I hope you will join me as I post about family, hobbies, health & fitness, and balancing work & home life.
Have a question you've been struggling with? Need some guidance? Ask the problem solvin' mom, and maybe I can help. If not, I'm sure one of the fabulous readers here will be able to! I'd love to hear from you - problemsolvinmom @ gmail (dot) com
Two things I'm always working on are staying active and eating healthy. I want my girls to know how important it is for them to take care of themselves - and to really understand what that means. As a Mizkan blogger advocate, I was really excited to see them launch the Nakano Splash it On, Step it Up challenge this summer. The program encourages participants to get active and make healthy choices - one of the campaign goals is to help people eat more veggies - how cool is that?!
In the pursuit of eco friendly and sustainable products, I'm so glad I was introduced to Dandelion Earth Friendly Goods. Dandelion makes several products, from feeding accessories to toys to layette items.
As I have been relentlessly attacking the "stuff" in our house in an effort to simplify and declutter, I was looking for useful and fun Christmas presents for the girls this past December. These hats (with matching rattle balls) fit the bill - who could resist the cute? Made from bamboo fibers, they are cuddly soft.
My girls love to try on hats, but rarely leave them on. Finally we have hats that the girls want to wear everywhere! Here they are, modeling their favorite outerwear in the one snowfall we've had this year...
The heat has finally set in here, and we're pulling out sprinklers, baby pools, and delicious summer treats to stay cool! The watermelon this season has been fantastic, and both girls have been regularly requesting it multiple times a day and especially for breakfast. They love to eat it sliced in wedges like this...
Who doesn't love a cold pasta salad on a hot summer day? In addition to being tasty, cool and refreshing, pasta salad is one of my secrets for providing a variety of healthy foods my entire family will love. Don't get caught up in visions of plain jane macaroni salad from the grocery deli - come up with a list of fruits, vegetables, meats and cheeses that your family likes and group them in complimentary combinations. Then come up with a dressing that is well suited to your combination- easy, right? And the combinations are endless.
The photo above is one of my girls' favorites right now - let's call it a very grape garden salad! As this is more of a method than a recipe, here are a few tips, and then a list of ingredients:
Keep ingredients small enough for little mouths, and also easy for little fingers to pick up if the fork and spoon loose their appeal. When making these salads, I often cook 2 boxes of pasta at once and make 2-3 different salads so we can rotate flavors.
In the salad above, we have peas, corn, sliced grape tomatoes, sliced grapes and shredded cheese with a poppyseed dressing.
Does your family love pasta salad? What are your favorite ingredients?
This post was written as part of the Hungry Toddler Blog Hop. Join the fun, add your linky below!
It's berry season here in the midwest, and here at the Problem Solvin' homestead we are picking strawberries and raspberries. It looks to be a promising season for blackberries as well, which is always exciting! One of my favorite quick treats with fresh berries (other than enjoying them fresh in the garden with my family) is a parfait. Easy to throw together and healthy, I love to enjoy one after the girls are in bed as I'm winding down for the day. Serving it up in a wine glass makes it extra special and helps keep my portion in check.
In this parfait, I combined roughly 1 cup of sliced strawberries with half of a cup of homemade granola and added a drizzle of warmed Dark Chocolate Dreams. I will share the granola recipe next week. Yogurt is delicious in a parfait as well, but when the berries are especially fresh I like the way they stand out against the crunchy granola.
For most of us, providing a healthy home cooked menu for our family means planning and preparation at some point. I have batch cooked and meal planned complimentary menu items in order to minimize prep work and share ingredients, but Trisha at Once a Month Mom takes meal planning to the next level. Her site provides recipe cards, grocery lists, and detailed instructions for a big day freezer cooking event each month and she recently added a whole foods option to the menu selections!
Just as exciting, she has a new ebook out - Survive Before 5: Toddler Meals for your Busy Days. Survive Before 5 provides recipes for healthy breakfasts, lunches and snacks - those pesky meals that aren't covered in the once a month menus on her website! In addition, you will find a sample calendar for organizing these meals and serving size recommendations. There are detailed plans for preparing your freezer meals as well as recipe cards, labels, and a grocery list that can be tailored to the number of children needing to be fed. One of my favorite features of the book is that each recipe includes toddler tasks. What a great way to get your little ones involved, excited, and learning. So much of our kitchen routine is method based, and that is what makes this cookbook so valuable - the methods and tips shared in these recipes can be extended to your own family favorites, making your time in the kitchen even more efficient and enjoyable.
