Menu Planning and Grocery List All-In-One

I needed a way to start making menu planning, grocery shopping, and my whole kitchen attitude better. I created a menu planner for accomplishing all these things.Download the menu planner here!

We will SQUASH you!

So, I never liked squash. Until I thought about how it might be good IN something. So here is some Squasharoni.






Squasharoni:
boil one big ole squash until tender (like potatoes for mashing)
cut it into thin slices
put it in a casserole dish
add half a cup of light sour cream
a can of drained green chiles
cover it with shredded cheddar
into the oven until golden brown.

If you want to have Squasharoni Macaroni:
puree the squash and green chiles and stir them in along with the sour cream into cooked macaroni noodles. Add the cheddar and bake until golden brown. YUM!

Avoiding the Power Struggle

I can't stand a fight. I have always been a peacemaker. When a child is a baby, it's so easy to think that when the crying to get needs met subsides that life will be easier. In reality, the child learns to talk back as soon as the ability to form a sentence comes. How do you enforce rules without having all the backlash? Deep down, you know what is best for your child. Your child has fun bullying you and mocking your attempts to ground them, spank them, and will pretty much make a fool of any attempt to enforce consequences. You start to be hypnotized into thinking you're a bad parent because you don't know how to deal with them.

Don't buy the lie. There will always, always be an attempt at a power struggle. If there wasn't, your child has some serious development issues. Their whole agenda is the same from the time they are infants- to gain more and more control of their lives. You want to "train them up in the way they should go" and you have been told to be consistent and enforce consequences. Training them up is not as black and white as "disobedience transpires, hand out the consequence. " This is like a transaction at the drive thru. You hand them the money, they give you the food. There is no question that you will get a bag of food when you pull up to the window.

DON'T EXPECT your child to just accept the consequences when they do something wrong. Expecting this sets you up for failure. You take away the gaming system or the keys, and you should expect that they'll want to resist that. Expect it so you won't yell. Just because your kid ticks you off doesn't mean that you have to yell. In fact, it's better to walk out of the room with them yelling at you while you go from room to room totally unaffected. Take their power away by not engaging in every fight they set the trap for. Think of the impact of your non-verbal communication. Not staying parked in one place says you are closed for business- they aren't spending the night with a friend. Staying parked with your feet in the same place as where you started the conversation means that you are listening to their demands.

Maybe your struggle is a child who responds "I'm not taking a shower." You don't have to say that they are. My six year old is too big to pick up. He wanted me to throw a screaming fit of threats when he said wasn't taking a shower. Instead, I ignored his defiance. I gave it a few minutes, and I collected all the light sabers. He decided to decoy me. He went to his bathroom which is right next door to the closet where I lock up toys he's grounded from. He pleaded that he would take a shower, so I walked off without locking the closet. He walked out and said, "I hate showers, and I'm not taking one." I placed my hands on his shoulders and walked him back into the bathroom and pulled his underwear off. I put him in the tub and turned on the shower. At that point, I hadn't yelled, and I hardly spoke to him to get the result I wanted.

I don't have all the answers, but I needed a different approach. I am sick of my household being an angry one. Everyone in my house is yelling to get their way. Even me. In order for them to change, I have to change first. It feels really good to know that there is a choice. I can choose to get upset, or I can choose the freedom in staying calm and dealing with it with a sound mind. Training them up means teaching them about the good and bad choices. How will you train them up if you treat them like a drive thru transaction? Isn't it unreasonable to think a conflict is solved by taking the role of the enforcer. Enforcer = the person who will get the resistance. Teacher = the person who will get results.

It's that time again

It's time to make a grocery list. That would not seem to be an overwhelming task, but I don't like to plan. Ever. My son Peyton loves planning. In fact, he woke me up once by dropping his handwritten hour-by-hour itinerary on my face. He's six. This is also the child who needed to clean his kindergarten classroom and straighten name tags on his desk so that he could concentrate on what was being taught. Born out of the desire to work smarter and not harder, I have decided to make a feature on my blog called "Whatcha Got Cookin?"

Every once in awhile, I'll see something my friend is doing, and it will blow my mind. My friend Jennifer did that yesterday.
This is a picture of her fruit kabobs that blew my mind.



This also reminded me of some yummy veggie kabobs I had at Allaso Ranch in Hawkins, Texas. They had red onion, cherry tomatoes, and potatoes. They were grilled and served with fresh green beans and a more meaty kabob. See, it just takes a
little thing like that to get the grocery list started.

I kind of re-invented a chalupa last week, too. Check this out...



This was easy. You take a tablespoon of vegetable oil and warm it in a pan. throw in the tortillas and brown them on both sides. The oil should get warm enough that the tortilla will puff. As long as it's browned, you're good. Paper towels will soak up the extra grease like it's bacon.

After you cook the tortillas, then put em on a cookie sheet, spread black refried beans on it, sprinkle mexican cheese. Warm them in the oven at 350 until the cheese is melted. Pull them out and add lettuce, sour cream, avocado, chopped cilantro, and hot sauce. YUMMY!

Wanna join me in Whatcha Got Cookin? Click on the blue link below that says, "Click here to enter". When other people join me, their links will be listed below with their Whatcha Got Cooking post. If I have 7 blog friends join me, you'll have a menu for the week just by visiting my blog =D. Crossing my fingers for major participation! It will drive traffic to your own blog, so you may as well join me!

=D
Beja

What's up

I don't know why I can't sleep, Coca-cola. Why does your bubbly goodness beg to go down the hatch when I should be brushing my teeth for nighty-night? I've been waiting on my video post to process, but I didn't know it was such a long process. Anyways, I won't be Pete Repeat because I think my Coca-cola surge might be finally wearing down.

Secretly, I wish I could upload my custom blog graphics that I made in Pixelmator (it's like all the benefits of Photoshop but a tenth of the price). As I'm not feeling represented by this generic blog template, I am hoping I won't have visitors til I get all this ugly look shoved in the closet. You know, because if someone saw how messy the house was even though you were expecting company, that might look bad. Whatever. This is exactly why I need to be accountable- my creative perfectionism gets on my own nerves.