Quick Smoothie Tip for Quicker, Healthier Smoothies!

Quick Tips for Yogurt Smoothies!

Strawberry Blueberry Yogurt Smoothie

Hey guys, sorry I didn't post on Friday, but we didn't even get groceries until late last night.  Being down to one car and Patrick working full-time, plus some, has greatly hindered my errand running.  This is actually somewhat good for our budget, bad for keeping food in the house!

Anyway, one of our favorite things to have for breakfast or snack time are smoothies.  I want the kids to keep yogurt in theirs, but they tend to not want to bother.  They end up with milk, frozen fruit and protein powder.  That, and more often than not, they end up with more fruit than anything.  For those on a tight budget, you know that fruit can get expensive, and we need to make it last.

This is what I use to get the yogurt in there!:)

So, the other day I made myself some strawberry protein yogurt (just plain, unsweetened yogurt, strawberries, blueberries and some protein powder.  And I made WAY too much.  This gave me a great idea.  When the kids were babies, I always pureed our food in a blender for them.  I then froze the puree in ice cube trays, leaving me with perfect serving sizes for a baby.  I thought this would be a perfect way to ration out the fruits and make sure the kids were getting some yogurt, too!

Blend the whole container of yogurt, strawberries and blueberries, some liquid stevia for sweetener.  I also added some vanilla protein powder.

I don't happen to have ice cube trays (but I'm going to get some now!), but I poured the rest of my yogurt in ziplock bags and told the kids these were our new smoothie cubes.  Now all they have to do is take some smoothie cubes, add some milk and blend away.  For moms with little ones, it can make smoothie time quicker for you too.

Tada!  I froze them in thin layers in ziplock bags, so one good knock on the edge of the table and it breaks apart for the blender!

Oh!  And a money saving tip... if you can find overripe bananas at your store (I've gotten a 5# bag for less than $1.50 before!) you can take them home, peel and chop into thick slices and freeze in zip lock bags... or, like I mentioned today, puree them with protein powder and yogurt for future smoothies.

*I say "protein powder" often, when, although I use extra protein powder, we use a raw, organic meal replacement powder for our kids snacks or breakfast.  Since we simply can not afford organic all the time, it is nearly impossible in this day and age to get enough nutrition out of our food.  This is not a typical diet meal replacement with artificial sweeteners and sugars, so read your labels.  I do NOT recommend feeding your children 'diet' foods or any meal replacements with artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup or refined sugars.

Another great thing to add to smoothies is spinach, bee pollen and if you're not using yogurt already, probiotics are great as well.

Oh!  And in a "Why didn't I think of this before" moment, my freezer is SO much more useful now, since stuff isn't falling out every day!

Dollar Tree baskets and I'm good to go.  One for fruit, one for veggies!

Have a great week!  I'll see you next week with a video on juicing and possibly wheat grass juicing too, if all goes well!

Tulsa Snow Storm Anyone? Easy Handmade Snow (or sandpile) "scoop"

So, for those of you who have spent some of the last week unexpectedly snowed in, I I found a quick and easy "shovel" for your kids to play in the snow with.  I used to make these for the snow pile... but they work just as well in snow.  You can also just cut the bottom off straight and have a "brick" mold for igloos!

 Take your liquid laundry soap jug, use a sharp knife, cut like so:

Make sure to clean up any sharp edges, they can go play in the snow without trying to manhandle a big shovel!

You can make a lesson out of it and the kids can have a blast building a REAL igloo:

Or, if you're too cold to go outside, save up used jugs and build an inside version!

Getting Kids to Help Clean (w/ a Good Attitude) because Clean Eating can be messy!

With all this home cooking from scratch has come MORE MESS.  And yet our house is cleaner than its been in years.  Why?  First off because I have more energy than I've had in years.  I'm sleeping better, waking up ready to GO, and that hasn't happened in... as long as I can remember!  Healthy food makes such a huge difference!!

We've also changed the way we do chores for the younger girls (10 & 12)  They have the dishes job this month.  Three or four times a day, we set the timer for ten minutes and they have to work.  For some reason I can't begin to fathom, this makes everything tolerable for them.  They work faster than they do normally, and the entire kitchen is staying clean.  Even with all the extra baking/cooking going on every day.  I think it REALLY helped for them to realize HOW MUCH GETS DONE in ONLY ten minutes.  The first time the timer went off and they looked around to see just how many dishes they'd washed and rinsed... it was amazing.  AND OUR DISHWASHER IS BROKEN!!!  Amazing.  I love it.  Good attitudes abound, because even they don't get grouchy over a measly ten minutes!

