Magnetic Menu Planning

I love to cook. I don't even mind cooking dinners night after night for my family. What I don't like is trying to think of what to cook. I always seem to draw a blank or can only think of the meals which I have cooked over the past couple of nights. I used to be great at menu planning (I would plan my meals for a month at a time) but these days, I just never seem to have the time to sit still long enough to menu plan. And so I went in search of a solution ....

I tried to plan my meals just one week at a time and decorated a gorgeous menu board for my kitchen where I could write the meals onto the glass. Simple, easy to change, should have worked a treat ... but it didn't. I often found myself trying to quickly plan my menu before I went grocery shopping and I struggled to think of dinners to cook.

Enter Pinterest (source of many fabulous ideas) and I saw a Magnetic Menu Planner. Now this was just the solution I had been looking for. The idea was to make up magnets of all the meals you like to cook and then just arrange them on your fridge into a meal plan. Perfect. So here is my interpretation ...

If you are at a loss as to what to include at this point, ask your family for their favourites or for meals you haven't cooked in a while. The other thing you could try is just to keep a record of what you cook over the next couple of weeks and use this as your base. I did both of the above and then made sure I added a magnet for Eating Out, MamaBake Meals (I will tell you all about these another day), Freezer Meals (I often cook in bulk), Try A New Recipe and Take Away.

I designed my magnets using Story Book Creator Plus which is a fabulous digital scrapbooking program from Creative Memories. I use it for lots of projects around the house. Then I printed them on cardstock, laminated the little cards and then placed self-adhesive magnets on the back. You could do something similar with post-it notes if you don't want to go all out with the magnets.

This is what the finished product looks like. I can now easily plan 3 weeks worth of menus in a matter of minutes. It is easy to move meals around and to add new meals.

Many thanks to the lovely Sarah for making me the weekly grid to place my magnets onto and for lending me her laminator today when mine started smoking!!! True - one of the little cards went in and didn't come out. And to Jill from www.controllingmychaos.com for the original idea. I love it.

Mmmm Cookies

With the 3 big girls off at school I am relishing the extra time I seem to have everyday. I feel like I am finally getting on top of some of my organising projects (though there are many, many more to go) and happily, I have so much more time to get into the kitchen. I am really enjoying rediscovering some of the recipes I have not cooked in some time, especially many that my mum used to make for my sister and I when we were at school.

Aren't we cute? We were about 9 and 6 at the time. And check out that wallpaper and carpet. My Dad loved to wallpaper; we had it in every room in the house.

So, without further ado, my Mum's recipe for Coconut Cookies.....

120gm butter (use butter not margarine)

1 1/4 cup self raising flour

1 cup sugar

1 egg

desicated coconut

Melt butter. Mix flour, sugar, egg and melted butter together. Roll into small balls and then roll in coconut. Bake in preheated 180C oven for about 15 minutes or until light golden brown.

Recipes makes 3 dozen cookies. (And they are delicious!) Note: There are actually 6 dozen cookies here - with 6 of us, one batch never seems to last very long.

Oh and just so you can really imagine me as a school age child, I found this photo of myself from Grade 1. (circa 1981)

To Market, To Market

I have been spending part of this week trying to get my head around the family budget. And I am quickly coming to understand why I did not choose accounting as a career; it would seem that numbers really are not my forte. But I digress. One of the largest numbers on our budget is our grocery bill. So my plan is to shop and cook smarter this year and see if I can't make some of those numbers just a little (or maybe even a lot) smaller.

And so to market I went. More specifically, the Queen Victoria Markets.

The fruit and vegies at the market are so fresh and even better, they are so much less expensive than the supermarket or the fruit & veg shops. With prices ranging from 25 - 75% off what you would usually pay how could you go wrong?

This is all the lovely fruit and vegies I bought ... 12 x new season apples, 6 x oranges, 600gm strawberries,  7 x bananas, 5 x  plums, watermelon, 3 x capsicums,  500gm beans, mushrooms, 4 x zucchinis, 3 x broccoli heads, cucumber, 2 bunches of asparagus, 2 bags of baby carrots, 4 x leeks, 5kg potatoes, 3 x sweet potatoes and 1.5kg onions. This huge pile of produce cost me a grand total of $50.

