Copy Cat Snapple

I finally got around to trying out this homemade Snapple recipe I found last week. After making a few changes to the original recipe here's what it looked like;

8 C water (bring to a boil and remove from heat)

8 Celestial Seasonings - Country Peach Passion tea bags (steep for 2 hours) ($0.96)

1/4 C raw honey ($0.63)

1/4 C lemon juice

1/4 C frozen peach puree

=

THIS

Doesn't it look gorgeous? It smells even better! :-) Matt is the one who drinks the peach Snapple (in place of soda) so the real test will be what his taste buds think. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the peach Snapple, but something in it gives me headaches. I'll have to see how my body handles this recipe. *crossing fingers*

If this is something we enjoy and want to make on a regular basis, I'll have to see if I can find the tea at a cheaper price because without the lemon juice and peach puree prices it's already $1.59/half gallon and we can purchase the real thing for $2.

Here's a couple random pics of the kiddos being kiddos.

All super heroes scale walls right?

School Field Trip to Bounce World

A Nap, A Niece & A Nice Meal

It's 11:14pm on a Sunday night, and I should really be in bed, BUT I took a nap this afternoon. I've been burning the candle at both ends this week, and at the gentle suggestion of my sweet hubby, allowed myself the luxury of a nap, in my bed, with a pillow over my eyes and ears, and no alarm set...I slept for 3 1/2 hours. I must have needed it! However, because of my lengthy, late afternoon siesta here I sit, wide a wake, and writing a blog post. *shrugs* Oh well!

After waking up @ 5pm and realizing that I hadn't made any kind of supper plans for my family I needed something I could put together fairly fast. Winter Veggie Chili to the rescue! The name of this recipe confuses me slightly though because in my mind anything with the word chili in the title should contain beans, yet this one has nary a legume in sight. Are you of the bean containing or bean-less chili population? Some people are quite passionate about their chili beliefs. I would think a more appropriate name for this concoction to be Winter Veggie Stew, but surprisingly they did not ask my opinion about the whole matter. I know on St. Patty's day it's tradition to consume green colored food and beverages to channel the luck of the Irish, but given my lack of planning and sleep induced time crunch we are apparently going to end up with the luck of the Oompa Loompas instead.

I served it with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese on top, and triscuts and sugar snap peas on the side. As we were eating our orange colored "chili" I asked Matt if this was an "acceptable sweet potato delivery mode", he's not a fan of the orange night shade. With his mouth full of my latest culinary experiment, he nodded yes. I have a feeling he was mostly just grateful this meal contained some meat, which is always a BIG plus on his score card. lol  And as the kids took turns singing a jingle from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, "You gotta try new foods cause you just might like them", ad nauseum, they cleaned their bowls. Ladies and Gentlemen we have a winner! *insert Mommy victory laps around the table* Next time though, I'll increase the amount of chili powder and Matt requested a bit more salt. I'm always a bit cautious with the salt because I would much rather under than over salt something, nobody likes cotton mouth.

I also became a new Auntie again today! My b-i-l & s-i-l welcomed little Ilinca Joyce into the world this afternoon at 12:30pm. We'll probably get to see her on Tuesday, and yes, I'm going to make her some cupcakes. I can't WAIT to hold her and kiss her soft little cheeks and smell that precious newborn scent and let her know how very very happy we are to meet her.

My $83 Grocery Haul

Ever wondered what $83 of groceries and toiletries looks like? Well wonder no more! This was my haul for the $5 meal challenge next week (plus a gallon of fresh milk not pictured). My goal was to reduce our usual budgeted amount from $120 down to $75, but somehow I got my math wrong when I withdrew our cash for the week and ended up with $85 in my grocery envelope. That's still $35 less than we usually spend, which adds up to $1,820/year! Not to shabby! P.S. If you want to stick to a certain budgeted amount, USE CASH ONLY! It hurts to let go of those bills rather than swiping a piece of plastic so you think about your purchases more carefully. That's a Dave Ramsey tip and believe you me, it works!

I was able to get some good sales this week that helped my goal along.

• 3lb bags of onions were on sale @ Aldi for $0.69. They're usually $1.69. (I didn't NEED onions this week but I use them ALL the time and couldn't pass up such a good deal, so I got 1 bag)

• Eggs were on sale @ Kwik Trip for $0.99. We've been paying around $1.40's-1.60's

• I found chicken hindquarters (thighs and legs) on sale @ Fareway for $0.69/lb, usually $0.99/lb, so I got 10lbs for $4.90. I know it's not all meat, but I can make chicken broth with the bones so I won't have to buy that for a while. We won't eat all 10lbs this week of course so next week I won't have to buy any chicken!

Other things that helped cut costs;

• I'm using 2 lbs of ground venison we already had in the freezer.

• I skipped the 2 bag of chips I usually buy ($4/wk) in favor of  homemade popcorn.

• We've been spending $9/wk on Kashi granola bars so I'm going to try a homemade recipe this week.

