Menu Update - Tuesday

Not too badly again today. However I plan to take the stove apart tomorrow and do a thorough cleaning from top to bottom so I might be taking something out of the freezer for dinner tomorrow, that is if I get it all clean in time to use the oven. Otherwise it might be eggs or the night we pick up KFC's new grilled chicken.
Breakfast: breakfast cookie with iced coffee
Lunch: tuna salad with pork skins (didn't feel like making pita chips)
Dinner: fish with bacon & broccoli frittata ( I wanted broccoli instead of the salad)
No snacks, my meals were plenty and I wasn't hungry.
Two days down and so far sticking to my menu pretty well. Not exactly but pretty darn close.

So who wants to join me and start posting their menus? As we all know to succeed we need to plan, plan and then plan again. This is my way to make sure I plan and then follow through.

Have a good week and Bon Appetit!

Menu Challenge -Monday update

Yesterday I did pretty good. I had Scrambled eggs for breakfast
Cheese burger sans bun for lunch
And made Cranberry Roasted Pork Loin for dinner with baby snap peas with sesame
1/2 cup yogurt with a spoonful of cranberry sauce for am snack
and a breakfast cookie for pm snack because I made them today and I couldn't resist...giggle
All on my menu, all as planned not to bad for the first day.

Menu Planning

Menu planning is never easy, unless you have a good system in place. I'm still working on mine. my goal is to be able to plan out a full weeks menu using up food item I already have on hand and only having to buy a few things at the grocery, plus restock. So far I haven't gotten this down to a science, but I'm working on it.
My biggest obstacle in this challenge is me. I love to cook whatever floats my boat at the time. However, that can be very very $$$$ and wasteful. So I'm working on changing my bad habits in this area.
In order to help me plan and FOLLOW said plan I'm going to start posting my menus for each week and then do a follow up to see how well I did. Remember I'm just getting started and I'm terrible at following rules, even the ones I set for myself. But I'm trying to do better.
So here are my menus for this week.

Monday
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs w/ green onions and bacon ( which I had but no green onions)
Lunch: Bacon Cheese Burger (sans bun) with pork skins
Dinner: Pork Fried Rice and salad (I already know there will be no salad I don't have any lettuce)
Snacks: 1/2 cup yogurt with cranberry sauce

Tuesday
Breakfast: Toasted Flaxbread with cream cheese and tea
Lunch: Tuna Salad with pita chips ( I bake my own with lc pita)
Dinner: Cranberry Roasted pork roast, snap peas w/ toasted sesame seeds, sliced cucumber
Snacks: peanut butter and celery or just a few peanuts

Wednesday
Breakfast: Blueberry breakfast smoothie with flax seeds
Lunch: Left over tuna in lettuce cups
Dinner: Mexicali Chicken, refried beans and small salad
Snacks: Boiled egg and/or an oz. almonds

Thursday
Breakfast: Breakfast cookie and iced coffee
Lunch: Pizza Dip and Chips
Dinner: Parmesan Crusted Tilapia, cucumber,onion and tomato salad
Snacks: 1/2 pear and peanut butter sauce

Friday
Breakfast: Salsa Eggs with crispy ham strips
Lunch: Meatballs with veggie sticks and cheese dip (homemade not the store bought stuff)
Dinner: KFC Grilled chicken (everyone needs a night without cooking), sausage cheese stuffed zucchini ( will post recipe on my other blog later)
Snacks: Cheese stick or almonds

Saturday
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs and bacon
Lunch: Left overs
Dinner: chicken legs, chili beans and squash with onions
Snacks: 1 cup cheese popcorn (homemade) to go with a good movie

Sunday
Breakfast: Breakfast smoothie with kale and strawberries

Lunch: Chicken salad pita sandwich with cucumber slices
Dinner: Taco salad or tostadas
Snacks: Breakfast cookie or 1/2 yogurt with a spoon of s/f orange marmalade

I've made my grocery list with these foods as my goal and for the most part I have almost everything I need except veggies. I made a heavy menu so I had options in cutting it back making lighter meals and still stay within my menu. I am not going to be strict about which day I have which menu, just as long as I stick to these meals, no going to the store to make something else.