The meat prices and quality are just as good. 2kg of premium mince for $10, lamb loin chops $9.99kg, porterhouse steaks $13.99kg. Today I spent $107 on meat and I have enough for 17 meals : 5 mince, 2 beef strips, 3 porterhouse steaks, pork chops, 4 lamb loin chops, kebabs and hamburgers. That's an average of $6.70 per meal on quality meat.

So now I have done the shopping and the packing, I think I deserve a rest. For tomorrow, I cook. 

Favourite Storybooks

Josie and I have been enjoying our time together now that all the big girls are at school. We have lots of plans for the days ahead but our favourite time of day is snuggling up on the lounge to read books together. Josie likes to choose and her choice is invariably the same each day (in fact, often more than once each day!)  This is her current favourite ... "Are You My Mummy?" Josie loves to 'read' the words she knows from the story and she loves the happy ending.



Over the past few years, I have learnt many of our books off-by-heart. Each of my girls has had a few favourites that we have read again and again and again. There are days where I would give anything for a new title but the girls' enjoyment of this same story never seems to dwindle. And truth be told, when they have eventually moved on, I have missed those special books we shared together day in and day out.

Favourite Recipe : Banana Bread

I've been back in the kitchen again today cooking one of my favourites: banana bread. This is such an easy recipe and the girls love it. I always make several loaves as one in our house lasts only a matter of minutes! It is also a great one for school lunchboxes as it freezes really well. I slice it before freezing and then it is just as simple as popping a slice in the toaster to defrost and warm or turn it up a little for crispy bread.

BANANA BREAD
2 bananas
1 1/4 cups self-raising flour
1 tspn cinnamon
20gm butter (or margarine)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup milk

Mash bananas. Sift flour. Add other ingredients and mix. Do not overmix - batter should be lumpy. Cook in a loaf tin in a hot oven 200C for approx 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Back to school cooking

Well the girls have returned to school and Miss 5 has navigated her first day of Prep successfully. Now to get myself organised for school lunches ...

This is one of my (and the girls) favourite slice recipes. The basic recipe is the same but with a few ingredient changes, you have 2 different slices. It is great for school lunch boxes and you can freeze it (although mine never makes it to the freezer). The girls also like that they can make it almost on their own (I just supervise the melting).

WEETBIX SLICE
150gm butter
4 crushed weetbix (1 cup of weetbix)
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup coconut
2 tablespoons orange juice

Mix dry ingredients well. Melt butter and add orange juice. Add to dry ingredients. Press into greased 28cm x 19cm tin. Bake at 180C for approx 20 minutes. Ice with orange or lemon icing while still warm. Cut into squares.

CHOCOLATE WEETBIX SLICE
185gm butter
4 crushed weetbix
1 cup self raising flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup coconut
1 1/2 dessertspoons cocoa

Make as above. Ice with chocolate icing.

I would love to know what great recipes you use for school lunches and snacks. I will post a couple more of my favourites over the next few days. Enjoy .....

Thought I would sneak in a photo of the girls on their first day together.  Happy days.

My New Favourite Product....

As I was browsing the aisles of OfficeWorks recently, I made an exciting discovery. Wait for it ..... photo size sticker paper! You have no idea of all the uses I can think up for this magnificent product. I was honestly dizzy with excitement.

First on my list was printing up my own icon stickers for my calendar. This is especially helpful for those things that have to be written on repeatedly ... like the girls calisthenics classes. Not only will I not have to write the child's name and class time over and over each month, I have also colour coded them (of course!!!) so I can see at a glance who is doing what on any given day. Brilliant.

I can see me going through a fair few sheets this year. And stay tuned for some of the other ideas I have for these sticker papers. Happy happy joy joy. (It doesn't take much to make me smile.)