I had a few questions about my smoothie pops come out of that guest post, so I thought I would post a few more ideas and specifics about our smoothie recipes. Here are some of the fruit combinations we go to most often:
Banana, Strawberry, Watermelon
Canteloupe, Blueberry, Peach
Blackberry, Strawberry, Banana
Pineapple, Orange
It helps to freeze one of your fruits - we grow strawberries and blackberries, so most often we use last year's crop as the "ice" to keep our smoothies cool.
To add some extra fiber and nutrition, veggies are a great addition. Two handfuls of baby spinach, a half cup of diced kale or cabbage can be added with your juice at the start into your blender, then add the remaining ingredients.
To start, try a cup of juice with your greens. Then add in a cup of fresh fruit, a cup and a half of frozen fruit. After everything is well blended, try adding a half cup of yogurt or peanut butter.
As you can see in the picture above, smoothie making is a family affair at our house! The girls love helping to choose the ingredients, and as with most foods, helping with preparation makes them more adventurous eaters and excited to try their creation.
I'll be the first to admit that my gardening style has changed dramatically since adding little ones to our family! While gardening with littles can take a lot of patience and time, it is so worth it! I love watching my girls tenderly (or not so tenderly, depending on the day) take care of their growing plants, and take a bite out of a freshly picked fruit or vegetable while dancing around the back yard. I firmly believe this experience makes them more adventurous with food, and we've been able to sprinkle learning in along the way - colors, counting, science and nature studies - as they grow the learning opportunities grow as well!
The weather here in Ohio this spring has been especially crazy - hot one day, cold the next, wind, rain, snow, etc...we've not been able to get the ground prepared to plant, so I'm starting some of my hardier plants in planters until we can transplant them in their final destinations.
The girls loved helping me dump dirt into the planters and dig around in it. Sweetpea went on a worm hunt and added a few night crawlers to our boxes, because we've been studying how worms improve the soil and help plants grow! I brought over an extra box to let the girls dig once the seeds had gone into the ground. We now have two kinds of lettuce, cucumbers, kale and collard greens ready to go! A little extra dirt and plenty of "tools" for the girls helped this adventure be fun and successful - I can't wait until we see some little plants peeking out of the ground!
By mid May we will be ready to plant tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant seedlings. I also want to plant some sugar snap peas and beans in the ground in the coming week, and look into some potatoes. Last July we were able to reduce our grocery budget to $20/wk with the bounty from our garden. I'm hoping we can do that again this year!
It has been a very long time since I've written in this space...and yet all along I was blogging in my mind - composing posts to myself in the car, while working on homework assignments or in between classes I was teaching. These past months have flown by as each day was jam packed with things that had to be done. Now I'm working on my final project of my last teaching certification program, and the teacher I was substituting for is back from materity leave. In the next month I need to refresh my memory on the details of physics and chemistry for two certification tests I take at the end of April, and then - whew! I'm sure there will be many other things taking up my time at that point, but I'm sure hoping that some of those things are items of my ever growing wish list of things to get to *at some point*.
With mother nature showing us peaks of spring here in the midwest, the flowers just starting to peek through the ground and the seed catalogs coming in earnest, this time of year always seems like the right time to do my yearly planning. I do some daydreaming about goals and the like at the start of the year, but this is when I do my serious editing and reworking. As usual, at the top of my list is being present and attending to my family before all else. In order to make the home management tasks less of a burden, I've been on a relentless quest to eliminate the unnecessary "things" in our house - little by little as I find pockets of time. We have made many a trip to the resale shop and to our local charity donation station. There is much more to do.
How do you organize your time and do your best to make time for what is most important? I've written before that what works best for me is being very clear as to what those *most important* things are...and with that, I'm going to try and share a link to my daily sheet planning page. It's a sheet I created from excel, based loosely off of SimpleMom's planner, but adjusted to meet my needs. If you're looking for a planner and can't quite find what you need, maybe you can create your personalized sheet from excel too! My next scheme for keeping everything in one place is to print a bunch of these off and have them bound at my local office supply store - a DIY planner with extra pages for all of those someday plans as well.
