Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Crockpot Cookery

After years without one, I purchased a crockpot last winter.  It is just a cheapy Rival that Target had on sale for $15 (normally $40) last year during the holidays.  So far the funnest thing I have made in it is tapioca pudding, but I have used it for soups mainly.

Today I found this post with some great crock pot tips from Deborah Taylor Hough's The Original Simple Mom blog.  She is also the author of the Frozen Assets: How To Cook For A Day And Eat For A Month book which I liked when I was doing freezer meals.  Talented lady.

I have been on the look out for crock pot recipes that don't say "Open a can of Cream of Chemical Soup", then add...

Any healthy crockpot recipe recommendations out there?

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Never Give Up!

So, I'm basically back to Square One!  My weight has a "set point" like a thermostat and if I don't continually exercise I go right back to that.  Exercising has been difficult since my knee injury three years ago.  The knee is better but now I have severe hip bursitis.  I have been in physical therapy twice. It works for awhile and doesn't.  All summer I've been thinking about what to do.  It is important to me to become healthier and to do my part to live as long as possible for my wonderful family that YHVH has given me late in life!  I've decided that the best thing for me to do is to jump back in to blogging.  That gives me a little bit of accountability and a way to make a commit.  So here I am.  Never give up!

In the past I have balked at meal planning, but now I think I'll give it a hand.  Because my family honors the 7th day Sabbath, my meal planning has changed some.  It takes some planning to prepare ahead of time, our festive meal for Friday night as we celebrate the beginning of Sabbath and also make one or two meals for lunch and dinner on Sabbath at home or to take with us to our fellowship/worship meeting.  And sometimes I forget about items in the refrigerator and they need to be thrown out!  Such a waste!  Planning will help reduce and hopefully eliminate this.

Today I've been looking online for some free planning calendars.  So far, I found these at The Project GirlVertex42 has a variety and if you like using Excel you can download the files there to use, OR you can use the pdf files and print them right out.  My favorite resource for homeschooling forms and calendars, Donna Young, has some options as well.

For now I am going to print out some and see which works best for me, then I'll either download and available Excel file or figure out how to make one myself.

If you have done menu planning, I would like to hear from you.  What helped?  What didn't?  Anything you would avoid, do differently, etc?