Emergency Snacking

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There’s a time of day when the 4 year old should have had a nap, but now if you lay him down he won’t sleep tonight.  It’s the time of day when he sees his sister’s chocolate protein bars that are tucked away in her closet, so her brothers and sisters won’t eat them, and she can have them for after her pointe class.  The time when he brings the box to her with his big baby eyes and says, “Can I have one?”  And she has to say, “no” because if he gets one then they all will want one and she won’t have what she needs for dance class.

Then his cute little lip sticks out, and big alligator tears trickle down his cheeks and your heart breaks and melts into a pile of enabling goo.  And you know if you don’t do something, that sad little moment will turn into a kicking, screaming, thrashing, a “oh why didn’t I give the toddler a nap?”, moment.

When this happens, I take him by the little hand.  And put a spoon in it.  Then we pour honey, peanut butter, cocoa powder, and oats in a pan and wait for the magic to happen.

Snack Balls

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup honey

2 Tablespoons cocoa powder

1 cup quick oats

Place honey in a saucepan over medium high heat.  Stirring until it is very runny.  Turn off the heat and add the peanut butter and cocoa powder, stirring until smooth.  Add oats and stir until mixture forms a dough.  Roll tablespoons of dough into balls and let cool for a few minutes (or don’t.)  Eat right away and store the leftovers (there won’t be any) in an airtight container.  Then cuddle your boy with a good book.

Italian Eggplant Bake Revised

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I’m thrilled that so many of my lovely readers are still here :).  Every time I get a comment from you it makes me smile and want to blog again.  I’ll have to admit that I enjoyed my break from the blog, even though sometimes I felt guilty about neglecting it.  I was enjoying my family so much that most of the time I didn’t even think about it.  I think I’m ready to start writing again, even if it’s just a few times a week.

Someone brought a huge box of eggplant to church last week.  We waited by the box until the crowd thinned so we could take 2 of them without feeling greedy :).  I looked up my recipe created this summer for Eggplant bake and cut the cheese in half and added a half cup of parmesan for flavor.  It was delicious and only had 300 calories a serving, which is a generous 1/8th of a 9 x 13 pan. 

2 eggplant (1 or 1.5 lbs each)

1 jar spaghetti sauce (26 oz)

2 lbs ground beef

2 cups mozarella cheese

1/2 cup parmesean cheese

1 tsp garlic salt

Place ground beef in a large skillet and sprinkle with garlic salt.  Cook meat until no longer pink, drain and rinse of excess fat.  Slice eggplant into 1/2 inch thick slices.  Cook for a few minutes on each side in a hot skillet until lightly browned.  Grease a 9 x 13 casserole dish.  Place 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce in the bottom of the dish.  Cover the sauce completely with eggplant slices.  Sprinkle with half the ground beef, half of the cheeses and half the remaining sauce.  Repeat the layers once more.  Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes.  Let stand a few minutes before serving. 

We served ours with a huge spinach and romaine tossed salad, green beens, and peaches. If you aren’t watching you carbs, garlic bread would be perfect :).

I’m off to put the children in the tub.  It’s Saturday night, whether you need it or not…..

P.S.  I did not peel my eggplant.  I try not to peel anything if I can help it, because usually there are lots of vitamins in the peeling.  When I served the leftovers to my mother for lunch she looked shocked.  “You didn’t peel it!?”

“Oops, Was I supposed to?”

Mother:  “What did your recipe say?”

Me:  “Ooh, recipe, that would have been a good idea…”

Happy New Year

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Happy New Year! We spent our first night in our new home last night, and it felt like home. Darren and I made the living room with green carpet our temporary bedroom.

4 of the kids are sharing the striped bedroom until we can paint and carpet 2 of the other rooms. Even with 4 beds in there it feels huge.

Tomorrow I will get a few more things from the old house. Since it hasn’t sold yet I’m only bringing over what I can put away immediately. I’m not in the mood to live in a mess again, lol.  We had a lot of help yesterday to move the furniture and appliances. It’s just odds and ends now./p
pSpeaking of messes did you see that Netflix has added 4 more seasons of Clean House?  I’m so excited!

I’m trying out blogging with a new app on my phone since we don’t have internet service yet. If this works out it should let blogging be less of a time commitment. This year I’m turning my heart towards home while making Grocery Shrink more business than hobby.  That means I need to make better use of my time.

I’m off to plan my year and make my January menus. With the move we are trying out some new money saving strategies to reduce our phone and internet bills. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Ants on a Log

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The boys made these all by themselves while I took a conference call.  There was peanut butter everywhere, but they sure were proud of their snack.  I thought it looked like more than any family could eat–but I managed, somehow :).