Wish me luck!

What are you doing for Mother's Day?

With mom still in the hospital we had to plan something portable so we could carry it to her. We decided at the beginning of the year, that this year there wouldn't be any birthday or mother's day presents this year.

We decided on Cranberry Porkloin with snap peas. I went ahead and made the cranberry sauce and roasted the pork roast tonight. Tomorrow I will just need to toast some sesame seeds for the peas, saute off the peas and do the final roast on the pork with the cranberry sauce on it. Then pack it all up and get it carried over. Thankfully the hospital she's in is close and allows food to be brought in and have a little family room with tables so we can be comfy while we eat. So even with her "away" we will still be able to all enjoy Mother's Day together.

So what are your plans for Mother's Day, if you have any at all.

MS OneNotes and getting organized

Life here is moving on in what has become the norm. Mom is still in the hospital with 2 and a half weeks still to go. Cindy gets up heads to work, comes home changes and the heads to the hospital with our without me in tow to visit mom. Me if I'm honest I've gotten very lazy lately at keeping the house clean. I'm trying to get myself re-organized so I can better take care of things without over doing in one day and then letting it slide til I can't stand it... which is what I've been doing.
I'm using MS Office OneNote to set myself up a cleaning schedule along with keeping my menu's with recipes and grocery list to go along with it. I just started it last night but it looks like it will be very helpful.
It also has this great little onenote window that I can jot down notes, recipes or ideas I find while reading my blogs, favorite websites etc. It's just a little window where you can jot down anything you need, then it saves it for you . So cool.
I don't know about you but I get dozens and dozens of recipe newsletters in my email everyday. I belong to freezer groups, have some of your wonderful blogs e-mailed to me and I get swamped with ideas, recipes, and thoughts while I'm reading then promptly forget all of it by the time I have pen and paper to write it all down. This is perfect. I can jot down where to find the info I might need later, recipes I want to try, things I need to pick up at the store, errands I need to run, whatever I remember or think about while I'm online. EASY PEASY as they say these days.
I can also keep a baking schedule so I can keep breakfast cookies, flaxbread and crackers made up without heating the house up everyday. If I make them all in the same day or two whether I'm out or not I can cut way back on cooling bills. Same goes for roasting meat and chicken or veggies. I can pick one or two days a week to use the oven and the rest of the week everything is stovetop.
Of course as it gets hotter oven use will more than likely come to a complete halt. But that's ok, since I'm making a baking schedule I hope to get a pretty good stash of baked goods in the freezer for summer.
I already did my big "Summer's coming" beef and chicken sessions. I have taco meat, meat with onion and garlic, hamburger patties, meatballs and stuffed pepper meat in the freezer along with a ton of roasted chicken, both dark and white meat (found a great deal on bl/sl chicken breast and roasted about 8 lbs worth.
Now I just need to roast a couple of pork loins, slow braise a couple of london broils and maybe a brisket. Then I should be in great shape for the summer heat.
Well there you have it. My newest goals for keeping organized, now if I can just stick with it. I'm so so bad about not following through after the newness wares off. Hopefully this time it will be so convenient I'll keep it up.
So how do you keep yourself organized? Do you have a plan in place or do you just wing it?
I sure miss the good old days when you just took a full weekend and everyone in the house did Spring cleaning. But somehow that just doesn't work anymore, at least not for me.
Oh yeah I nearly forgot, part of my organization plan is a surface a day. I have to de-clutter and clean one surface in my house everyday, WITHOUT moving it to another surface...giggle man it's going to be hard, this is a tiny house. But I'm up for a good challenge. First surface, kitchen table. I've been better but it's still a cluttered mess so it's the first to get my attention. Wish me luck!
Have a wonderful weekend everyone, we in for yet more rain, so Patty heads up, if you haven't gotten it yet it's heading your way. Donna I guess y'all are getting it as snow, at least I saw your video where you were. Yikes sure glad I'm down here.
Hugs to all and may God bless you richly.

