Author: Lois Houston

I'm a sweet tea drinkin' southern gal who loves to cook, bake, crochet, and read. Check out my blog for posts about parenting, faith, books, crafts, planning, baking, cooking, and life in general.

It’s better late than never

SO.

As I mentioned on an earlier post – it’s been a busy couple of weeks.

BUT

That does not mean I haven’t been menu planning.

I just haven’t had time to post it!

I have to say, though, that if I hadn’t been menu planning, I don’t know how I would’ve gotten anything cooked the past two weeks. We would’ve probably been doing a lot of eating out and takeout.  NOT something I want to do – both for dietary and budgetary reasons!

My menu plans save me, week after week.

They save my sanity.

They save my waistline.

They save my budget.

I can’t live without them.

And just to show you that I have, indeed, been planning –IMG_0451

 

That’s my last three weeks’ worth of menus. 🙂

I had been using a printable calendar from busybodybook.com. I really liked using them this past school year.  They helped in keeping everyone’s schedules straight. I printed it and hung it on the refrigerator – that way there was no confusion from anyone in the house as to who was doing what and when.

Of course, I kept my own master calendar at my desk (it’s the green one on the bottom) that has everyone’s stuff in one place, but the printable pages made it easy for my family to see one week at a time what was planned. I even made a column for dinner menus!

For my master calendar, I’m using Amy Knapp’s Family Organizer. I have used it before and migrated away from it for a while, but I am back and loving the all-in-one planning space – especially having my menu plans, to-do, etc. in one place.

OK, enough about calendars – this is supposed to be my menu post!

Here’s the menu for the week.

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  • Monday: pizza for the girls and calzones for SuperMan and me. Using our homemade pizza crust recipe.
  • Tuesday: Grilled chicken thighs, pesto pasta & a salad
  • Wednesday: Grilled chops, baby Yukon gold potatoes (in hobo pockets) and veggies
  • Thursday: BBQ chicken, mac & cheese & veggies
  • Friday: Mexican
  • Saturday: who knows – probably potluck or leftovers!
  • Sunday: we’re hosting dinner for our Small Group: Roasted Chicken Salad sandwiches on croissants & homemade bread, pasta salad (minus the chicken in this recipe) and Oreo pie for dessert. (I’ll post the Oreo pie recipe later this week)

Check out Orgjunkie.com for more ideas!

Project Life Tuesday

Oh.my.goodness!!

Isn’t life supposed to SLOW DOWN once school is out?!?

Well, it hasn’t for us yet.

Last week was a busy, busy week. So much so that I’m not entirely sure I took pictures every day. I can’t even remember!

The girls’ recitals were over the weekend, so we had rehearsals on top of a short work week and recuperating from our whirlwind holiday weekend trip.

It’s been fun but I am certainly ready for things to slow down a little bit.  This week doesn’t look much like it will be any slower, but I am hopeful for next week. 🙂

I know I owe you my menu plan for the week, too. I’ll put it up in a separate post. Mom was here through yesterday and between recitals, working, doctors appointments and spending time with her, blog posting got pushed way, way down on the priority list.

 

Anyway, without further adieu, here is the PL Tuesday photo show. Enjoy!

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I’m not quite sure what to say about this one, other than this is what happens when Mommy is working in another room and the kids are unsupervised and a camera is nearby. I think this is Little Bit in the laundry basket. But why? I’m not entirely sure!

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Relaxing at the pool – and pummeling your sister – no better way to spend the summer.

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Thursday afternoon ballet rehearsals. IMGP3569

 

 

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Saturday night Jazz recital. Not a bad family picture, I think. 

IMG_0445Sunday ballet recital.

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Relaxing in the hammock with Daddy.

Photo of the Day: Mischief

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Life in the South with two kids, two dogs, SuperMan and a Serious scrapbook addiction
Thoughts Along Life’s Highway

Hobo Pockets and Grill Cooking

I mentioned on Facebook that I’d cooked Hobo Pockets on the grill last night and several of you asked for the recipe.  This is something that is popular when camping, but I decided yesterday “why not try it on the grill?” and so I did!

Basically, a Hobo Pocket is anything you cook in a foil pouch.  If you’re doing it the traditional way, you’d embed the pouch in the coals of your fire – or cook in direct proximity to the fire.  Since I was cooking on a gas grill, I opted for placing my hobo pockets on the grate alongside the other things I was cooking.

