It’s a simple fact-meals need to be prepared every day. Whether you have a family of one or a family of twelve, planning your menus ahead of time can help you eat better, reduce stress, and save both time and money.
In today’s hectic world, we are often making meal decisions based upon what is available at 6:00 PM in whatever supermarket is closest to our home. Doing this day after day is not good for your wallet, or your sanity.
So what is the solution? A menu plan! Menu plans do not need to be complicated, and you do not have to invest hours in making one. A small investment of time can reap great rewards. Here are some of the advantages to using menu planning:
• Good for your wallet-A menu plan can reduce trips to the supermarket, reduce impulse buying, and help you use leftovers more efficiently
• Good for your life balance-Planning meals ahead of time can eliminate last minute trips to the store for forgotten ingredients as well as frantic searches through the freezer looking for something you can thaw and serve quickly.
• Good for your health-Now that you have saved time by eliminating constant trips to the supermarket, there is time to prepare healthy dishes for your family instead of relying on overly processed convenience foods.
Design your plan to fit your personality. If you hate to try new dishes, then don’t feel compelled to just because you are creating a formal plan. If you have ten favorite meals that you cook on a regular basis, start by including those on your plan. Once you get more comfortable with menu planning, you may find you want to branch out and try some new things. One thing is certain, you will already have found extra time just by sticking to a plan, so you may choose to spend that trying delicious new meals for your family.

Found a great video on how to do a Julienne Cut with kitchen knife.

How long it has been that you have taken your spouse and your kids out for a vacation? Definitely, it’s over a year……Right! Planning a vacation might sound too complicated when you have tight schedules at your office, but family can also be not ignored. This is the right time to pleasantly surprise your family with a holiday where they have always wanted to be. It just takes a fraction of seconds and……….do not forget about menu planning. It is the most important part of the vacation that will certainly make your loved ones feel more special. With menu planning, you can get everything what you want just at reasonable prices which will be easy on your pockets. If you are budget concerned, then also you do not need to worry……. service providers will take care. You just need to choose one service provider, which can provide everything in the menu that you wish to have. Holiday Menu Planning offers a variety of options……if your family loves to have roasted turkey, Swiss green bean casserole, apple pies, pumpkin cheesecake, vegan cinnamon swirl coffeecake, shrimp cocktail, sushi platters and lots more. Isn’t these mouth-watering eatables sound too lip-smacking? Yes…..they do. Then what are you waiting for!!!!! Just opt for the best menu planners and make your family feel special. Whether you want to take them out for Thanksgiving or Christmas, the menu planning service providers will surely fulfill your desires and you planned something outside you can even have holiday dinners, as per your convenience. So, enjoy……

Surely, it’s been a long time that you have planned any holiday with your family, obviously because of all those hectic schedules. Now, do not count those short weekend plans when you were out for a movie…………! If you have not planned a vacation yet, this is definitely the right time. Just Imagine !!!! An evening near the beaches, you and your spouse enjoying the dusky sunset and your kids having a great time playing at the beach……….Then at night the family savors the scrumptious dishes that you had already selected while holiday menu planning and get everything you wish for. Isn’t it superb? Certainly, it would be…..Generally, people while planning an outing with the family overlooks to make arrangements for the menu that they would prefer and this some times becomes an unpleasant part of the vacation. To avoid such situations, it is always recommended to have a menu planning and get facilitated at the vacation. The menu planner can include various options like fresh smoked hams, roasted ducks, delicious turkey, mashed potatoes, baked cakes, autumn roasted vegetables and lots more. From meal starters to desserts, menu planers can have everything that can easily fall into your budget. These days, there are numerous websites to choose the menu planning facility for your vacation. The service providers give their best to meet the requirements of people and this is definitely going to make things easy for you. So, just don’t make plans. Go and grab the opportunity make this one, the best-ever vacation for your family.

When was the last time your family had a meal together? I don’t mean sitting in the car munching on burgers from the drive-through. I mean sitting down at the table and sharing a home-cooked meal.

If you can’t remember when you last enjoyed a family dinner, make plans to have them more often. Experts have found – and continue to discover – plenty of benefits for both children and adults when families have dinner together at least three times a week.

I know…I know, it’s not always easy, so click here if you need help with meal planning and grocery shopping.

Here are 10 reasons why you should have family meals more often:

Good For The Body
1. When families eat together, everyone tends to eat healthier. People who have frequent family meals consume more calcium, fiber, iron, and vitamins B6, B12, C and E. It could be because home-cooked meals are healthier than fast food and restaurant meals. (Source: Archives of Family Medicine)

2. Children tend to eat more fruits and vegetables when they frequently have dinner with their families. They also tend to eat fewer snack foods. (Source: American Dietetic Association)

3. Children in families who eat dinner together are less likely to be overweight (Source: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine). This makes sense, given the findings in #1 and #2 above.