• And I'm going to try a Copy Cat Snapple recipe in exchange for the $4/wk the real stuff costs us.

I have $2 left in my envelope and I think I'll have Matt pick up a couple more bags of onions with it. I use my chop wizard on them, quick freeze and toss them in gallon ziplock bags to pull out anytime I need to cook with them.

I'm definitely going to need to be way more deliberate with my meal planning, like I was this week, but I think I can make this work! *crossing fingers* I'll keep you updated on my quest. :-)

$5 Meal Challenge

So, we've been taking another hard look at our finances recently and trying to figure out where we can scale back to free up more money for savings. So, I've decided to see what I can do with our grocery budget. We currently use $120/wk for groceries and toiletries. Now I don't think this is a large food budget for a family of 4 by any means, but it's one of the few areas where we have some control. I mean we can't really just up and decide to lower the mortgage payment or the amount of gas we need in a given week to get to and from work, although the petrol usage will go down this summer when I'm no longer driving the kids back and forth to school and we can bike to where we need to go around town. Yay for warm weather!

Anyway, I've decided to see if we can eat just as well (insert "just as full") on $75 by focusing more intently on preparing lower cost meals. There is a website I have been perusing called www.5dollardinners.com. This Mom of 4 boys who started this site is known for preparing $5 meals to feed her entire family. They're not vegetarians so meat is regularly on the menu (as my hubby breaths a huge sigh of relief). She focuses on working with the more inexpensive cuts of meat and planning her menus around meats on sale and using inexpensive items (veggies and grains) to bulk up the meat she does use.

Here's the challenge I've given myself this week; $5 meals for 5 days that are low carb, and contain no processed sugar. ...... *sigh* That sure feels like a big bill to fill, especially the low carb requirement because a good amount of $5 meals contain pasta which I only dream about but don't eat anymore. :-( I would love to price out my own recipes at some point and see where they fall but for this week I'm gleaning from 5dollardinners database. Here's what I have in the line up;

Crockpot Pheasant

Slow Cooker Maple Chicken

Winter Vegetable Chili

Slow Cooker Chicken Parmesan

Frozen Pizza, Popcorn and Apples

I'll let you know what my total comes to after I go shopping tomorrow! *crossing fingers*

Leftovers Conundrum

I cooked 2 things this week that were not very popular with my little family. One was mushroom and onion pork chops and the other was a broccoli soup. I hardly ever cook with pork chops, but they were on sale and Matt wanted me to try to do something with them. The recipe I used left them a little on the tough side and not very juicy, and as a result I still have 6 of the 10 chops I had cooked. :-(

The other recipe I made was a broccoli soup. The recipe said 2 heads would serve 4 people and since we thrive on leftovers for lunch I decided to make a double batch. The recipe called for cooking the broccoli in chicken broth and I usually use Better Than Bullion paste. It's very flavorful and has no MSG in any of the varieties. I cooked the broccoli in water and was planning on adding the bullion paste right before pureeing only to discover that the only flavor I had in the fridge was beef. *sigh* I couldn't add any boxed chicken broth liquid because I already had enough liquid so I had to rely on seasonings for the flavor boost it needed. It wasn't bad by any means, but it wasn't incredible either. I made ham melts to dip into our soup and everyone gobbled those up and hardly touched their soup. As Matt skipped the soup I sighed and said "If I had known I wouldn't have made a double flippin' batch. I thought it was cauliflower you didn't like?" He told me that he prefers broccoli over cauliflower, but it's just not his favorite. He did end up eating a small bowl of soup to fill in the gaps of a second missing sandwich that he would have preferred instead I'm sure. The next day I added a large cupful of Parmesan cheese which I thought made it quite tasty. Wes ate some of it for lunch but Bre still didn't want any of it. Maybe it was the texture, she's kind of texture sensitive sometimes. SO I still have 1/2 stock pot of broccoli soup I need to do something with, besides eat it all myself. lol

I've gotten a little lax with my low carb eating recently in the realm of bread and tend to default to sandwiches and chips for lunch if there is not much in the terms of leftovers, especially leftovers that anyone will eat. I was about to default to BP&J for the kids and I this afternoon and then decided that there must be SOMETHING else I could whip together that would not involve bread and carbs that cycle around to wanting more bread and more carbs for the rest of the day. Taking into account that tomorrow is grocery day and I am out of practically everything, here's what I came up with. Matt has the camera out coyote hunting this weekend otherwise I would have posted a picture as well. It was quite colorful and pleasing to the eye.

Leftovers Egg Skillet

4 eggs scrambled in coconut oil

1 finely diced mushroom & onion porkchop

1 cup of diced carrot and green bean leftovers

Salt & Pepper to taste

It made me think of the skillet eggs and potatoes that Matt makes for us when we go camping in the summer, except a bit healthier. We ate it with apples and a glass of raw milk. I thought it was delightful and finished every last bite. Wes ate most of his and Bre had her apples, milk and 1 bite of eggs before declaring she was full. Oh well! Can't win them all I guess.

