Weekly Meal Planning The Single Parent Way

I've been trying to come up with some meal planning routines for while Joey's gone.

So far, I'm thinking breakfasts will be mostly a combination of cereals, yogurt, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, fruit, breakfast burritos and milk. All fairly easy, all of which I am capable of cooking or preparing myself in a way that I will like to eat it. As opposed to over easy eggs, which I cannot prepare at all and must rely on Joey to make for me. So I'm eating my fill of those while he's still here. . .

Lunches will either be leftovers from dinner or sandwitches with pretzels, chips, fruit, veggies, salads, etc. All quick and easy to prepare, which is always good because I seem to lose track of time between breakfast and lunch and don't always have tons of prep time for lunch when the girls are already "starving".

Dinners are the hard ones for me. I like dinners to be healthy, wholesome, and yummy. Usually, they are hot as well. While Joey is gone, I plan to stick with what I know I and the girls like. That includes lemon pepper chicken caserole, meatloaf with mashed potatoes and steamed veggies/salad, chicken pot pie, turkey/venison burgers, chicken hot dogs, chili, 15 bean soup with cornbread, chicken ziti with salad, lasagna with salad, chicken fettuchini caserole (has steamed squash and zucchini in it) with salad, a weekly pizza night with salad, tilapia with yellow rice and steamed veggies or with baked potatoes/fries and salad, pinto beans with cornbread and salad, enchiladas, tacos, burritos, nachos, and chicken salad sandwitches (for an easy night). These are all great, healthy meals (at least the way I make them) and most of them have the added bonus of having plenty of leftovers that are easy and tasty to reheat for lunch the next day or dinner the next night. Some of them even have an additional bonus of being able to be made into another dinner for the next night.

If you've noticed that most of my meals include salad, that's because its a veggie side that all my girls will eat without complaint. I'd love to experiment while Joey is gone and find new veggies/veggie dishes that the girls will eat, but I think it will be just too frustrating for me if they don't eat what I prepare and then I'll worry about if they are getting all the nutrients they need, etc. I may end up experimenting some, but my mission for while Joey is gone is to provide a happy, healthy, peaceful environment for my kids and having a stressed out mom or a mom who's frustrated because she spent x amount of time trying to make something new they'd like only to have them turn their nose up at it will not help me in my mission. So for now, I plan to stick with what I know.

I'm not sure how I'll determine a weekly meal plan while Joey is gone. Some people do a different meat every night (i.e. monday ham night, tuesday chicken, wednesday fish, thursday beef, friday turkey, etc), some people do a different genre of food every night (i.e. monday pizza, tuesday mexican, wednesday italian, thursday chinese, etc) and some people just pick a certain meal for ever night, but I prefer to just choose 7-10 dinners as options for that week and make sure that I have the ingredients on hand so that come 4 pm whatever I'm hankering for, I can prepare for dinner. That's more pregnant friendly IMO.

So there are my thoughs on weekly meal planning the single parent way. Keep it simple, stick with what you know and what you know you like, always be prepared and be flexible.

Pizza Night, Salad Fever

We had our second pizza night last night and it was a success again. Kinda. This time, we had olives, mushrooms, onions, jalapenos, pepperoni, ham, italian sausage and tomatoes. We doled out a portion of the desired toppings to the girls and they put them on their pizzas.

Addy made a pepperoni smiley face on her pizza and put olives in the middle of her pepperonis. Evie had pepperoni, onions, olives, ham and italian sausage. Joey had pepperoni, ham, italian sausage, olives mushrooms and onions. I had onions and jalapenos because I've been craving Boboli pizza with onions and jalapenos.

Evie ate half of her toppings off her pizza while Joey and I were putting toppings on ours. Immediately after the pizzas were put in the oven, she informed us that onions were "YLUCKH". Its her new favorite word. We tried to explain to her that she maybe should have left them off her pizza if she didn't like them, but then we just left it alone, figuring if we didn't highlight the onions on her pizza, she'd forget about them. Which she did.

