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Get Your Grill On

July 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

grill

I menu plan every week. And I do most of the cooking. But something happens in the summer and everything breaks down. I get lazy in my menu planning. I get even lazier with the cooking. I could blame the heat or the lack of routine. Or it could just be that I am super lazy and just hide it better during the rest of the year. Actually I am not sure I ever really hide the lazy.

Let’s go back in time a bit. When I was first married, pre menu planning, I used to drive my hubby nuts calling him at like 4:45 and asking him to pick up the 3 things I needed for the recipe I had found at 4:43 and decided to make for dinner tonight. He was DELIGHTED to spend the end of his day in the grocery store. Delighted.

So we don’t want to remind him of those days during my lazy days of summer. Partly because I have him fooled that I am a superstar wife. Partly because I have a Groupon expiring this week for a facial and the only time they can get me in is right at the kid’s bedtime. And we all know how delightful putting the kids can be. It ranks JUST under going to the grocery at the end of the work day.

So my summer trick is this. At 4:15 when you realize you haven’t planned dinner grab some sort of meat out of the freezer. Anything will do. Grab some sort of veggie from the crisper. Then when the hubby comes home from work you say, “Babe!!! You get to grill tonight!!!”

Men LOVE to grill right? I mean WAY more than the grocery store and bedtime. It is like a REWARD to come home and grill. There is fire and meat and…..well I would do it just to get outside and escape the children for a minute.

So let’s recap. I don’t have to cook. Hubby gets to play with fire. I get to get a facial post dinner. In the words of an amazingly wise philosopher, “I’m Winning!!”

Starting August 1st, when you watch the featured video on the Hillshire Farm Facebook page, you can download a $.55 Off coupon for any Hillshire Farm product. Then, if you post the offer on your Facebook Newsfeed or enter three friend’s email addresses, you will have the opportunity to upgrade to a larger coupon for $1 Off.  How’s that for another win-win? (P.S. Hillshire Farms meat is awesome on the grill)

Hillshire

This is the first in a series of four sponsored post for Hillshire Farms. I am being compensated for my participation in this campaign but as always all opinions and stories are all mine

Filed Under: Food

The Sneaky Chef- Works For Me Wednesday

July 19, 2011 By 5 Comments

green smoothie

photo credit

So I talk a lot about my CSA and how much I love it and I truly do. But dude. You get a LOT of greens. Like 2 heads of lettuce, 10 leaves of kale, piles of unidentifiable greens lot. And I like me some salad but I am not a rabbit. Sometimes it is near impossible to eat all this stuff in a week.

This is compounded by the fact that my kids aren’t so keen on the greens. If you have children who live for noshing on salads more power to you but mine like things of the non- green variety. The one healthy food I NEVER have to persuade them to eat is fruit. Unless it is a melon (my entire family has an unexplainable aversion to melons), if it is a fruit, we like it.

This is the part of the post where I tap my fingers together and laugh maniacally. Because you know what covers up the taste of kale quite nicely? A fruit smoothie.

Here is my “recipe”:

Fruit

Kale

Yogurt

Blend in blender. Drink.

Yes, it is REALLY scientific. I just make a smoothie like I normally would with whatever fruit is in the freezer. Bonus if it is about to go bad or on the “near expired” cart at the grocery store. Then add in a giant handful of kale. I tried it with a few other greens but the taste came through and no one would drink it but me. Bonus if you add just the right amount of kale so that the smoothie stays “fruit colored”. Extra bonus if you can use of the wilty kale in the bottom of the crisper that you forgot about.

My kids drink it up none the wiser that I have fed them something healthy, cleaning out the produce drawers and have a quick easy breakfast that we can eat on the run since mama is not so much a morning person and often doesn’t have time to make a “proper” breakfast.

Hillshire Farms has a new series of hilarious commercials about cooking with an ulterior motive. I find them a major improvement from the slightly creepy “Go Meat” campaign. And I don’t know about you but I can totally relate to having an occasional ulterior motive in the kitchen. Stay tuned for future sneaky endeavors….

 

So tell me, what have you done lately with an ulterior motive?

This is the first in a series of four sponsored post for Hillshire Farms. I am being compensated for my participation in this campaign but as always all opinions and stories are all mine. This post is linked up to Works For Me Wednesday at We Are That Family.

Filed Under: Food, Works for me Wednesdays

Blueberry Crisp vs. Cascade (Plus a GIVEAWAY!)

June 2, 2011 By

blueberry

Yesterday I promised you blueberry crisp and today I give you blueberry crisp!

One of my favorite things about summer is the reappearance of fresh, seasonal fruit. We have such a short growing season up here that I go crazy every summer with the fruit. And one of my FAVORITE things to do with fruit is make a crisp.

It isn’t quite blueberry season up here so I sadly had to settle for store bought, but when you add sugar and butter to fruit it really doesn’t matter where you get it. It will be good.

So when Cascade dared my to make a blueberry cobbler (I am a crisp fan so I fudged a bit) and test out their Cascade Complete All-in-1 ActionPacs against some caked on blueberries I had to agree. I mean I have to cook and eat blueberry crisp for my blog? It isn’t all glamorous, this blogging life. Sometimes it is VERY hard work.

But first, the crisp. I adapted a recipe from The Neelys because my hubby is allergic to nuts. And I didn’t think it would be fair to put nuts in it an eat it all myself. Cause that has NEVER happened before when I was making a dessert. Ahem.

blueberry crisp

Blueberry Crisp

adapted from The Food Network

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup quick-cooking oats

1/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 stick room temperature unsalted butter, cubed

6 cups blueberries

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1/4 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Combine flour, oats, brown and white sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a bowl. Add butter and mix until crumbly. Toss blueberries, cornstarch, and sugar together in a 2-quart baking dish. Top blueberries evenly with the crumb mixture. Bake for 40 minutes.

Serve with homemade whipped cream or ice cream.

Now the challenge. I leave the baking pan out for 24 hours to let everything cake itself on nicely. Then I put it in the dishwasher without a single rinse. And then I begin to twitch.

Seriously, we always rinse our dishes pretty thoroughly before putting them in the dishwasher. I realize you aren’t supposed to do that but I can’t handle not. So this was hard for me to do. But I did it.

So here is the before.

cascade before

And here is the after.

cascade after

And here is my disclaimer.

I swear by Cascade. It is one of the only detergents I use because in my opinion it is one of the only ones that works. So I knew it would pass this test with flying colors and got a little cocky. As you can see in the before picture I left some literal chunks of food on the dish. And then despite how I would normally load my dishwasher (if you remember I am a bit fanatical about it) I put it on the top shelf to make room for some pans on the bottom. So is there residue? Yes. But would I still trust Cascade to get my dishes clean? Absolutely.

Would you like to take the challenge? I have 5 trial packs of Cascade Complete All-In-1 Action up for grabs. To win one simply tell me your favorite summer time dessert. Easy peasy!

Contest is open to US only and will end Thursday, June 9th. Good luck!

Disclosure: I was provided with a sample and a Wal-Mart gift card for by P&G and MyBlogSpark for my participation in this campaign. As always, all opinions are mine. This post will be linked up to Friday Favorites at Simply Sweet Home’s, Sweet Tooth Friday at Alli-n-Son, Foodie Friday at Designs by Gollum, Friday Potluck at EKat’s Kitchen and Finer Things Friday at Amy’s Finer Things.

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Filed Under: Finer Things Friday, Food
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