JOY: Dinner's Served!

What's brought me joy this week? Well, this has been a tough question for me this week. It has been a struggle to feel on top of things and I am really trying to keep a positive attitude. Stress and Simone are not a good mix. The worst part is I am not sure why I am so stressed. I guess I really am feeling like i just want time off, even though I love teaching my little guys! 

But, this post is not to complain or gain any sort of pity. Just merely stating it was more difficult this week to come up with something! I guess what has brought me joy is definitely being able to cook for others. Since I have gotten married, it has become a great joy to meal plan and see something finished. So many times, as someone who has dabbled in so many crafts, cooking has turned into a sort of hobby that has brought me joy just in completing that task. There are so many unfinished projects that I wish i had enough hours in the day to complete! 

This week the menu items have turned out quite nicely. It brings me so much joy to know that I  pulled off a recipe successfully. I know it sounds really cheesy, but it really does make me feel like a wife who has fulfilled a duty. I sometimes have those domestic tendencies. I also feel that I have filled my belly and my husband's belly with yummy and healthy food!

In addition to the menu items that I have already posted about this week, tonight I will be trying to make Snickers Popcorn for my work potluck tomorrow! This school year one time a month our school staff has a potluck meeting and the potluck is a competition. The winner of the competition wins the prized "Golden Spatula." I won it for the month of September for S'mores bars. Click the link for an AWESOME recipe! Anyway, this should be fun to make! (And because my hubby will feel left out he will get a snack too!) 

I will post a review of my experience tomorrow! Oh and here's the GOLDEN SPATULA!!! 

On the Menu

Hey there! Hope everyone who has the day off is truly enjoying their day off in remembrance of a GREAT man! I wonder what our lives would be like without Martin Luther King Jr. 


Any who, I have spent the morning grocery shopping and getting the oil changed on my car. The shopping was in preparation for the meal planning I have done for the week. What's on the menu this week? For lunch we will be having the Candied Pecan, Apple, and Gorgonzola Salad from The Girl Who Ate Everything. I love that blog and have found some great treats and healthy options because of her great blog! For our dinners I have altered a recipe that I found on Skinnytaste. (I felt I wanted some more veggies and also, a few more spices!!!) Here's my version of a crock pot veggie turkey chili.


Crock Pot 3 Bean Turkey Chili Ala Simone
Servings: 12 

• 1.3 lb (20 oz) fat free ground turkey breast
• 1 bag of onion, chopped
• 3 bell peppers, seeded and chopped, any color will do (i used red, yellow, and orange)
• 1 (28 oz) can diced tomatoes
• 1 (16 oz) can tomato sauce
• 1 (4.5 oz) can chopped chilies, drained
• 1 (15 oz) can chickpeas, undrained
• 1 (15.5 oz) can black beans, undrained
• 1 (15.5 oz) can kidney beans, undrained
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Topping:

• 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro for topping
• shredded cheddar to top 

Brown turkey, onion, and chopped bell peppers in a medium skillet over medium high heat until cooked through.
Drain any fat remaining and transfer to crock pot. Add the beans, chilies, chickpeas, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, cumin, cayenne, and chili powder mixing well.
Cook on high 6-8 hours.
Garnish with onions, cilantro and cheese and enjoy!



This recipe is currently bubbling away in my crockie! I will take a shot of a bowl later tonight when i serve it up for dinner! Yum! So last week I promised a screen shot of my grocery list to go along with my meal planning. Here they are: 

Here's the app that I use on my iPhone to take my grocery list with me. This prevents me from forgetting my list at home and also prevents me from forgetting items. 

So as you can see, I have items on there ready to buy for my chili and as I added each item to my cart, all I had to do was touch the item and it disappears from the list. I do this every week and I think people look at me like I am texting and shopping, but it really does work for me. This app can be found for Android and Blackberry phones! What would we do without our smart phones? I hope my hint might work for you! 

Ornaments all packed away!

So today my husband and I spent the day relaxing and doing nothing .... ha ha! That's a joke, we did a bunch to clean up CHRISTMAS! I know so many people reluctantly put away Christmas decorations, but today I only reluctantly cleaned. Some may feel sad when the decorations disappear and get packed away for another year, but not me. I dreaded putting in the work because i knew the garage could have used some organizing before everything was all put away. So anyway, we began when I returned from my normal Saturday morning kickboxing class and breakfast! I am completely off track ... this post is not all about cleaning.... it is more about one of the traditions we have as a married couple. 