Joey, Addy, and Evie did great eating their pizzas and Izzy got her own piece (a piece of Evie's with pepperoni and onions and olives on it) this week instead of just having the crust. We've (well, I've) been worried about how cheese will affect her since it seems to stop up some of us and not stop up others, but she had her normal BMs today, and since she ate her pizza slice from the toppings down (toppings, cheese then crust), I know she got all the cheese there was to have on that pizza. So cheese in moderation doesn't seem to affect her badly, which is a relief to me. Constipated babies are not happy babies and we like happy babies.

I on the other hand couldn't eat a bite of my pizza. But I ate well regardless. Since no one ate tomatoes on their pizza and there were leftover mushrooms and onions, we made a salad while the pizza was cooking. It had shredded mexican cheese, tomatoes, sliced mushrooms, sliced onions, sliced olives, and romaine lettuce. The girls complained that they didn't want mushrooms or onions in their salads (including the use of Evie's signature "YLUCKH"), but we informed them that they got to custom make their pizza on pizza night, but not their salads and they could either eat it or not eat it. We gave them their salads while the pizzas were baking and they ate them without complaint, which was nice. I had a huge salad myself, which is good because apparently the bean is not a fan of pizza at the moment :( Which is a bummer for me because I *really* like pizza.

Overall, it was a great dinner. The girls had fun making their pizzas and we all had fun cooking and eating together. I'm glad we're making it a weekly event and I'm hoping each week's pizza night just gets better and better and that the girls and I will be able to hold on to memories of these fun times with daddy while he's in basic. He ships out May 9th, so that is constantly on my mind these days. But we keep on going regardless because what else can you do? If I let it paralyze me, I'll miss out on the good times, like pizza nights. . .

Morning Sickness and Liquid Chlorophyll Supplements

Someone in my due date club on Diaperswappers mentioned that their morning sickness was helped by taking liquid chlorophyll. Now, I don't have morning sickness to the extent of barfing, but I feel nauseated all day every day and its exhausting. I had been looking for something to help me out with energy naturally, so when I researched liquid chlorophyll after Willow pointed it out to me, I found that it does help boost energy in some people. So I decided to try it.

I ordered this organic liquid chlorophyll product from Vitacost.com, paid for the cheapest shipping option (to take 2-10 days) and got my products 2 days later. Not only have I felt less nauseated and felt like I had more energy, but I've also become more "regular", which isn't easy to do when you're pregnant. And I was amazed by the quick shipping.

It is NASTY by itself. I mix 1 tbsp of it in a glass of water with some agave nectar to sweeten it or I mix 1 tbsp into a cup of apple juice and all I can taste is the juice, although it is a bit disconcerting that it is green. I prefer the juice method, myself.

I will warn you that it is green and will stain if it is spilt. I have found that using a medicine cup helps this as 1 tbsp = 3 tsp and the medicine cup has room to spare above the 3 tsp line, which prevents overflow spillage. I also pour it over our stainless steel kitchen sink. I may order chlorophyll capsules next time to completely avoid the spillage issue. I will also warn you that your bowel movements will be green -- very, very green.

But I definately recommend this supplement for any of you suffering from morning sickness. It worked for me and several other ladies in my due date club, so its worth a try ;)

Beware of creepy people online

I'm online way too much. I make a little money online, but most of the time I spend online is recreational to an extent. I do a ton of reasearch, mostly on nutrition these days, but also on anything else I happen to hear about that I'm curious about. I do my searches through the Swagbucks website as I can earn swagbucks that I can trade in for Amazon gift cards, which I think is really cool. I also frequent Diaper Swappers an online cloth diapering and parenting community and Winster an online gaming site that I am a member of. Its a neat site to me because you can help other people as you play games (if you have a piece they need, you can trade with them and vice versa) and its pretty much the only cooperation I get most days. Also, you can trade the points in for Amazon gift cards, which I am a fan of. You can play for free, but I decided to get a membership for myself for my birthday. Its $4 a month to get 300 spins a day that you can use in any of a bunch of different games, plus as a member there are no ads and you can save spins if you don't want to use them that day and you accumulate points faster.