Anyway, it's great to see you all again - thanks for sticking with me through my "vacation" of sorts. What have you been up to?! :)
Do you love brussel sprouts? I do! If you don't, chances are you haven't had them made correctly...just like greens, they can be rich and delicious in the right recipe. I first fell in love after trying this recipe from Rachel Ray. While I still love that recipe, I like to mix things up a bit and try new flavors. Last night I wanted something with a bit of fall flavor to it, and this fit the bill just perfectly! If you are looking for a fast, frugal and healthy side dish, this is it!
The key is to start with fresh brussel sprouts. I've never been able to get the texture right with the frozen variety, and texture is so key in a dish like this. I like small to medium sprouts, so that when cut in half they are roughly bite sized. Cut off the bottom "stem" area if necessary and rinse the sprouts well. Cut them in half unless they are particularly small.
1lb brussel sprouts, small to medium in size 2 cups broth of your choice (I usually use chicken broth, but beef or vegetable is tasty too) freshly ground pepper, to taste salt (I prefer course) to taste pinch of dried mustard 1/4 tsp nutmeg 2 tablespoons apple butter
Heat a pan on medium high with a tablespoon of olive oil. Place the sprouts in the pan so that they are in roughly a single layer. Allow them to cook a minute or two to caramelize before stirring. While you're waiting, add the salt and pepper. Stir the sprouts and add the mustard, nutmeg, apple butter and broth. Cover, reducing heat to low. Cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste one to make sure they are cooked to your preferred texture, and serve!
This amount of brussel sprouts will likely serve eight to ten people - great for holidays, parties, or leftovers!
I saw these simple and darling cupcakes at Hoosier Homemade the other day (okay a few weeks ago, so I'm just getting around to all things Halloween!) and I knew I wanted to let Sweetpea try her hand at them. Our icing was a bit soft to stand up like I wanted them too, but they are still cute, don't you think? We had to use yellow for the eyes, because "yellowismyfavoritecolor!" and she thought this ghost just had to have a nose too! :)
These "cupcakes" are actually sweet potato muffins, which I shared at Amy's Finer Things a while back. They are a great healthy muffin, and with a little frosting they taste sweet enough that my husband eats them (that is saying a lot, trust me!).
Now Sweetpea likes these muffins without icing, but just in case you wondered if she liked these little ghosts -after she finished eating this one tonight she said, "mommy, I look silly! Take my picture..." And so I did!
Do you find yourself dreading workouts, cheating on your diet, or feeling like the healthy changes you've made aren't something you can live with long term? It's often much easier to get excited at the start of a healthy lifestyle change, but there are tricks to motivating yourself when your motivation starts to fizzle. Here are my top five ways to stay motivated:
1. Commit to it! So often, getting started is the hardest part. When starting a program, set a minimum time frame to stick with it before giving up or moving on to something else. This goes for individual workouts as well - when I really don't feel like working out, I make a deal with myself that I will work out for ten minutes, and then I can stop if I want to. Most times I keep going, but sometimes I do stop, and that's okay!
2. Reflect on your reasons for starting this journey when you're feeling down or discouraged. Is there someone in particular you want to be healthy for? Is there something you really want to do? Keep these inspiring thoughts close at hand - the fridge is a good place for them, actually, or the front door...a vision board or inspirational quotes posted in several locations can't hurt!
3. Remember your workouts are built in "me time" to care for yourself, decompress and/or get out some aggression. I find my workout time to be a great brainstorming opportunity, and I often text myself ideas I don't want to forget!
4. Treat yourself to little indulgences that are especially for during or post workout. (or at the end of a day when you've eaten particularly healthily!) I have special body wash and lotion that are reserved exclusively for my gym bag, and I hold back my favorite magazine to read while I'm on the elliptical machine.
5. Measure your success - if you find numbers or progress especially motivating, then be sure to track your success. This can be with the scale, a measuring tape, or the way your clothes feel. Don't get too tied to the numbers, however, remember to keep track of your energy level, sleep habits, and general mood, which should all improve as well!
