Book Review: Fearless Feeding by Castle/Jacobsen

There are very few books that stay on the bookshelf in my bedroom for quick reference and easy access and today I wanted to share one of them with you.

Fearless Feeding: How to Raise Healthy Eaters from High Chair to High School

Written by Jill Castle and Maryann Jacobsen

Published in 2013, this book has some great insights and helpful tips on raising well-rounded eaters at all ages and stages of development.  I love that it is written by two registered dietitians with experience in the realm of pediatric and family nutrition, in other words, a knowledgeable team to provide advice.  What also makes the authors credible in my mind is that both are moms who have sat in the trenches of motherhood and wrestled with what to serve their families.

Chapter 1 is the must-read introduction into the Fearless Feeding Strategy.  It takes some time to consider the WHAT, HOW and WHY of feeding our kids.  Here's my quick summary:

• WHAT: picking foods based on nutritional needs, balancing nourishing and "fun" foods, using variety and paying attention to portions
• HOW: structure of meal/snack times, parental attitude toward food choices and consumption
• WHY: stages of development can be predicted but every child has a different food personality

The next four chapters can be read as needed since they are broken into age groups (infancy, toddler, school age, teenager).  When I first bought this book in 2013, I only read the infant and toddler chapters since my oldest was a mere 4 years old.  Recently, I picked the book off the shelf again to read through the school-aged section since I have two kids in that category.

The final three chapters, in my mind, focus on the troubleshooting and "what do I do with this information".  They help you as a parent identify how your own childhood relationship with food could be affecting how you parent, how to determine if maybe your child has a food issue that could use professional intervention and also tips and recipes to help with meal planning and execution.

So there you have it, I highly recommend looking this book up either on Amazon or at your local library.  I've found it to be a resource worth having around the house!

Favorite Recipes for a Quick Serve Dinner

The past couple days have been about how to plan and how to shop, today I'm sharing some of my all-time family favorite recipes for a quick serve dinner.  There are lots of recipes that we enjoy but the ones listed below are meant to help you get dinner on the table during a busy weeknight.

Keep Calm and Cook On

Crockpot: everyone's favorite fix it and forget it appliance
-- applesauce BBQ chicken
If you've tried applesauce chicken before in the crockpot and were underwhelmed like me, the addition of BBQ sauce makes this a winner
--  honey sesame chicken
This recipe calls for 1cup of honey, feel free to use 1/2 - 3/4 and you'll still enjoy it
-- honey bourbon chicken
Contrary to it's name, there is no actual bourbon in this recipe but the taste is on point.  Like other recipes with honey this recipe calls for 1cup of honey, feel free to use 1/2 - 3/4 and you'll still enjoy it
--  crockpot falafel
This recipe cooks in about 3-4 hours so put it together during naptime and enjoy for dinner. 
--  ground beef
Brown up a couple of pounds (or 5-7lbs depending on the size of your crock) of ground beef without having to stand over the stove for an hour.  This is a great time saver for making chili, tacos, shepherds' pie or any other recipe that calls for cooked ground beef
--  20 to 40 clove garlic chicken
The amount of garlic is up to you.  I make this with drumsticks and serve with mashed potatoes drizzled with the onion/garlic juice from the bottom of the crock!
-- crockpot cranberry chicken
This is a fall favorite and quite frankly good year round so when cranberry sauce goes on sale after Thanksgiving buy a few extra cans and make some freezer kits of this meal.

Instant Pot: the new kid on the kitchen appliance block that everyone loves to rave about
-- whole porkloin with potatoes
Everyone loves a one-pot meal and this delivers in under an hour.
-- whole chicken
I skip the browning step depending on my timeline and just place the whole chicken in the pot with whatever seasoning I desire.  Definitely make sure to use the rack or else you might have a hard time getting the chicken out of the InstantPot without it falling apart!  Use the carcass to make bone broth later!
--  sausage and rice casserole 
This is my childhood favorite updated for the Instant Pot.
-- porcupine meatballs
I've adapted this recipe from my stovetop pressure cooker cookbook as well as my childhood; I can't wait to share it with you.

Make Ahead, Double and/or Freeze: a little extra work today could mean dinner for another night
-- black bean taquitos
-- meatloaf
-- shepherds' pie
-- taco meat
-- lentil empanadas

Favorite Recipe Resources
Stephanie O'Dea's A Year of Slowcooking Blog and Recipe Index
Once a Month Meals Recipe Index

In case you missed them, make sure to read my posts on Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping Strategies!

