Well, my crockpot has been on overdrive lately. First, there was the bushel of apples I got from our CSA. At least a third of which became applesauce or apple butter.

Then, I 'funcycled' [which is a contraction of 'fun' and 'recycled'] crayons. I went through the kidlet's crayon bucket and took every single broken crayon out of and striped the paper and put the various colors into my muffin molds in the crockpot. I'm not creative enough to have thought of this myself. Hop on over A Year of Slow Cooking and read how it should be done.

I did it in my silicone mini muffin cups and this was a slightly flawed idea. I think it would work well in good quality silicone but mine weren't. They worked okay but I had one rip in each batch. The cute part is that the crayons are a nice size for my kids little hands.

After a month of hard work my white porcelain crockpot was stained. I got the soap and scrubbed but nothing worked until I thought about how I clean my sink. I use Barkeeper's Friend.  Ah, this worked wonders. It removed the build up of sugar from the cooked apples and the spilled wax from the crayon projects. The only sad part was that I hadn't thought of this years earlier!! So, save yourself some time and elbow grease and just get some Barkeeper's Friend. It's amazing stuff. In fact, I'm not sure there's anything it can't do.

We're very lucky for the most part that our kids don't ask for snacks and toys in the checkout aisle. Well, not in earnest. They are at an age now that they notice these items and they will mention them to me but since we've never started the habit of buying them they don't expect me to do anything about it.

The exception is the Farmer's Market. I let the girls help pick out our purchases during the CSA season at the Market and I see no reason to change now that the season is over. Well, except that it's real money so I have to be prepared with actual currency before we go shopping.

The good news is that these impulse purchases are for things like eggplant and raspberries. Isn't that amazing! My kids are begging me - yes, begging me for eggplant. Mind you, they haven't begged me to eat it yet:) but they know what it looks like and they wanted to take it home. I figure that's the best first step to getting them excited about eating it and there's something tremendously cool about that.

Each year we buy our honey at the Virginia State Fair because it gives us the opportunity to taste different varieties and support local apiaries. We've done this for almost a decade now and we've learned which flowers we like our honey to come from and which we don't. This year we decided to try something a little different. After we picked the varietal we wanted we decided to make sure it came from an apiary in a zip code local to us.


Why? Our family suffers from season allergies in varying degrees and our doctors have mentioned that taking a teaspoon of local honey a day can help build immunity to our local pollens - which in central Virginia are many.  We've only just started this but I've already seen an improvement in Comfort's seasonal allergy issues and for that I am very grateful.

There are other medicinal uses for honey, of course. When I was little I got honey for a sore throat. For some reason Moms stopped doing that when 'better' medicine came out. It turns out that honey is just as good - so say the new docs. And article in last month's Parenting Magazine included this dosage information:

Honey can also help relieve coughing. A study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that honey at bedtime was more effective at quieting coughs than honey-tasting cough medicine (flavored so the kids wouldn't know which they were getting). The AAP recommends half a teaspoon for children 2 to 5 years old, a teaspoon for ages 6-11, and two teaspoons 12 and up. (The brand of honey "doesn't make any difference", says Dr. Fisher, but make sure your child has fluids or brushes her teeth afterwards to avoid letting the honey sit on their teeth). Never give honey to babies less than 1 year old.

So, honey - it's a lovely, tasty treat that has many uses. If you can try to buy local honey so you can explore the flavors from the land around you and take advantage of extra health benefits 'cause I just happen to think this is a super Cool Idea!

Pinecone Research is a great survey company and they are open again and looking for new people!! 

I've done several different survey companies but this is one I stick with because, even though it only pays $3 per survey, it pays it directly to my PayPal account with a day or two. Also, if there is an email in your account you know that the survey applies to you so it's not a waste of your time. These are things I appreciate. I've also gotten some neat products to test.

There is some fine print, just like other survey companies - you can only have one person per address signed up with Pinecone or it negates everyone at that address. So, don't try to cheat the system. Really.

I almost typed "Happy New Year!" because it is that time of the year again. It's September and it feels like the beginning of a new beginning.

In fact, Comfort starts First Grade tomorrow. We've set out her outfit. Her lunch is ready. Backpack is cleaned out and a new name sticker has been affixed.

It's a new year. Enjoy.

Yeah, the hurricane came and she did some real work on us here in Virginia. We were lucky that we only lost power for 24 hours and our street didn't lose any trees. However, the streets behind and beside us still have huge 85 yrs old oak trees blocking the road. And since much of the city, as well as others up the East Coast, is still without power I thought I'd post my thoughts about what to do with the stuff in your fridge that is about to go bad.


First of all, this will be much easier if you or someone in your neighborhood has a gas stove. Really. Then you just start cooking or buddy up and begin bartering with your neighbors. If you don't know them already this will give you a great way to get up to speed really quickly, especially if you bring coffee or wine or bacon.

Speaking of bacon you'll need to cook that first because it's not going to last. Neither are your eggs. Your cheese is going to stay good for a while but if you're going to cook the bacon and eggs you might as well make an omelet:) Double check your fridge for anything else that is raw or a leftover that needs to be eaten and put it into the early rotation.  We were lucky and this was the sum total of the raw ingredients in the fridge. If you have more eggs than can be eaten right away [like us, I'd just bought 2 dozen for some birthday baking] some can be hard-boiled and they'll keep better and be easier to eat that way.