Hi everyone, I'm Buffee, from The Truth According to Buffee. Today I'm guest posting for Steph while she's on vacation celebrating her anniversary! At least I think that's why I'm here? Anyway, Steph was looking for guest posters and I volunteered! I made her give me suggestions on what she wanted me to post about. She requested something fall related, maybe a craft or recipe of some sort.
I decided to go with the easy (obvious) choice and post a recipe! I typically post one recipe a week on my blog. Every Thursday I link up with my sissy, Brandee, over at Think Tank Momma for her Share A Spoon.
I love the fall. It's my favorite time of year. I love the changing of the leaves, the colors of fall, football, the smell of spice in the air, the cool temperatures, the festivals, anything and everything to do with the fall! Especially pumpkins! I really enjoy going to the pumpkin patch and carving jack-o-lanterns. I love making and eating pumpkin recipes. There's just so much I love about the fall. Today's recipe is a simple one. Most all of my recipes are. My mom taught me how to make these. I believe she learned the recipe while attending Weight Watchers. So yes, it's easy, delicious, and healthy! What more could a girl ask for? Chocolate? You got it! I added mini chocolate chips to give it a little something more! (Yes, I'm cool like that, uh huh uh huh)!Mini chocolate chip pumpkin muffins 1 box Spice Cake mix1 15 oz can of pumpkin1 6 oz container of vanilla yogurtabout 3/4 cup of mini chocolate chipsPreheat oven to 350 degrees.In a large bowl combine cake mix, pumpkin, and yogurt. Stir until completely combined. Fold in chocolate chips ( I never measure them, I just pour some in until it looks like enough). If you don't like chocolate and pumpkin together, just omit them. They're great without them too! Spoon mixture into lined mini muffin tins. (I use a nifty cookie scoop to do this. It makes this job so EASY). Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. That's it! It's that easy! I bake these every fall and take them to work. Everyone always loves them! I hope you'll try them out and enjoy them too! Thanks for having me Steph!
A meze is a small dish, served as a collection of appetizers before the main course in a Mediterranean meal. In Turkey, for example, they keep on bringing plates after plates of these mezes and you get to taste small portions of each with fresh bread. Mezes are an important part of the culinary experience as you sit down with family and friends, enjoy the conversation and of course the delicious food! It’s not that you overeat – even though you are tempted to – because the quantities are small and each meze is shared by everyone on the table. Different types of cheese, olives, pickles and meats are presented in a huge variety of mezes. Eggplant based dishes are quite popular as mezes, they can be made easily and they taste delicious!
Recently, we started a small vegetable garden in our backyard. We planted three Japanese eggplants, and now that they are bearing fruit, we have been making some of our favorite eggplant dishes including mezes. It is amazing to see these eggplants grow starting out from the beautiful purple flowers. Here are a few pictures of these eggplants and the twins having fun with them!
Anyway, here is an eggplant meze recipe one of our friends recently made for a party:
Ingredients
2-3 eggplants, peeled and cut into cubes
2 tomatoes, crushed in a food processor
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
Salt, black pepper, red pepper to taste
1 cup heavy cream
3-4 olives
Method
Add eggplant cubes to a large pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Add warm water if needed, until eggplant cubes are soft and cooked well. Remove from the pot and rinse off excess water in a colander. Mash the cooked eggplant in a plate until it turns into a mushy mix.
Add olive oil to a pan on medium heat. Add garlic and crushed tomatoes and mix well. Cook on low-medium heat until soft, stirring occasionally. Add eggplant, salt, pepper and fold in with a spatula to mix well. Add in the heavy cream and allow it to cook a little more until absorbed. Remove from the pan, garnish with olives.
Serve warm or cold.
By the way, did you know that eggplant is actually a fruit, although it is cooked like a vegetable. Check out a few interesting facts about eggplant and another one of our favorite recipe for a grilled eggplant and yogurt salad.
Convenience foods are particularly tempting during a hectic day, but many of them aren't very nutritious. The ones that are nutritious are generally pretty expensive. If you want to provide nutritious food to your family, the natural answer is to control what goes into that food by cooking it yourself, but that can be time consuming and at times overwhelming. Here are five tips to help streamline your "convenience" foods, which I generally think of as snack foods, but which could also be a previously prepared meal.