Good For The Brain
4. Children from families who eat meals together get better grades than their peers who don’t have lots of family meal times (Source: Lou Harris-Reader’s Digest National Poll).
So family dinners are not only good for the body; they’re also good for the brain.

5. When families eat together frequently, children have better language skills compared to kids from families who don’t have family mealtimes often. (Source: Harvard
University)

Good For Emotional Health
6. Children of families who eat together report feeling happier and are more optimistic about the future, than their peers who have infrequent family meals. (Source: Lou Harris-
Reader’s Digest National Poll)

7. Teenagers are less likely to use drugs, smoke, and drink alcoholic drinks, when their families eat together regularly. (Source: Columbia University)

8. It may come as a surprise, but among Moms who work outside the home, those who have family mealtimes reported feeling less stress than those who had family dinners less
often. (Source: Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal)

9. The more often teen girls had meals with their families, the less likely they were to have symptoms of depression and suicidal behaviors. (Source: University of Minnesota)

Good For Family Bonding
10. Eating together gives family members the chance to communicate and build relationships, something that both adults and children appreciate very much. (Source: Nutrition Education Network of Washington & Oprah Winfrey’s “Family Dinner Experiment”)

I hope these reasons motivate you and your family to try and eat together more often. We’re all busy – even children have plenty of after-school activities. But as the list above
shows, family meals are worth every effort we put into them. It helps to plan ahead so that we’re not scrambling to get dinner ready or panicking because we don’t have all the
ingredients we need.

To make it easier to get the family around the table with a home-cooked meal, check out href="http://dinewithoutwhine.com/amember/go.php?r=7810&i=l10">Dine
Without Whine’s menu planning service. It costs just a penny to try it out!

The children are running around the kitchen. The dog is barking it at the door and dinner should have been on the table thirty minutes ago. It’s a common scenario in many households come dinner time.

The reason that most meal times don’t always go smoothly may because dinner the last thing on your mind and when it’s time to get food on the table, everything else goes haywire in your house.

We have all been there, but with a little bit of meal-planning, you can be serving up delicious meals the family will be glad to gather around the table for.

Meal planning can make it easy to get dinner on the table in no time on a busy night. Not only do you save time, but it’s economical too. You buy only what you need, avoid the drive-through line up and you can concentrate on using fresh ingredients – instead of prepackages items from the grocery store. Every mother should have a set way to plan all of their meals in advance for the week…it’s a true life-saver.

The first step to successful meal planning is to sit down before you head out to the grocery store for the week (or sign up for the affordable Dine Without Whine Menu Planning Service & they’ll make that plan for you) .

It is best to plan what food you will need to have on had before you head to the grocery store when planning the week’s meals. Meal planning will make good use of a well stocked pantry and will only need a regular amount of grocery shopping. By having your meals for the week planned out, you will be able to write a grocery list that you can stick to (Dine Without Whine actually puts your grocery list together for you too). This will help you to save money by keeping you from not buying extra food that you will not use.

As you plan your week’s meals, make sure that you think about ways you can cook once and make two meals out of it. It’s easy to do a lot of cooking on the weekends so that you can do minimum cooking on busy week days. You can grill up chicken breasts on Sunday and use them in pasta on one night and then in fajitas another night. There are many ways that you can reuse the cooking from one night to make the next meal that much easier.

Meal planning can also help to cut down on your prep time in the kitchen when you are cooking. By knowing the meals that you are going to cook in advance, you can wash and cut vegetables when you bring them home from the grocery store. The simple act of pre-measuring the vegetables that you would need for a meal will cut out a lot of additional cooking time.

To be successful with your meal planning, you will want to take into account a lot of factors when you plan your meals for the week. One of the most important things to keep in mind is your weekly schedule of evening activities. The nights when your family has many activities planned are not the evenings to make meals that take along time to prepare. It will be those nights that you will want to use the meals that use the food that you already prepared on the weekends.

Meal planning is a skill that will take some getting used to. The first couple of times that you attempt to plan out your meals for the week, you will have some missteps along the way. After awhile it will become second nature to plan all of your meals in advance and you will wonder why you did not start to do it sooner.

To make your meal planning a whole lot easier, sign up for you 1 ¢ no-risk trial at Dine Without Whine. You and your hungry family will be glad you did.

9 Simple Ways to Save Money on Your Groceries

It never fails, we budget for our groceries, but the bill always ends up being more. We underestimate, run out of things faster than expected and overall, everything is becoming just too darned expensive! To make things a little bit easier, here are 9 simple ways you can start saving money on your groceries.