So this is all to say I'm online a lot. I haven't really encountered any creepy people until the other day on Winster. This girl I had put on my friends list (enables you to find your friends who are online so you can play games in the same room with them) found me and started asking me some really weird questions. I had played in the same room with her the day before and she hadn't acted too weird toward me, but as soon as she left the room, everyone in the room said she was trying to get their phone numbers to text them and was being very pushy about it. I kinda forgot about it until the next day when she started IMing me through winster.

First of all, you have to understand that I am a smart ass. I am sarcastic, droll. However you want to call it, that's what I am. And lying irks me. And I also sometimes like doing plays on words. But back to my story.

So she IMs me and asks me if I'm a good person. Since I am a Christian and I don't like to lie, I said it depends on your perspective. If you're looking through God's eyes, then no I don't meet God's standards of a good person. But if not, then you'd probably consider me a good person.

So she asked what I meant by God's standards and I told her that God regards anyone who has sinned as not being good.

So she asked what sin was and I told her it was breaking God's law, the 10 commandments and I gave her a few examples: thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not covet.

So she jumped to the conclusion that I had killed someone and told me she didn't want to talk to me anymore because I was scary. Ummm, ok. I would only consider myself scary if you're a bug in my house or someone trying to hurt anyone in my family, but whatever. At this point in time, I just thought she was a moron.

5 minutes later, she is IMing me again, asking me if I'm home alone. By this time, my creepy alert started going off and I removed her from my friends list, blocked her, and stopped talking to her. Pretty soon, she left the room and everyone else in the room breathed a sigh of relief and said she was pressuring them to get their phone numbers and asking if they were home alone.

So I thought I would write a post, reminding everyone that there are some very strange people online and for safety's sake, please remember not to give out any personal information. Most of the people you meet online are great, but as the book Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers taught my girls (I hope), you have to be careful because the "bad apples" don't always look "bad" on the outside.

So while you surf the net, be safe, avoid the bad apples and safeguard your personal information. There are some real weirdos out there. . . They draw you in talking about general crap and then before you know it, they're asking if you're home alone. (*rolleyes*)

ISO kid friendly veggies

We're having issues with our middle daughter not eating her veggies. We really like the california blend veggies steamed with cheese on them. Its 3 colors of veggies in one dish, its easy and its yummy. Unfortunately, she won't touch them. So we're ISO more Evie-friendly veggies to add to our diet.

In our diet, we are aiming for GMO free, preservative free, artificial flavoring and artificial colorant free foods. It doesn't sound like a lot to avoid, but it is. Its difficult to find products that don't have any artificial ingredients and are GMO free. But that's what we are aiming for.

Fortunately, she will eat salad, even salad mixes with red cabbage and carrot slivers in them. She will also eat tomatoes all day long and she loves zucchini bread. She will also eat the mixed veggies that I use in chicken pot pie and she will eat pickles. She also likes spaghetti sauce, so I gravitate towards sauces that include veggie chunks of several different colors in them. She will not eat broccoli, cauliflower, carrots (except in carrot cake), cucumbers (except pickled). . . the list of veggies she won't eat is larger than the list of veggies that she will eat. Its very frustrating. I'm trying to broaden her food palate, but she is a stubborn lass and hard to convince to try new foods. She won't merely trust mommy that its good for her or that mommy will make them taste good, so practically every meal is a struggle with her.

Fortunately, in contrast, my oldest and youngest daughters will eat practically everything placed in front of them without complaint, so that leaves me free to concentrate on Evie, who I am fully confident would happily eat nothing but meat and cheese if I let her. Unfortunately, this wreaks havoc with her digestive tract and she often has issues with constipation as a result. This is definately a work in progress and I would happily welcome any tips or recipe ideas.

