Meal Plan Monday

It has been a while since I have done a meal plan Monday.  With the holiday’s I was rather busy with getting ready for those as well as Sweet Pea’s birthday, which is on Christmas Eve, you can imagine how busy an already busy time of the year is for us.  While I did try to keep up with our meal planning I wasn’t the greatest.

At the beginning of January CJ and I decided to make a conscience effort in making all our meals at home with an occasionally treat every now and then.  To give you a bigger picture of what our habits were CJ would often eat out 3 meals a day, usually bringing dinner home with him, and occasionally I would get us a coffee breakfast treat or lunch out for Zach and me.  July was by far our worst month where we spent a little more than $1,200 eating out.  That is about the same amount as our monthly mortgage for our home.  I was astounded by this number and knew it needed to come to an end.  So far for January we have only spent $215.00 on eating out, that being mainly CJ eating out for breakfast and lunch at the beginning of the month and one dinner for the 4 of us.  I have gotten into a much better routine in the morning and for the last two weeks or so I have been packing CJ’s lunch and making more of an effort to not give in to the “treat” lunches for the kids and me. There is still major room for improvement but this month is the longest amount of time in a row that we have had home cooked dinners every night.

When CJ and I first started dating it used to be a fun date night for us to go to the grocery store and buy everything we needed for the week, or even stock up at Sam’s Club and meal prep at home.  But for this reason or that we have gotten away from that but are making more of an effort to focus back on those roots we started so long ago. We have turned what used to be our favorite kind of date night into a family outing.  Z-man loves holding the list, helping put things in the cart as well as on the conveyer belt when it is time to check out.  And well Sweet Pea is just excited when she gets a snack during the shopping trip for now. I load up our grocery rewards card with their digital coupons and bring along any paper coupons we happen to clip that week, shop according to what is on sale for that week, and have recently started using the Ibotta app to earn cash back on things we are buying anyway.  All of those savings really add up quickly and plus we earn gas points.

What are some of your favorite money saving tips for the grocery store? Leave them in the comments I would love to hear them!

Here is this week’s menu.  You will notice I don’t plan out lunches as during the week while at home we typically eat leftovers and CJ and Z-man when at school take sandwiches so since that is a constant it takes that one meal a day out of my planning which makes it that much easier.  Also, I am trying to challenge myself to try one or two new recipes each week so we don’t fall into a rut and get sick of the same things all the time. The new recipes I am trying this week are highlighted to take you to the link where I found them.  

S u n d a y

                Breakfast – Breakfast Sandwich

                Dinner – Steak, baked potato and veggie

M o n d a y

                Breakfast – Pancakes with fruit

                Dinner - Parmesan chicken bites, salad and rice

T u e s d a y

                Breakfast – Eggs with yogurt

                Dinner – Taco’s with corn and beans

W e d n e s d a y

                Breakfast – Waffles with fruit

                Dinner - Pork chops, salad and rice

T h u r s d a y

                Breakfast – Blueberry muffins with yogurt

                Dinner – Creamy garlic chicken, potatoes and green beans

F r i d a y

                Breakfast – Eggs with fruit

                Dinner – Pizza with salad

S a t u r d a y

                Breakfast – Omelets with toast

                Dinner – Burgers with macaroni salad and fruit

Sausage Tortellini Soup

Happy New Year  y’all!  I have to be honest here for a minute.  I have wanted to write something for the blog all day but have been struggling to come up with the words.  I think mostly I was over tired from a long night with a sick husband, a coughing preschooler, and a teething toddler.  Momma needed a nap!

I have since had said nap and feel like I can now think clearly and coherently enough to share my thoughts with you.  This isn’t going to be a post about resolutions or how to organize your house in 2 hours.  It won’t even be a post of “How to lose those holiday pounds in 2 weeks!” Not that there is anything wrong with those kinds of post, they just aren’t me as I did not make any resolutions this year.  None at all!  What I did do was choose a word that I want to focus on, that I want to center me in all I do and let it consume me instead of all the outside bull crap that others can sometimes intentionally or unintentionally project onto you. And that word this year is; Joy, Anyway, I digress!

I remember growing up our local grocery store, Nob Hill Foods, would put recipes on the front of their ads and then have all those ingredients on sale for that week so people would want to try them.  My mom was always looking for a good deal to stretch the grocery budget and also for new recipes to subject… I mean offer… yeah offer… to my dad, sister, and I.  Most were hits but if I remember correctly there were a few misses but by golly if there wasn’t a hot meal on the table each night after my parents both put in very long days at the office.