Homemade Kettle Corn

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Darren:  “What are you making?”

Me:  “Kettle Corn.”

“Where did you buy it?”

“You don’t buy it, you make it.”

“I’m pretty sure you need a special pan for that, that keeps it from burning.”

“They didn’t say anything about a special pan.”

“Who’s they?”

“You know, the blogland people.”

“Hmm.”

“All the instructions are over there on the blog, and they promise it won’t burn if you do it just like that.”

From the other room, “Eww, mom what’s that smell?” As the kids trickle into the room, “What are you trying  to make?  Is it supposed to be smoking like that?” “What’s the matter, did you run out of microwave popcorn?”

“Microwave popcorn is expensive and nutritionally inferior.”

“Maybe, but it’s edible.”

Grant is 6 months

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It took me awhile to take his pictures this time.  I prefer outdoor lighting, but the weather wasn’t very cooperative.  I’llhave to get a new plan for the winter months, lol.  His 12 months onesie now fits him properly.  It will have to streeeeetch to make it to his first birthday.

His mood was ever changing for this photo shoot.  His front teeth are trying to make an appearance and disrupt his sleep and his pleasant attitude.  It’s things like this that will make us celebrate when they finally break through!

Wanted: Homeschool Teacher

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I have a teaching degree and taught 5th grade for two years, when I was VERY young.  I turned 22 on the first day of school and though I did a decent job, would do a much better job today after having been a parent.  I had already decided that when I was blessed with children of my own, I would be a homeschool mom.  After teaching classes of 20-25 5th graders, I figured that homeschooling a mere handful of my own children would be a piece of cake.  I WAS WRONG.  I have a huge respect for homeschooling mothers who do it right.  Especially those moms of many who persevere year after year while pregnant and nursing and during financial strain.  I wrote this little ad as a tribute to homeschool moms everywhere.  It takes a special woman to do what you do.

Happy Birthday to Brandon

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Life is spinning by like a merry-go-round on hyper speed.  Somtimes it’s so much fun I can hardly contain myself and somtimes I think I might be sick.  This Saturday was one of those sick types of days with 4 soccer games, orchestra and selling cubscout popcorn in between.  But these kids are so amazing, it’s worth a little craziness to let them have opportunities to build their talents and relationships.

This week we also got to celebrate some boys and there will be more boy birthdays to come this month.

And Grant is already 5 months old and has a tooth!  He’s such a happy little sweetie.

He is VERY interested in food.  Today he grabbed Heidi’s peanut butter sandwich and shoved it in his mouth.  She got it all out and rinsed his mouth out.  ( I was pretty proud of her instincts–She’s only 11.)  Thankfully peanut allergies do not run in our family.  I usually wait to introduce solids until my babies are 9 months old.  He has teeth and can sit up unassisted for short periods of time. He weighs 18lbs and is average in size for 5 months old.  He seems satisfied with nursing, but is very curious about eating food and has tried more than once to eat things off our plates.  Would you start introducing foods?

Italian Eggplant Bake

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We spent the weekend farm sitting for Darren’s parents.  Two calves were born while we were there–so cute!

I’ll  admit that I came “this close” to throwing a tantrum while we were preparing to leave to go there.  I had a lot of things to do at home and I felt like I needed some time to be home without a crazy schedule.   Once we got there, the house was quiet and there were lots of places for the children to play outside.  Grant took two 4 hour naps on Saturday and let me work.  I can’t believe everything I accomlishedin just 12 hours!

I finalized the text on my latest ebook, read two hardcover books from cover to cover (Tribes:  We need you to lead us; and The Westing Game), finished my September menu, and wrote Heidi’s lesson plans for September and October. 

I also got to do my Fit Yummy Mummy interval workout on the gravel road, which I decided is just about as good as running on sand to add extra resistance and balance into a workout.  Plus the scenery was breathtaking!  I ran and ran and only saw 2 houses before it was time to turn around and head home.  Another benefit was that the country blocks are exactly 1 mile long, so I could judge my distance easier than at home.  I did 2 miles in a little over 15 minutes.

Ooh, I almost forgot, I also took Grant’s 4 month pictures.  He gets cuter every day (proud mom talking.)  I miss the newborn floppy, cuddly stage.  But there is no bad stage.  He’s getting very vocal about letting me know when he needs to potty.  Which is so helpful, since this distracted mom needs LOUD potty cues, lol.  And he laughs hilariously when I make pig snort noises–but only when he can see my face at the same time.  I also love seeing him get super excited when a toy comes his way.