One of my favorite uses for cream-of soups: Lemon Pepper Chicken Caserole

Ingredients:
3 chicken breasts
butter
2 cans cream of soups
long grain brown rice
1 pkg frozen broccoli florets
cheese
lemon pepper seasoning
salt or garlic salt
cracker crumbs or crunchy onions (optional)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees farenheit
Place chicken breasts (frozen or thawed) in an aluminum foil packet with a pat of butter and lemon pepper seasoning sprinkled on them.
Cook chicken breasts for 30 minutes, check internal temperature if not at 160 degrees farenheit, turn over, put butter and lemon pepper on other side and cook for another 15 minutes or until internal temp reaches 160 degrees (I am very particular about making sure my meats are fully cooked)
Cook rice on stovetop or in crock pot or rice cooker while chicken is cooking.
Steam broccoli in crock pot or cook in microwave or on stove top while chicken and rice are cooking (I like to buy the kind you can steam in the bag it comes in as it takes less than 10 minutes and is convenient and fairly cheap)
Remove chicken from oven and shred or chop into small pieces.
Combine chicken, rice, cream of soup, broccoli, some cheese, salt and lemon pepper seasoning in caserole dish. Top with more cheese and crackers or crunchy onions (optional) and bake for 15-20 minutes to cook soup, combine ingredients and melt cheese.
Enjoy.

I love this dish because its fairly easy to make and its a meal in one dish, so less to clean up afterwards. If only dd2 would eat broccoli. . . I may experiment with adding different veggies to this recipe or simply pureeing the broccoli so she has no choice but to eat it.

I have never soaked my rice before making it and Joey made this dish for me this week otherwise I would have soaked the rice the night before. Next time I make this dish, I will soak the rice before making it to improve its digestability. So the night before I want to make lemon pepper chicken, I will combine the amount of rice I want to cook with the amount of warm water the package of rice calls for with 1 tbsp bragg's organic apple cider vinegar for every cup of water called for. I will combine it in the pot I am going to cook it in, cover it and let soak overnight (20-24 hours is even better) then simmer in the same water used to soak until tender.

TGIM -- pizza night and yogurt

Tonight was our inaugural weekly make your own pizza night and it was a roaring success. We (well my husband) put the crust, sauce and cheese on the pan to reduce mess and prevent our little ones from having constipation issues from too much cheese consumption, chopped up the veggies and placed them on small plates along with the ham and pepperoni and let our 2 year old and 5 year old dress their pizzas as they saw fit. We all had lots of fun. We all ate our dinner. And we are all looking foreward to next week. Make your own pizza night only has 2 rules -- you must have at least one topping besides cheese on your pizza (to aid in cheese digestion) and you must eat at least one piece of your finished pizza (no turning your nose up at it when you custom made it for yourself).

This week, our toppings were sliced mushrooms, sliced black olives, diced tomatoes (left over from taco night last night), pepperoni, grilled ham, and diced onions.

Next week, I need to make sure and have jalapenos on hand. I didn't realise we were low on jalapenos Saturday when we went grocery shopping and we ran out as soon as we got home. The girls don't eat them, but I have discovered that the bean is quite fond of spicy/salty foods especially of the cheesy variety and especially when alternated with sweet foods. So pizza without jalapenos was particularly disappointing for me.

On the topic of yogurt, I haven't been eating as much for the past 2 weeks. I overdid it a bit when I was first pregnant (but before I found out that I was pregnant) so I got a little burnt out. This week, I bought my starter (Stoneyfield farms organic lowfat greek yogurt) but decided to just eat it because I didn't think I would eat an entire batch of yogurt. I got 4 heaping tbsp of yogurt added a tbsp of honey and did not like it. It was too thin and just didn't taste like my yogurt. I wanted some last night and again tonight, so I am back on for yogurt, so next time I go grocery shopping I will be picking up an extra gallon of milk and a container of starter yogurt and making a batch of yogurt.

So beware of starting to make your own yogurt as you may end up spoiling yourself from being able to eat storebought yogurt again. Not only is it healthier, but it tastes so much better. You just can't go back to how it used to be ;P