Paper Airplanes

Airplanes are totally not my department.  I gained an appreciation during the early years of our marriage living on Air Force bases, but appreciation does not an expert make.

So you can imagine my panic when Micah asked me to make him a paper airplane!

I have never been able to make a paper airplane that actually flew well.  You know, fold in half, fold two corners, fold down the wings, voila.  You have now created a terrible paper toy.

But in this age of limitI consulted the trusty internets, quickly find a super easy tutorial.  It has diagrams, which is what we used, but also step-by-step photos for the truly inept.  I folded the first few steps, then he jumped in to finish off the last few.  We flew it a few times, then he decided it needed some decorations.  The circles are the passenger windows.

It flies amazingly well, when the pilot is experienced.  It flew 15 feet or more.  The less experienced pilot might fly it straight into the ground, but since it is blunt-nosed, it will live to fly another day.

Meal Planning!

It sounds daunting, and at first it is.  But planning our dinners has saved me a lot of 4pm frustration.  What do I make for dinner tonight?  What can I make in the time I have until everybody starts grumbling from hunger?

A friend gave me a binder with some very cute weekly meal planner pages in it, and I dove right in.  At first it was more difficult, so I only planned one week at a time.  We usually do our grocery shopping twice a month, so that left a good chunk unplanned.  But now that I have the hang of it, doing two weeks worth of planning takes me less than an hour.

This not only saves me money (little to no food goes to waste), but also time.  An hour of planning includes looking through my grocery store sale ad, their online coupons (which load onto the loyalty card), and browsing through old plans for meals I want to repeat.  Then if I don't have enough ideas, I check out my amply filled recipe box on AllRecipes.

I do my grocery list digitally through the OurGroceries app or website.  My husband and I both have the app on our phones, and it is very handy because it's immediately updated.  That means if one of us is at the store and the other remembers an item and adds it, it's instantly added to the list.  We also have separate lists on there for the grocery store, Costco, and the hardware store.  There are several list apps out there, so check them out.  Very handy and no notepad to lose or forget.

Back to meal planning.

The meal planner I have been using is one-week at a time, plus a column for the grocery list.  Since I do my list digitally and do two weeks at a time, I decided to whip up my own printable planner.  Now I'm sharing with you.

click to view/download

Some tips for getting started meal planning:

• Tip #1:  Use a template  Print out my printable meal planner in glorious color (or to save colored ink, set your printer to grayscale).  It can be used for multiple meals per day, but I only use it for dinners.  Or, use another planner (just do a search, there are many out there) that suits your shopping/cooking/organizing style better.  You can keep many copies in a binder, or hang it up on your fridge.  Whatever works best for you, do that!
  
• Tip #2:  Use pencil!
    I have no idea how many times I've accidentally ended up with three chicken meals in a row.  I need variety.  I change my mind.  Using pencil means I can erase as needed and not make a mess of things.
• Tip #3:  Consider cooking & prep time
    On days you know you'll be busy, plan a crockpot meal.  Plan a couple of easy dinners.  If you mostly cook from scratch, you will not want to make a more complex meal every night.
• Tip #4:  Be flexible
    Things come up.  You might not have time to make the meal you intended.  If you're lucky, somebody will take you out to dinner.  That will not ruin your plan.  You can shift your days or switch them around.  Just make sure nothing in your plan for the skipped day will go bad before you can use it.  This is another reason to use pencil!
• Tip #5:  Look ahead
    If you've frozen that whole chicken, don't expect to start cooking it an hour before dinnertime.  I once thought I had plenty of time to make Kalua Pig in my crockpot when I brought out the frozen pork roast first thing in the morning.  Then I looked at the recipe which said to cook it for 20 hours.  Oops.  This is where I forgot Tip #3 and remembered #4.  If something needs to be prepped the night before, make a note of it in the previous day's notes.  On occasion, I have also set reminders for myself on Google Calendar which sends me a text at a prescribed time.  Yes, I am that forgetful.

Unroasting-Pan Roasting Chicken

I have always wanted a roasting pan for making chicken (or turkey) in the oven.  But they are so big and expensive that even though I have looked at them in stores on online, I have never purchased one.

I came across this method somewhere between finding my favorite whole-chicken recipe and finding an alternate version for the crockpot.  I can't remember where I read it, but whomever thought of it was a genius.

Oval-ish squished foil.

Ingredients:

Chicken
Seasonings
Smart Balance (or butter)

Tools:

13x9 pan
Foil

You tear off three squares of foil, squish them into roughly ball-shaped, flatten them a bit, and place them in a 13x9 pan.

*FYI:  I use a Pyrex baking dish, but metal, Corningware, or glazed stoneware should all be should be fine.  I used to use my Martha Stewart enameled dutch oven until it was recalled.

Look ma, no hands.

Then place your chicken on top.  The tail end of the bird goes on the side with two foil balls. You'll have to adjust the foil under the bird so that it's being supported by the foil and none of the chicken is touching the pan.

Now, when you book the chicken according to your recipe, the fat will go to the bottom of the pan, and the chicken won't be sitting in it.  Just like a fancy schmancy roasting pan.

Mediocre Housekeeping II

Just checking in since two days ago I started using Money Saving Mom's customizable Daily Cleaning Checklist.  I really got a lot done (more than was on my day's to-do) yesterday.

So far I have found out a weekly vacuuming doesn't cut it in a house with a fur machine dog, two active boys, and a crawling baby.  It's amazing how a previously-unnoticeable, minuscule scrap of paper or candy-wrapper is like a magnet to a little baby's pincer grasp!  So the customizable worksheet is getting some tweaks here and there. I figure in a week or two I'll have it mostly down.


What I like about it is that the daily stuff is broken up into segments: before breakfast, after breakfast, after lunch, after dinner.  For me, it is mentally easier to tackle two to four things than to look at a list of a dozen things I have to get done today.

The other thing that makes it tolerable is good smells.  I have been using Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day all purpose cleaner.  It smells SO good.  You almost WANT to clean just to smell it.  (Almost.)  If I could, I would buy every single product made by this company and spend all day smelling it. :)

It's not cheap stuff, but I got this bottle on sale at Fred Meyer and dilute it (2 teaspoons per quart of water) in a reused squirt bottle.  That makes it cheaper than the ready-to-use spray and so it lasts forever.  But I digress.

Today was busy, but I still managed to get most of my to-do's done, as well as some computer work for my job, go to a meeting, take Caleb to the doctor, go to the dentist, and have dinner at my mom's house.  (Not cooking dinner saved me a few tasks today, too!)

Tomorrow we will also have dinner out (Caleb's in a play and they're serving a potluck dinner), but I still have to prepare something to take and share.  (And that will be tomorrow's post!)