Freezing Meals, Enjoying Life, ... Loosing Weight

A friend of mine on an email list I was on told me about this neat software that helps you freeze meals ahead and only spend one day in the kitchen per month (or so) cooking. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks really promising. They also have books you can buy with recipes that freeze well.

The soup book looks interesting since I have been on a soup kick recently. A friend of mine made a potato and bacon soup for us when we ate at her house the other night and it was so filling and delicious! I hope I can get her to remember the recipe so I can keep it in here.

I also have the Carrot Cake recipe finally. If only I could find time to sit down and post it, eh? Oh, well - you don't really need a carrot cake. At least if you are like me and have about 15 pounds to loose, right?

Speaking of loosing weight... I'm on a CHOICE diet. No, it isn't a low carb, high protien, raw foods diet. It didn't come from a book or website. It is just a personal quest to "make better choices while eating". Eating to live rather than living to eat. So here it is in a nut shell:

THE RULE: Make 3 good choices per meal.

"I'll have salad instead of fries"
"I'll drink tea instead of coke"
"I'll use agave nectar instead of sugar"
"I won't salt the beans"
"I'll only have one taco instead of three"
"I won't go back for seconds"
"I won't have dessert after dinner"
"I'll eat two cookies instead of four"
"I'll get that on whole wheat"
"I'll half the meat in the recipe"
"I won't add extra cheese to my potato"
"I'll drink a glass of water 30 minutes before I eat so I won't be so hungry"
"I'm not going to skip breakfast because it jump-starts my metabolism"
"I'll eat some protein to prevent a carb crash"
"I'm going to eat turkey bacon so I won't have as much fat intake"
"I'll have unsweetened tea"

Whatever your "choice" is that is positive, just try to make wiser choices at meal time... and you can make small "deposits" in your health bank while loosing tiny bits of weight each time you sit at the table to eat. I already lost 4 pounds since starting this a week ago.

If you are doing something similar, I'd love to hear about it!

Carrot Cake recipe to come sooner or later!


Subscribe to Gathering Manna by Email

Technorati Tags: Diet, Soup, Meals, Planning Ahead, Weight, Food, Life, Recipes, Choices

8 Things from the Kitchen

All Things Hold Together tagged me a long, long, time ago... and I'm just now getting around to posting. Sorry, Charity! I'll try to be more prompt next time. If you want to go read her post about this... just follow the link on her blog's name.

8 Things From My Kitchen

1. Meat scissors. We eat a lot of chicken around here... well, when I'm cooking, that is. I absolutely love my meat scissors that I got at IKEA. I can easily cube, cut fat off of, or thinly slice chicken breasts for all sorts of yummy recipes in seconds without a slow, dull, dangerous knife. Speaking of knives... I really do need some new ones.

2. My pink Bialetti Dama. I've already talked about how we do coffee here at the Bee house. I threw out my coffee maker and we ONLY brew our Italian coffee on the stovetop. I love my little pink Dama (a gift from my husband... who uses it more than me, as a matter of fact). Mmmmm! I can just smell the lovely aroma of a fresh-brewed tiny pot of espresso! To make a great 888, you will also need a PRODUKT Milk Frother from IKEA - which you can pick up for less than 2$. Trust me. You need it. Say goodbye to Starbucks prices forever. Truth be known, my husband is the one who usually makes the coffee. He's such a sweetie.

3. Cookbooks galore. I love cookbooks. I have a bunch of them. Right now they are all on my kitchen counter taking up space... but I'm hoping my mother-in-law will give me an old buffet for the holidays that she has in her garage (she already said she would). Once I get it, I'm going to move my cookbooks to the drawers in the buffet. I always save recipes from the favorite things in all my cookbooks right here in this blog... so when I want to make something again, I don't have to search for hours in all the books (there are at least 50 of them). I can just look up the recipe online from where-ever I am. I also have a binder with a printed copy of my favorite recipes sectioned with tabs. That one will stay on the counter!

