Jar Full of Rocks

I’m not a fan of cooking.  If given the choice between cooking dinner every. single. day and driving across the country in a van with our two massively huge dogs and two young children, I’d choose the drive.

If we could live off of baked food (read: desserts), then I’d be in Heaven.  But, until I get there, semi-homemade dinners are going to have to work.

About 2 months ago I started to meal plan hard core….meaning I actually started sitting down, looking at the sales flyers for my grocery store, and planned dinners around what I saw on sale.  I do not buy alot of pre-packaged or processed foods (so I don’t use alot of coupons), but I do use them for some of my semi-home made dinners.

What is a semi-homemade dinner?  It’s a dinner that is mostly made from scratch, but instead of doing some of the time consuming work, you use pre-packaged food for that part.  They are time savers……and sanity savers.

So, I’m going to share with you my kids’ all time favorite semi-homemade dinner:

Bubble Pizza
1 can refrigerated biscuits (I like the kind that has lots of flaky layers)
1 can pizza sauce
2 cups mozzarella cheese
Your favorite pizza toppings

Heat oven to 400 F. Lightly grease a 9×13 dish (I use a Pampered Chef stone, so no greasing there).  Open the biscuits and cut each one into quarters.  Line the bottom of the dish with the cut, raw biscuits.  I usually have a few quarts left over…every once in a while I can jam them in somewhere, tho.  Dump the can of pizza sauce over the biscuits and spread it evenly over the dough.  Spread the cheese over the sauce then add your toppings.

Bake in the over for 20 minutes and your done! Total time from prep to table: approx. 30 minutes.

And tonight’s trial run dinner:

Cheeseburger Pie

1 can crescents dough
1 lb. ground beef
1 sm-med. onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped or minced
1 egg
1/2 cup ketchup
1/8-1/4 cup mustard
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese or 3 slices American cheese

Heat oven to 350F.  Lightly grease an 8″ pie plate.  Layer the crescent dough in your pie plate and heat in oven for approx. 10 minutes (to get the dough started).  Meanwhile, saute  onions and garlic in butter.  When onions are clear, add ground beef and brown.  Chop up the beef.  Remove the meat mixture from pan and cool a little.  You can rinse it in cool water to remove grease and cool faster.  Add egg (if your meat is too how, it’ll cook the egg, so be careful here).  Mix the egg into the meat mixture and then spoon it into the pie plate.  Pack it down a bit.  Squirt ketchup and mustard over meat.  Bake for an additional 10 minutes.  Add cheese and bake until melted.  Enjoy!!

I don’t always make semi-homemade meals, but I do schedule those for days that I know I’m going to be more busy so I don’t drive myself crazy trying to get complicated meals onto the table.

Semi-homemade dinners work for me!

I hate laundry.  And by hate, I really mean HATE.  

I realize that is a strong word…..but I really do hate it.

I think it’s because it is a multi-step process.  You don’t just toss stuff into the washer and call it a day.  No, you have to sort the laundry in some way or another (I sort it by kids’ clothes, underwear and socks, and adult clothes), put it into the washer, transfer it into the dryer, fold it all, THEN put it all away.  I find that I usually stall right before the ‘put it all away’ step.  I’m not sure why.

Maybe I’m like a runner who hits ‘the wall’ during a race, except instead of pushing through that wall, I just walk off the track and grab a lemonade.

For a long while, I did all of our laundry in one day.  I felt like I was trapped in my house for that one entire day.  Then, one day, I started to do things differently.  I’m not exactly sure why I started doing it….maybe the fact that our son didn’t quite have enough clothing to make it through an entire week, or maybe it was that he puked enough to warrant me not waiting a full week to do the laundry.  In any case, I started separating our laundry into different days of the week.  I now only do one load of laundry a day and it is MUCH more bearable.

This is what my laundry week looks like:
Monday- Our clothes (ie: adult clothes)
Tuesday- Socks and underwear
Wednesday- Kids clothes
Thursday- Towels (if the load is small, I’ll throw in a heavier clothing item also)
Friday- Bedding (this often gets let go….which I’m trying to be better with)
Saturday- Catch up day (in case I was super busy and missed a day)

I think doing this would even work for people who work outside of the home.  Laundry could be thrown into the washer in the morning before leaving for work and then it can run through the dryer in the evening when you are home.

One load a day works for me…..and it might just work for you!!