This recipe I am about to share with you is one of those said recipes from the grocery ad all those years ago.  Well, technically it is a combination of TWO of those recipes.  How that happened was when I was living on my own and had just started dating CJ I wanted to impress him with my culinary skills but couldn’t remember either of the recipes in full separately and accidentally combined them.  The result was absolutely delicious and I have never made it any other way, or the individual recipes again, and Sausage Tortellini Soup was born.

Here is what you will need;

  

1 pound Italian Sausage

1 package Tortellini

2 – 32 oz containers Beef Broth

1 jar marinara sauce

1 -2 zucchini (sliced) depends on size

Italian seasoning (about 1 tablespoon)

Minced garlic (about 1 tablespoon)

Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions:

1 – Remove sausage from casing and brown in a pot.  Drain fat.  Return to pot and add minced garlic and sliced zucchini.

2 – Pour in beef broth, marinara sauce, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper.  Let it come to a low boil.

3 - Stir in tortellini and cook according to package directions (just don’t drain.) Once the tortellini is cooked through you are ready to serve.  I like to serve this soup with crescent rolls on the side; I usually sprinkle a little Italian seasoning on crescent rolls prior to baking.

This is a fairly easy recipe that comes together quickly for those busy nights or just a cold night when you are looking for a fast dinner to serve tour family!  It makes a good amount of soup, if I am remembering correctly from when I was growing up it made enough soup for the 4 of us to have dinner a couple times or for my parents to take some as leftovers for lunch that week. For my little family it will stretch a little further. 

I hope you give this recipe a try and enjoy it as much as my little family does.

Until next time my friends!

This is my right now...

As a parent you have moments where you think "I can't do this one more day!"  You have days where you feel completely and totally inadequate to those fellow parents around you and doubt you are doing anything right by your kid(s).  For me I feel like this is more for moms than dads for two reasons.  One, women naturally put more pressure on themselves in all things, we constantly compare ourselves to those around us.  Plus, there is that good old mother's guilt.  Two, we carried, physically carried our children inside of our bodies for 9+ months.  We were literally the force field that protected them day in and day out until it came time for them to bust out of the womb. And then...then we were hopeless to stop whatever may happen to them. Men, while they love their children more than words could ever say I don't think, now mind you this is just my opinion, that they feel the same amount of pressure we women do to get this parenting thing "right".  Whatever that may mean in our individual home. 

With this third pregnancy flying by week after week I find myself getting more and more stressed out on a variety of motherhood tasks. One, how am I going to have enough time in the day for all three of my kids and their very different needs?  What will happen while I am in the hospital having my third baby and my first two are at home? Are just a couple of the long list on repeat in my head. 

Add to that Z-man's oh so fabulous 4 year old tantrums and Sweet Peas constant need to know that I am on her level, literally sitting on the ground, while she plays independently and freaking out if she can't see me or be near me or feel me when she needs that reassurance that yes I am in fact sill here. And then, well then I talk to my sister, who is dealing with her own day to day struggles and she says, "This is my right now, not my forever." And then it clicks.  This is a season of life, a season in which I will all to soon look back on and miss those moments when my children needed me the way they do now.  A time when they form more of their own independence and get closer and closer to no longer fitting in my arms for me to rock them.  

For example, just yesterday while loading the car after shopping with two kids solo I found my self thinking, "Crap! How am I going to take three kids to the grocery store, load them in and out of the car multiple times, get everything we need, load and unload our food, without it taking all day!?"  Just as I finished that thought Z-man exclaimed from his car seat "Momma I did it! I buckled my own seat belt all by myself for the first time!" Now to you this is probably going to seem like such a tiny insignificant detail in everyday life, especially if you have yet to have kids, let along a four year old, of your own. But this, for me, was HUGE!  While yes it is just one more thing to add to the growing list of ways he doesn't need my help anymore it will also be a ginormous help once Bambino is here.  Then instead of having to buckle three kids into the car I will have to do only two and just quickly double check the third.  Which seriously will save time! 

Add to that my Sweet Pea who is just a week shy of 1 years old.  Like seriously how did that happen so quickly!? She has decided that she doesn't need us to carry her up the stairs anymore, she can crawl/climb them totally solo. We obviously walk right behind her to make sure we are there to catch her if she slips.  But again something that seems like not such a big deal to some is huge to the pregnant lady who goes up and down the stairs a minimum of 10-15 times a DAY! No wonder I haven't gained any weight this pregnancy with that workout program! Not only that but Sweet Pea has taken her first steps.  She is regularly taking 2-4 steps at a time before falling and trying again.  I am just a few incredibly fast passing short weeks away from having a full on walker.  This will provide new challenges I know but at the same time it will also provide some freedom in my day allowing me to focus on other things, like getting ready for our Bambino and all of his needs once he comes in April. 