This is a good time for the kidlets to remember it's not the time to get picky about meals. They want a certain item [for example] with their crackers and fruit. Tough. It doesn't exist. Milk might exist in the first day when it has to get drunk by all before it goes bad but after that it's gone. Comfort doesn't like peanut butter but I tell ya, if the power outage had lasted much longer she might've reconsidered as there is tons of it in this house and she saw everyone else begin to enjoy it so much while she ate plain crackers.

I know there are many more lessons that others can relate. Mostly we were lucky. We cooked dinner on our camping stove, cleaned up, put the kidlets to bed and then the power came back on. If we'd gone on another day we'd have done the same until the propane ran out and the stuff would've stayed cold in our cooler for a day or two. We do what we need to do and we hope it won't last long before our normal lives return. For everyone whose lives have been impacted by the storm, I hope it will return to normal for you shortly. In the meantime, have some virtual bacon and eggs with me. I'll be thinking of you.

http://www.poptartsworld.com/nycSo, remember how long it took me to get used to the beginning of the school year. It's taken me nearly that long to get used to the end of the year too. Here are just a few things that have been going on in our lives.

Meal Planning - This lasted longer than I expected. In fact, I think it lasted about 5 weeks. Then I hit the wall. I was tired of figuring what the girls would actually eat. Seasonal food wasn't really keeping up yet and I was just tired. I'll give this another shot soon because this was by far the best option for me.

Summer travel - we're in the midst of all going in different directions and it's hard. Thank goodness for Nana who handled the days when dh and I were both going in different directions and the kidlets got some wonderful inter-generational time.

And speaking of my travels, on my way back from NY I was in Union Station in DC waiting for my train and I saw a brochure for Pop Tart World in NY. I thought - well, I can't repeat it here but it was along the lines of "You have got to be kidding. I was just there!" I didn't have much time outside the conference but I'd have made time to see Pop Tart World!! Today I remembered to look online and it seems that it's no longer open. Whew. I'm sad that it's closed but happy not to have missed on such a wonderful experience. Personally, I think Times Square definitely needs Pop Tart World back it would round out the experience:)

I wasn't emotionally attached to this alarm clock but I'm having a hard time replacing it. Apparently it's hard to find perfection.

I want it all. I want atomic accuracy. I want dual alarms. I want projection. I want....yeah, I've been reading the reviews on Amazon for days and I still don't have a clock.

So I decided to look at the classic alarm clock that I had when I was in high school and college. This was just enough then. It got me up for school and I never overslept unless I knocked the alarm clock off the foot of the bed:)

Surprisingly enough this clock was about $8 the first time I owned one. I think I had at least three over a decade or more. Now it's $32. If I weren't so cheap I might buy it again but now the idea of a $32 alarm clock that does nothing but tell time and wake up seems ridiculous - even if it was designed by Dieter Ram.

If you have an alarm clock that does everything you need - or more - let me know. I don't need it to sing "Rock and Roll Chicken" but there are a few things I'd like [see above].

Fox Network has canceled Chicago Code. Yep, apparently a television show with a good moral center just doesn't work on that network. What a surprise. Go check out the episodes on Hulu and then make sure to watch the remaining episodes in this season. Yes, there is a moderately annoying voice over at the beginning of each episode but it goes away. I promise. I also promise that this is a fantastic show that you won't want to miss.

It's time to try meal planning again.

You're not surprised are you? I usually post something like this every four or five months and my efforts last a few weeks at best. I know this, too. I recognize the pattern.

So, what's different about this attempt? Well - it's a multi-prong focus using tips from Erin Chase's The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare and then populated with recipes from said cookbook, some family favorites, and other internet sites.

What exactly is this two-prong attack? I'll tell you but remember that it sounded better when I called it a 'two-prong focus' or whatever I just wrote. Erin, the $5 Dollar Dinner mom, talks about starting out with each night of the week already dedicated to a specific type of meal. We used this concept for a while when we had Taco Tuesdays, but now I'm expanding it so that my plan looks something like this:

Monday: Pizza
Tuesday: Breakfast for Dinner or Trip to Costco
Wednesday: Crockpot
Thursday: Pasta
Friday: Chicken
Saturday: Leftovers

I took out my blank template, wrote in the theme for the night and then began deciding what to make. I'm taking into consideration seasonal offerings especially since this is the first week of our CSA for the year. I also need to be realistic about what everyone will eat. I'm not about making more than one meal for the family so there needs to be enough available to everyone so that they can each be satisfied.

So far I have two weeks planned out and my hope is that I'll be able to stay a week ahead. I'm also hoping that this will make the remaining few weeks of school easier to handle because life sure isn't going to get simpler on it's own.

There's my plan. We'll see how it goes. If you don't hear anything that might be good news - or it might mean there's a need for another plan. If you have your own meal planning system and have something that really works for you, let me know. I have no trouble incorporating additional aspects into my new plan!