Food Challenge

After reading a friend’s blog today I was inspired to challenge myself. Starting April 1st I‘m going to be cooking every meal in our house, meaning breakfast, lunch and dinner for 1 month, 7 days a week. So please don't invite us out to dinner :)

I’m really looking forward to this challenge. I have our whole meal list planned out for next week, which means a pretty big shopping list, but most of the stuff will last for a month or longer. Thank goodness for Sam’s Club. I tend to cook pretty healthy but I am taking it a step further. I'm eliminating white flour and will now be using whole wheat flour, we will be using all ground turkey in place of ground beef and we will only be eating red meat one time this month. I think that is going to be the hardest part, because we love steak. I have replaced most of the stuff in the kitchen with organic, cage free and grass fed, so I feel like I’m taking a step in the right direction.

I would love to hear from my other mom friends on this subject. Do any of you cook all of your meals at home? Do you tend to use natural, organic, fresh ingredients? Do you typically stick to making the same things or do you try new things? How do your kids react to different food and how do you get them to try it? Please feel free to share recipes, I love trying new things. With that being said, I will share one of the recipes I love. It is not super healthy, but I will be tweaking it and adding new things like whole wheat flour to make it a little healthier. I’ll share the revised recipe once I have perfected it myself.

Banana Bars

• 3 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1-1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1-1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 3 medium)
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Dash salt
• 
  FROSTING:
• 1 package (8 ounces) reduced-fat cream cheese
• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 3 cups confectioners' sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

• In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until crumbly, about 2 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the bananas, applesauce and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into butter mixture just until blended.
• Transfer to a 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack.
• For frosting, in a small bowl, beat cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Add confectioners' sugar and vanilla; beat until smooth. Frost bars. Refrigerate leftovers. Yield: 3 dozen

PPD

I am thinking of doing a vlog on my battle with postpartum depression. I feel like my struggle has been way too intense for written words... I don't even know how to express what I’ve gone through in writing… what I’m still going through. It’s a daily struggle to maintain a “normal” existence when you’re suffering through something like this. I do have an amazing support system and have sought out help in many different forms, but it’s not something that can be treated overnight. I think that’s been the hardest thing for me - that I don’t feel like myself, and I want to be back to my old self so badly that I’ve become impatient with the process. I’m going on 15 months of trying to work this out - I would love to just tell my story and let other women out there know that they are not alone in this fight… that there are many other women who are dealing with this and can relate to them. Please let me know what you guys think.

My blog is a work in progress

I have been a little lazy on blog posting lately. I decided to go ahead and buy the domain for BecauseMommySaysSo.com. I figure I plan on doing this for awhile so I better scoop up the name while I can. I think that it looks so much better with a .com instead of .blogspot.com

Any-who..this has put a little wrench in my blog posting. I have a few written I want to post, but I am trying to wait until my DH gets it into gear and makes me a cool new blog :) He is the best when it comes to design. He has been so busy and I have been kind of dragging my feet at picking a template. He unfortunately wants me to pick a premade template to get it up and going until he can get time to build me a custom one. I do not want to settle on a premade one…Not that there aren't some great ones out there but I feel like this is my blog and I want it to reflect me and who I am. Not what some one else is. I know that it’s temporary, but I’m not sure how long temporary is in my husbands world. He is very busy at work and is on the computer all day, so when he comes home the computer is the last place he wants to be unless he is getting paid for it. So how do I bring this to my DH’s attention that this is super important to me and I want him to make me a kick ass blog design now?? You know, without sounding to demanding. I guess I can’t really…So I will probably continue to write a few blogs and just not post them like I have been, or I just post them here and transfer them over later. We will see I guess. Maybe my DH will read this blog post and decide that it would be so sweet to make his awesome wife a really cool blog :)

Wordless Wednesday

All purpose cleaner

I set a goal for my self last year that I would become a chemical free household by 2011…much to my dismay that has not completely happened yet, so I have been on a mission to do so.

Today I made an easy all purpose cleaner made from  borax and white vinegar or you can use baking soda if you do not have borax. It works wonders and it makes me feel better knowing what I am cleaning with. I works so well and I like it so much I thought I would share the formula mixture.

I used a 1/2 of cup of white vinegar, 2 tablespoons of borax ( or 1/4 cup of baking soda). Mix into into 1/2 gallon (2 liters) water. Store and keep. Use in shower for water stains, chrome fixtures, mirrors, tile floors , etc.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

Make sure to keep all home-made formulas well-labeled, and out of the reach of children.

Stroller Envy

With my first son, I never remember this being a “thing”… probably because I was 20 and clueless about raising a baby – and definitely clueless about baby products.  Since I’ve had Max, I’ve noticed things more. I’m more aware of what other moms are doing around me.

For instance, my friend and I walked into Stride Rite the other day and went to the back to look at shoes. We get to the back, and there are two girls there with their kids in strollers. The first thing I noticed - they looked at what kind of strollers we had… Almost like they were sizing us up. I was pushing Max in our new Maclaren Volo (which BTW I love), but when I noticed how they were looking at it, I almost wanted to shout out, “My Orbit is in the car!” Like I had something to prove to this stranger, who I will never see again in my life.

It almost reminded me of a man saying, “My good car is parked in the garage.”  It made me really start to think about how we’re judging each other all the time - whether we know it or not. I’m sure that I’ve done the exact same thing. We have hard enough jobs being moms and trying to raise our kids the way we see fit. Why waste a moment of our time judging another mom by what stroller she’s pushing her tot around in?

maybe we should take a step back and try to be a little more aware of what we are doing.