My Favorite Recipe Sites and Tools

I wrote this recently on my Xanga Blog before I switched to here. I mentioned the other day on here how menu planning is important to my family, so I thought I would repost this blog post here also!

A couple years ago I really tried to weed out as much "convenience food" from our household as possible. I began making menu plans that included a lot of home cooked meals. I try to make as much of our meals, snacks and other things from scratch as possible. I have since found a few recipe sites that I utilize for planning our menus and snacks.

My #1 favorite site is Food.com(formerly RecipeZaar) . It is the first site I go to when looking for recipes to change up our menu or for specific recipes that I have in mind. I really like the "Cookbook" feature where I can save our favorite recipes for easy access the next time we need it. In the last year, they have also added the "send to cellphone" feature, saves on printing costs!

My #2 favorite site is SparkRecipes. SparkRecipes has lots of healthy cooking recipes. The recipes are listed by the users of the site and I have found some awesome recipes for Weight Watchers and Biggest Loser on the site. Some features of this site that I like are: Cookbook: save your favorites from the site for easy access, Share: share the recipe with friends or yourself via email, Facebook, Twitter and more. Recipe Calculator: Input ingredients from a recipe and it calculates the nutritional value of the recipe.

A couple more recipe sites that are "community based" sites and have lots of "made from scratch, like your grandma used to make" type of recipes are Tasty Kitchen and Tammy's Recipes.  Tasty Kitchen is a recipe community by the famous blogger,  Pioneer Woman. A "community based" recipe site is one where the recipes are posted by the members of the site. Members post recipes, you can "friend" other members, so when they post recipes you can get notifications and more. You are able to save favorite recipes into a "recipe box". Both of these sites are FREE to join!

I have a couple of favorite "tools" for recipes and menu planning.

First of all: Every weekend I plan a menu for the coming week using many of the sites listed above and based upon what I know my family likes. I use a word document so I can print it out and put it on the fridge for a daily reminder for the whole family and "no questions asked" about upcoming meals. Here is the document I created and use, which can be downloaded to your computer and can be edited weekly: Blank Weekly Menu Plan  Each Monday I upload my filled in Menu Plan on my blog as part of Menu Plan Monday. Very easy and simple and "old fashioned". I love it!!

ZipList is another great tool I use. Ziplist is an FREE online Grocery store list maker/manager. It is also a menu planner and an online recipe box. There are over 300,000 recipes at Ziplist that you can search and add to your menu. It will then allow you to add the ingredients from the selected recipe to your grocery list. Once your grocery list is created you can share it with family members so they can add to it if needed. You can also send your list to your cell phone or a family members cell phone for them to do the shopping and of course it is printable. The best thing is that it is printable from any computer anywhere! They also now have "Apps" for iPhone and Android Phones.

Lastly, another favorite site of mine is My Grocery Deals. My Grocery Deals allows me to view and compare the advertised sales at my favorite local grocery stores, print my shopping list, print coupons, and much more. It is FREE to join and I love using it!!

Menu planning and Grocery shopping planning really help our family stay on track, not only with our budget but eating properly.  I usually do all my shopping for the week on one day, go alone and have a weekly budget of about $80. I am able to stay within that budget each week with the help of these recipe sites and tools! It is a wonderful thing for our family!!

My Favorite Recipe Sites and Tools

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I was on the "other side" of radio today!!

I had an awesome experience today! For those who don't know I went to Columbia College from '93-97 and was a Radio Broadcasting major. I worked at a radio station here Chicago from '96-'00. So this is why my title is "the other side". Instead being on the working end, I was "just the listener" today. LOL!!

I still enjoy listening to the radio and there is a new favorite of mine that came on-air last June. It is Chicago's Rewind 100.3FM  They play hits from the 80's and more!! I love 80's music because I was a teen in the 80's. I used to love watching movies, but lost interest in the 90's, so many movies I remember are from the 80's.

Monday afternoon I registered for the VIP Listener Reward Program and saw that I can register to win a "Meet and Greet" with Corey Feldman from Lost Boys and Goonies fame! The Meet and Greet was to happen at the station in downtown Chicago. I clicked and entered. I figured I would never win anyway and if I did my husband was off work today anyhow! Tuesday afternoon I receive a phone call from the Promotions Dept that I was one of the 2 winners for the Meet and Greet. I said "Really, your kidding? LOL" She said for real!  I was like "Woohoo". She forwarded the info to me in an email.

I had to be at the studio by 2:30pm, and I actually arrived at 2:15pm due to fast CTA train service. Around 3:10pm myself and other winner were ushered into the studio. Corey Feldman was bought in about 2 minutes after we got in there. He had a black leather "aviator hat" on, his answer to earmuffs. He was much shorter then I had expected. He was very pleasant and amazingly funny! He is very much like you see him in the movies! He did the daily trivia contest with the afternoon Jock, Brian Middleton. Corey was the one who created the question for listeners to call in and answer. Brian and Corey did an interview about Corey reason for being in Chicagoland for the next few days. He has a Film Festival  that he is featured in all weekend long. They are showing many of his 80's films, especially The Lost Boys movie! I think he is really trying hard to stay clean, he had an "electric cigarette". He looked awesome, really!!

