Friday, August 13, 2010

Bummas and ChicoBag Giveaways Ending this Weekend!



Don't miss the opportunity to enter these great giveaways ending Sunday, 8/15! Just 3 more days!

Bummas Cloth Wipes, Ends 8/15/2010ChicoBag Produce Stand Starter Kit, Ends 8/15/2010


NEWS FLASH:

-A great friend and great blogger at Big Dreams for a Simple Life, is giving away a $50 CSN Stores GC! I'm becoming a huge fan of CSN Stores as I just received two items for review from them. My first dealings with them as a consumer left me pretty impressed. So stop on by Big Dreams for a Simple Life and enter the contest!

-Are you a fluff addict? If so, you might want to stick around! See left side bar for buttons and dates of upcoming CLOTH DIAPERING EVENTS! Stay tuned for cloth diaper and wet bag giveaways coming soon as well as chances to get early entries on event giveaways!

Happy Friday Everyone!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

More about Sprouts and Menu Plan Monday

A couple of weeks ago I posted about growing lentil sprouts. Well, this coming Tuesday evening we will be hosting my brother in law and his new wife from Japan. While browsing through More With Less cookbook in search of a main dish to prepare, I found a recipe for Yakisoba, a Japanese recipe. I noticed that it called for bean sprouts and was a little disappointed not to have thought of it earlier so that I could grow my own again. I decided to look on line however, to see if there were other methods to grow them that might go faster. I'm not sure about the faster part, but I definitely found some additional methods, and began to learn a lot more about sprouts.

This time I will be using a colander to grow the sprouts. After looking seeing a variety of other possibilities, I've concocted the following plan:

Soak lentils overnight.

Place a wet cloth over the bottom of a colander.

Rinse beans and place them on the cloth in the colander.

If you place them in a dark place, they will be more white, like what you see in stores, but you can just leave them sitting on the counter.

Rinse beans a couple times a day and replace them in the colander.


We'll see how it works! I will report next week. This search led to some reading about why sprouts are healthy. That coupled with things I started reading as a result of searching to see if pre-soaking brown rice would make it cook more quickly and be softer has led me down a path of discovery that's a little overwhelming in regards to soaking and sprouting grains, a subject I had intentionally been avoiding because I was already learning so much and didn't want to get too overwhelmed. I'll be writing about that in coming weeks.

This weeks Menu Plan:

Monday: Baked Chicken in the Crock pot.

Tuesday: Yakisoba

Wednesday: Left over spaghetti

Thursday: Creamed Chicken over rice

Friday: Chicken Curry

Saturday: Maybe chicken crescent rolls (that I didn't get to last week)

Sunday: ?

*This past week was horrible as far as sticking to the plan. I've taken on too many responsibilities that happen at the end of the month. This week was particularly difficult because we also had a family emergency and a trip out of town. I have a new plan for the coming month to try to keep things from getting too stressful at the end. So, once again, there will be some trying again on the menu this week. Here's to trying again...again.

Choices, Choices, Choices at CSN Stores!

I'm excited to have the opportunity to review a product from CSN Stores. As a frugal mom, I have a list of things that it would be nice to have, but that are not essential. We have to make decisions about what things are worth saving up for and getting, and what things we just put on the wish list for times like, well this (if ever :)! We had a crazy week, but I finally have a moment to browse through CSN stores and decide what to review. CSN stores has anything has anything from dinnerware sets to furniture to office supplies to well...you name it!

I've been leaning towards a garlic press,

or a pasta maker, as both would help out my from scratch endeavors a whole lot, but then again, a small white bookshelf has been on the wish list for the nursery for sometime.


Hmmm...Decisions, decisions. Stay tuned for a review of whatever we end up choosing to review!