So, I guess the point of this post is to simply say, when the day feel insurmountable and you think that your plate cannot fit one more crumb on it remember my sisters words... This is my right now...not my forever.  Then take a step back, a deep breath, and look around you and see those tiny hardly noticeable changes that occur little but little each day until it is such a big change and you can't remember what was so hard the day before.  And know this, we all have our own to see and we can make it through together. 

Until next time my friends! 

Meal Plan Monday

Lately we have been trying to get back on track with cooking more at home.  With what CJ does for a living it leads to us often eating out because of the inconsistency of his schedule. But now that the weather if colder and he is home at a more decent hour most nights we have been able to focus more of our energy cooking at home.

I know some people are really into couponing as a way to save money but for us we aim to avoid a lot of the processed foods so coupons don’t really help us much.  But that being said there are a few things that I like to utilize to help us save money. One of our local grocery stores has a savings card that you can load digital coupons on.  I occasionally will look at those and if I see something I know I will need I will add it to the card so when I am paying for my groceries it is automatically deducted on my total bill.  Also, this same grocery store sends us coupons in the mail based off our most purchased items which is awesome!  For example this last batch I received in the mail has 4 free items in the pack two of which are salad mix and frozen veggies which we eat a lot of. So, I pack those along with us and it helps us save in the long run. 

Another way of spreading the savings is they offer a gas reward system so for every dollar spent in their store you earn 1 point.  For every 100 points you get you save $0.10 off a gallon of gas. You can use up to $1.00 of gas points at a time. For us it helps especially now that I don’t work and we only have to fill up the car every 3-4 weeks.

Another money saving tip that I learned a very long time ago from my mom is shop the ad, base you weekly menu on what meat/protein is on sale for that given week.  Stock up when possible on things you know you will use often and have a longer shelf life for your pantry. Doing this will make the weekly shopping easy to stay on budget for that week knowing I can base most of our meals on what I have stocked in our pantry.

Alrighty then.  Now onto the menu for this week, we are trying something a little different and are meal planning not just dinners but also breakfast and lunch.  Lunch is usually the same unless it is a special occasion or a holiday. 

Monday

            Breakfast –      Cereal with fruit

            Lunch –           Mac & Cheese, Nuggets, and Yogurt

            Dinner –          Chicken, Rice Pilaf, and Salad

Tuesday

            Breakfast -      Eggs, Fruit, and Toast

            Lunch -           Leftovers / Sandwiches

            Dinner -          Taco Salad

Wednesday

            Breakfast -      Pancakes, Fruit, and Eggs

            Lunch -            Leftovers / Sandwiches

            Dinner -           Ravioli with Marinara Sauce, Salad, and Bread sticks

Thursday

            Breakfast -      Sausage Bread

            Lunch/Dinner -Thanksgiving

Friday

            Breakfast -      French Toast, Fruit, and Eggs

            Lunch -           Leftovers / Sandwiches

            Dinner –          Make your own pizza

Saturday

            Breakfast -      Omelet, Fruit, and Yogurt

            Lunch -            Leftovers

            Dinner -           Chicken, Rice, and Veggies

Sunday

            Breakfast –      Pancakes, Fruit, and Eggs

            Lunch -            Leftovers

            Dinner –          Crock-pot Roast, Smashed Potatoes, Veggies

Happily Ever After - Kiera Cass

This book Happily Ever After is a follow up to a series I read, actually I have read it twice now, and I couldn’t wait to crack open the cover and see a new point of view on some of my favorite characters and even some of the characters I loved to hate in the series. With that being said I would not start this series with this book as it will be a major spoiler to the whole series that are individually amazing in and of themselves.  So, if you would like to read these I would recommend you read them in order The Selection, The Elite, The Prince and The Guard, The One, and The Heir.

Keria Cass has a way of pulling the reader in with the first pages of each of her books.  If you don’t believe me sneak to the back of this book and read the special preview of Siren and tell me if that doesn’t make you want to be at your local book store the day it comes out!  Shoot if you are local we can go together!

These are very quick reads but leave you craving more so with this latest addition to the series I feel as if I am now fully satisfied with everything in the books and all the unanswered questions I had been left with from first reading The Selection are now answered. It also has inspired me to go back and read the whole series from the beginning again but with new eyes after this.

Learning more about Amberly and King Clarkson from the time of his selection gives new perspective on not just their relationship throughout the books but also some of their behavior during their son Prince Maxon’s selection.  Reading more about Marlee’s love story during her time in the selection was something I had always craved to know more about during the adventure of it all. I also liked that it gave you a “Where are they now?” glimpse at the girls who didn’t win and how their lives ended up after they left the palace for good.  As if you could maybe run into them at the local coffee shop and catch up with them like you are long lost friends.