We didn't get a chance to take pictures or get autographs because Corey was short on time, but the experience was awesome! The station has some pics up in their Picture Gallery.  I am in the girl in the background wearing the purple striped sweater.

I am sooo happy that 100.3FM is now playing mostly 80's music. I really love it  and I am a listener!! I even have an app on my Android phone that is called Tune in Radio. I have access to tons of radio stations all around the country, including many local stations. So even on the go, I can listen to Chicago's Rewind on my phone or via my MP3 player that has FM access! LOVE IT!! 

THANK YOU Chicago's Rewind for the neat experience and letting me be on the "other side" of radio today!!

I was on the "other side" of radio today!!

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Works For Me Wednesday

Cups, Cups, Cups that is what this post is all about! We live in an apartment which we rent, where except for the Kitchen and Bathroom it is wall to wall carpet. We also have 3 boys who tend to be "rough and tough" and can create spills often. I don't want them to be restricted to just the kitchen for taking a sip or drink of something, but I also don't want to be cleaning up spills constantly on the carpet. The carpet is only 6 months old due to a flood in our apartment last summer. Although, even with the old carpeting which was probably 10yrs old or more, I used this idea.

My solution to prevent spills and restriction to kitchen is: Lidded cups!! I have different cups for different situations. I also make sure everyone has "their" cup for each of those situations. Our boys are only 16 months apart each, so I tend to color code them and everyone gets the same color as much as possible or a color close to the original color. I normally use Blue, Red, and Yellow. If I have to I will substitute with Green, and if absolutely necessary pink. Cups are hard to find in red, so we do use pink sometimes for indoor cups. My oldest is blue, my middle guy is red, and youngest is Yellow/Green. We pretty much use the same cup for the different situations all day, we just rinse and reuse when getting a refill.

Here are the cups we use in our apartment:

 The 3 on the bottom are the boys, the blue on top is DH's, and the teal one is mine.

Left to Right: Husbands, Mine, Joshua, Daniel, Nathan

Mine is the Blue cup and the boys use the Zoo cups. (DH doesn't drink smoothies)

These are not lidded because our dinner table is in the kitchen. 

The boys cups are bottom row, DH has black cup and mine is purple. 

I found these on "End of Summer" clearance for .50¢ for all 5.

Lidded cups for everyone in the family has really worked for us! It really does prevent spills and messes on carpet that we would have to replace if it got ruined. 

For more great hints and tips visit Kristen over at We are THAT Family.

Works For Me Wednesday

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White as Snow 1/11/11

I like the beauty of snow falling and the pure white snow laying so beautifully on the ground, even though I am not much of a "winter person". I much prefer spring and summer! I don't even go outside and play in the snow, my husband does that with the boys. Chicagoland is getting a beautiful snowfall today through tomorrow. We had to take our 6yr old to the ENT Dr. today, just about 2hrs after it began snowing. I took the opportunity while my husband was driving to take a few pictures of the snow falling and its beauty.

The beautiful White snow reminds me of the verse Isaiah 1:16:

God has covered my sins and made them white like snow! What a wondrous and awesome God I serve!!

White as Snow 1/11/11

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Menu Plan Monday

Menu Planning is a very important thing for my family. It keeps us on track with our grocery budget by not having to look at the clock at 4pm each day and wonder "What's for Dinner?" It is also time saving as we  know in advance what needs to be defrosted or is we have to put something in the Crockpot early in the day/afternoon. We are a very "simple meals, family favorite meals" type of family.

I designed my menu sheet a few years ago and it works well for my family. I am able to print it out each week, insert it into a sheet protector and put it on our fridge. I upload it to Scribd each week for ease of posting to my blog.

Here is our menu for the week(blue words are clickable recipe links):


Weekly Menu Plan


For more menu plans and meal ideas from Menu Plan Monday visit: Organizing Junkie.  Have a great week!!

Menu Plan Monday

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Welcome to my new blogging home!

 

Hello and Welcome to the new home for my blog! My name is Kendra and I have been blogging since April '07. My previous blog was/is   FamilyMgrKendra Xanga.  I have been contemplating a change for some time and felt the New Year was a perfect time for a new blog on a new platform. Blogger really fit the bill for me as it has so many more options then Xanga and I am wanting to expand my blogging horizons! 

Who is this blog about??  We are a Christian Homeschooling Family who lives in a Suburb of Chicago, about 15 minutes from Downtown. I married my college sweetheart, Harlin, on August 1, 1998. We have 3 very energetic boys: Joshua 8, Nathan 7 and Daniel 6.

What will you find on this blog?? You will find me blogging about Christian Life, Marriage, Family, Raising and Homeschooling 3 boys, Frugal Living, Couponing, Menu Planning, Product Reviews, ideas that work for our family, Family Fun stuff!

I am very excited to have made the change over to Blogger! I will be tweaking things as I go along and I hope you will enjoy my blog!!

Welcome to my new blogging home!

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