1. Bulk/Batch cooking - is it nearly as easy to double or triple the recipe, rather than make a single batch? If so, make extra for the freezer or pantry and save yourself some time down the road. There is nothing like laying out a frozen meal on a particularly busy day or reaching into the pantry for a stored snack before running out the door to an appointment.
3. Process & Prepackage - take some time to clean and chop or assemble your snacks that don't require cooking so that they are ready to go when you need them. Packaging them in the size and container that you will want them in will allow you to grab and go.
4. Presentation - speaking of packaging, are you suspicious that certain family members like certain snacks as much for their presentation as their taste? Does your son or daughter always ask for the Dora pasta or Spongebob fruit snacks? In this case, try and use branding in your favor by providing a cute reusable snack bag or placing fun stickers on your containers.
5. Share - whether it's tips, recipes or an actual food swap, sharing resources makes things easier for everyone. If you have friends with similar tastes, try coordinating a play date where the kids entertain each other (or play with one parent) while the others make meals for everyone to take home!
Do you eat convenience food on a regular basis, occasionally or almost never? What tricks do you use to maximize the amount of homemade food in your diet?
I struggle more with my menu now that I'm home and we are eating here so often. I think that's kind of silly, since I always packed my lunches...anyway, I'm trying to be more thoughtful about breakfast and lunch. This week I'm going to list a few things that we'll have on hand, and if that works I'll try and stick to it!
Dinners Monday: Chicken and Noodles, biscuits Tuesday: Hamburgers, sweet potato fries and green salad Wednesday: Sweet & Sour Chicken and rice with roasted vegetables Thursday: Leftover buffet Friday: Tuna Salad wraps and caprese salad
Berry Nutty Oatmeal One handful of almonds (or your favorite nuts) 1/4 cup dried cranberries 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (or pure pumpkin) 1 tsp vanilla 1 dash cinnamon 1 small squirt honey (optional) Cook oatmeal as directed, and enjoy!
We use old fashioned oatmeal, and one of these days I want to try soaking my oatmeal, but so far I haven't taken the time. I will do it this week and report the results next Monday! :)
What's on your menu this week? What are your favorite lunch choices? (I could use some inspiration...)
One of my very first blogging buddies asked me a few weeks ago if I was interested in trying some Nakano Rice Vinegar. I love cooking with good vinegar, for the bold taste it imparts when I'm cooking light healthy meals, so I was excited to try it.
Nakano makes natural and seasoned rice vinegars, all of which are fat, gluten, and preservative free. Their rice vinegar is also low in calories and lower in sodium than other rice vinegars - by 50%! The available flavors are Original, Roasted Garlic, Basil & Oregano, Red Pepper, Pesto, Balsamic Blend and Italian Herb.
I received a bottle of roasted garlic vinegar, and at first I was a little bit nervous about the garlic flavor - I could smell a hint of it even before I opened the seal - would it over power my food? Would my mother get within six feet of me after having cooked with it?
I put my fear aside and began looking through the recipe booklet that was included. While all the recipes looked tasty, the tropical chicken looked and sounded amazing, and I had all the ingredients in my kitchen. I made a few modifications to the original recipe, mainly because we were grilling the next day and with the oppressive heat of summer still clinging on (I know those of you who live where it really gets hot are laughing at me, go ahead, I know I'm a wimp!) I didn't feel like roasting chicken inside. I combined all the ingredients and let everything marinate overnight.
Not only was this dish easy, it was delicious! The flavor was rich, tangy and slightly sweet, definitely something I could imagine eating on vacation. I will definitely be making tropical chicken again and again. In case you would like to try it, here is the recipe:
Tropical Roast (or grilled) Chicken
1/4 cup Nakano Seasoned Rice Vinegar (Roasted Garlic flavor) 1/4 cup orange marmalade 1.5 Tbsp minced ginger (I keep my ginger frozen, and use a microplane as a quick and easy way to "mince" ginger!) 1 Tbsp minced garlic (since the microplane is out, may as well grate that garlic clove too!) 1 Tbsp dark toasted sesame oil 1/2 tsp each salt & paprika 4 chicken legs (or boneless skinless breasts)
If you're going to grill the chicken, I would suggest pouring everything together in a gallon sized storage bag and letting it sit in the refrigerator overnight. If you would prefer to roast the chicken, preheat your oven to 375. Brush both sides of your chicken liberally with the glaze and arrange on a roasting rack. Bake 20 minutes in the upper portion of your oven. Brush again with remaining glaze and continue baking 15 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.
