A New Year, Some New Changes & Our Menu Plan

Last year I worked on minimizing our use of white flour, substituting whole grain brown rice and pasta and whole wheat bread for all the white stuff we'd been using. Mission accomplished. I also attempted to remove most of the preservatives in our diet by eliminating foods with nitrates, artificial colors and flavors, MSG, and other ingredients I can't pronounce. We did pretty well in that area although Daniel refuses to relinquish his pepperoni and I haven't found an affordable alternative.

This year my goal is to minimize our red meat intake so that we are only eating beef and pork twice a week and bringing in more fish, seafood, chicken, beans, and whole grains. The purpose is to improve our overall health by reducing our saturated fat and cholesterol consumption and increasing the fiber and antioxidants in our diet. Daniel agreed as long as I stopped fixing sweets! Whoa! What a minute! How will I survive without cake and icecream?! But I agreed. We don't need all the fat, excess sugar and calories, so instead we are going to try to eat more fruits and naturally sweet foods. This will be quite a challenge for me! I have also discovered that I don't have a lot of cookbooks with good recipes for beans, lentils and other whole grains so I am going to have to do some researching to find some that we like. As I found out last night, some recipes just aren't very good!

Here is our menu for this week:

Sunday: Taco salad with ground beef

Monday: Chicken parmesan with whole grain penne pasta, broccoli, and a sugar snap and carrot medley

Tuesday: Quinoa with cinnamon, feta, and cranberries (This crockpot recipe was DISGUSTING! I had to throw it out, which was disappointing because I like quinoa.) We ended up eating salad with spinach, hard boiled eggs, carrots, mushrooms, and beets and baked potatoes.

Wednesday: White beans, kale, and cornbread

Thursday: Breakfast Burritos from The Pioneer Woman's cookbook but minus the burrito shells [Eggs, hashbrowns, sausage] and biscuits and jelly

Friday: Pizza Night! A family tradition [Instead of pepperoni, I plan to use some sweet Italian chicken sausage for my lovely husband who HAS to have some meat on his pizza.]


I don't know how long I can keep up the menu plan each week but I've found that when I plan for the week, I am much less stressed and save a lot more money than if I'm trying to decide at 4:00 what we'll be having for dinner that night.

I've got some yogurt in the slow cooker for tomorrow's breakfast that I need to check on and Cora should be waking up soon.

Family Fun at Christmas

It seems like only yesterday that I was stressing about Christmas and now we are into January and a brand new year! This holiday season was the first time in which Kate really understood Santa and although she didn't necessarily enjoy opening her presents (she got way too much stuff!), she did thoroughly enjoy all the trips to Mops and Pops' and Gram Gram and Papa's houses and all her visits with her cousins. I think I had as much fun on Christmas morning as she did. Watching her go through her stocking and open her gifts made me even more excited about how much fun future Christmases will be when Cora is bigger.

We spent Christmas Eve at Gram Gram and Papa's with Brian, Jen and the kids, including our newest addition, little Holly Garner Mayes. What a doll!



Here are some pictures of our time with my family:









Some pictures at home Christmas morning:







Some pictures at Mops and Pops' house:





Speaking of little Cora (or Cora Jane as her big sister affectionately calls her), she is growing into quite a "chunky monkey." Kate gets very upset when I call her my "skinny Minnie" and Cora my "chunky monkey" but I'm sorry, honey, but there is nothing chunky about you. Here are some pictures of my Chunky Monkey:





As you can see, we have been richly blessed this year with material gifts and more importantly, with the wonderful gift of a precious new little girl. Happy New Year to you!!