I think what I love most about this series is that there isn’t just one loves story in it but many that all intertwine in the most amazing of ways.  When I read books I feel as though I become their characters I am reading about, that I am there living the ups and downs with them.  That is why when I saw this update of sorts I couldn’t wait to escape back into the mind set of these people because you will see they are easy to love or easy to hate.  You can imagine the world they are living in and see even in the most bizarre of ways how it fits into our world today.

I highly recommend you give this series and book a try, and when you do tell me what you think.  I can't wait to hear your thoughts! 

Until next time…

Book Worm

Hi again my friends. I am lucky enough to have time at night to partake in one of my favorite past times.  Reading.  I love immersing myself into a new set of characters and going on whatever adventure awaits them in each book and I often do this when the kids have gone to bed.  I think it is my release at the end of a long day and I am often known to stay up way to late reading my latest choice and I thought to myself as I finished up my second book in a week and half "Hey, I should keep a list of the books I read and share it on my blog." I have many friends and family who love books as much as I do and I have also seen several friends asking "What should I read next?" on various social media sites.  So why not offer a section here on book I have read and maybe it will inspire someone to try one of them even if it is something they don’t normally gravitate towards.

I will be setting up a page linked to the top as a go to spot that will link to any and all book reviews I complete on here.  It should be said that I am not being compensated for any of this I am just choosing to share my thoughts with you lovely folks.

Also, I read mostly fiction based books and occasionally will throw in a non-fiction if it really calls to me.  I hope you enjoy this new feature on Bushel of Sweet Peas and let me know if there are any books you think I might enjoy! 

Until next time my friends!

Bed Time and Tantrums

Oh my.  That is quite the title we have there isn't it.  Hello my friends, I am sorry it has been so long since we last had a chat here.  You see I have been a little busy living day to day life and that has left me with very little "me" time, whatever that is, and for that I am sorry. 

I am here to share with you a little snippet of what has been happening around these parts lately. It has been rough mostly with the kids, more specifically with Z-man. 

We are at a crossroads of naps and no naps.  Most days he still needs a nap but that will lead to a later bed time which then leads to not enough sleep and him then again needing a nap.  But here in lies the problem.  He doesn't want to nap and unless I force him to take a nap or he just happens to fall asleep randomly at 3, 4 or 5 pm he doesn't take one.  This is a huge recipe for disaster for the whole household!

Random late afternoon nap. 

Z-man while out with friends or at school is the picture of a well behaved child.  Which is you know amazing because as parents we worry that our kids act as crazy for others as they do for us!  But at home he has been full of attitude, whining, crying at every.little.thing. To the point where I thought I was about to lose my damn mind. I have never wanted to be a mom who yells or screams at her kids out of frustration but there were days (read weeks) where that is all I felt I was doing.  With CJ's work schedule it was hard because he would come home to a house in such a disarray, me pissed off because I needed a break, Z-man crying, and Sweet Pea was usually already in bed at that point. 

My poor sister would listen to me day after day complain and whine myself about how sucky it all was but she always listened and offered advice when I needed it. But after trying everything, or so I thought, I was at my wits end. Something had to change or one of us wouldn't survive to see Z-man turn 5.  Just kidding, but that is what it felt like. 

Throwing a massive tantrum because I said "No."
to having a treat 20 minutes before dinner. 

Enter a beacon of light.  A savior if you will.  The light bulb to out shine all other light bulbs. It was time for a schedule.  And not just any schedule, a bed time schedule.  Let me say first before ya'll start saying "Well....duh!"  Z-man and Sweet Pea have always been great sleepers, like I am talking sleeping through the night from 8 week postpartum.  It has been like a dream really until all of this acting out nonsense started. So, we have never had the need for a schedule for their bedtimes.  But, I thought it was worth a shot. 

Z-man had been going to bed between 8:30 & 9:30 but still waking up at 6 or 6:30 each morning. But when he napped he got all the sleep he needed for an active growing boy so we weren't concerned. With that in mind and him now not taking naps we have instilled a 7:30 bed time.

Let me just also say this.  I don't claim to be a parenting expert in fact I often roll my eyes at people who do. Because let's face it we are all just trying to figure out what works for our family and our kids one stinking day at a time. But by gosh if this hasn't been working...for us.  It has been only a few days but it seems the transition has been going smoothly. The first night was rough I think mostly because he took an accidental 45 minute nap late in the afternoon.  Last night on the other hand we started bed time at 7:30, CJ read him a book and I cuddled him for a few minutes along with a song, and by 7:45 he was sound asleep and woke in the best of moods both days. We are going to keep this routine for a few weeks and then bump the time up to 7:15 as a start of bed time and see how that goes. Wish us luck that this is a small light at the end of this phase because man I have two more kids to figure out!  

Until next time....