Tips, Hacks, and Your Questions Answered

A super simple tip to keep apples from turning brown.

I really had no intention to make peanut butter.  Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of homemade nut butters.  I've done sunbutter before, and it was great.  But I try to prioritize my time and making all my nut butters at home has never really made it to the top of my list of things I should be doing.

But I love peanuts.  I mean, I love roasted, salted peanuts.  A quick handful or two is an awesome snack - it satisfies my need for crunchy and salty, and gives me a little protein.  I bought some peanuts a couple weeks ago, thinking I was buying roasted and salted peanuts. Only to get home and realize that what I had grabbed was roasted and NOT salted. (That's what happens when you're trying to squeeze in a quick grocery trip in between pickups and dropoffs.) As far as I'm concerned, there is no place in my life for snacking on nuts that aren't salted.  I know you raw nut lovers can disagree, but I love my salt. 

A couple of quick printables I made for my kids for holiday fun - one is a wish list and the other is a sort of holiday bingo.

It totally kills me that my kids prefer those instant oatmeal packets over real cooked oats.  But lately I'm really trying to focus on choosing my battles, and trying to force people to learn to like oatmeal with some texture over the creamy, mushy stuff, just seems like a fight that's not worth fighting at this stage, especially on an already manic school day morning.  But instant oatmeal packets have all kinds of strikes against them, and I just can't bring myself to buy them any more.  The artificial flavorings in so many of the mainstream brands, the amount of sugar, and the cost - with 4 kids eating two packets each, we would use whole box at one meal.  I have bought some organic ones before, which are a little better, but they still have so much sugar and are even more expensive. I had seen several mentions on various food blogs and pinterest boards about making your own, so I thought I'd give it a try. 

Add to the list of things that I can't for the life of me figure out why I ever bought in a box: pancakes. 

Pancakes and waffles are so easy to make from scratch. Call me lazy, but I love a recipe that's versatile and adaptable to a number of uses. I like to think about it once and use it a lot - and this one definitely fits that bill.

Once you've had good homemade stock you'll really never want to go back.  The store bought stuff tastes so bland, or sometimes tastes like nothing but salt.  I love good chicken broth.  I love it so much that sometimes it doesn't survive long enough to make it into soup.  When someone in the house is sick, I make up a big pot of it and drink as much as I can.  I think it's the definition of classic comfort food, and it's so good for you.  Just do a quick google on the benefits of bone broth and you'll find pages and pages of info.

Thoughts about how and why I stopped fighting with my picky eater and made meal times work better for us.

From the archives - in our old house we had a very tiny kitchen. But I still managed to cook lots of amazing meals for our family of six.

This was one of our top favorite family activities for many years.