Sno Cones - The Real Deal

Grandparents leave you with certain, distinct memories. The smell of their house, their clip-on earrings you would wear until you couldn't feel your ear lobes any more. The delight of drinking a soda with lunch. Floating a collapseable canoe in the pool. Getting to eat as many of those colorful Brach's candies as you wanted, even though you never could quite get the wrapper ALL of the way off.

And the best sno-cones in the entire world.


Every summer Nana Marie would freeze little tubs of ice in preparation for our visit.


We would argue over who would grind the ice into little bowls.


Last week, I introduced Danny to the proper way to eat sno-cones.


We made the finest ice you've ever tasted.



Topped it with vanilla ice cream.


Finished it off with chocolate syrup.


And walked down memory lane to the taste of Nana Marie's sno-cones.

Meal Planning & Recipe Organization

I get quite a few questions about how we plan and prepare our meals. Since writing this post about packing lunches we have tweaked and changed our routine, so I thought I'd re-address our habit of pre-making our breakfasts and lunches each week.

Before I do that though, I must tell you I've tried every recipe organzational system under the sun. I've tried note books, I've tried cards in boxes, and I've tried computer software. None have worked so well as the website: WeGottaEat.

I switched to organizing, storing and referencing all of my recipes on WeGottaEat for the following reasons:

1. I could access it from any computer
2. I could easily share recipes with friends (just email them a link)
3. I can put Danny's computer on the bar in our kitchen and simply follow the recipe on the screen (no printing and wasting paper)

So, after that public service announcement, let's move on to our meals.

OLD MENU PLANNING SYSTEM:

Breakfast:

We would just eat cold cereal, oatmeal, frozen waffles or whatever we could find to start our day.

Lunch:
I would make sandwhiches and pack snacks for each of us for the entire week. The sandwiches would go in the freezer in ziploc bags and the snacks (usually fruit, crackers, granola bar) would go in the fridge in a brown paper bag. Each morning we would just grab a paper bag and a frozen sandwich on the way out the door.

Dinner:
After stressing about weekly meal plans, I finally sat down and planned eight weeks worth of meals. I created a grocery list for each week. Then, all I did at the beginning of every month was pick four weeks worth of meals, print off the corresponding grocery lists and spend literally no time trying to plan menus for each week.

Here's a sample of the menus and grocery lists. At the beginning of the month I would buy all the staples under the "Monthly Menu" column and then each week I would just buy what was under the corresponding "Weekly" column along with any additional perishables (milk, bread, etc. ) that we needed.

Eight weeks worth of meals gave us enough variety that we didn't get tired of the menu. This is a great time saver if you find yourself pouring over cookbooks for hours each week trying to plan menus and grocery lists. If this seems confusing to you or you'd like help setting something like this up - let me know - I'd love to help you!

NEW MENU PLANNNING SYSTEM:

First off, we started the Zone Diet in January, so we had to totally re-work our meals and my recipes. Sandwiches were out the window - they had too many carbs. Cups and cups of veggies were IN. Here is what our meals look like now:

Breakfasts:
We pack eight breakfasts each weekend. Usually one of us will end up eating out or dragging one meal out to Friday. If, on the off chance, we do eat all of our pre-made breakfasts by Thursday, then we fall back on the staple of eggs, bacon, yogurt, nuts and fruit for breakfast on Friday.

If a breakfast is better warm (quesadillas), we still make them on the weekend and then just microwave/toaster oven them when we're ready to eat. For things like smoothies, we just put all the fruit in a container on the weekend, and the morning of just dump and blend in the blender with ice.

You can find all of our Zone-friendly breakfast recipes here.

Our favorite breakfast recipes are:

• Strawberry Orange Smoothie
• Breakfast Quesadilla
• Fruit Pudding
• Cottage Cheese Salad

Lunch:
Again, we pack eight lunches, allowing for us to eat out or eat leftovers without wasting food. Our staple lunch in a pinch is turkey (sliced deli meat), mozzarella cheese, an apple and nuts.

For any salads, we simply pack all things separately in containers (lettuce by itself, veggies by themselves, and dressing in a little container). That way nothing gets soggy and nasty by the time it's eaten.

You can find all of our Zone-friendly lunch recipes here.

Our favorite lunch recipes are:

• Bacon Avacado Salad
• Hummus & Veggies (instead of making a salad, we just cut up a TON of veggies to dip in the hummus)
• Zone Chili
• Tuna Sandwich

Dinner:
We don't make these in advance, but we do make enough for two nights in a row, so we really only cook two to three times a week!

You can find all of our Zone-friendly dinner recipes here.

