Sunday, March 16, 2014

Perfect Portions: Salad


Browsing through Pinterest I'd often see salads in pint sized mason jars.  They all look really pretty, but I'd always think to myself that it would be so hard to get the dressing all the way to the bottom of the salad.  Of course you could dump it into a bowl.  But then you have the problem of all your toppings being on the bottom. 

Then it hit me.  Build the salad in the jar upside down!  Build it in layers starting with what you would normally put on your salad last.  Why didn't I think of this before?  Umm....probably because I wasn't trying to make salads ahead in perfect sized portions before. 

 See how pretty it is?  I'm doing the Atkins Diet at the moment trying to shed as many extra pounds before my trip to Scotland as I can.  Salads make the perfect go to lunch if they are pre-made and ready to go. 

You could layer this with anything at all you would normally put in a salad.  This one is (starting from the bottom):

Diced Ham
Chopped Hard Boiled Egg
Sliced Cucumber
Sliced Red Onion

Then I packed as much lettuce in as I could manage.  This time it happens to be a combination of iceberg and romaine.  I don't do iceberg lettuce often, but while I'm on Atkins I really miss the crunch of things like crackers and croutons.   The crunchiness of the iceberg helps a lot with that.

When I'm ready to eat my salad, I'll just dump it into a large bowl and put my dressing on. 

I wonder what else I can pre-portion.




Friday, March 14, 2014

Seven Year Old In The House!


Monday was Braden's seventh birthday.  First he wanted a dirt cake.  Then he found out it had whipped cream in it.  After that, he wanted a cake that looked like a turtle.  THEN, he read a story about a caterpillar in school and he saw a couple of caterpillar cakes while I was browsing Pinterest.  Once he saw them, he was in love and wanted nothing else.

To be quite honest, I was grateful.  This is one of the easiest cakes I've ever made for one of the kids birthdays. 

He's also pretty easy to please when it comes to food.  Chili dog Mac and Cheese is his favorite.  We don't often eat a whole meal of processed food around here, but when it comes to birthday dinners all bets are off.  The child gets what they want. 



It's pretty simple.  Combine chopped up hot dogs with boxed mac and cheese.  Then stir in a can of hot dog chilli.  We like the kind without beans!

I'm sure you could make the mac and cheese from scratch as well as the chilli.  For us, it's something we have so rarely that I've never bothered putting that much work into it.  And everyone needs a fast throw together meal to fall back on every now and again. 

Just  because I want to, here are a few more pictures of the birthday fun.










Wednesday, March 5, 2014

How I Stay Warm

I tend to crochet afghans in the winter months.  It keeps me warm in the evenings.  We really needed a new afghan for our bed.  I had a lot of left over yarns and several unfinished projects that were never going to get done.  So I randomly put them together to make a huge afghan for my bed.  My bed is a queen size, but I'm pretty sure this thing would fit a king size bed. 

Now I'm working on one for the kids.  Eventually I'll actually make something from a pattern again.  Until then, it's fun seeing how scrap afghans turn out.