What I've been up too

As most of you know, mom has had a really hard time since the valve replacement surgery in January. She came home very imbalanced with severe left side weakness. On a walker and not looking all that great. They had sent her for a week of rehab after the surgery but it wasn't enough to help her take care of herself. I spent every night up so I could help her get up to go to the rest room. She couldn't get out of bed by herself and when she walked, even with the walker she would start falling towards the left side.

First the two sides of her heart managed to become out of rhythm (arrhythmia) and had to go back in the hospital about a week after she came home. She was there for a week or so before they got it corrected. Meds didn't work they ended up having to shock her to get it back in rhythm. They put her on some new meds and sent her home. This was in February just a few days after the surgery.
Not to go on about everything, we had to take her back to the ER for the 4th time on Easter Sunday. She was so weak that morning when she got up, after having been doing much better, that I had to go help her get dressed and walk to the kitchen. She was shaking so badly I had to poor her coffee and fix her breakfast for her. Then when trying to help her walk into the living room so she could get into her chair, she fell. I just couldn't get around the walker to get in front of her in time and I couldn't hold her up with the hold I had on her from the wrong side. She fell, hit the couch , all tangled up in her walker and my crutch. I don't know what happened but when we went to help her up she couldn't move her legs or help us get her up at all. I called the kids (niece and her b/f) and they ran over and helped us get her up. She couldn't walk at all at that point or sit up without falling over. I had to sit right behind her and hold her up. She couldn't stop shaking and was freezing to death. She had been shaking and getting more unbalanced for the last week or so but nothing like this.

When they first got her into an exam room they immediately told us she had some kind of infection and the first thought was kidney. She had them before and had kidney stones removed. But even with the worst kidney infection she had never been this weak and sick and never this fast.
After 4 days umpteen test and dozens and dozens of blood test they found she had a staph infection in her blood. The major concern was that the bacteria would grow on her new heart valve and it would have to be replaced. Bless her heart she was so so sick and getting weaker all the time. They finally put in a PIC line (which is a catheter that goes from just above the elbow to just over the heart) to deliver antibiotic straight into the blood line. She has to have hour long antibiotic treatments everyday and have blood work done several times a day to monitor bacteria levels. She has to be weighed several times a day to make sure she's not gaining any fluid. Since she needed all this for the next 6 weeks she was moved to a speciality long term hospital here in Mesquite where they could care for her and monitor her progress.

She's been there for almost 3 weeks now and she's doing wonderfully. While I know you can't kill a staph infection, her blood is now bacterial free. She still has 3 weeks to go, but she's getting so much stronger. She is still on the walker but she gets an hour a day of physical therapy and an hour a day of occupational therapy.

She's just bored and being a hospital instead of a rehab center we can't check her out on Sunday to take her to church or to dinner. Everyone came to see her the first few times she was in the hospital so now no one going to see her and Cindy and I can't go everyday (most but not all). They won't let her get up and walk down the halls so she has to sit in her chair most of the day and she's bored out of her mind.

I've been trying to cook cheap and easy so not doing so well on low carb at ALL. But I'm getting back with it. No more pasta and rice (both cheap meal stretchers) but I'm keeping the beans. I just believe they have to much nutrition and fiber to stop eating and they are cheap! So the beans stay and I have a box of brown rice to use very sparingly in small amounts. Not sure I'll replace it when it's gone, but for now I'll use 1/4 -1/3 cup in a few things to help stretch them a bit farther.

Another thing I've learned over the last month is that things like rice and pasta fill me up while I'm eating much much faster than protein. I know the reason, they break down and digest much much faster than do the proteins. But in an hours I'm starving if I eat the carbs and I'm full if I eat protein. I'm hoping adding beans will help make me full faster and keep me that way. Not that I would ever want to eat beans every single day, but I have stocked up on 4-5 bags of dried beans.

Well that's what's going on with me. I'm trying to get new recipes together so I can start posting them on my other blog and get back to blogging about my day to day here.

Have a wonderful day, take care and thank you for reading!