Our favorite dinner recipes are:

• Cordon Blue Chicken
• Chicken Tacos
• Lemon & Herb Chicken & Veggies
• Lettuce Wraps
• CrossFit Breakfast **Our newest favorite!**

And that is how the Stillers eat.

I'd love to hear your methods for the madness that is meal planning and recipe organization. Share your ideas with us!

Buffalo Danny Wings

Danny really is a fabulous cook. He's better as seasoning things than me, and he's much better at creating something from the random items in our pantry than I am. If I don't have a recipe then I just stare at the can of beans, the instant potatoes and the jar of salsa in our pantry until Danny says, "let's go out."

However, I'm the one that's more motivated by my stomach to spend time in the kitchen. If I weren't here Danny would be eating Honey Nut Cheerios, macaroni and cheese, and beef jerkey for every meal every day.

I know.

That's what he ate before we got married.

When he does cook though, he cooks big. He researches recipes and analyzes ingredients.

He's attempted homemade pretzels and recently tried his hand at hot wings.


He only cooks things that make our apartment smell like the kitchen at McDonalds. It's just as revolting as it sounds.

I'm not telling how much oil it took to fry up this little guys.

How wings ladies and gentlement. Somewhere in South Carolina Danny discovered is LOVE and INFATUATION with hot wings. We can go to Buffalo Wild Wings one night and Danny will turn around and want to eat there the next night.

Who knew picking chicken off the bone while your mouth burns like fire could be so appealing. I burn so many calories just trying to find the meat that I never quite get full eating chicken wings - it's the most frustrating meal ever!

I bought four packages of wings at the store. The day of the fry-fest Danny decided to invite friends from our home group over. He was confident that his chicken creation would be completely edible and delish.


And despite the fact that I promised to only eat two wings, he went out and bought two more packages of wings.

Do you know how many wings he fried that night? Alot. Too many chickens alot.


The finished product. Danny's special Red, Hot & Blue (Texas Pete with Blue Cheese dressing) recipe.

Our guests did eat them and claimed they were good, but I'm not much of a Texas Pete (too hot) or Blue Cheese (tastes too much like feet) fan.

So guess what Danny had for dinner three nights in a row?

Those two extra packages of wings that he wanted to buy.

Packing Lunches

Sometimes I go crazy.

Like when Danny says "Forget the laundry, let's go play."

My insides start to run around inside of me like my own personal tornado and usually that makes me start to cry and kick things. "I want to play outside with you, but having no clean clothes to wear on Monday also makes me want put my fist through the door."

I am a working wife, and I just can't do it all.

There, I said it. I feel very proud of myself for being able to admit to ya'll that I don't have it all together. Sometimes keeping up with a job and a home is enough to make me go to bed at 8 pm, but I can't go to bed because there's just too much to do!

Making lunches every night before we went to bed started having a terrible affect on me, and therefore it started having an affect on our marriage. A tornadic affect in your marriage is never a good thing. It gets the sheets all twisted up.

Every night we would debate whether we would do the responsible, adult thing and make lunches or whether we would spend some quality time taking a walk or eating ice cream. Sometimes all that got accomplished was a good cry on my end because I just couldn't get it all done and a good hug on Danny's end because he has great shoulders for that sort of thing.

Finally, Danny decided that when we stub our toe on something, then we need to move that something so we don't keep hurting ourselves. It's stupid to keep stubbing your toe on the same thing over and over and over again. And somehow we kept stubbing our toe every night when we'd try to pack the lunches.

So the Sunday afternoon lunch-fest was born. It's the greatest idea that involves sliced bread.

I make enough sandwiches (both turkey & cheese or peanut butter & jelly) for both of us for the week (Monday through Friday):

I pack those up and freeze each of the sandwiches in ziploc bags.

Here's the trick: Don't put any mayo/mustard on the turkey & cheese sandwiches and they won't get soggy when thawing. Put peanut butter on both pieces of bread so the jelly can't soak into the bread and they won't get soggy when thawing.

Next, I bring out all the things we like to eat with lunch and for snacks.

I put enough single servings of fruit, crackers, carrots, cookies, etc. into ziploc bags for each of us to have several a day. I pre-wash and cut everything that won't spoil/turn brown - carrots are peeled and cut into sticks, grapes are washed, celery is cut into sticks and packed with a little container of peanut butter, etc. Apples, pears, mangos, etc. are left whole.

I then bust out 10 paper bags and label them for me and Danny for every day of the week (these have been re-used for multiple weeks).

All the snack items go into these bags and then all the bags go onto a shelf in the fridge.