It was sooo easy and sooo good. 

And with the temperatures hovering in the 90’s yesterday, I loved that I didn’t heat up my kitchen at all and yet we had a very tasty and healthy dinner.

Here’s what I cooked:

  • Grilled chicken breasts – marinated in Italian Dressing & House Seasoning for about 2 hours (while we were at the pool!)
  • Grilled baby Yukon gold potatoes in a hobo pocket that I drizzled with olive oil & House Seasoning.
  • Grilled mixed vegetables (baby Portobello mushrooms, carrots, patty-pan squash) drizzled with olive oil and house seasoning and cooked in a separate hobo pocket
  • Grilled corn – and if you’ve never tried grilling corn, you really should. This is the best way to cook corn. It brings out the sweetness of the corn and gives it such a good roasted flavor. I grill my corn by soaking in some cold water for about 15 minutes and then I place the corn (in the husk) directly on the grill over low heat for about 30 minutes. We usually put this on first and when we’re ready to cook the remainder of our dinner, we move the corn to the higher rack until we’re ready to serve it. Then we shuck it and drown it in butter.  I know folks who put the butter on before grilling, but I’m afraid of flare-ups on the grill so I wait.

To make your hobo pockets:

Start with a bowl and some foil. I use the bowl to help shape the cavity in which I’ll place the food.

IMG_0429 Then add your food

IMG_0430 Season

IMG_0431 Close it up, being sure you seal it well to keep the heat and steam inside.

IMG_0432Place it on your grill and cook.  For the potatoes, I think I cooked them about 30 minutes. The veggies were on there about 15 but SuperMan said that next time we’d do the carrots separately and longer (or cut them into smaller pieces) because they were still a little hard and everything else was done.

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I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but be careful when you take this off of the grill. It’s HOT!!  And, it will stay hot for a little while, so be careful when you open it, too, that you don’t get a steam burn.

I hope you enjoy. I know I will be doing a LOT more of these this summer.  The food is so good in them and it’s just so simple.

This is next on my list to try:

I’ll let you know how it turns out!

 

Photo of the Day: Rehearsals (more)

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Life in the South with two kids, two dogs, SuperMan and a Serious scrapbook addiction
Thoughts Along Life’s Highway

Photo of the Day: Rehearsals

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Life in the South with two kids, two dogs, SuperMan and a Serious scrapbook addiction
Thoughts Along Life’s Highway

Project Life check in

I thought I’d let you know how I’ve been doing with my Project Life project… or rather, doing but not doing….

or something like that.

I think I mentioned a while back that I’d purchased Becky Higgins’ Project Life kit.  I have every intention of using it, but life has been so crazy lately, not much is happening with it.

As a matter of fact, it looks like this:

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How sad is that?

Of course, the pile isn’t all mine. That flowered album is Big Girl’s and from that binder up to the top is all the kids’ school work that they decided needed to be in my album and therefore could be stacked there instead of going through it and tossing what they didn’t want.  (Guess that means Mommy gets to sort it and toss it)

I have been really good about taking my pictures, though.  Just not very good at doing much with them after that – well, I guess I’m doing something – I’m putting them here.

I am still toying with the concept of doing some digitally, too.

I am enamored of “the monthly roundup” concept that Katie Pertiet does – and Cathy Zielske has these great templates that work well, too.

(She’s also doing Project Life – and I love how she is doing it)

The Shabby Princess is also doing something similar – I think she calls it Project Scrap.  Her idea is 2 pictures/week and then she offers a free template each month for you to plop your pictures in. And the templates are CUTE!

I had been thinking about doing Katie’s Roundup each month to compliment the Project Life pages – and had originally planned to get Cathy Z’s templates. But after finding the Shabby Princess’ templates, I may just go with those. They’re free, after all.

So, that brings me back to the progress, or lack of progress, with the project. I have done well with picture taking and with keeping tidbits of memorabilia from life. I still want to do better with capturing some news items and saving some more things from life – church bulletins, etc.

I am hoping to go to a weekend crop the first part of July and that is when I’m planning to catch up on my project.  That will be all I work on, so that should be plenty of time (and stuff) to work with!

In the meantime, I think I may give these digital options a try and see if I can do some monthly recaps – at least I’ll feel more like I’m accomplishing something… although, I have to admit, between this blog and my photo-a-day blog, I don’t really feel like I’m being terribly slack. I’m just capturing my memories in a different way.

What about you? What do you think?