Nix9to5

Spring Break Plans

// March 14th, 2011 // No Comments » // Children and Babies, Cooking, Life in General, Time Management

Well, today is the official start of Spring Break around these parts, which means that Hot Husband is home with his Hot Wife and the Bear all week long.  In theory, that means I should be able to get a lot accomplished with my copywriting, but generally, it means I want to play with Hot Husband and the Bear instead of working.  Unfortunately, I’ve managed to get behind (again), so I really do need to work.

Luckily, I have a “new” freezer and it’s stocked with lots of good things, including an insane amount of chicken, so cooking should be fairly easy this week.  In fact, I bought a package of chicken thighs (3+ pounds) for about $0.60 pound, so we’ve got a super cheap meal coming our way today.  I’ve never actually bought chicken thighs before.  Until the Whole Chicken in a Crockpot Conversion, I think I’ve only bought chicken with bones once in my life (drumsticks super cheap–we threw free BBQ sauce on them and grilled them).  I was wondering what to do with the chicken thighs, when my sister happened across this chicken thigh crockpot recipe that just fits the bill for my cooking style:  lazy.  The only work involved thus far has been prying the packaging off the frozen chicken.  To make this recipe, just put frozen thighs in a crockpot, sprinkle with garlic salt, and cook on low all day.  Then, an hour or so before dinner, throw a cup of rice in the crockpot with all the chicken juice.  I’ll be interested to see how it turns out, and I’ll be sure to report back to you!

In addition to catching up on copywriting work, I plan to get the house clean and rearrange the office so it is a hybrid office/playroom.  That will allow us to get some of the toys out of the living room, keeping it looking neater, and it will also give Bear a place to play close by while I work, maybe letting me get a little more done when he’s around.

I’ll also be working on coming up with a schedule that will allow me to keep the house cleaner by doing just a little bit each day.  I have several ideas in the works, and I just need to tweak some of the schedules I found to fit my needs.  I’ll share that with you–as long as the model schedules–as soon as I get it figured out.

I also used to work out, believe it or not, even though I haven’t done much of anything for exercise since I got pregnant in Feb. 2008 (if I was going to get fat anyway, why bother, right?).  Well, the excessive flabbiness is starting to get to me, so I’m going to also try to figure out how to incorporate working out into my already packed schedule.

I was also thinking we’d use this week to start potty training, but after the marvelous start we’re off to in the last two hours, I’m thinking I may give up before lunch.

Finally, my favorite plan for Spring Break?  Duran Duran in concert!  Did I just tell you how old I am?  Doesn’t matter . . . I’m inordinately excited.

What are you doing for Spring Break?

Free eCookbooks from Mr. Food

// March 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cooking, Deals

I was browsing Passion for Savings when I saw a link to a free e-cookbook from Mr. Food:  Mr. Food Blue Ribbon Casseroles: 23 Easy Casserole Recipes.  I like how casseroles are so easy to make, only get one pan dirty, and freeze well, so I was excited to see this free cookbook.  After I downloaded my free casserole ebook, I looked through the Mr. Food site a little more and found a link to another free cookbook download– Mr. Food Light, Simple & Tasty Recipes eCookbook-- so of course I had to get that one, too.

But wait.  There’s more.

I finally found a link to the master list of Mr. Food’s free e-cookbooks, so you can pick and choose which ones you want.  Select one or more of eight free e-cookbooks from Mr. Food’s Latest Free Recipe eCookbooks.

I’m a bit of a cookbook addict, so I’m pretty happy to find free cookbooks!

The WHOLE Chicken

// February 10th, 2011 // 14 Comments » // Budget, Cooking, Money Matters, Time Management

I keep threatening to tell you about how I made a whole chicken for the first time ever during our first round of snow days.   Now,  I’m sure that several of you are actual grown-up women who have done this kind of thing before, but not me.  I’m just faking it.  Until now, I’ve only cooked boneless chicken breasts.  Maybe one time, we grilled some legs when I got them on sale, but I’m not actually sure I’m the one who grilled them, since Hot Husband is the man, and therefore, the grill is generally his domain.  So anyway, this Cooking of a Whole Chicken was quite a turning point for me.  I must say I was quite intimidated at the prospect, and had it not been for The Happy Housewife, I may never have even tried it.