When we wake up in the morning we just grab a brown bag from the refrigerator and a sandwich out of the freezer. It's fast, easy and efficient.

No more internal tornadoes each night; no more debates on whether to hang out or make lunches - we can always hang out. It's a beautiful when you have food to eat AND you get to relax with your husband.

Let's Dish

As already posted, I have discovered that I love to cook. Who knew? I surely NEVER volunterily welded a spatula in the kitchen growing up. And in college I ate things like 88 cent Tostino's pizzas and Hot Pockets. And I've probably took 10 years off my life with all the cheese I've snacked on.

Needless to say, I now love cooking, planning meals, saving money, clipping coupons, food shopping, etc, etc, etc. I love sitting down to a healthy meal with Danny.

The only problem now days is that we're busy. Busy. SHOCKINGLY busy!

Jobs, youth, travelling, housework, working out, friends, and more fill out our days, evenings, and nights! Where am I suppose to find time to cook dinner?

And then my friend from church told me about a place called, Let's Dish. It's my new favorite store in the ENTIRE world! It has to do with cooking and organization. Could it get any better than that?

You sign-up online, go to the store, don a stylish apron and bandana (see picture below) and start assembling meals.

They have all the ingredients laid out for each meal. You simply go up to the table, grab a bag or foil pan, and measure out everything you need for that recipe. Slap the cooking instruction label on and stick it in the freezer, and you're ready to make another dinner. In one hour I had 12 meals (3 servings each) ready to take home.

Here's Allison, Rachel, Jaime, Me, Amanda, and Kristi all ready to dish!

Allison and Amanda reading the cooking instructions for a recipe before getting starting.
Rachel and Jaime dishing it up!

I made the following delicious recipes:

1. Chicken Crostini
2. Cheesy Spinach Lasagna Roll-ups
3. Tomato Chicken Chili with Cheesy Cornbread
4. Chicken with Artichokes in White Wine Sauce
5. Linguine Shrimp Scampi
6. Orange Beef Stir Fry & Rice
7. Parmesan-Crusted Pork Chops w/ Glazed Carrots
8. Pork Tenderloin with Chile Apricot Glaze
9. Portabella Beef Stew
10. Sweet & Spicy Cashew Chicken
11. Thai Marinated Flank Steak
12. Tilapia with Lemon, Limes & Almonds

We had so much fun assembling our meals, they even served us drinks and snacks while we dished, in case we got tired and needed a break! And Danny and I have thoroughly enjoyed eating the meals. So far, the first five have been delicious. It's so fun to come home from work at night and not stress about what to cook for dinner or worry about standing in the kitchen chopping onions until nine at night. Now, we're sitting down to a full meal in 30-45 minutes! It's wonderful.

And, just for the fun of it, here is a picture of my freezer after stuffing all 12 meals in there! If only I could rip out that silly ice maker, I could fit so much more food in there!

Christmas Baking

This year we gave baked Christmas gooes to our families. We didn't have alot of money/dough to pour into gifts, but we put alot of time/effort/dough into making special, handmake presents.

Our Christmas tins included:

* Stained Glass Christmas Trees
* Peppermint Candy Canes (Danny's Favorite)
* Sugar Cookie Santa Clauses
* Peppermint Bark
* Gingerbread Snowflakes



Here you can see the progression of the snowflake.
1. Boring, undecorated gingerbread cookies.


2. Danny using his strong arm muscles to squeeze out that icing.

3. The finished product? Wha-La!


WE love you family & friends!

Desperation Dinners

When Danny Cooks:

Quick, Easy & No Clean-up

The less dishes the better

(And no, this wasn't staged - I walked into the living room to find Danny eating Mac & Cheese like this.)

.

When Laura Cooks:
Tasty, Conversational, & Messy
I'm gonna use all of those wedding gifts, by golly!

When asked by his father, a few months into our marriage, what the best thing about being a husband was, Danny replied:

"I eat better and wear clean clothes!"

Dinner from India

Let me tell ya'll just how small the world is. Danny and I were at Best Buy, saw a guy with a Texas A&M shirt one and to make a long story short, we said "hello" and made our first friend in South Carolina. Harry is from India and graduated this year from A&M with a masters in Industrial Engineering. He and Danny have hung out several times at Barnes & Nobles and Monday night Harry came over to cook authentic Indian food for us. Here is some of what we sampled:

Danny & Harry ready to eat!

Harry is displaying his true Aggie spirit: Gig 'em aggies!

Fried Rice with vegetables and tons of spices.

The main dish:

Hard boiled eggs in a curry gravy

The Side Dish:

Tomato/Buttermilk Salad