Recipe Swap

 

Over at The Sippy Cup Chronicles we're doing a favorite recipe swap. Who doesn't love a good meal? While I don't have an image of the meal that I am going to tell you about It is a quick, easy and yummy one dish meal. I can't remember the exact name of the recipe, but this is what you need.

pork chops- cubed.

chopped celery

chopped green pepper

( I also alternate between green beans and broccoli in my choice of green vegetable for this recipe)

1 can regular tomato sauce

chili pepper

chopped chives

Toss everything into a saute pan with a lid. Cook until pork is cooked through out and the sauce thickens a little. While the pork is cooking make 2 cups of Minute Rice. Spoon rice onto a plate. Top with pork mixture. Serves 3-4.  

I got this recipe from the New Dieters Cookbook. My mother had the book and when I moved out I took it with me since there were so many recipes in it that I really loved. Its an old book released in 1996. But I still use it regularly. When you find something that works, you hold on to it. What are your favorite recipes?

Making Smoothies

So one of the many great ideas that I got from Pinterest is portioning out fruit for smoothies. Seth and I have been on a smoothie kick lately since you know its the new year and all and we were doing the same thing that everyone else is the month of January, trying to be healthier only we're actually going to try to make it stick so that we can feel better about ourselves (me mainly). You don;t pop out two kids and say " Damn!! I look hot!!" without working a little to get there and I want to be back there again. So I have been buying these smoothing packs from the supermarket. There are 2 servings in each bag, but at $3.00 a piece its not so cheap

In trying to make the dollar stretch as far as it can go short of growing my own fruit, ( just not going to happen) I decided to buy everything separately and to portion it out myself. I bought 2 large bags of frozen mixed fruit. And a box of freezer bags

I bought 2 containers of vanilla yogurt to make cubes in Rebecca's cube trays. Those things are great!!Not really a fan of plain yogurt though when mxed with fruit you may not even tell the difference and there is also the added sugar value of the vanilla flavoring so I think I will trade our vanilla yogurt for Rebecca's plain yogurt because the girl can afford to add a few extra pounds.

Next was the task of separating everything. In the premade smoothie pack I poured it into a measuring cup and found that there were 2 cups of fruit for the 2 servings. So I scooped 1 cup of fruit into each freezer bag so that we could make individual servings at home.

 Mixed berry

  Strawberry, peach, mango, pineapple

Yogurt cubes. Once they freeze you just slide them out since the bottom is rounded. And the trays are stackable. Each cube is 1oz.

In the end between the 2 bags of fruit I got 22 servings. If I were to buy the premade bags that would be 11 bags at a price of $33.00 + tax. I paid $25 and that was tax and freezer bags included. The only thing left is to add 1/2 a cup of milk per serving, blend and enjoy.



Fun with a Snack Cup

I figured I'd introduce Rebecca to the joys of a snack cup in hopes of alleviating some of the mess that she makes with her puffs. She knew right away that she needed to put her hand inside of it, but pulling it out was a different story. She would grab a handful of puffs, not hold onto the cup and then in order to get her hand free she would shake the whole thing. Of course the cup and puffs went flying.

Now a bottle free home.

Thursday I packed away all the bottles. Actually I went through them, peeled all the labels off them with Aiden and Rebecca's names on them, scrubbed off the label residue and threw away all the nipples. I posted them on Craig's List to see if anyone wants them that way and I am going to try to see them at the Spring Consignment Sale in March if they don't sell on CL.

Let's be honest. Rebecca has not taken a bottle in a little over a month and for me to keep them in the pantry until her birthday in a "just on case" moment that she decided that she wants one was just plain stupid. She's not going to take a bottle and she definitely wants nothing to do with formula as this point. The girl made my life a whole lot easier by making that decision herself. Aiden we had to cut him off the bottle cold turkey and even then he held out for almost 3 weeks before he would drink milk out of a sippy cup. We're still working on getting her to drink more milk, she prefers room temp water the best, but our pediatrician said that she really need should be in the formula still. Well.. she is...kind of. I put it in her fruit and in her yogurt and she eats it. She doesn't get the same amount, 20oz., that she got when she was drinking it, but she is getting about half so I guess that is something. And its not like she is dehydrated and not getting any fluids. I make sure that she drinks at each meal, before and after each nap. And she also gets fruit at each meal and snack as well which is loaded with fluids. So she is good to go in my opinion.

It is nice to have all that space in the pantry again so I can spread out the kids' food out a bit to see it better and don't have to worry anymore about making sure that I have water to make a bottle or if I remembered to fill the formula sorter. I just have to toss in a sippy cup. And ironically she's not keen in on the soft spout cups (woo hoo more stuff that I can get rid of!!), she likes the hard ones already. The thermo ones are still a little hard for her to suck out of at this point so she is using all of Aiden's old take n toss cups. Not bad they are stackable and don't take up that much room either. Now I guess the next step is to start going through all the old baby toys to see which ones I want to get rid of and which ones I want to hold on to for the future, like the shape sorter or the nesting blocks. Anything soft and fabric needs to be sold since that won't hold the test of time. I can't believe that its starting to come to this already. It goes by too fast.....

 Oh yeah, she's already got straws down too. (stealing brother's juice box)