Now that I had tried one recipe, I was intrigued. I went to the recipe section of the Mizkan website and looked around, and now I have several more recipes bookmarked to try. I can especially see myself using these vinegars in dressings and glazes with vegetables and salads.
Would you like to win a Nakano prize pack, including a $25 Gift Card, 1 bottle of seasoned vinegar and a coupon/recipe booklet? If so, visit the NAKANO website and tell me what Splash tip is your favorite.
For extra entries, you can do any of the following, and leave me a separate comment letting me know:
This giveaway will close at midnight on September 27, and a winner will be randomly selected. I was provided with compensation and a bottle of Nakano Rice Vinegar for this review, but the opinions provided are strictly my own. For more information, please visit my disclosure policy.
Motherlove has been providing quality herbal products to pregnant and breastfeeding mothers now for 20 years! Made with organic ingredients and without artificial fragrances or petroleum based additives, you can feel confident using Motherlove products for yourself and your babies.
I recently had the chance to try the Green Salve and what a blessing it was this summer when the mosquitoes came to visit. I kept it handy to spread over bug bites, scrapes, and the occasional rash, it did a good job of comforting the itches and ouches. It has definitely earned a place in this mama's medicine cabinet.
After enjoying the green salve, I went back and looked at what other products Motherlove had to offer. I am definitely going to pick up some birth & baby oil with my next purchase - lavender scented and gentle enough for mama and baby's dry skin, it is also recommended for cradle cap, which is something we occasionally need to deal with.
One lucky reader will win some green salve and some birth & baby oil of their own!
To enter this giveaway, visit the Motherlove site and let me know what product is your very favorite.
For extra entries, any of the following will provide you an extra entry. (be sure to leave a separate link for each!)
Post about this giveaway on your website or facebook page
Tweet about this giveaway, or any of the other giveaways going on this week, and leave a direct link.
Our garden has been a tomato producing machine this year, and we couldn't be happier! I've long said a fresh garden tomato is like a taste of sunshine! Though it gets a bit tiresome to pick 50 - 100 tomatoes a day (not counting the cherry tomatoes) it is wonderful to have such healthy, tasty goodness to eat each day, to share, and to store up for the cold winter months.
Here are some of my favorite ways to eat tomatoes, in case you're craving them, or maybe looking for a little variety. (and maybe sprinkle on a little oregano for good measure!) Caprese salad Sliced with cottage cheese Sliced and sprinkled with goat cheese, herbs & a drizzle of olive oil Gazpacho Ribollita Cherry tomatoes sauteed on medium high until they "pop", then reduce heat & caramelize Pasta e Fagioli Stuffed with chicken or tuna salad Roasted with eggplant, squash, olive oil, herbs & crusty bread (all together in a casserole dish!) Nestled between a piece of crusty bread, a slice of cheese, under the broiler
How do you like your tomatoes? What is your favorite variety?
Have a few too many cucumbers, or just looking to take advantage of the abundance of them this time of year? I love cucumbers any which way, but also enjoy mixing things up a bit. Lately there has been a container of cucumber and onion salad in the fridge just about every day of the week. Sweet and sour, cool and refreshing, it is especially delicious when the Vadalia onions are available.
This is an especially easy recipe. You may want to play around with it a bit to find your preferred balance of sweet and sour - I started at allrecipes as I often do, and adapted from there.
Prep and slice cucumbers and onions thinly - I like a 3:1 ratio or thereabout of cucumbers to onions
Bring equal parts vinegar, water, and sugar to a boil in a saucepan. Make enough of the liquid to cover your veggies. While hot, pour over the vegetable mixture. Let everything marinate for an hour or more. I prefer to make this far enough ahead that it's cold, but room temperature is fine too.
Enjoy!
I had this salad while we were on vacation last week with a bit of crushed red pepper flake. If you like spicy, it was a nice addition.
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