You see, Toni from The Happy Housewife was posting a week’s worth of crockpot recipes, and one she included was “Whole Chicken in a Crockpot.”  That looked easy enough, but I still probably wouldn’t have tried it, had she not included recipes for what to do with this big ol’ chicken and its carcass (blech) once you were done crockpotting it (new verb for you).  With her ideas in mind, though, I headed to the grocery store to buy a whole chicken.  That in itself was kind of weird.  I didn’t even know where to find a whole chicken.  In the meat department?  In the freezer section?  Running around in a barnyard? (more…)

Crockpot Baked Potato Soup

// February 6th, 2011 // 4 Comments » // Cooking, Life in General

On our first snow day, I made baked potato soup.  With the blizzard outside, it was nice knowing that at the end of the day, we’d have a hot, creamy meal–and it was so easy!  I got the recipe from my sister (who flew to Chicago for the weekend–I wonder if she made it) who got it from a friend.

Here’s the recipe I used:

• 5 lbs potatoes; peeled and coarsely chopped
• 1 small onion; chopped
• 8 oz cream cheese; softened
• 3-14.5 oz cans reduced sodium chicken broth
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• ¼ tsp pepper

Put potatoes & onion in crock-pot. Combine the cream cheese, chicken broth, cream of chicken soup & the pepper. Add this mix to the crock-pot.  Cover & cook on LOW for 8-10 hours or on HIGH for 4-5 hours. After cooking time, mash the potatoes if you want the soup to be thicker.  Garnish with cooked, crumbled bacon, shredded cheese, scallions, and sour cream.

I left off the onions, because Hot Husband will boycott any dish if he suspects the presence of onion.  Sometimes I will sneak minced, dried onion into recipes (shhh . . . don’t tell), but I was out, so this pot was completely onion-free.  We garnished with turkey bacon and lowfat shredded cheddar.  I think that it would have benefited from green onion, but I didn’t have any.  We didn’t use sour cream, but it may  have been good.  If you microwave 4 slices of turkey bacon for 3 mins., they get very crispy and are easy to crumble on top of each bowl of soup.

I will say that the soup base is VERY plain.  We ended up adding pepper after it cooked, and I also sprinkled garlic salt on mine.

I don’t know how well potato soup freezes, and this made a LOT.  I made some of the leftover soup just like the original, and I also had some that I just added pepper, butter, cheese, and ranch dressing to, and that was really good, too!  I know it sounds crazy, but I like ranch on baked potatoes, so I figured it would be good in the soup, too.  I was right.

I think it might have also been good to add corn and smoked sausage to the leftovers to make a “Smoky Corn Chowder” soup.  Maybe I’ll try that next time.  Diced ham would also be good in this.  Hot Husband wondered if chicken would be a good addition to the soup, so we might try that next time, since the original recipe doesn’t have enough protein for him.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for freezing potato soup or variations that you think might be good in this, I’d love to hear them!

I’ll definitely be making it again–just not for a while, because I think I ate it for nearly every meal over the last few days.  If you try it, let me know what you think.

World’s Easiest Soup

// February 5th, 2011 // 3 Comments » // Cooking, Life in General

As we’ve been “snowed in” (we can get out–I just choose not to), I’ve been doing a bit of cooking, including making hot, yummy soups.  Tonight we had what I’m deeming The World’s Easiest Soup.  It’s a vegetable beef soup that would be sooo easy to always have everything on hand, plus it freezes easily–just mix up a batch, eat half, and put the other half in a gallon freezer bag and thaw it out when you’re feeling lazy pressed for time.

World’s Easiest Soup

• 1 lb. ground beef
• 46 oz. can tomato juice
• 2 cans mixed vegetables, drained
• 1 pkg. ranch dressing mix

Brown the meat.  Dump the juice, veggies, and dressing mix in the pot and stir it all up.  Heat through.  The end.

You could pretty much adapt this however you want with what you have on hand.  Serve it with crackers or grilled cheese, and you’re done.  Here’s the best part.  I asked Hot Husband, “How’s your soup?”  He replied, “Actually, it’s really good.“  I LOVE that my husband’s favorite foods are some of the easiest ones to fix (like this Chicken Pot Pie recipe, which is his absolute favorite).