I learned enough from my reads to figure out that I wish I had some computer programming courses under my belt.  Darren and I talked about sending our 9 year old son to classes so he can create Android Apps for our businesses and earn the money for his college degrees.  That boy is Smart!  He beat Darren 6 times at Stratego this weekend which is something since his daddy is a brain himself. 

Part of the fun of being on the farm is arriving without a menu plan and cooking with what we can scrounge up from the garden and create.  Bonnie had a pile of beautiful eggplants, okra, and fresh blueberries.  What a treat.  Here’s the recipe for the Italian Eggplant Bake we had for the main dish.  It was the first time any of us had tasted eggplant and we loved it!

2 eggplant (approx 1 lb each)

cooking spray

garlic powder and salt

2 lbs ground beef (you can use 1 lb or even better that yummy Turkey Italian sausage from Aldi)

1 jar spaghetti sauce

1 lb mozarella cheese, shredded

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Slice the eggplant 1/2 inch thick and place on a greased cookie sheet.  Spray with cooking spray and sprinkle liberally with garlic powder and salt (to taste)  Bake for 10 minutes, then flip and spritz and sprinkle the other side.  Bake for 10 minutes more. Reduce temperature to 375 degrees.

Meanwhile, brown the hamburger or turkey sausage (also liberally sprinkled with garlic powder and salt) and drain and rinse the fat.  Stir the spaghetti sauce and hamburger together.  Place a small amount of sauce in the bottom of a greased 9 x 13 dish.  Cover the bottom of the dish with eggplant slices.  Top with half the sauce mixture and half the cheese.  Repeat the layers once.  Bake for 30 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly and golden brown.

Serve like lasagna–Yum!  And very low carb.

(Note:  This is how we made the dish with what was available, but I thought a little parmesean cheese in the layers would have been fantastic.)

Today

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We started our homeschool today and so far I’ve only lost my patience a handful of times, sigh.  A sign that I am still overwhelmed even with 2 kiddoes in school.  On the bright side, I think I will be able to teach those 2 well and the baby and 3 year old are being fairly cooperative.  Brandon is sticking to my side like glue during Dub’s lessons and I expect he will pick up quite a bit by listening in.  (Ooh, did I tell my blog friends that I am sending 2 children to private church school this year?  It was a terribly hard choice but the right one.  I’m so happy about it and it’s fodder for a new post..with darling first day of school photos.)

Today I am also working on planning for our clothing needs for fall and winter.  This is my favorite part of homemaking!  (Besides cooking–and eating, lol.)  I’m writing all of how we do frugal clothes in a brand new ebook complete with imbedded video (if all goes well) and hope to release it  the week of Labor Day.  There will be a special introductory sale the first day that  you’ll want to take advantage of.  Now…the pressure’s on for me to finish in time!

Clothing plannin is especially fun becuase we have a spring baby!  That means that the older brother clothes are the wrong season for him during the baby months (though will work fine once he is in size 24 months.)  And I get to hunt for baby bargains :). Our baby is also a pottying EC baby (EC=Elimination Communication.) Which means his clothing needs are slightly different than the average baby.  Onesies don’t work well here since we leave him diaper cover free at home, and the flaps get damp if we have a miss (potty accident.)  For summer, I just used a t-shirt and diaper with a hand knitted soaker cover when we slip out. I cut the flaps off a few onesies to extend his wardrobe, but didn’t love doing that. 

I noticed Children’s Place has some non-onesie baby shirts starting in size 6-9 months.  With the coupon code (A7E2011) good today only for 20% off plus free shipping, the shirts are only $4.80 each.  I’m not into dressing my kiddoes like punk rockers or in clothing with skulls, so the choies were limited.  I found 3 shirts that will work great and plan to sew some envelope top shirts from thermal knit (all stash) later.  But since I’ll be drafting the pattern for these…I’m happy to order a few shirts to get by until I have time.

Though I’m using cloth diapers now, I’m ready to have underwear for the babe now since it is easier with pottying.  I found this super cute pattern on etsy for underwear style training pants that come in wee babe sizes (starting at 6-9 months) and  big boy sizes too (up to 12 years).  By sewing these from stash fabrics, I’ll save $12-15 a pair!  The pattern looks fantastic–very professional and easy to understand with some great tips.  I was excited that all my boys said they’d wear underwear like that (the pattern has an optional soaker that can be left out for big boys or girls) if I used camo fabric, lol.  This is not a paid endorsement of the pattern, just a happy customer.  I’ll let you know more how I like it once I stitch a few pairs up.

Underwear Style Training Pants PDF Sewing Pattern

Anyhoo, that’s my day today.  I’m slapping myself that I haven’t put a newsletter out in 4 weeks.  I need to write those ahead since the end of the week is always so busy!