4. Home-Ec Classes. Each week the kids get to learn how to cook. I really had to learn everything I knew on my own - somehow I missed the in-home training that a lot of kids get before they get married! I don't want my kids to serve their spouses "hamburger helper" the first year they are married, so we try and always have one kid in the kitchen as we cook. They get to see what is happening, help gather up ingredients, and learn to cook for themselves. Sometimes they even cook without mom - fancy that!

5. Spices. I am known in my family as the spice lady. I have a ton of spices. I use them every time I cook. I love to use fresh herbs, but I probably have a bunch of things that are old and need to be thrown out. We like to cook international dishes a lot, so I require a lot of spices that aren't very usual to most kitchens: palm sugar, cardamom pods, sumac, Hungarian hot paprika, ginger and garlic paste, saffron... are just a few. I have a HUGE container of chili powder. We use a lot of that since I make home-made enchiladas at least twice a month.

6. Stacking Bee-Hive Measuring Cups. I found them in Fredericksburg at a womens' retreat one year while we were shopping. They are so cute... and so handy on the counter when you are in a hurry. I think I'll cry if they ever get broken.

7. Scripture Verses on the fridge. My kids do their Bible Memory verses every week or every other week on index cards and we keep them on the refrigerator so that they have them handy to memorize. When they come down, they put them in a little index card storage box. It is fun to browse back through them and see how many we can remember later in the school year. I like to let them draw a little on each card, too. I love to have their artwork on display.

8. Grossamole. This is the gross Dean's Guacamole Dip my mom just bought. She gets the nastiest processed, fakie groceries sometimes. She stays with us a few days each week and while she is here there are usually strange items (that we would not eat) taking up residence in my fridge. Aside from the "Grossamole", we have leftover nasty ribs, runny mayo-potato salad from a grocery store, a small bag of fried chicken from some greasy spoon chicken place, and a bottle each of Fanta Strawberry, Diet Dr. Pepper, and Caffeine Free Diet Coke. Yuck. Yuck and more Yuck!

So there's my kitcheny 8. How about you?

According to Charity, this meme has no rules. So let us know what's living inside your fridge and behind your cabinet doors. Got "slime in the ice machine"? Any magic kitchen tools you want to showcase? Elves in your cupboard? We want to know.

Now, to tag some people (feel free to play along if you aren't tagged here... and feel free to not play along if you are tagged here):

Sheri of Shades of Pink (because I know she loves to cook)
Mrs. Happy Housewife (because her site is cooler than mine)
Elise at Simply Recipes (because "I love her, man!")
Toni at Wifely Steps (cuz she's really sweet)
Farmgirl Fare (because it would give me an excuse to go see her awesome photos)

Shoot me an email if you DO play along. I'd like to rummage through your kitchen with you.


Subscribe to Gathering Manna by Email

Technorati Tags: Links, Meme, Cooking, Home, Eat, Food, Personal, Homemaking, Domestic, Household, Food and Drink, Kitchen

Start Cooking

If you haven't seen this groovy site: StartCooking.com ... you've got to go check it out. It is a Blog and video podcast focused on simple cooking techniques and full of great recipes that you can make for your friends and family.

I'm going to add this link to my sidebar in here. Check it out!


Subscribe to Gathering Manna by Email

Technorati Tags: Links, Cooking, Video, Learning, Lessons, Recipes, How To, Instructional, Food, Tips, Baking, Kitchen

The Coolest Cake Pan on the Planet

This is the coolest cake on the planet. How awesome is that! I just have to have one of these nifty Williams-Sonoma bee-hive bundt cake pans. The sweet-almond cake mix, candy bees and their little kid-sized busy-bee apron aren't bad either.


Subscribe to Gathering Manna by Email

Technorati Tags: cakes, bundt, baking, food, sweets, dessert, kitchen, cooking, yummy, cooking tools, neat things, delicious, nifty, stores