My prayers goes out to the family members who lost a loved one in the last week due to those deadly tornados.  May this crazy weather be over and we can all enjoy spring again.

meal plan week of 4/30-5/6

 

I am ready to get my meal plans back on track, my first tackle brown rice and pasta. My family isn't a fan of brown rice but I read if I mix brown and white rice together my family will learn to love brown rice...slowly 

Dinner

Saturday: BBQ at a friends house 

Sunday: Cheeseburgers (hopefully on the grill) with sweet potato fries

Monday: Sausage and Peppers on hoagie rolls

Tuesday: Beef and Broccoli with brown and white rice

Wednesday: Fish Sandwich with spinach salad

Thursday: Left Overs

Friday: Order in Pizza

Breakfast

Saturday Morning: Bagels and cream cheese

WeekDay: Cereal

Snacks-N-Sweet

Easter Candy

Ice Pops

Grapes & Oranges

What a beautiful Pascha

I'm back! After a great Easter I am back to the daily grind.  What I am working on is my garden container, a desk full of work, and freezer of meat to eat!

 Here are some of the pictures from the long weekend

Holy Thursday and Pascha

is the same for me every year; happy, tired, sore, hungry, excited.  During holy week, we spend so much time living a simply Christian life with prayers, fasting, and church service that you get this an indescribable feeling of being spiritual clean, then you are ready for what you know is coming in just a few short days……PASCHA

For anybody who has never been to a Pascha service, it should be on your bucket list.  It is the most beautiful and spiritual service you will ever attain to in your life, I promise.   My favorite part is the candle lit service, where the entire church is dark except for one single candle, the priest takes that one lit candle and passes the flame, and we keep passing the flame until everybody’s candle is lit therefore lights up the whole church (I tear up every time).  Around midnight-ish (I never wear a watch) we leave the church with our candles and walk around the block by candle light (I think you are supposed to walk around the church but with the number of people who attained this service that would be impossible).  Then when we reenter the church the feeling is so intense, the church is all lit up, flowers and greenery are everywhere, you can feel the joy to know that Christ has risen. There is so much excitement that you could faint.     

I will be taking the next few days off to spend time with my family and prepare for my favorite holiday.  I pray everybody has a beautiful Pascha and I should be back on Bright Tuesday.  

For the last three nights

My husband and I have been getting kittens out of our dryer vent.  The first one was actually behind our dryer, I named his Dusty since he is all gray and covered in dust. We thought he was the only one who climbed into vent until last night, when I heard more meowing.  Once I opened up the vent three little heads pop out, Moe, Larry, and Curly.  Once again thinking that all kittens were out until this afternoon, the last kitten started meowing, LOUD, and he was the most stubborn one of all.  My poor husband (who has allegories to dust and allergic to cats) tore apart the dryer vent all through out our basement, this kitten refused to leave.  After two hours he finally walked out, my husband named him killer because... well lets just say he needs to go to confession lol, which I missed tonight because of this last kitten.

VERY VEGGIE PASTA PRIMAVERA

1 lb. angel hair pasta

2 tbsp. olive oil

2 tbsp. butter

2 - 3 teaspoons minced garlic

2 cups chicken broth

1 bunch asparagus, cut in 2-inch slices

1 small red pepper, diced into small pieces

1 (8 oz.) package of sliced fresh mushrooms

1 cup heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon basil

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil & butter over medium-low heat. Turn heat to medium-high and add all the vegetables and garlic. Saute for about 5 minutes being careful not to brown. Salt & pepper to taste.  (Start water to boil at this point and cook your pasta.)

Add the chicken broth and turn heat up to high until it begins to boil, turn the heat to medium-low and let simmer for about 6-7 minutes. Add heavy cream, parmesan cheese, and basil. Stir until heated through. Serve over pasta with extra parmesan cheese.

Hint:  If your pasta is done first and needs to sit, just rinse with hot water if sticky.

10 more days till Pascha!

Need to do before Easter…

This Saturday~ Buy white shoes and supplies for blessing of the basket and last food shopping trip till after Bright Monday

Bright Monday~ (I'm off of work) Make meatballs for breaking the fast AND Make lasagna for Bright Monday *freeze both lol* Clean house

Good Friday~ Go to Service and get a good night sleep

Holy Saturday~ Prepare easter basket to get blessed, die Easter eggs, Make Egg bake for sunday's brunch, take a nap

Saturday EASTER service 11pm-2am then basket blessing and breaking the fast

Pascha Morning enjoy Easter baskets and egg hunt, brunch at the house, then off to a friends’s at 3 for dinner 

Bright Monday Church service at 9am, then Easter egg hunt and potluck lunch, THEN SLEEP

March’s Monkey Lesson

We learned all about cars, which is something Monkey already liked so this was an easy month.