Grocery Store Strategies

This week's posts are all about food -- deciding what to make, buying it, and then making it.  Yesterday I shared my Meal Planning Tips; today is all about Grocery Shopping, tomorrow I'll share links to some of my favorite quick dinner meals!

It feels almost silly to put some of my "tips" into writing because I feel like you'll read them and say "well, duh Courtney, of course!"  BUT I didn't figure some of these things out until the past couple years and I've been grocery shopping for far longer than that so here goes...

-- Have an organized list
    Lots of folks have lists but to truly master the art of an effective and minimally stressing grocery trip you need to have a list that is actually organized.  Once I've shopped a particular grocery store long enough, I generally have a solid understanding of the layout.  So write your list based on the layout of the store.  Group things together that will be together.  If you aren't sure where something is going to be write it at the top and make sure you're always on the look out.
    A second layer to your list organization is noting any coupons you have or need to check.  I usually go through my coupons prior to my trip and pull the ones I know that I am going to use but sometimes there is an item for which I'll have multiple brand coupons (hello cereal aisle) so I need to check and see which offers me the best deal.

An organized list can save you valuable time and money in the grocery store.

-- Don't shop hungry OR dehydrated
    Not shopping hungry helps prevent those stomach growling impulse buys but I find that I need to make sure that I'm not dehydrated either.  Instead of getting hangry I get cloudy and my brain doesn't seem to work quite as well.  All of a sudden determining the cheapest item has me standing in the aisle doing fuzzy math and wondering why it is taking so long.  Another tips I learned from Melissa d'Arabian is to pop a mint or piece of gum just as you go into the store so that you have a clean taste in your mouth and you're less likely to be enticed by the aromas of the bakery, samples, etc.

-- Know your price points
    There are certain items that unless I am in absolute dire straits I will not buy unless they are at or below a certain price especially because I know that if I wait until next week or next month, said item is going to go on sale.  For example, $2/box for Nutrigrain bars is my price point.  If it is $2.71/box, unless I have a coupon, I'm not buying.  Now, when they are on sale for $2/box I stock up and buy a whole bunch [it's how we survive church service with a 2 year old!]  $1.99/lb for pork loin or porkchops is another price point.  That is the going rate at Sam's Club (which mine will cut the giant pork loin into chops for free if you ask the butcher!) so unless it is on sale for less during my usual grocery run, it's not getting bought.

-- Shop the store strategically
    Resist the urge to go right!  Grocery stores are pretty much all designed to encourage the natural inclination to go right which usually leads you straight into the produce, bakery and quick foods section.  Resist!!  Go straight for the middle aisles.  Get your canned goods, jars of sauces, boxes of cereal, toiletry items and then head into the Dairy and Eggs.  Get what you need from there and then head back toward produce along the back wall of the store.  This is most likely where all the meats are.  Grab those on the way and stack them together or place on the carriage under the basket (no leaky meat!).  Top your cart off with all those delicate produce items and then head to checkout since you'll be back near the front of the store.


That's all I got folks, I hope that you can use some of these tips on your next grocery trip to make things just a little bit less stressful!

My Meal Planning Tips

This week is all about food and what it takes to get food on the table.  For me, grocery shopping is a minimum two day process with the first step in the process being MEAL PLANNING.

I'll be honest, I didn't really start taking meal planning to heart until I had my second child and my husband was deployed for a year.  All of a sudden, I had two little people to take care of, one of whom was very needy, and I myself couldn't just get by on goldfish and chicken nuggets for a year waiting for another set of adult hands to free me for a leisured dinner prep.  I realized and began to utilize the sacred naptime for dinner prep as well as discovering a range of freezer cooking recipes.

The biggest part of planning is actually writing something down!  For me, I have found that the standard vertical monthly calendar from Printfree.com is absolutely perfect.  There is enough space to write in an entree as well as note any activities and it's a single sheet of paper which takes of little space and is easy to reference.  I think it's very important to annotate your family's activities and commitments on the meal plan because when filing in dinners you can quickly know that on Wednesday evenings you need a crockpot, scoop and serve or other quick meal so that you can eat as soon as you get home from sports practice.

Monthly calendars, a document protector and a magnetic clip make meal planning painless.

