A Little help from the grocery store

Thank you Trader Joe's! I love that grocery store! They carry all the same stuff as a regular grocery store, but almost everything is their own brand. I spent only $60 on groceries yesterday and managed to pick up stuff for four dinners! That's how much we would spend on one dinner out! Yes, I cook at home everyday. Only on special occasions or if I am extremely tired do we call for take out.
After about two years of tasting what's available for delivery, we've decided that my cooking tastes better and better for the wallet (no tipping required)!
Last night I made hot and sour soup, orange chicken, vegetable stir fry and steamed rice. Of course I had help from the freezer section of Trader Joe's. They sell frozen vegetables in variety of blends and I bought the Asian one for last night's meal. All I had to do was open the package, pour it into the pan and stir for about five minutes then add the soy sauce that came with it. Of course I added a few extras to make it mine. The orange chicken was just as simple! It's a bag of frozen par fried chicken pieces and sauce packets. I have stainless steel cookware so I just plopped the chicken into the pan and threw it in the oven for 25 minutes to cook. When it was ready I poured on the sauce and heated it a minute on the stove top..viola dinner was ready!

I love hot and sour soup, but never made it before so I was a little nervous that mine wouldn't taste as good, but as it turns out I make a pretty good hot and sour soup! Jimmy said it was one of the best hot and sour soups he has had! It was so easy and I got to put all of my favorite ingredients in it and leave out the ones I usually fish out. I also didn't have any green onions so I substituted shallots and it worked just right.

I picked up some pizza dough and frozen lasagna there too. I bought dough for Jimmy and I to make and one for Kai. I thought it would be fun for him to roll, top and bake his own pizza. Then that would take care of our weekly pizza/pasta craving.

I've been on a roll with the cooking and have a rotation of cuisines that I make now. It consists of Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Mexican, American comfort food (meatloaf, mac and cheese, chicken and dumplings, beef stew..etc), Mediterranean and Srevotfel (Jimmy just taught me that one this week. It's leftovers spelled backwards..^_^).

Fun at the museum

I took the kiddos on another play date on Thursday to the Kohl's Children's Museum and they had a blast! It was great, I got in free with the kids thanks to my new friend and the parking was also free because it was out of the city. I loved it so much I'm going to become a member so that we could go often! There was so much to do and it was very clean. We stayed for four hours and still didn't get to do everything! It's not as big as the children's museum in Indianapolis, but so much to do that the kids were happy to play with what was there.

I discovered little Cassia's love for music at the museum. Here favorite rooms were the music room where she was rockin' and dancing, and the water works room where she loved pushing buttons to get the water flowing.

Look at all those teeth!

Kai was a master at the pretend grocery store and spent about an hour playing with the kid sized digger. He wouldn't stop telling me how much he loved me...I take it he loved the museum!




We took a break at the Kim & Scott's pretzel cafe in the museum. I got Kai to twist and decorate his own pretzel. He did an excellent job decorating with marshmallows, sprinkles, chocolate chips and cinnamon.




On the ride home the kids crashed hard while I spent an hour and a half in rainy traffic. By the time I was almost home, Jimmy was clocking out so I went to pick him up from work. Then we all went out to our favorite local pizzeria and had a delicious meal.

Taking the kids out this week has me too busy to tackle my business plan, but Jimmy is off tomorrow so maybe I'll get a few hours in tomorrow.