steak, Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans
Thursday	Spaghetti with Homemade Sauce (has Italian Sausage in it too-yum)
Friday	BBQ Chicken Pizza - there are so many different options! Finding a good pizza dough has been so helpful and then we just add toppings.
Saturday	Tacos, Enchilladas...maybe something different in "mexican" style
Sunday	Family Dinner - it was our turn for Oscar night, so we are back to the other families.

Thanks for stopping by!

Menu for Week of February 20th

Budget troubles.  Within the past two weeks, hubby and I are noticing increasing difficulties with sticking to our "cash envelopes" budget. We have 4 months left to be very close to debt free (house & student loans will still be there).  As I'm sure we've all noticed, gas prices have been rising across the country.  We raised our weekly budget for gas from $50 to $60 a week (we carpool to work), but in the past two weeks it doesn't seem to be enough. 

Groceries, is another area that we are "overlapping."  When I refer to this "overlap," I mean that we have to take money out of our other budget envelopes (i.e. Wham money - walking around money) and move it over to groceries because we are having an overage for the week.  We use a lot of coupons and shop the sales; however, I'm convinced that prices have to be rising here too because we've been fine on our grocery budget for the past 7 weeks.

Do you have a cash budget plan?  Have you experienced/noticed similar rising costs? How are you coping?

On that note, I offer a much simpler menu this week so that we can try to keep some under-budget this week on our grocery bill.   Please share if you have a "low budget menu" or if you have other strategies your family implements during crunch times.

THIS IS LUNCH:

Monday	Left over Ziti from last week with side Caesar Salad; Jello, Yogurt, Mixed Nuts
Tuesday	Baked Potatoes (butter, cheese, bacon, sour cream); Jello, Yogurt, Fruit
Wednesday	Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup/Chicken Noodle (Hubs gets another catered lunch in at work this week because of training)
Thursday	PB & J (Haven't had to resort to this in months so maybe with some potato chips and Carrot Stix) Apples
Friday	Taco Chips Salad; Beans, Lettuce, Tomato, cheese, Sour Cream and Olives
Saturday	Macaroni & Cheese
Sunday	Brunch - Waffles and eggs

THIS IS DINNER:

Monday	Sloppy Joes
Tuesday	Sweet n Sour Chicken with rice (we didn't make this last week)
Wednesday	Oven Ready Lasagne
Thursday	Breakfast for dinner: French Toast and Bacon with Fruit
Friday	Homemade Pizza
Saturday	Hopefully, we'll have extra this week (as payday will have passed by this point) that we can either make a short trip to grocery store or grab Chick-Fil-A.
Sunday	Dinner will be our turn this week - yikes! Probably something in the Crockpot or Chicken Fajitas

Thanks for stopping by!