A Basket

I love to watch my girls play together.

It's the sunshine to my life.

My girls have a pretty cool playroom. It's filled with a train table with an elaborate collection of Thomas the Train trains, a Dora kitchen, a puppet theater, and an impressive collection of toys we've accumulated over the past 4 years. There are puppets, puzzles, play food, and pretty much half of a Toys R US down there, but their favorite toy?

A basket and a little imagination.

They use it as a bed and put pillows and blankets and pretend that one another are the royal Queen. They pretend that it's a race car and push the other one down the hall as fast as they can. It morphs into a cave some days and a good hiding spot on other days. A platform to stand on when they win a gold metal; their (and by their, I mean mostly Riley because Raigan just follows along with her big sis) creativity never ceases to amaze me. I'm proud of their creativity and ability to think outside the basket.

"Girls, it's probably not a good idea to play with the basket on the bed, one of you could fall off."

"Can I sit on it, Mom?"

"No, I just don't want you  guys to fall down and get hurt. You could easily fall off the basket with it up there."

"Like this, Mom?"


"Yes, Riley, just like that."

"Like this, Mom?"

"Yeah, Raigan, just like that."

 (as you can see from the pictures, I was closely supervising behind a camera lens)

Easy as...

pie? Nope. Easy as chicken.

I love chicken. When I was a vegetarian for years, it was the chicken that I missed most.
I love chicken and I love simple.
I love honey and mustard too, and salt.

So here is the yummiest chicken recipe made with all things I love:

It's 4 simple ingredients

*Chicken breast (after watching Food Inc, I try to buy organic free range whenever possible)

*Yellow Mustard

*Honey

*Salt

Your portions of meat should  be the size of your palm. My husband and I usually share a chicken breast, Riley will eat a small portion of mine, if we're lucky, and Raiggie, she isn't quite there yet, close, but not there. I sometimes make more to have leftovers, but not very often, because unless Brandon takes them for lunch the next day, they just sit in our fridge till I get around to cleaning it out.

You preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Put a chicken breast(s) in a shallow pan or baking dish (I use aluminum foil because it makes clean up easier).

Cover the chicken breast(s) with a good squirt of honey and a good squirt of mustard. Sorry if I'm being too technical here. haha

Sprinkle with a small dash of salt.

Pop it in the oven for an hour, baste the chicken a few times throughout with the honey mustard glaze, and.....

voila! Honey mustard chicken breast.

A Tutorial on Tofu

I just asked Raigan if she wants me to do a tutorial on tofu and she went crazy in baby babble. So I guess I will, because she's the boss.

I made a resolution at the beginning of the year to live more simply. I'm struggling with it, and working on it daily every once in awhile. I try to double up on things., do them when I think about them so I don't forget or have to spend time even remembering that I had to do them.

I use the same logic with feeding my children. I'm very much interested in nutrition and establishing good eating habits in my children. On the otherhand I still need it to be simple and easy, because there is too much in my life is not simple and easy.

Tofu is a great choice in the meat and bean group. What the heck is tofu? I used to wonder the same thing. Tofu is soybean curd, there are many types, consistences, and it's been around awhile. I'm trying to keep this simple.See? I'm working on it.

Tofu is a great alternative to meat because it contains little fat, and little to NO cholesterol, which is huge when trying to find protein. Tofu is super rich in protein, iron, and calcium. It contains Omega 3s, which lower the bad cholesterol and raise the good. It's got a pretty big bang for it's buck.

Tofu doesn't taste gross either like kale some other healthy foods that are high in vitamins and minerals. In fact tofu doesn't really taste like anything. At least when it's by itself. Tofu is like a sponge, it soaks up whatever flavors you want it to, so you can marinate it to whatever you like. I'm talking baby food talk though here, so there is no need to season it, because babies don't yet know too much about seasoning yet.

My point from all this:

Tofu as a baby food is a great idea. It's very simple, easy to make, soft already for baby, and packed with nutrition. Babies can start eating proteins at around 8 months.

What you need:

Hungry baby? 

 Check.

Package of extra firm tofu?

 Check.

There are all different kinds of tofu for different things, but in my opinion extra firm is best for baby food.

Drain the fluid off of the block of tofu.

Place the block of tofu on a towel or paper towel...

and wrap it up.

The goal is to press out as much of the moisture as you can.

Use pressure from your hand or put a book on top and push down on the book.

Once you've squeezed the heck out of it cut it into tiny little cubes for the babe.

And serve. Easy as tofu pie!

Since tofu is bland I fed this to my little Raiggie with applesauce.

I couldn't shovel it in fast enough so she was grabbing some herself in between bites.

Disclosure: I am not a Registered Dietitian. This is not professional advice. I'm just a mama wanting to feed her kids well while living simply.

Budgeting

Hub and I have been trying to be better with our money and my first trip to the store with a strict budget in mind didn't go so well... I was halfway through the aisles and realized oh no, this is probably already over my budget. In the past going to the store, I have always been a little conscious about what I was buying. I always used coupons, bought the sale items, and only bought a few of those "I don't need this at all" items. I have never brought a calculator or have worried about not having enough money. I'll bring a calculator next time. I brought $80 tonight to go to the store for this week, I brought cash so that it would be easier to stick to. When I went up to the register I honestly had no idea how much it was going to cost. I went over $33.44 and ended up using my bank card for the rest. I'm such a cheater. haha What I should be doing is meal planning, I think it would save us a lot on time, money, and wasted food. Guess that will be a thing to tackle for next Sunday.

Goodbye Cable

I have been on a mission all year I have wanted to be on a mission all year, as it was one of my new years resolutions to live more simply. I have been struggling, as most do, to live this way. I love shopping, I love little girl clothes, clothes for myself, make up, things for our home, and on and on and on.  Yesterday though, I am proud to say that I did NOT let the cable lady talk me into keeping cable when I called to cancel it, as she honestly has three times previously by using their sale skills like magic. I stood my ground. Our conversation went a little something like this.

"Thank you for calling Name of the Cable Company, this is Name of the lady, how can I help you?"

"Hi, I was calling to pay my bill and to also cancel a service."

"Ok, I can help you with that."

......

"And you said you would like to cancel a service?"

"Yes, I would like to cancel the cable service."

"Ok, is there anything wrong with the service."

"No, we just don't need it."

"Ok, will you be going with a different company?"

How coy haha

"Nope."

"Ok, well there are some simpler services that would be much cheaper than what you have now."

We have the HD, million channels that you don't need, service that no one with a job or anything going on in their life would be able to humanly watch to justify the cost.

Be strong Meg, you can tell them no! I told myself.

"No, I would just like to cancel."

"We could give you basic serivces for only $13 a month, would you be interested in that?"

I started to sweat. Just say no, just say no.

Yes, I realize how sad it is that I let the cable company lady talk me into this so many times before... and that saying no to them is such a challenge. It's sad because I have become so dependent on that darn dvr and it's convenient commercial fast forwarding abilities.

"No, I would just like to cancel all together."

"Ok, well we're sorry to see such a long time loyal customer go, if you need our services again we would be glad to have you back."

Victory. Sigh. 

One simple step towards living simpler. And hopefully to many more productive hours, family time, and less hours for my poor toddler to log of commercials. It will be nice too to have that extra money.