I still have 5 pork chops and the rest of the broccoli soup to use so I think I'm going to attempt a Pork Chop Hash with the broccoli soup as the cream base and whatever other vegetables I can find in the fridge (cabbage, peppers, snow peas, cauliflower, etc.) for supper tonight. I'll let you know how it turns out. My mother is the queen of the leftovers remake and I think that even she would be proud of my re-creation attempts.

A Popscicle Called "Fart"

Hallelujah It's Friday! Come on say it with me, I know you want to. As soon as I complete my Friday morning chauffeuring, Zumba leading and grocery shopping responsibilities I automatically switch into take-it-easy/decompression mode, complete with frozen pizza and popcorn for supper and family movie night. Today the decompression started about 6 hours earlier than normal when I decided to keep Bre home from school today because of a nasty sounding cough. So, since just after breakfast we've been takin' it easy, catching up on laundry and dishes and watching PBS, and eating, always with the eating. I grew up watching PBS (and eating of course, but that's nether here nor there) and as a result have NO parental qualms whatsoever about allowing my children to watch TV of the Mr. Rogers & Sesame Street variety. Some parents seem to pride themselves on saying "My children only watch 13.245 minutes of tv a week." I don't care to boast of such things and would much rather my children have the fond memories of learning to count in Spanish with Big Bird and discovering the migratory habits of Monarch butterflies with the Krat brothers.

The kids were watching Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood this afternoon, an animated spin off of the characters from Mr. Roger's land of make believe. It's by far one of their most favorite shows (right next to Wild Krats), and is always heralded by shouts and whoops of excitement as the opening scenes start to roll. The topic of today's show was "try new things"and in one of the segments the characters made a banana swirl treat. According to the kids (I was rebooting the laundry) Daniel Tiger & Miss Elena froze banana pieces, and then pureed them in the blender to have as an after dinner treat. Both my kiddos adore anything cooking related and are always more than eager to get their hands dirty in the kitchen, so they asked me if we could make some banana swirl as well, plueeeeze! After explaining the process to me I told them that we don't own a blender so we wouldn't be able to make that kind of banana treat. Wes wondered if I had lost our blender, and I had some difficulty explaining to him that you can't loose something you never had to begin with.

They were of course quite disappointed that banana swirl was not in their culinary future, so after a moment of applying my "how can Mommy turn their frowns upside down without purchasing a new kitchen appliance" super-powers I declared that we could make banana popsicles to have after our pizza and popcorn instead. My maternal powers must still be intact because at the moment of their comprehension there wasn't a frown to be found for 100 miles round'!

Here was our recipe;

2 bananas

4 popscicle sticks or anything of a spear like shape

2 TBS yogurt mixed with 1 TBS peanut butter

shredded coconut

semi sweet chocolate chips

Peel the bananas and pierce them as if you were defending yourself from a savage wildebeest.

Roll into the yogurt/peanut butter mixture for the necessary adhesive factor.

Sprinkle with way more toppings than the surface area can hope to contain and then lick up the leftovers that have fallen onto your work surface like a hungry furry mammal of your choosing.

Freeze and enjoy!

Once we had their banana-scicles all assembled and onto the cookie sheet that was headed for the freezer, Bre mentioned that the ones with chocolate chips on them looked like porcupines. Wes, then pointed to his scicle duo and said, 

 

"This one is called porcupine and this one is called fart." 

*insert crickets chirping*

 

I tried desperately to tame down the look of complete and utter confusion that I'm sure was on my face and asked him to repeat himself. Perhaps I had misheard him. 

 

"That one is called porcupine and that one is call fart cause it has white stuff on it." 

..... White stuff? Farts don't have white stuff, unless he means like in a cartoon? 

 

My brain was beginning to throb with the exertion of trying to discover the connection he was making. We had just had the discussion about this particular F word 2 nights ago (one of them had heard it used at church in kids class). I had explained what it meant and that it wasn't necessarily a bad word but just wasn't a very polite word to use and we preferred them to use the word toot instead. And now he was using it to reference an item of food!?! I decided that another definition review might be in order and said 

 

"Buddy, fart means toot, remember?" 

 

He put his little hand on his forehead and said "I meant to say sheep. That one is called sheep."

 

Shredded coconut = white stuff = sheep fur. Ah ha! But why did he come up with fart when the word he wanted was sheep? A popscicle named fart!!!! 

 

As these thoughts raced through my brain at lightning speed and the last phrase repeated itself like a broken record, I began to laugh until tears streamed down my cheeks and I was gasping for air. Luckily, he thought the situation was funny as well and wasn't hurt that I was "laughing at him". 

 

Most of the time I'm quite proficient at filling in the logical blanks between what they meant to say and what actually gets spoken, but I simply could not connect the dots this time. When I have to draw a mental link between flatulence and wool fibers I'm afraid that's where the outer boarders of my Mommy super powers dissipate into a cloud of white stuff.