My secret weapon in meal planning calendars is that I keep them for one year (yep, a whole 12 months) in a document protector that is clipped to the side of my fridge.  That way, when November 2016 is coming around, I can pull out November 2015 and remember some of my seasonal favorites that might have been forgotten through the previous months of summer cooking.  At the bottom of the calendar I also might note recipes that interest me or that I remember from previous months so that I have them in a visual queue for the next time I'm planning meals.

There aren't really any right and wrong ways to meal plan.  For me, I like to write out at least 2 weeks worth of meals (we are fortunate to have a chest freezer and second refrigerator) so that I can really stock up when I take a trip to the grocery store.  I also schedule a vegetarian meal once per week as well as a meal that involves fish or seafood (a great meal to have the night before trash day so you don't have to worry about salmon skin or shrimp tails sitting around for too long).  Also, I try and update the  meal plan based on what we actually ate.  This helps me know that I still have a particular freezer meal available or that I didn't actually serve burgers twice in one week.  Finally, I have a mini-white board that is stuck to the front of the fridge where that week's menu is written.  This helps me immediately know what I'm serving so I can consider what prep work might need to be done as well as making sure I have meat thawed and ready to go for future meals.

What's for dinner? Look and see for yourself!

Come back tomorrow and I'll be discussing Grocery Store Strategies so that the necessary chore doesn't have to be a necessary evil!

Kids' Runs and the Daily Struggle to Set the Example

Parenting: full contact sport where an impressionable little person or persons watches, sees and emulates just about everything that you do.

Setting the example is HARD HARD HARD!  We see this all the time in the area of morals and ethics -- yep, I was speeding, didn't come to a full and complete stop, told the telemarketer that the other parent wasn't home when they are sitting right there, said I didn't have any cash on me when I just went to the ATM...the list goes on and on.

However, let me encourage you that there is one area of life that it can be easy less challenging -- Health and Wellness.  Do you want to be healthy?  Do you put a priority on working out and staying fit?  Notice: I did not say do you put a priority on being thin and beautiful.

Part of how my husband and I have chosen to help our kids in these pursuits is by involving them in our sport, running.  Kids' Run are great ways to teach the young ones that fitness can be fun and rewarding.  Sometimes they are an expense that seems a little hefty [$20 for a t-shirt and a run down the street?!] but think of the long-term dividends.  When we lived in New Mexico my kids were fortunate to have a running club at school that was sponsored through a local race organization, RunFit.  They are so proud to wear their race t-shirts and display their finisher medals and their memories are ones filled with positive associations between fitness and fun.

I'd encourage you, if you don't already have a fitness routine or if you haven't seriously considered your health and nutrition choices, consider the immeasurable investment you'd be making in not just yourself but your children.  Start by shifting your mindset, instead of saying, "I'm supposed to eat vegetables", say "I'm so glad that I get to eat vegetables to give me necessary vitamins and nutrients to be healthy and strong."  If you don't like running, try Zumba, go for a walk, watch yoga on YouTube.

It doesn't have to be expensive either!  Most nights, the vegetables on our dinner table were frozen and subsequently cooked in the microwave.  Don't feel like you have to shell out a lot of money for kids' races either.  Set up a course in your neighborhood, invite your friends and draw a sidewalk chalk finish line.  Celebrate the effort and accomplishment by your children!

Whatever you do, just be you, the healthiest YOU that you can be today because your kids want and need you, and your friends do too ;-)

Plyometrics: Explosive Jumping and Expletives

You've got to hand it to good ole Merriam-Webster for making plyometrics sound benign.

Definition of plyometrics

1. :  exercise involving repeated rapid stretching and contracting of muscles (as by jumping and rebounding) to increase muscle power

When in reality I think the secondary definition for plyometrics should be something like this

 2. : exercises where the individual is convinced to jump up and down resulting in a series of expletive laden exclamations and possible urinary leakage

Let's be real, I know plyometrics build strength and get my heart rate up quickly but I wish the schedule of classes at the gym would have an asterisk or something for those classes that involve lots of jumping. *note: wear a panty liner and come with an empty bladder*

My usual gym routine involves some sort of cardio equipment (read: treadmill) and then weights and stretching but I do like to mix it up with a solid hour of Body Pump or a Pilates class on occasion.
Last week, I gave a class called Hard Drive a try.  I should have known the use of the two-riser bench would mean plyos but I naively played along; after all, I was already in the room and by that point didn't feel like running on the treadmill.