Last night, knowing we were putting the Christmas stuff away, I thought I would share about the ornaments we buy each year and how we store our ornaments each time we get new ones. So, there is a great nursery that always decorates and has plenty of BEAUTIFUL ornaments for sale here in Orange County. Each year my husband and I make a visit and pick out a couple ornaments. We usually wait until later in the season so that the ornaments go on sale, but here are the ones we picked out this year! 

This one was my favorite this year. I love the contrast of the white and the beautiful poinsettia leaves. 

 I know this one is a bit blurry, but we had it on a rotating thing that made just a few select ornaments spin when the lights were on! That added a nice touch this year. 

This was my husband's choice this year. He wanted a snowman, and a snowman he got! He also got a great Christmas village that we added to the decorations this year. It looked great! 

Anyway, so when it comes time to pack everything up, each year i write a description on the individual boxes for each ornament. Here are the examples for the ornaments i showed you. I also am sue to include the year the ornament was purchased. Oh and I get the boxes from that great nursery where we purchase them. They are free at the gift wrapping station and they will give you ribbon and the whole bit if you buy them as gifts. 

So, that's our tradition and how we store those beautiful ornaments! 

K, my husband is starving and we still have yet to figure out where to eat... gotta go! Have a great weekend! 

Meal Planning Part 2

Today is COOK Day! Like i said yesterday, I cook on Mondays. So after a long day of work i usually want this to take the least amount of time possible. I truly try to make it take no longer than 2-3 hours including clean up time. If it takes longer i get really cranky after a long day of work and then crash after. 

I thought that today as I cooked I would document how I do this and package all my food (and my husbands too!). So on the menu this week is Bean & Sausage Soup for our dinners (Tuesday thru Thursday) and a green salad with whatever I felt like buying from the store this week four lunches Tuesday thru Friday. 

Tonight i began with the soup and this recipe was easy! It was made even easier by buying a few items that save on prep time. I buy mirepoix to save on chopping time. If you don't know what this is - it is chopped onion, chopped celery, and chopped carrot all in one container. This is not always sold prepared, but it is used to create a vegetable base to many soups. In addition to the mirepoix, I use my food processor to help slice, chop, or even blend things quickly. Tonight I do not know what I would have done without the food processor! 

Anyway, once the soup had gotten going, I  finished adding what was needed and skipped the spinach because I will be adding that on a daily basis. Soggy spinach doesn't excite me so, I figured it will be fresher if I add it each time I heat up a bowl. I then moved on to some Sassy Water which was a snap with the food processor. It literally only took me 5 minutes to make and the longest part of the process was filling up the HUGE pitcher with water.

Our salad for the week will have red onion, red, yellow, and orange bell peppers, with celery, grilled chicken, and some white cheddar cheese that is cubed. The greens consist of Romaine and spinach! We usually package our salad dressing the morning before we leave for work. The key to all of this is keeping the ingredients with the most moisture separate from the lettuce or anything else that should not sit in moisture until it is eaten. 


After the sassy water, I moved on to salads and started by filling 8 containers (2/day for 4 days per week) with romaine and spinach.


Then I packaged baggies with the chicken and the veggies. I made 8 baggies so we can easily take them each morning. 

The cheese came last and this time I used snack size baggies and packaged the cheese separately to prevent soggy cheese. Again, soggy = not yummy! 

In the end, I put the soup into one large container and stuck it into the fridge after I served my husband a bowl with fresh spinach! The soup got good reviews, so I hope you night try it some time! 

Hope you enjoyed reading! 

Meal Planning

So many people ask me about all my cooking and what I make each week...

So here is a step-by -step example of what I do on a weekly basis to plan our lunches and meals each week. I do this to save on time during the week. It seems like I would spend way too much time in the kitchen every day and this means I only spend approx. 2-3 hours in the kitchen to cook everything 1x per week. I cook every Monday afternoon for a couple hours. 

Step 1: I begin with a notepad, note on my iPhone or iPad, or even just take mental notes. Here's my notepad that i purchased from Target.

Step 2: Pick a couple recipe books, apps, or even fun finds on Pinterest. At this point you need to know what you would like to eat. Lunches need to consider how packaging will work and also, dinners should consider how the storage will work out. For my husband and I we have salads for lunch and dinners usually consist of a soup or even some sort of warm dish for the evening. From these sources I create a list of what i would like for lunch and dinner that would be easy to individually pack or pack in large quantities. 

Here's an example of these written lists. Notice that I have short hand ways of figuring out where each recipe comes from. 

Step 3: So, from this I sit down and make a grocery list using my grocery app on my iPhone and will then check my pantry and fridge for what I already have. I will post a screen shot of this next time i actually have a list... I just went shopping yesterday and there is currently nothing I need to buy, hence, no list.

So that is how I shop for the week. 

