Tightwad Tuesday-Cars and Food

It's Tightwad Tuesday with Canada Girl. Today I'm going to recommend a "car sustenance bag". At least that's what my kids call it. Summer is the season of sports and unexpected trips to the park or beach. I keep what amounts to hearty snacks that won't spoil in the car for days or evenings we just don't make it home for a meal. Eating out can get pretty pricey, even from the concession stand or dollar menu when you're feeding more than one or two. I keep these sorts of things:
peanut butter or cheese crackers OR saltines and canned cheese (my kids love it, ack!) or individual peanut butter packets
granola or cereal bars
dried fruit and freeze dried veggie snacks
single serve fruit or pudding cups
drink pouches or boxes
single serve drink mixes to dump into a water bottle
disinfectant wipes for grubby hands
plastic silverware

It's not a perfect meal but it can round out a hot dog or get you through until you're home.

Monday Again

Week of April 26. Another crazy week.
Sun-chicken macaroni, peas
Mon-corn dogs, green beans, oranges
Tue-beef fajitas, torilla, corn
Wed-cheese manicotti, salad, grapes
Thu-salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, carrots
Fri-calzone, relishes, ice cream
Sat-baked chicken, roasted potatoes, salad

Last week of driving school. Three more weeks of track. Twenty-three more days of school! Oh yeah!
Check out more menus at Org Junkie

Two Quotes

Two quotes. Since I'm a plodder (some call it stubborn) and an eccentric (ok, some call it weird)
The wayside of business is full of brilliant men who started out with a spurt, and lacked the stamina to finish. Their places were taken by patient and unshowy plodders who never knew when to quit.
- J. R. Todd

But Jack Kerouac was an eccentric, as were Walt whitman and Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Jefferson and every prophet sacred or profane stretching back at least to the fufitive who saw a burning bush and came reluctantly back to preach freedom. Those who choose freedom almost always seem to be eccentric misfits, and those who choose slavery almost always seem well adjusted by comparison. Our freedom is always at risk, but we are its only real threat. The smoke of idols, the clang of cymbals , the shouts of apostates din the creed that freedom is too risky, too uncomfortable, too painful to bear. We’ve seen people start for freedom and then pause to consider how unreasonable a choice it was in light of what everyone around them knew to be true. Many have choked off their lives by limiting their choices to what they could see.
Gregory and Martine Millman

Family wise, busy, busy, busy. Come on June!

Thinking Thursday

I'm almost ready to make the whole post
THE SUN IS SHINING!
We've had way too much rain, combined with the joys of track meets. They really do go together in my experience.

On to the real post. I wanted a heading for some of the stuff we've been doing for homeschool. One of the resources I like is
Mindsprinting. It is free, but they are in need of enrollees to stay on line. Check them out. Our main curriculum source is Time4Learning. F has made great progress with this. Hand the child a worksheet or piece or paper and total melt down occurs. Reading to him, ho hum, but something that looks like video, he's there. Ideally it would be nice to just let him follow his interests but to say that they are narrow is an understatement. This is a nice middle ground. I do fill in with some worksheets (he usually answers the questions out loud unless I FORCE him to write the answers), movies and documentaries, experiments and field trips. Of all things his favorite experiment so far has been about germs. Have the child rub lotion into his hands, sprinkle on glitter. Let him run his hands under water. Did the glitter germs come off? Now try it with soap. This seems to have made an impression where 8 years of my telling him did not.

Wacky Wednesday

From 8yo F. Let me preface this by saying I have nothing against the Duggars. We even sometimes watch their show but the J thing would totally mess me up.

Me-"So what will they name the new baby?"
F-"Jumpin' Jehosaphat"

Menu Plan Monday

My menu this week reflects that
1) I have no time to cook.
2) We'll all be eating at different times.
Sun-Mac&ch w/tuna (I didn't feel like cooking.)
Mon-chili soup (or vegetable soup), grilled cheese, grapes
Tue-meatloaf, carrots, potatoes
Wed-crockpot chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans
Thu-Crockpot Enchiladas, corn, oranges
Fri-pizza, relishes, ice cream
Sat-chicken nuggets, peas, apple sauce

Having things that we can eat out of the crock or that can be microwaved helps with the three different dinner times we're working with for a couple more weeks. If I don't stay organized we'll be reduced to fast food or ball park hot dogs. .