The warm-up was a nice series of running in place, some step-ups and jumping jacks.  Nothing to be concerned about.  But then...the first round of an apparent ladder designed by the instructor to make me swear.  Burpees off the bench, jump and turn on the bench oh, and X-jacks off the bench -- seriously lady, there may be two gentlemen in the class but there is a good chance that at least 50% of the rest of us have gone through childbirth at some point and those things are just not nice!  Needless to say, I made it through the workout by pretty much doing a perpetual kegel and swearing between breathless gasps.

At least I didn't have to sneeze... ;)

Are we done yet?!?

Recipe: Instant Pot Sausage & Rice Casserole

Unless you live under a rock, you've heard of the Instant Pot.  And by heard of it, you may have heard people speaking mystically about its magical powers to have dinner on the table in 4 minutes with you not having to lift a finger.  Yes, there are many recipes that involve a 4 minute timer (this included) but there is still some work involved and the entire recipe isn't done and on the table in those four minutes.  Nonethless, I'm a big fan of the Instant Pot.  I've had a traditional stove-top pressure cooker for years and loved the many recipes and flavors I could build in it; the Instant Pot is no exception.

Today I present to you one of my all-time favorite meals.  This is the meal that my mom would always include on the menu whenever I came home from college and still manages to include when I visit.  I've been making Sausage and Rice Casserole for myself and my family for years and after I scored an 6Qt Instant Pot IP-DUO60 7-in-1 this summer on Amazon's #PrimeDay I decided it was a recipe worth converting from the oven to the Instant Pot.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Instant Pot Sausage & Rice Casserole
  serves: 4-6
  total time: ~30 minutes

Ingredients
- 1lb ground sausage
- 1.5 cups of uncooked white rice
- 1.5 cups of water
- 1 cup of Pictsweet Seasoning Blend (frozen) or fresh diced onion and celery

Directions
1. Using the Instant Pot [Saute] function, brown and crumble 1lb of ground sausage.
2. Once brown, remove sausage to a holding plate and drain any excess grease from the inner pot.  Add 1.5 cups of uncooked jasmine rice to the inner pot along with the 1.5 cups of water.
3. Carefully return the browned sausage to the inner pot.  Add the vegetables on top.
4. Lock cover into place and seal steam nozzle.
5. Press [Manual] and set the timer for 4 minutes.
6. Allow to [Keep Warm] for 10 minutes and then turn off and release the pressure.
7. Stir and enjoy!


Notes

• Save time by having a 1lb bag of sausage already cooked in the freezer.
• The Pictsweet Seasoning Blend is also a great time saver -- it's a pre-chopped, frozen blend of onions, celery, green and red peppers and parsley flakes.  Look for it with frozen vegetables.
• This recipe is very flexible, add more or less of any particular ingredient and it can flex to feed as many mouths as are at your table.  Just make sure to keep a 1:1 rice:water ratio
• This recipe can also be assembled in a traditional casserole dish and cooked in the oven, covered at 400* for about 40-45 minutes.  Increase your water to about 2 cups to account for evaporation.

#MomHacks -- Making the Most of Your Laundry Detergent

I don't know about you but bargain shopping for liquid laundry detergent can be quite mentally challenging.  Maybe I'm overthinking things but I find myself in the detergent aisle debating how to determine best value: price per load or price per ounce.

I've started defaulting to price per load since there are some super-concentrated versions about there that require teeny tiny amount of detergent to get your clothes clean.  With that being said, does that bottle of detergent actually clean the 76 or 150 loads that is claims it will or do you get some number marginally less?  Using the barely legible lines of demarcation on the bottle top to decide how much soap to use is anything but an exact science -- until now!

#MomHacks: Snappies container + rubberband = laundry detergent measurement precision

If you've given birth anytime in the last few years or so you probably have a handful of those 2oz Snappies containers lying around.  My laundry measurement #momhack is quite simple: a Snappies container and a rubber band.  Most laundry detergents will say on the back in the instructions section the actual volumetric measurement for a "normal" load by which their selling labeling is calculated (in the picture it is 1.78oz).  I place my rubber band at this mark on the Snappies container and boom we're in exact measurement business!  If you've got a particularly soiled load, fill above the rubber band line; not so dirty, obviously just use less.

Happy Laundry Days! [since we know there is never just one day of laundry]