Our Meal Planning/Grocery Shopping Routine

Grocery shopping, and meal planning, are one of my most favorite things about being a stay at home mom. I love to try new recipes, and I love to grocery shop. Also, I love to organize. So, I thought I would share with you my wonderfully efficient way of meal planning and grocery shopping. Also, a little couponing. :)

I grocery shop on Thursday, which is pay day for us. On the day before, Wednesday, I look for coupons. I use the Ibotta Iphone app and coupons.com. Now, I do love coupons, but honestly I don't use that many because 1. we eat a Paleo diet, and 2. we live in a small town that only has a weekly paper. However, I do usually find at least one coupon a week for something that we need, thankfully. So, I gather my coupons, and my grocery list, and head out to Ingles to shop!

I keep my grocery list on my phone, on the Evernote app. I have a 4 week meal plan, which I update regularly, whether I am switching out recipes for better ones or updating recipes for summer, winter, etc. So, consequently, I have a grocery list for each week already planned out, according to the recipes that are assigned for that week. If I need extra items or additional things, I have a separate list, usually a very short one, in my notes that I can refer to. I love that I can just pull up the list already made up for that week, as soon as I get to the grocery store and do my shopping right away, instead of taking an hour plus per week to plan my meals and grocery list!

This week, since our oldest peanut has started pre-k, which is from 8-2:30 every weekday, I of course have to plan lunches for her as well. Since we eat a Paleo-style diet, it is not as simple as a PB&J with chips every day. Which of course, given the option, I would not choose for her anyway. I might choose it for myself, since I loooove PB&J, but I wouldn't make it for her.
Anyway....... her lunches are a bit complicated. We don't eat bread, chips, crackers, cookies, etc. All those wonderful portable things that so often find their way into lunchboxes, so I have to be crafty. This means I made up a Lunch Meal Plan for her way back in the summer, since I was up all night one night, worrying what I would possibly make for her lunch that would: a) be good, b) be portable, and c) not beg for other children to make fun of her 'weird lunch.' You know that kid in school who always had the odd, stinky food that everyone made fun of? Well, I thankfully wasn't that kid, but one of my friends was. She was a vegetarian, and she would always bring weird vegetarian food to school. Like tofurky. Or hummus-- before it was cool. Well, I didn't want my peanut to be that kid, not yet anyway. I mean, I need to get her off to a good start! She is only in pre-k for goodness sakes!
So, back to my original point....
The lunch meal plan. I thought I would come up with about 5 different choices for a lunch entree, then 5 veggie choices, then 5 fruit choices. At the beginning of each week, I ask peanut what she wants for lunch that week. She picks 2 from each list, and I buy those things, prepare them, pack them, and she gets a variety of good lunches for the week. This week it was apple chicken sausage, a gluten free waffle sandwich (I know, not Paleo, but she's a kid! She only had it one day this week anyway), mushrooms and frozen peas, and strawberries and blueberries. For next week, she picked cubed chicken and ham rollups with spinach and green pepper, tomatoes, and applesauce and frozen berries. Not so bad, eh? Peanut didn't think so either-- she apparently liked her lunches this week. That 's what she told me at least....

So, all in all, I guess I wanted to just jot down what things worked for us as far as meal planning and organization go, so if this helps anyone, or is just merely entertaining, than it has served its purpose. Well, actually its purpose was just for me to jot it down for memory's sake.....

A Productive Day!

I haven't written in a while, but I thought I would break the silence with a small post.

It's been a pretty perfect Saturday, if you ask me. I got up at about 7 with Caylen, fed her breakfast, made pancakes and tea, ate them with Brandon, we got showered and ready, then Caylen and I went to Walmart, with our freshly peeled apple in tow for her shopping snack. She was very well behaved and sweet on this trip, which is unusual. We leave there, go to Ken's Herbs, I get a few items, and she asks to go potty there, as she likes to check out the potty everywhere she goes. She was, I won't lie, quite trying at Ken's, but we found what we wanted and left.
We get home and eat lunch: leftover homemade vegetable noodle soup and crackers. Caylen eats great, for the second meal in a row, hey we're on a roll! I get to work soaking peas for split pea soup, make shampoo and toothpaste, yogurt, and some rye bread. I candy some apples. Then Caylen, after a little hesitation, goes down for a nap. And here we are.

Ahhhh! If only every Saturday could be this great!

Shampoo Free!

As you may have already guessed, I have officially gone shampoo free! This has been the most challenging of all my homemade overhauls, but I think I have found something that works. Pretty good, anyway. First, I tried Caylen's method of 1 tsp. baking soda in 1 cup water. I did this for a couple of days, found that my hair was not much different than not washing it, then proceeded to the baby powder trick. I have been living with this one for a few days now-- you know, the thing you do when your hair is a little stringy and you put baby powder in it to soak up the oil? yeah, I had to resort to that one quite a few times. Just once a day though did the trick.

Some of you may think this is gross, going shampoo free, but really, I am getting the dirt and most of the oil out of my hair, it is just that my scalp is still producing oil like it is being stripped daily. However, I wanted to find a more efficient, and easier way to get my hair clean. I tried the diluted baking soda, then I went to a baking soda paste, but both were just time consuming and hard to get good coverage since I have longer hair. So, I found a recipe for a foamy shampoo and tweaked it some and went with it. This is what I am currently using now:

• 1/2 cup grated homemade soap flakes
• 1 cup water boiled down for 30 minutes with your choice of herbs.