PLEASE NOTE: My husband and I eat the same meal for lunch all week and the same dinner for three nights in a row. We rarely get sick of the food we eat because i change the recipes each week. Keep in mind too that occasionally portions need to be adjusted to make the recipe last for the entire week. Additionally, if a recipe is vegetarian, I often add some form of meat. 

Hope that this may help someone. I know many people are turned off by eating the same meal everyday, however this saves money and time and truly doesn't get old. Happy planning!!!

What do you want to read?

So by now I think you have figured out that I am trying to be a responsible blogger and post daily. So far this has been a fun/overwhelming adventure where I realize I have much to learn. 

There's so much I could cover and  wonder what people want to read. Truly, I would like to avoid meaningless posts. I am aspiring to be like the bloggers that I have followed that have inspired me and kept me wanting to know more and more.  So with that being said, does anyone have anything they would like to know about? A topic you would like me to focus on or even information you would like to learn about that you think I might have even an inkling about? Comments, suggestions, specifics, and general musings are welcome..... Please leave behind a kind comment below!

PS. The picture above is one of my husband (Brandon) and I at the Orange County Fair this summer. They had a refrigerated room that had really awesome ice sculptures. It was fun and QUITE cold! They even offered blankets for people to use. Just thought I would share! 

What's Bringing Me Joy Wednesday!

So it's Wednesday and it completely felt like a MONDAY! That's cause it was the dreaded end to Christmas Break. (I can see the storm clouds rolling in and the organ playing some daunting song!). That's right I went back to work and my classroom which was completely ignored for all of break! Though I went back kind of dragging my feet, I realized how much i missed my little kiddos. This leads me to my content for today... 

So, my thoughts are that Wednesdays on "Busy as a Honey Bee" will be all about what has brought me JOY for the week. So there it is "What's Bringing Me Joy Wednesday." I am hoping to find something every week to remind me that I have so much joy in my life. I feel that often times I can truly get so bogged down in the mundane stresses of life that I lose sight of what has brought me the most joy. I may not be the only one in this, but regardless, Wednesdays will regularly be about what has brought joy to my life. 

Today, my students are what brought me joy. They are so awesome! I went to work almost kicking and screaming and left feeling like I know exactly why I stay late, drink too much tea, and stress about making things better than the last time. My reminders today were when one student randomly said "I love school" and then a small conversation continued with another student about how they loved the school too. Another reminder was when a student winked back at me after i winked at him. It was adorable and he looked so much like a pirate when he did it! I hope and pray every day for moments where I made an impact educationally or even emotionally. Maybe today was one of those days! 

My FIRST Post

Hi Everyone! 

So here it is my first post on my very FIRST blog! (Oh how I am already realizing how much I need spell check!) This blog is definitely been in my imagination for a very long time and I am excited to get started. I do have to be honest though that i am a bit overwhelmed by this new adventure. I am still trying to figure out what my blog content and structure will be. So far, I feel I am as busy as a honey bee. I am a wife, daughter, sister, teacher, friend, Christian, cook, and really so much more! I figure I have enough to share so this is my beginning! I do hope you enjoy my musings.... 

First of all, I will begin with what was in my kitchen today.... I made Chicken Tortilla Soup (a Pinterest find) in the crock pot! The recipe (from  www.disneyfamily.com) is below:

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1 4-ounce can chopped green chilies, drained (hot or mild, depending on preference)

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 yellow onion, diced

2 15-ounce cans of diced tomatoes, including juice

1/2 - 1 cup chicken broth

1 teaspoon cumin

Kosher salt and pepper

4 corn tortillas, sliced into 1/4 inch strips (I skipped adding these to the crock pot and just served tortilla chips on the side)

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

1/2 cup shredded Monterey jack cheese

1 avocado diced and tossed with lime juice to prevent browning

1 lime, cut into wedges

Directions

1. Place chicken in Crock-Pot® slow cooker.
2. In a separate bowl, combine chilies, garlic, onion, tomatoes, 1/2 c chicken broth and cumin. Blend and pour over chicken.
3. Cook on high for 3 hours. When chicken is tender, use the tines of 2 forks to shred. Adjust seasoning and add additional chicken broth if necessary.
4. Just before serving, add tortillas and cilantro to Crock-Pot® slow cooker. Stir to incorporate. Adjust seasoning to taste.
5. Serve in soup bowls, topping each with shredded cheese, diced avocado and a squeeze of lime.

Serves: 4-6 Size: 3-6 quarts 

Mine looked a little more like this.... 

Either way it was yummy and really easy! My husband said the soup was good but offered constructive criticism... it needs some more spice..... so I have a little research to do the next time I make this. 

So that's my first post! So much more to come!