We had a car wash with his little cars~ I provided plastic tub of water, soap, and towels. Then Monkey had a car wash by having them wash and dry their cars, all done outside of course!  I tried to point out the tires and door, but he really didn’t care all he wanted to do was make a mess.

We also made a steering wheel using paper plate and a little construction paper.  I had Monkey paint the entire paper plate (green for the month’s color) then once dried I just cut out the inside of the plate.  The next day I had Monkey glue two strips of black paper, he wasn’t happy that he had to wait another day to play with it, for the rest of the week he pretend to drive all around the house…until he ripped his plate.

I usually don’t have time to take pictures while Monkey is painting, I’m usually making he doesn’t paint any chairs or walls, so this is a rare photo of Monkey actually painting his wood car (that I got at the dollar store)

We also learned about the letter M and the color Green.  I found letter shape post-it’s at CVS so we had an M hunt, which he loved.  He enjoyed the fact that he could reuse them well in monkey terms; he enjoyed sticking Ms all over the walls lol

We also made M sugar cookies but for the next few weeks he was calling all cookies “M” so I don’t know how well that worked but he did enjoy them.

For April we will focus on bunnies, the color blue, the letter E, and I’ll be doing a lot of counting to 4.  I’ll post of success next month ;)

Better late than never right

It's a month overdue but here are some pictures from Monkey's Safari Party

And the winner is……

Kitchen Monki!

First I thought I was going to like Cozi because of the layout in the beginning but I wasn’t crazy with all the clicks I had to do just to get to the meal planner so I gave Cozi low marks because of difficult of use. I had a hard time with actually working with the whole meal plan for DinnerTool (plus it was lacking in color) so DinnerTool also got low marks.

Why is Kitchen Monki my newest Momma Tools? My first thought was how I was able to see everything; it had everything I am looking for without all that clutter, very nice and simple layout.  Very easy to add a recipe, step by step instructions to help, I added 3 recipes in less than 10 minutes in total.  Then I wanted to see search other people’s recipe and see if I can use theirs to my meal planner, Monki got an A+ in this department, you can search recipe by season, holiday, meal, ingredients, etc, you can also bookmark your favorite recipe. Once you find a recipe that you want to try add it to your basket or knowing as “Queue”.   Once you have recipes in your Queue you can create a meal plan and a grocery list

When creating a Meal Plan it is day by day (I wanted it by week) but when you go to print (which you can print everything or just the category you need, love it) you can see it by week.  You can also add a leftover and eat out night!  The grocery list is AWESOME you can add the whole recipe or just certain items, it won’t add an item twice, and the best part is you can create list by STORES!! That was the seller because I shop at a farmer’s market, ShopRite, and Sam’s club so to create three different list sold me

Momma Tools

Since this blog was started to help me balance mom/wife/work/church/friend/family/me life I want to start a new section of this blog, Momma Tools. Momma Tools is something that helps moms balance their lives better, usually a freeish website.  I will personally test all new momma tools before giving it a seal of approval making sure that they are easy to use, really do help all mommas, and safe and secure.

I used to call these helpful items personal assistance but I wanna take it to the next level.  I want the best of the best tools to help my family that’s easy, freeish (I might pay a onetime fee but NO monthly fee), able to share with family and friends.

Right now I am researching a recipe, meal plan, and grocery list websites.  The three that I have so far are

~cozi~
~dinnertool~
~kitchenmonki~

~If you know of any please let me know and I will add it to my list~

The things that are a MUST
1) easy to add your recipe, should take around 2-3 minutes
2) able to view other recipe and bookmark it to use again and again
3) create weekly/monthly meal plans with just a click of a recipe
4) once I choose a recipe for a meal plan then those ingredients are entered into the grocery list
5) Able to print recipe and meal plan (to hang on fridge)

Also added bonus would be
A) can use on phone, either mobile view or an app
B) easily share with my family and friends


It should have a nice simple flow from start to finish and of course n no monthly fee.

Black Bean Enchiladas

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

4 tablespoon of taco season

1 large can of refried black beans

1 can (15 oz) black beans

¼ cup of water

flour tortillas (8 tortillas)

2 Cups Monterey Jack cheese

1 can (10 oz) enchilada sauce

1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly spray 11x7-inch (2-quart) glass baking dish with cooking spray.

Heat oil in 10-inch skillet over medium heat. Add onion and cook and stir until onion is tender. Stir in both cans of beans, taco seasoning, water, handful of cheese, and a little enchiladas sauce with the onions.  Cook for 5 minutes, meanwhile heat up the tortillas in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Place spoonfuls of bean mixture in center of each warm tortilla. Top each with 1/4 cup Monterey Jack cheese.

Roll up tightly; place, seam side down, in baking dish. Spoon enchilada sauce over tortillas. Spray sheet of foil with

cooking spray; cover baking dish with foil, sprayed side down.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Sprinkle with Cheddar cheese.