1. Go with a List: Yes, I know…it’s a pretty obvious suggestion, but it’s amazing how effective it can be. You can purchase only what you need and avoid all the other yummy distractions of the grocery store.

2. Meal Planning: Planning your meals in advance makes it easier to get your list together and ensure you buy only exactly what you need. You can get help with your meal planning at Dine Without Whine AND they actually put your grocery list together for you too.

3. Eat Before You Go: Another classic tip. If you’re hungry, you’ll want to buy (and instantly eat) everything! Have a meal or good snack before you go to avoid impulse purchases.

4. Stock Up on Staple Items When They’re On Sale: If you see ketchup or your family’s favorite sauce on sale, stock up. Or if it’s a certain type of soup or frozen vegetable your family eats all the time, buy a bunch of it. As long as it doesn’t spoil and you have space to store it, you will save money in the long run. The nice thing about this is if you continue to stock up on a variety of items, you’ll have a nice pantry full of food at any given time.

5. Cook from Scratch More Often: Yeah, yeah…it sounds easier said than done, but it doesn’t have to be too complicated. It’s no secret that pre-packaged items and convenience foods come at a premium price. They save you time in preparation, but they eat up your budget and let’s face it, time IS money. Plus, if you’re using Tip #2 and planning your meals, cooking from scratch more often is a whole lot easier.

6. Comparison Shop Before You Leave Home: No, I’m definitely not suggesting you go from store-to-store looking for the best deal. That takes too much time. Check the flyers that come to your door and see who is offering the best deals on what you actually need. If you don’t have any flyers at your door, visit the store website as they generally post flyers online.

7. Use Coupons Sparingly: Sure, coupons offer a great deal, but most coupons you’ll find are for items you don’t really need or use. Resist the urge to think, “Wow, that’s a good deal” and search for coupons based on items you need to purchase instead.

8. Keep the Little Ones At Home: If you have young children that want everything that they see, it’s easy to get into the trap of buying items you don’t need, treats that aren’t healthy and become victim to other grocery store distractions. Keep the kids at home with Daddy (it’s a good bonding opportunity) or a relative. You can even swap grocery store shopping times with your neighbor. Not only will you save money, but you’ll save your sanity too!

9. Make Quick Stops for Fresh Ingredients: This may not be easy if you’re on a tight schedule, but if you can work it in, it can save you a bundle. One of the biggest culprits in grocery budgets gone bad is spoiled food. If your fruits, veggies and other perishable items are always going bad, consider shopping for them more frequently, but in smaller quantities and restrain yourself from buying items you don’t need. If you have any teenaged kids, this would be a great chore for them too.

There you go – 9 ways to save on groceries. But in order to make these tips work, you really need to have a plan in place. You need to know what your family needs and what you’ll be eating. To make your meal planning a whole lot easier, sign up for you 1 ¢ no-risk trial at Dine Without Whine. You and your grocery budget will be glad you did.

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Everyone loves pizza. Dough is $3.30 per pound at the local grocery store.

On Fridays we can make two pizzas. One will be a cheese pizza and the other will be made leftovers from the week (i.e. meatballs from spaghetti, pepperoni from sandwich meat, cheese.

It takes 5 minutes to add all the ingredients to the bread maker pan.
We like to use this recipe. This is for one pizza.

Ingredients

* 1 1/2 cups water
* 2 tablespoons oil
* 2 teaspoons salt
* 2 teaspoons sugar
* 4 cups all-purpose flour or bread machine flour (use either I have seen no difference)
* 1 tablespoon of Italian seasoning
* 4 teaspoons fast rise yeast
* 2 tablespoons cornmeal (optional). I find it messy to use the cornmeal.

Directions

1. MEASURE all ingredients except cornmeal into bread pan in order listed; Select dough setting. Depending on model or brand times will vary. The bread maker we use takes 1.5 hours.

2. REMOVE dough to lightly floured surface and cover with plastic wrap; Let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

3. SPRINKLE cornmeal on large 16 inch pizza pan or on a pizza stone and press dough into pizza shape; Cover with a towel and let rise for another 30 minutes.

4. SPREAD with desired sauce, seasonings and toppings.

5. BAKE at 425F for 20-30 minutes; I like to partially bake the pizza on a pan for about 10 minutes without the cheese and then add cheese for the remainder of the baking time.

Enjoy your pizza.

Catching up on the DVR and saw Suze Orman on Oprah. She blew me away with a suggestion to everyone in American to not eat at a restaurant for a month. I wonder if there will be a rush on the web for menu-planning. She a great segment with Oprah. Suze is giving away her 2009 action plan as free download until January 15th. Maybe next time Suze will stress the money and time save by consistently menu planning.