Watcha got cookin'?

I'm three days in with the no buying exercise. It's going good. I'll admit I have thought about buying things, but then I remember what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. It feels good to be making a sacrifice, even a small one. No shopping is giving me more time to focus on something I love - cooking! Since I can still buy food, I have been experimenting with making some new (and old) dishes and treats. This afternoon I made some homemade cheese crackers for M2. She appears to approve, as she is currently sitting at her little table enjoying some crackers and blueberries while watching The Cat in the Hat.

One of the biggest challenges I face is creating dinner meals that can be thrown together quickly if the kids are cranky and needy in the evening time. Mr.P usually doesn't get home until just before dinner is ready. I try not to use too many boxed items because they tend to be so salty. One trick I have found is that I can do a little bit of dinner prep work during nap time. Today I measured out the rice I plan to use, and I got the water, olive oil, and salt ready to boil in a pan on the stove. I pre-washed and trimmed the green beans, and I have the meat marinating in a freezer bag in the fridge. When dinner time comes, I can put the pork loin in a fry pan to pan sear each side for about 5 minutes, while the oven heats to 400 degrees. I'll pop the pan with the meat in the oven, and turn on the pot for the rice. I'll get another pot of water boiling for the green beans. When the water is ready I can put the rice and green beans in, and the dinner will cook itself while I tend to the kids. This is one of our stand by 30 minute meals. If the kids are behaving and I have time, I'll also pan fry a sliced up onion in a little olive oil to put on top of the rice (caramelized onion - so tasty!)

Last week I tried out a meat loaf recipe I got from the Lipton's Onion Soup Mix box. Wow, it turned out delicious! At first I made an error - I was going to only make half the recipe, but I accidentally added twice the onion soup mix. I decided to go with it, and it worked out great adding a lot of rich oniony flavor. In the future I plan to use two times the amount of soup mix it calls for. Unfortunately M2 didn't enjoy my meat loaf...it seems to be a universal thing that all kids hate meat loaf (I know I did as a kid).