5 quick tips to battling the grocery store

 

The grocery store - It's this daunting task that looms over our head on a weekly basis..ughhhhh. It only gets worse as the kids grow and consume food like a vacuum. One day your pantry is packed and you get a feeling of relaxation and pride, patting yourself on the back and saying "you did good today, you will not have to make any extra trips to the grocery this week." hahahahaha yeah like that really happens.
Lets get real here, to me the grocery is like any test I used to take, I wait until the last minute then I am scrambling around only to realize the end result is going to be an ultimate fail. Like when you come home from the grocery and you realize you are missing one ingredient to every meal you had planned!
Well now that I am getting older and wiser, I have realized that good preparation is key. Here are a few tips to help you get through those grocery aisles like a breeze.

1. Plan out your meals for the week-
I know this sounds like a lot of work but having a clear idea of what you will be eating every night helps you not over purchase. When you don't know what your going to make you tend to buy a bit of everything which then leads to food going bad. You know you do it, you think ooh that looks good maybe I will use that and then you never get around to it. Have a plan ladies!

2. Write out a grocery list..and don't leave it at home-
This is a very obvious tip but lets face facts, we are busy with a million other things and we don't always have a list on paper. The one in our head never seems to be good enough. Write it down and remember it!

3. Use your coupons-
Every grocery store offers them. Mine even sends them to me in the mail. Go through them, know which ones you will use and use them. If you don't you are just throwing money away.

4. Avoid at all costs taking your kids with you-
I am sorry if that sounds harsh but seriously going to the grocery is bad enough, you don't need to add in pushing around that damn car cart that takes corners like a semi. Also your kids make you buy stuff that you normally wouldn't..let's save that money, mama needs a new pair of shoes! No kids!

5. Do not go to the grocery store hungry or tipsy-
Last but not least, shopping while hungry or a little buzzed. Not good ladies, it disrupts your whole purpose of being there. You will want to buy everything and eat everything which will directly lead to what I stated above "you will come home with a bunch of randomness and nothing that you can pull together to make one meal!" Save yourself from making multiple trips to the store during the week.

That is all, happy shopping ladies and I say ladies because you know the men ain't doing it! 

Chicken Piccata

This is one of my go to dishes during those busy work days. It takes a little work in the beginning but if you can manage that, you will have a delicious dinner and enough left over for later in the week! This is also a hit with the kiddos!

Chicken Piccata

3 boneless skinless chicken breast
1 cup flour
2 eggs
2 cups Italian bread crumbs
3 lemons
1/2 cup white wine
1tsp capers
2Tbls butter
1 cup fresh arugula
Shaved Parmesan
Salt and pepper

Pre-heat oven to 400
To prepare your chicken breast take your cutting board and wrap it in plastic wrap. Take one chicken breast and butterfly it (slice on the side of the breast and cut almost all the way through, so when you lay it flat it looks like a butterfly). Cover the breast with another piece of plastic wrap and then pound out. You want your chicken to be thin (you do not need a meat mallet for this, I used the back of a thick wooden spoon). Repeat this process with all 3 pieces of chicken. Once your chicken is ready set aside and prepare your flour, eggs, and bread crumbs. Have 3 separate plates set out. First plate take your flour and season it with a little salt and pepper, then whip your eggs and have those in your second plate, finally place your bread crumbs in the third plate. Season your chicken well with salt and pepper. Have a large skillet on the stove heating up with about 2Tbls olive oil. Take your piece of chicken dredge it in the flour and shake off any excess, then dip in the eggs, and end with bread crumbs. Make sure both sides are lightly coated. Place your chicken in the skillet and brown on both sides for about 2-3 minutes. Add more oil if needed in between each piece of chicken. Place your golden brown chicken on a foil lined baking sheet. When all your pieces of chicken are browned put in the oven and start on the sauce.(the chicken will only need to cook about 10 minutes in the oven)

For the sauce, wipe out the skillet you used to brown the chicken. On medium heat take the juice of all 3 lemons, the white wine, and capers and bring to a boil. Reduce your liquid by about half. Turn off your heat and add the 2Tbls butter. Swirl until your butter is melted. Place your chicken on a large platter and pour the lemon butter sauce over top. Finally take the 1 cup fresh arugula and toss it with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. Place over the chicken and top with shaved parmesan.

This dish is so lemony fresh, and yummy! If you can get through the pounding out and breading part it is fairly easy and quick to make! My family loves this chicken and I hope yours will to.

**Pasta or wild rice make a great side to this dish
***This chicken is great the next day over a fresh salad for lunch

Basil Peach Cobbler

First Sunday of NFL Football yesterday and I went a little cray in the kitchen. Made sweet chili lime chicken wings, heirloom tomato salad drizzled with homemade bleu cheese dressing, baked mustard fries, and basil peach cobbler!
 I had received a bag of fresh picked peaches and they were totally ripe. I needed to use them before they went bad. So I decided fresh peaches, fresh basil, a little sugar and spice, done!