I used soap that I had from Thistle Ridge, a cold process lye soap, and it is scented like mint. I used cinnamon, nutmeg, and rosemary in my herb blend, and my shampoo result was a deep reddish brown-- very beautiful! It does, however, get on the shower walls and turn them reddish, but it wipes away. How does it clean? It does pretty well-- it suds up, and it cleans my hair well, and my hair has had lots of volume and body! I do have a conditioner with it as well, but honestly I can't use it without having to wash my hair after wards. It consists of olive oil, cider vinegar, and essential oils. It feels great, but it doesn't wash out so much. I am left with stringy hair after drying, and while it may be conditioned and healthy, it is not too appealing.

Overall, I am very pleased with the shampoo free routine, although I am not a fan of stringy hair or trying to adjust to below -par lathering. However, the condition of my hair has been much more satisfactory! I have more body and volume, which is hard for my superfine hair. I would recommend trying this for people who have problems with dryness, but if you have hair on the oily side like mine, you might be better off with store bought items, unless you are doing it to forgo chemicals like I am.

Flavored Homemade Yogurt!

Well, I did indeed try making homemade yogurt, flavored, and it turned out great!  What I did was this: I did everything the same, but at the end where I would normally just pour the milk into the jar, I added a tsp. and a half of Stevia, which was almost too much, and a tsp. of vanilla flavoring! It turned out very yummy and I was pleased. Caylen likes it too! I mean, she isn't one to shun any type of yogurt, but she does seem to like this kind better-- it's not as 'tart.'
Now, I just wish I could eat it! I have been going to see this alternative medicine doctor, and I don't mean medicine-doctor, and she has been doing acupuncture for my asthma, which has gotten to be really awful. I have been going a couple times a week, I got some blood work done, and we have,seemingly, exhausted all the possible causes of why it might be worse, but when I went yesterday, she suggested something else. She suggested, well she told me, to stop eating all dairy as it might be causing it, seeing that Caylen has a dairy sensitivity, she thought I might too and it might be making my asthma worse. Well, you know what that means! No yogurt :( As well as cheese, milk, etc. but the one thing I will miss the most is my yogurt! And, my breathing has been a lot better today! Which is great news, but I guess I will try to experiment with making almond milk yogurt for myself? Until then, I will continue to make it for Caylen, whole milk version, and I can attempt to interpret her opinions on how it tastes.... :(

Making Your Own... Yogurt!

I had heard of making your own yogurt, but I figured it was one of those lengthy, time-consuming, arduous tasks that only stay at home moms or Amish people took on. Well, I am neither, although I do respect both titles, very much so. Well, actually I am going to be a part-time stay at home mom now, since I am going to just be working 3 days a week now....
Anyway, back to the yogurt.
Yogurt is expensive. If you get the good kind. No, I am not talking about Yoplait, which is more like Jell-o than yogurt, since it has gelatin in it. It's just not right... I get the organic kind, I prefer Greek, but I like it either way. I get Caylen the organic whole milk yogurt, and boy it is expensive! I mean, it's not through the roof, but especially compared to what I can make it for, it is way too much!
So, I bet you are dying to know how I made it right?  Haha, just kidding, it's no secret!All you need, or what I used, is at least a quart of milk, 1/2 cup dry milk, a quart canning jar, a large saucepan, wooden spoon, yogurt starter, a heating pad and some kitchen towels and stock pot. Here goes:

I got my recipe from my handy dandy Tightwad Gazette. It recommends buying a container of store bought, active culture yogurt from the store. I used Dannon. This will be your starter yogurt, or starter culture. You will need the bacteria from this yogurt to get yours going. The tightwad gazette is always finding the most cost effective way of doing things, so it recommended taking the yogurt by 2 tablespoons each and freezing them in ice cube trays. So, you end up with about 16 2 tablespoon starters (?) I can't remember how many compartments there are in those ice cube trays. Anyway, in order to start the yogurt, you need to take one ice cube worth of starter, 2 tablespoons in other words, and let it melt. In the meantime, take your milk, whole milk, 2%, organic, whatever, and measure out a quart. The easiest way to do this is to pour it into a quart canning jar, which is what I used to store my yogurt in. Put the quart of milk in a large saucepan, and mix in the 1/2 cup of dry milk. Heat the quart of milk up to 180, I used my candy thermometer to track it, and then cool it down to 115. At this point, take a 1/2-1 cup of the warm milk, whisk it very vigorously into the starter. Then, take the starter/warm milk mixture and mix it into the large batch of warm milk. Whisk very vigorously. There has been no evidence that vigorous whisking can kill the cultures. However, it is pertinent to make sure the cultures are well distributed so all the milk will turn into yogurt instead of curdled milk. After it is well-whisked, pour it into your quart jar, fasten the lid, put it on a heating pad on low, wrap it in a kitchen towel, and put a stock pot over the jar so it is dark and warm. This is so the cultures will have opportunity to grow. Let it incubate for 8-12 hours. I did mine for 8, then put it in the fridge, but it just depends on how 'tart' you like your yogurt.
I call 'tart' 'sour.'
Anyway, after 8 hours it was firm and delicious! It lasts for about 5 days, give or take, mine lasted at least 6, but I am not sure how much longer after that it would last since we ate it all! I liked to serve it with a little raw honey-- soooo  good! Or, for Caylen, I mash up a little banana in it! Yummy!

My next yogurt venture? How to flavor it?! I'll let you know how it turns out!