Greetings from Snowklahoma!!

// February 3rd, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Cooking, Family, Life in General, Money Matters, Time Management, Work at Home

(I know this picture has nothing to do with snow, but it is awfully durn cute.)

I’ve been doing an awful lot of complaining about how everyone is getting snow days except for us, but thanks to “Blizzard 2011″ (also known as Snowpocalypse, SnOMG, Arcti-geddon, and various other things), we are catching up with the rest of the nation.  Monday night/Tuesday morning brought 40 mile/hour winds, -15 degree wind chills, and 8-12 inches of snow (depending on who you ask).  Friday morning will mark our fourth straight snow day, and I’m LOVING IT.

I haven’t ventured out of the house since Monday afternoon except for a brief interlude Tuesday when I thought we were going to go “play” in the snow–but the blowing winds and arctic temps put a damper on that in a hurry!  Because of the winds, our yard doesn’t look like we got anywhere near a foot of snow–maybe just a few inches–until you look at the three-foot drifts by our fence.

I’ve spent the entire week in pajama pants, and I really don’t have any plans on changing that strategy tomorrow.  And although I work from home, I took “snow days” along with Hot Husband and the Bear.  We’ve been watching the whole Toy Story saga, and I watched Toy Story 3 for the first time this morning (*sob*).  I’ve drunk gallons of hot chocolate and hot cinnamon milk, and talked myself out of baking a batch of cookies, because we all know which waistband-avoiding mama will be eating them all by herself.

We did have some minor drama as Bear got terribly sick Tuesday evening, and I was terrified that we’d have to brave the blizzard Wednesday morning to try to get him to the doctor without getting my little two-wheel drive RAVzilla stuck in the snow.  Fortunately, he woke up Wednesday morning feeling much, much better.

Lest you think I’ve been completely unproductive in these few days, there are a few things I’ve been up to.  I’ve made freezer breakfasts–sausage biscuits (courtesy of Charla’s Confessions) and low-fat whole wheat waffles.  I’ve made a huge pot–vat, really–of baked potato soup (recipe coming soon) and cooked a WHOLE CHICKEN, which I’ve never, ever attempted before (details coming soon).  Though I spent too much on the chicken, now that I’ve researched to see what sale prices should be for a whole chicken, it was still cheaper than buying the frozen breasts (even at a sale price of $1.67/lb), plus it yielded about 7 cups of chicken stock, saving me from buying roughly 4 cans of broth in the future.

Today, in an effort to stave off cabin fever and to force me to get some work done, Hot Husband took the Bear to Chick-fil-a so he could play on the indoor playground, and I made some headway in all the work I’ve been neglecting.

I’m so sorry I’ve neglected you, readers, but I have been thoroughly enjoying being cooped up with my little family.  Coming up in the next few days, I’ll be bringing you the baked potato soup recipe, the Adventures of the Whole Bird, and two more giveaways.

I hope you’re all staying warm and cozy!

Freezer Cooking: Warm up with Italian Chili

// January 12th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cooking, Time Management

My friend Charla is just beginning her third trimester in her pregnancy with baby number two.  In her blog, Charla’s Confessions: Confessions of a Stay at Home Mom, Charla writes about how she is getting ready for Baby Brother by restocking her freezer stash.  I’ve written briefly before about how freezer cooking is a great way to  manage time for anyone–working moms, work at home moms, and stay at home moms.   It generally doesn’t take any longer to cook two batches of your meal than one, and when you throw one in the freezer, then the next time you eat that meal, preparation is nil.  Plus, you save money by not throwing out leftovers.  Just freeze them and save them for later.

My own freezer stash is depleted to nothing and has been for some time.  As I try to re-establish a focus on time saving, money saving, and organization–the things that allowed me to become a WAHM in the first place–I’m going to restock my freezer with healthy meals just waiting to be thawed and enjoyed.

The first meal to go in my freezer is courtesy of my mother-in-law (Bear’s “Beela”).  When Hot Husband and I first married, I made him some chili and asked what he thought of it.  He said, “It’s just really different from my mom’s chili.”  Later, I discovered the reason for the difference is that this Italian Chili to which he was referring is not what I would call chili at all.  Still, everyone’s definition of chili is different:  I mean, if you can put chocolate or cinnamon in it, or put it on top of spaghetti, and still attempt to call it chili, then who am I to judge?