Here's the recipe:

Filling
3 pounds peaches
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup chopped basil
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 Tbls Flour
zest of an orange

Topping
1 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 stick unsalted butter cold cut into cubes

For the filling mix the ingredients with the sliced peaches and place in a baking dish.

For the filling add all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix together. With the mixer on add in your cubes of cold butter. Continue mixing until the ingredients starts to hold together and feels moist. Crumble your topping over the peach filling.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes

**You can make this dessert ahead of time and keep in the refrigerator before baking. Bake while you are eating dinner and it will fill your house with an amazing aroma. It will be warm and bubbly just in time!

Why your mother (and one day you) goes to the bathroom with the door open!

Things you tell yourself when your younger:

"I will let my kids do what they want"
"I will clean my room when I want to"
"I will wake up whenever I want to"
" I will be the coolest parent ever"
"I WILL NOT go to the bathroom with the door wide open"

Things that actually happen when your older:

You do not let your kids do whatever they want, you make your kids clean their room as you continue the never ending task of cleaning your own house, you do not wake up whenever you want because you either wake up for work or from your kids standing at your bedside staring directly at you asking for breakfast over and over again until you drag yourself out of bed on a weekend at 7am, and finally yes, you find yourself sitting on the pot with the door wide open.
Why you ask...?? Well here are the events that lead up to the moment where modesty is thrown out the window forever.

I distinctly remember multiple times as a teenager my mother yelling from the other room asking me to get in here so she could have a full on conversation with me while she is sitting on the toilet with the freaking door open. A relationship with your mom as a teenage girl is already difficult enough, I mean everything she does is embarrassing, but this tops it all. C'mon does the woman have no modesty? No, actually she doesn't and later in life I have learned why.
One day if your lucky and if you wish you will be pregnant. And so it begins. You will go to multiple OBGYN appointments straddling your legs for whomever and if you are so very lucky like I was your hospital will be a "teaching" hospital. So when your about to give birth to your first child and you are in the middle of a contraction your doctor will come in with 10 med students and ask if it's ok for them to watch?!! Why not, there is already a million other people in here staring directly at my crotch, lets go ahead and add a few more. That's what I was thinking. What I replied was "I DON'T CAAAARE!!" due to the fact my son's head was crowning and I just wanted that dam baby out! After that you just try regain any self respect you have left and you don't let anyone look in the direction of your crotch for a good 6 months and that includes yourself. No one wants to see that! Then comes the time that all first time mothers struggle with. Conquering the shower. You know, when your husband is at work and you have been in your PJ's for 3 days straight and you absolutely have to take a shower because your hair is so greasy that it's in a pony tail with no pony tail holder. "What do I do with the baby though?" you ask yourself. "What if he cries, or somehow falls out of his swing, or rolls over, or climbs out of his crib???" Newborns can do that can't they? So what do you do, you take a shower with the door wide open and the curtain half way pulled back so you can watch your sleeping baby.
There you go...the beginning of the end....
When kid #2 comes along your attitude has totally changed. Going to the bathroom or taking a shower is now your one and only source of peace. I would look forward to taking a shower for days. I say days because you are still in your PJ's all the time, this does not change except your in your PJ's for a week instead of 3 days. I specifically remember one day when I was so proud of myself. My kids were a little bigger now and I was working part time. It had been a long week with work and the kids, but I had managed to clean the house, get the laundry done, and make an awesome dinner. I of course was still in my robe but when my husband got home I had it all planned out. I would feed them and while they were eating I would go and take a nice long shower. I tell my husband "I am going to go shower, you watch the kids". Finally peace. I am just starting to relax when I hear my youngest  knocking on the door, the door was locked of course. After multiple knocks he stops, a couple minutes later I hear the door knob turning and then I hear a little voice say "mom are you taking a shower?" and there is my son standing in the bathroom with a set of tiny toy keys that he managed to open the bathroom door with! Are you serious! I scream down to my husband to get up here and get my son. So he comes up and grabs him, but does he think to close the bathroom door...NO! The door is wide open letting all the nice warm air out and once again I am standing naked for all to see. You have now officially arrived.
This is your life. You can not escape the opening of doors when you are trying to have a moment of peace. By the way my husband can go sit on his throne for a half hour with not one kid trying to get in??? WTF.
At one time your mother was modest and had privacy, then she had you, and now you have kids and no privacy. It's an ongoing cycle. No way of escape.
I am my mother...you are yours...and that is all.
I did conquer being the coolest parent ever though at least in my mind!

