Organized Lunch Plan

And here it is, our organized lunch planning sheet.  I took the state daycare requirements, simplified them to a sheet that is easier to read, listed the food options that my kids like by categories, added a couple other helpful notes, printed it, laminated it, and hung it in the cabinet.  I love when organizing makes life easier. 

What's For Lunch?

Did you see the article about Pink Slime?  Here, let me link it for you.
Gross?  Did you want to eat some of that?  

Did you eat cafeteria food when you were in school or were you lucky enough to bring a healthy lunch from home?  Did you know that parents have to jump through hoops to send a qualified lunch to school or daycare?  There are rules.  Crazy rules.  Rules that I had to laminate and refer to often in order to make sure I'm not missing anything. 

Did you know that parents could take the easy route and just order school lunch for their children?  I've done it for many years.  It's easy.  The kids enjoy it because its junk food.  And, I didn't have to make sure that I met the correct measurements on a daily basis. 

Well, maybe I'm older and wiser now.  Or, maybe I'm just sick of cringing every morning when I read the lunch menu for the day to my 4 year old son.  Today on the menu was a chicken patty on a whole grain bun with sun chips.  Wow, really?  And how does that meet all of the requirements?  I am not seeing it? 

Check out this blog: http://fedupwithlunch.com/  I came across it by searching school lunches on pinterest.  This motivated mama and teacher took packing lunches to a whole new level and actually created a blog about it and wrote a book.  I think I'll be adding her blog to my reading list. 

While browsing the web I also came across this link at Kitchen Stewardship.  She has a list on her blog with some great school lunch ideas.  This motivated me to create my own list for my family.  There were a lot of things that included Peanut Butter on her list.  I couldn't include those items for my kids lunches because daycare has a very strong rule against no peanut products due to allergies, but I kept them on my list for myself and my daughter.  Maybe we can start sending peanut butter with the boys when they start school.  We all love peanut butter. 

Do you pack your kids lunches?  What do you pack for them?  What do you pack for yourself? 

Thanksgiving Horror Stories

I was browsing through yahoo stories and came across this.  The more I am reading these stories, the more I'm laughing out loud.  I sure hope none of these crazy things happen for any of us this Thanksgiving Holiday.  I'll have to say that after my daughter and my cooking mishaps this weekend... anything is possible. 

1) I made these amazing oatmeal cookies this weekend, but decided to ditch the raisins, cut back on the butter and add peanut butter for extra taste.  Well... lets just say they turned out like oatmeal-peanut-butter-hockey-pucks; however, I ate them. 

2) Mariah made banana bread and added an extra banana for extra moist flavor.  She put the bread in the oven and made the entire house smell delicious.  I opened the microwave, put in my coffee, warmed it up, opened it back up... and found a stick of butter that rotated around in front of my coffee.  Yup, she forgot to add the butter to the banana bread.  The bread turned out a bit rubbery, but we ate it - put our butter on the bread. 

3) Mariah made brownies for her friends at school.  She put the ingredients in, added a little extra Hershey's syrup for extra chocolate-y-ness... and because... she had mixed up the measurements on the oil and water.  They were like fluffy pieces of chocolate cake instead of brownies. 

Hopefully this is no indication of whats to come on Thanksgiving!

Recipes for Cleaning

I changed this post a bit.  I found many recipes for laundry detergent and went with the one that uses 1 cup borax instead of 1/2 cup borax. 

I did it!  I made my own laundry detergent this weekend and it was super easy, fun, and made my kitchen smell really fresh!  Here is the recipe I used (taken from this website):

Homemade Laundry Detergent


Most homemade laundry detergent recipes out there contain the same ingredients:
1. 1 bar of Fels-Naptha soap
2. 1 cup of Washing Soda
3. ½ cup of Borax powder  1 cup Borax powder (cleans really well)

To make a powdered detergent, cut the soap into small pieces and then powder it in a food processor or blender (I use my Pampered Chef cheese grater and then put it in a food processor) . Mix this with the washing soda and borax. Use 1-2 tsps per load depending on the size of the load and the amount of soil.
Super cheap and super yummy smelling!  I've read that you can use different types of bar soaps instead of the fels-naptha if you prefer. 

The next recipe I'll try is for homemade dish detergent (from the same website):

Homemade Dishwasher Detergent


Ingredients
• 1 cup washing soda
• 1 cup borax powder
• ½ cup salt
• ½ cup citric acid

Mix all the ingredients together and store in a glass canning jar. Use one tablespoon per load. For best results, use white vinegar in the rinse dispenser.

Ethan helped me make the laundry detergent.
And... Cory is completely on board because its cheap and smells delicious.

Grandma's Cookies

Grandma Knodel was always known for baking too many cookies at Christmas time and for giving everyone socks for Christmas.  We miss grandma very much this year and will also miss her cookie and socks traditions.  In rememberence of Grandma Knodel her cookie recipes live on... ;-)

Here is one of my FAVORITE cookie recipes from Grandma Knodel.

Kiss Cookies
1 1/4 cup softened butter
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 1/4 cups flour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all ingredients together until nice and creamy.  
Use a small or medium scoop and form cookie balls.  Dip or roll in colored sugar sprinkles, or cinnamon and sugar mixture.  Put on cookie sheet and bake for 9-10 minutes.  Place pure chocolate kiss on top of cookie - press into the cookie just a little bit - then put back in oven for about 2 minutes.

Simple and delicious!  Thanks Grandma Knodel!