Check out everyone else's menus here.

Family Friday

A busy week here at Chez Lisa. S is taking driver's training class which means two trips to town M-Th. That's two hours out of my day I can't really spare. Include soccer practices, baseball practices, track meets, homeschool, preschool, oh, and little things like laundry and feeding the family. At least boredom's not a problem.
E made Top 25 in her class again. She is ranked #3 out of 500 and some kids. I'm not sure she's my daughter. At least I don't need to worry about her work ethic, because she didn't get there on her natural ability. F is zipping along in his homeschool curriculum. He does a web based program with lots of video. If he thinks it's a computer game he's way more willing to pay attention, and like his mama, paying attention isn't his strong suit. The other kids are doing fine. Lily is chafing at her physical restrictions from her appendectomy but they will be gone next week. Keeping my little tomboy quiet isn't easy. Connor won the 200m last night in his track meet and came in 3rd in the long jump. He was badly overmatched by what appeared to be grown men in the 400m. He's hoping he'll hit a growth spurt soon, lol. I'm sure other things have happened but my mind is like a sieve. Here's a picture from Wednesday. I am not a very political person but S really, really wanted to go. He is very interested in politics and government and I don't want to squelch that.

Tightwad Tuesday

As I stated below, it's use it up week here. I am out of chocolate chips (thanks to this morning's chocolate chip muffins) so for today's after school snack (and probably tomorrow's breakfast) I made peanut butter balls. I think I got this recipe in 4-H so we'll just call it some time ago. I don't even use a recipe anymore. This is healthy and my kids and dh like them.

Scrape a jar of peanut butter into a bowl ( I use my kitchen aid)
squirt in some honey
pour in dry milk powder while mixing until you get a dough consistency
roll into balls and eat
Sometimes I add rice krispies if I have them. Milk, peanut butter and cereal. Sounds healthy too me.


Just cause she's so stinkin' cute. She was pleased with the Easter Egg hunt

Monday's Menus

After a week of playing for spring break, it's use up what we've got week here.
Menu
Mon-beef stew and biscuits, grapes
Tue-chicken fajitas, corn,oranges
Wed-stroganoff over noodles, broccoli,apple crisp
Thu-hamburgers, fries, green beans, cookies
Fri-pizza, ice cream
Sat-cheese manicotti, carrots, peaches
Sun-pepper steak on rice, pears, cookies

Everything homemade this week.
Things will be very busy here the next three weeks. We've got lots of activity overlap happening
S had driver's training M-Th from 4-6:30 for three weeks. That means two trips to town at least.
We also have 4 playing soccer, 3 playing baseball and 1 running track. Lots and lots of driving coming my way. Note that most of the food is the make ahead/warm up later variety. If I fall down on the job there's always peanut butter.

Seventeen Years Ago Today

I lost all my senses and became a mom.

No new pictures, that would be so uncool. Trust me she's beautiful and surprisingly responsible. Must have been despite of me.

Spring? Break

Today starts my kids' spring break from school. I figured it was pretty late this year and we'd have good weather. Instead it's beginning to look alot like Christmas out there. I, of course, just bought the girls lovely , sleeveless Easter dresses and sandals. That'll be comfortable.
The menu this week? All I know is lots of food will be consumed if they are home all day.




Mon-meatloaf, carrots, potatoes, chocolate cupcakes
Tue-DD's bday meal-minestrone soup, homemade breadsticks, cheerio bars (no cake, she's weird)
Wed-stroganoff over noodles, broccoli, cookies
Thu-turkey, dressing, green beans, rolls, brownies
Fri-tacos, corn, ice cream
Sat-pizza, relishes, cookies
Sun-Easter Dinner at my dad's-bring on the ham

Next week will feature hard boiled eggs in every way I can think of

A Day Off

I keep thinking today is Tuesday when it is really Wednesday. I've been running fast to stay in place. Things are better today. L is feeling better, F got back on schedule with school, and S who has had a horrible headache is feeling better. Today's humor? My older two boys were having a discussion about China (who knows why). F was listening.
S "You know, Mongolia. The Gobi desert, Ghengis Khan, Marco Polo."
F "I didn't know they had swimming pools there."
Which set off a weird game of Marco Polo in the kitchen. My children are nerds. Amusing nerds, but nerds none the less.