Tuesday Tip: Chefs Knife

Do you own a nice chef's knife for your home kitchen? I am not talking about the big knife that came in your knife block as a wedding gift....unless it was a really nice wedding gift! Every cook should have a good chef's knife. This is something you should splurge on (a little). You can find a good knife for around $80, but they definitely go up from there depending on the brand and type of steel. For a good home cook you don't need to get to technical and you don't need to break the bank.

Some good brands are:

Wusthof - you can find these at Williams Sonoma
J.a. Henckels- these are at Bed Bath and Beyond, and are your cheapest option
Shun - This is a Japanese steel and will be your most expensive choice. Williams Sonoma, Macy's, Bloomingdales, and Sur La Table will carry an option.

When you are working with your knife at home always have a safe cover and place to store it. Also remember the sharper the knife the less likely you are to cut yourself. When you are finished using your knife never put your knife in the dishwasher or down in the sink! This is for 2 reasons, 1.Someone could reach down in the sink and cut themselves and 2. Your knife could rust.
The proper way to clean your knife is to run it under warm water, wipe it clean, dry it, and then put it away.

Just a little Tuesday Tip.

Best Bloody Mary Ever!

In the spirit of this 3 day weekend, I will share the best Bloody Mary recipe ever with you! These Bloody's have gotten myself and a few of my friends through some hard mornings and onto some beautiful Sunday Funday's! Take this recipe and share it, I guarantee you will be praised!

1 48oz can Tomato Juice
2 cups Vodka - the good stuff
2 cans beef broth
3 Tbls worchtershire sauce
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
3/4 tsp tabasco sauce
salt and pepper

Mix all the liquids together in a large pitcher, add your salt and pepper to taste. Pour over ice and serve with bleu cheese stuffed olives, celery stick, and a lime wedge!

Your Welcome!!! 

Mastering the Art of my life....

As I sit here on a Sunday afternoon doing laundry, folding laundry, and cleaning bathrooms the movie Julie & Julia came on. Maybe you have seen it or maybe you haven't, but this movie actually means something to me. It's about Julia Childs and a young professional woman named Julie. The movie goes back and forth between the 2 women's lives. One taken in present time which is Julie who is a young professional woman that is unhappy in her job and releases stress by cooking, the other story taken in the past about Julia Childs life and how she became...well Julia Childs the chef.
Both stories have an underlying message that is the same, one that I totally relate to as many women/men do. The question we all ask ourselves "what do I want to do with my life?".
In the story of Julia Childs life she was in government like her husband. They traveled all over the world and ended up in France. There only her husband worked and she found herself bored. She kept thinking of things she liked to do but nothing was what she really wanted to do. She finally found Le Cordon Bleu the French cooking school and that was it for her. For the present day New Yorker Julie, she was working a 9-5 job and about to turn 30. So she decided to start a blog about how she would learn to cook by cooking her way through Julia Childs cook book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. After about 3 months of blogging about her experiences she was the 3rd most popular blog and got a huge write up in the New York Times. Which basically led to the making of this movie I am blogging about. (it was based on a true story)
I wish things were that easy. I am not saying these ladies had it easy, like most of us they were lost. I mean your a kid and you think when I grow up I am going to do exactly what I want to do. Well kudos to those of you who did, but for many of us it does not come that easy. I am a 32 year old mother of two, a wife, a homemaker, a bill payer, a housekeeper, and a sales professional. I love to cook and want to write about it and teach others how to do it and I want to cook on T.V. . I KNOW what I want to do. It's just how the hell do you get there? People say work hard, well I do work hard, they say don't give up, I never give up. I have tried out for the Food Network 4 times, I tried out for Masterchef once and made it, but only to be sent home for not causing enough drama.

The true issue is how do you do it all????

How do you get there and still pay your bills and take care of your family. Do you just go for it and quit your salaried job to go work in a kitchen to learn from a chef and build from there?
Well, I did that. It was exactly what anyone who wants to cook for a living should do. As long as you have no kids and a mortgage to pay.
This is not a blog about me complaining, even though it kind of sounds like it. It's about what inspires us and how to stay inspired throughout your life. So many things get in the way or just deter us from our dreams. I always told myself I wouldn't be that mom who tells her kids "Mommy gave up her dreams when she had you, you were enough". I'm sorry but that's a bunch of bull. I love my kids and I would do anything for them, but that doesn't mean I have to give up on myself. On the other hand being a mother and being married I feel I have to constantly reinvent myself. It's easy to let all those little strings take priority over number one. It's a balancing act that I am still trying learn.

So I will continue to work, blog, make custom cakes, and most importantly COOK until I get to exactly where I want to be.
To everyone else out there, everyday is an opportunity to take back who you are and become who you want to be....
As for myself, I will continuously watch this movie to stay inspired and remind myself it's never to late. Also I always tend to make such a delicious meal when it's on!