It doesn't work as well with the boys because Jaedin moves at the speed of SMELL.  He is the slowest person I've ever seen.  Seriously, the boy moves in slow motion.  Doing pretty much anything.  And Kainan... just isn't that motivated.

Refried Beans from Dried Beans

Refried Beans

Here are the ingredients we used today (and if anyone has some suggestions for the canned item replacements, that's great, but this time I just didn't have time to go hunting for all the fresh ingredients after having been sick for a week, so canned it is:(

I usually use beef broth if its needed, but I forgot to buy it because I forgot I needed it so it wasn't on my list.  I hope to get better at that part:)

The pain about dried beans is that they need to soak for a long time.  You can simmer them on the stove for a shorter period of time, but I generally just cover them with water (a LOT of water, they expand a lot, especially when they're cooking!) and leave them in a covered bowl overnight.  

Then I cook them on the stove with some chopped onions and a little garlic, checking on the water levels every once in a while (When I can remember:) because these beans grow and soak up water.  I cook them on 5-6 (medium - medium/high) for a few hours.  Do not add ANYTHING with salt to the beans until the skins are soft, because otherwise that will cause the skins to get hard and your beans are shot.  Stir them every once in a while, and depending how many you make (we always, always make a lot, so ours takes four or 5 hours).

Obviously beans, like home made bread are made on a day when we are home for the day and don't have a lot of running to do.  That's why we always make a lot because we eat it all week while we're busy out and about.

Once the beans are soft, add in your chosen spices, seasonings and whatnot.  I use seasoned diced tomatoes, green chilies and burrito or taco seasoning which gives the bean some kick:

Then, when they have cooled down some, sitck them in your handy dandy blender and make what my kids like to call "Bean Smoothie"  Yummilicious!  Here's Squatchmo making his smoothie:

The, um, not so pleasant sounding process of pouring the bean... "smoothie" back into the pan for making bean dip.

Dried beans are AWESOME.  They are nutritious and extremely inexpensive.  I love using them because we can cook big batches and freeze what we don't need right now.  It took us a bit to get used to the different texture, but now I can't eat canned beans without it tasting like paste.  Ick.

I'm trying to get away from using canned foods as much as possible, but I'm not there yet.  Our goal is to make one healthy change with each recipe until we can get to a place where most of our meals are healthier than they were before.

So, there you have it, refried beans!  Tonight Squatchmo is using some of these beans to make taco pizza!  Yay!!  We'll use the other pan of refried beans to make bean dip.  We add ground beef, corn, black beans and salsa, topped with shredded cheese to eat with tortilla chips.  The kids LOVE this dish and it always gets gobbled up fast at pot lucks!

The Finished Beans, ready for burritos, or in this case, Taco Pizza

Nutrition Homework for kids!

We used to do a lot more cooking and have gradually gotten out of the habit.

So, for Nutrition & Fitness (at the request of one of the moms who hates to cook, actually) its their homework to cook healthy meals.

Basically, thanks to the kids homework for Nutrition & Fitness, I have a cook 4 nights a week. They have to make a healthy meal from scratch (no mixes) once a week. They post their pictures of their ingredients, work in progress and their family dinner on our facebook group. Its been really awesome!

I made a checklist of categories that they could choose to cook from:
Name:
Choose one category each week until they're all checked off. The point is to learn to make healthy choices and to try new things, so don't fix the same old things that you've always had.
Once each week, cook a healthy, well rounded meal for your family with/from...
fish as a main dish
chicken as your main dish
beef as a main dish
a vegetarian main dish
wraps as your main dish
something packable for packed lunch or picnic
something you've never tried before
“Fix” an old favorite to make it healthier
gluten free ingredients (the entire meal)
a different country
a different country
a different country
a healthy pizza dish
breakfast
soup as a one dish meal
a one dish meal
healthy, DIFFERENT soup and sandwich meal (Find some new and interesting sandwich ideas as well as soups.)
make an old dessert favorite healthier


Its already making a difference in our grocery bills, since we're buying bulk items again like dried beans, flours, etc. It should make a good difference in our health as well. I made the above list so that the families with several children in the class weren't stuck with the same category all in one week.... then 3 of MY kids chose Mexican dishes to make this week. Taco Pizza, Tacos/taco salad and enchiladas.

Were rediscovering some favorite recipes from the Redwall Cookbook and the 365 days crockpot site I used to use and LOVE and discovering some new ones along the way.