Jen's Blot
Children and family, Saving and coupons, ADHD and Quirky Kids, and other randomness...
Jump to navigation
02 July
Bread, glorious, wonderful, bread!
My bread maker now has a place of it's own. In MA it was in the storage room for the 5+ years we lived there - there just wasn't any place to put it. But now I have space :) and it lives on the counter and it gets used almost every week.
Unfortunately, with the influx of fresh, hot from the oven bread - there has also been an increase in my waistline. So the next grocery trip will have a list of ingredients included for making better bread - it will at least have a higher fiber content in it! I'm also going to start playing with mixing up the flour and using lower fat fats in it (ha! that's an odd sentence).
What do you put on your fresh bread?
21 January
Dietary Changes
After my last post, I've been paying more attention to the ingredients list. Rather than carry around the LONG list of things that *definitely contain* and others that *may contain* MSG, I've looked at it repeatedly and can now remember most of the biggest offenders. My goal in ingredients has become - as few as possible, aiming for those items with the least amount of really complicated names listed. I haven't pulled everything out of the cabinet to examine it, but I am looking at each item I pull out as needed, and make a decision from there. Oh - this has glycerin in it? Hmmmm and I weigh - we've been eating it right along - should we just finish it up and then not replace it? Or ditch it right now. I'm focusing on moderation for the most part.
I did swing through Trader Joe's and then the Organic/Whole Foods section of our super market. I've found a few cereal choices that the boys like that do not contain corn syrup - yay for small wins! And I found some REALLY yummy chicken at Trader Joe's - Kyle's been asking for it repeatedly since Friday when we had it :o)
The good news is that we don't seem to have a lot of offending products :o) the corn syrup thing isn't directly related to the msg thing - I just figured it was good timing to attack that one. A major dissappointment though - while in the whole foods area I found some whole wheat ravioli (yay!) and read the ingredients - they contain one of the items from the *always contains MSG* list (boo, hiss). Back in the freezer they went!
18 January
Excito-what?
I've started reading some material on excitotoxins. I'm not going to go into much about them - you can Google it and get the same hits I did :o) Maybe I'll write more about them later. For now, I'm reading and digesting (ha! that wasn't a pun!) and trying to decide if there is an approach here that I want to pursue.
I'm surprised that MSG is hidden in so many ways. My mission this weekend is to go through the pantry cabinet and see what we have with 'hidden' MSG. I was already avoiding Aspartame for the boys and Holly. Mostly because it didn't feel like a good idea for their little, developing brains to be exposed to it. I'm not sure what I'll do with the stack of food I'm sure I'll accumulate. But finding them is a first step. Then I'll decide how much we can change.
The good news? The Oreos I'm about to devour have none of the suspect ingredients (they'll just kill me with fat and high fructose corn syrup). :o)
15 June
Dinner is served!
Back at the end of March we attended an auction to benefit the PTO for Kyle's school (they raised $30k!!!) - at said auction I 'won' a gift certificate to
The Gathering Kitchen. I finally got around to booking my session and I went last night. I 'assembled' 6 entrees - well 5 entrees with doubling up on one of them. Holy Mole Flank Steak, 5 Star Pot Roast, Mrs. V's Pulled Pork, Greek Isle Pasta, and 2 of Shrimp Scampi Skewers. Since I was there without friends, I didn't chat and was all business. Everything was prepped at each of the stations and I just moved from recipe to recipe and put everything together. I seal them in big ziploc bags and label them with cooking directions. Into my freezer they go. So now I have 6 home cooked entrees waiting for me to defrost and cook - each serves 4 - 6 people. I loved it (and it only took me 45 minutes!!!). Oh, and no clean up??? It was so worth it. Especially the way I've been feeling about cooking lately.
So tonight we will have shrimp kebabs - I will let you know how they are - maybe even take a picture!
So, in the future if anyone has any reason to get me a gift -
gift certificates are a good choice LOL!!!
I'm thinking this might be something Steve and I can do together - while not a cook, assembling a bunch of ingredients is OK for him. Me? I enjoy the whole thing - the textures and smells of everything. The colors. How things change when you mix them together (cocoa on a steak? can you do that??? )
But the next time I book a session I'll be sure to try to get more folks I know to go - and bring some wine! :-)
Email Jen!
Subscribe in a reader
About Jen:
Welcome to my Blot! The result of a typo, but it fits me rather well.
I have no set agenda for my blot - it rambles wherever my brain takes me. Have a seat, grab some coffee or other beverage of choice - read what you like, ignore what you don't like :o)
We have a cat, two boys, a girl and two parents! My oldest was diagnosed with Asperger's but then later had that label dropped. He may or may not have been touched with some ADHD - join me while we learn more about this new and interesting facet to Kyle's Being...
We ventured into the world of cloth diapering with Holly in 2007 and it was not nearly as scary as I thought it would be - actually, it's only different from disposables in that I had to wash them - which is no big deal. Really!!! Ask me :o) I read that it takes 500 years (YEARS!!) for a disposable to decompose.. I guess if we just tossed the diaper out in the back yard it would break down quickly, but with 10 - 12 changes a day I think the neighbors might object to that method! So instead we wrap them up in little balls, put them in plastic and send them on to the waste management facility... where they are probably buried.... no oxygen... so they sit and sit and sit. Having contributed 2 boys worth of diapers to that process already, I figured I should make an attempt... have a look around at
WildFlower Diapers to see how cute and fun cloth diapering can be!! Shannon is a wonderful person, and I have no problems sending business her way!! Holly has since learned to use the potty, but I do miss the cuteness of those dipes!!
I have refocused my attention on collecting coupons and saving in general. I will try to post periodically on what I've saved and how we're doing. We're also saving our loose change for our 'travel fund' - we'll be opening a Travel Savings Account in the near future, and I'll also post our deposits and balance there so you can play along at home :)