Even though this isn’t what I would typically consider “chili,” it is really yummy, great for a cold, cold night, and it is meal number one in rebuilding my freezer stash.  Here’s the recipe for Italian Chili (Thanks, Beela!): (more…)

Hot Cinnamon Milk

// January 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cooking, Life in General

I’m afraid I might be kicked out of the Sisterhood of Women for admitting this, but {whispering} I don’t really like chocolate all that much.  I mean, it’s okay, but if you were to tell me I could never, ever eat chocolate again, I’d be fine with that. (Well, at least until I realized that would mean no more Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which somehow manage two take two foods about which I am not too crazy–chocolate and peanut butter–and blend them into a little bite of glorious perfection.)  While I enjoy a cup of hot chocolate to take off the chill in the winter, most of the time, the chocolate taste is secondary to the pleasure of holding a warm, steaming cup.

While I was visiting my family in Nashville over the holidays, my mom had me try a cup of Hot Cinnamon Milk.  Oh, my heavens, is it ever yummy.  I had a cup before bed last night, and was ready to drift off into cozy slumber.  For those of you who don’t like chocolate or who just want to switch things up a bit, here is the recipe: (more…)

Dealing with Picky Eaters

// January 6th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Children and Babies, Cooking

Yesterday, I made sweet potato fries for the Bear to eat with his lunch.  They were the first thing (maybe the only thing) gone from his plate by the time we were finished eating.  You may remember that when I first posted the recipe for sweet potato fries, Bear thought they were Cheetos, and I refused to tell him any different.  Well, he’s figured out that they aren’t Cheetos, but he seems to be satisfied with them anyway.

Well, at least he was yesterday.

You see, Bear’s taste in food changes on a daily (or hourly or minutely) basis.  The foods he inhales and begs for more of today will be pushed to the edge of his tray (and onto the floor) tomorrow, accompanied by shrieks of “No, you don’t LIKE that!”  (He’s switching his “you’s” and “I’s.”)  This fickleness and assertion of independence is not particularly my favorite thing about being the mom of a toddler.

Enter The Happy Housewife.

I stumbled across her blog today, and in the process discovered that she is beginning to offer free e-books to her Facebook fans.  This month’s e-book is The Happy Housewife’s Guide to Dealing with Picky Eaters.  If you have a picky eater in your house, or even an occasionally-picky-eater like the Bear, you may want to check out this free guide.

To get your free download of The Happy Housewife’s Guide to Dealing with Picky Eaters, “like” The Happy Housewife on Facebook, then click the Free E-Books tab.  Enjoy!

Freezer Mashed Potatoes (and serving suggestions)

// November 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cooking, Life in General

I use my muffin tins all the time, but very rarely for actual muffins/cupcakes. Here’s a tip that comes in handy when you have lots of leftovers:

Freezer Mashed Potatoes

Cool mashed potatoes completely.  Generously coat muffin tins with cooking spray, then fill with potatoes.  Freeze until solid; quickly transfer portions to freezer bags.

Re-heat as many portions as needed on stove-top (watch for scorching) or in microwave.

Or:

Use as a quick base for soup:  mashed potatoes, chicken stock, milk/beer, cheese, sautéed onions/scallions.  Add in cooked ham, chicken or bacon; corn, peas, etc.  This can easily be done in the slow-cooker – frozen mashed potatoes, frozen cooked chicken/ham, frozen corn, chicken stock, sautéed onions and beer…  just set it on low and walk away.  Add cheese, peas and milk when you get home, stir and adjust seasonings.

Potato bowl:  place ¼ c frozen corn and a pat of butter in a bowl, top with two portions frozen mashed potatoes.  Microwave one minute, stir.  Microwave one minute, stir in Cajun seasoning to taste.  Add shredded cheese (and cubed/shredded cooked chicken or turkey), microwave until hot.

Bonus:  freeze leftover gravy in ice-cube trays treated with non-stick spray.  Add a cube of gravy to above in the first step for extra flavor!