Menu Planning

Evening meals here at the Simply Burbs home are simple affairs. Between busy working schedules, three children and a weekly grocery budget, we don't tend to go in for fancy cooking.

I am a huge fan of bulk cooking, whether it be cooking double or triple servings of a meal, with the goal of freezing the extras, or cooking large amounts of single ingredients, such as beans or rice, so that they can be used in a variety of ways throughout the coming week.

This week's menu is a typical one for us; we are having a 'cupboard' week this week - using up some of the things that are hidden in the back of the pantry, or at the bottom of the freezer.

Monday
      Brown Rice and Pinto Bean open-face Burritos, with Avocado (both the rice and the beans will come from the freezer)
 
Tuesday
     Raw veggies with Hummus, Chickpea Salad

Wednesday
      Pesto Potato Soup, with black olive bread (potatoes and pesto from the freezer; we have a can of olives in the pantry, and bread flour stored in the freezer to make the bread with)
    
Thursday
     White Bean Chilli (beans are from the freezer;they were bulk cooked from dried in the crock pot, and then frozen)

Friday
     Egg Salad

Saturday
     Picnic Dinner (we are going to an outdoor concert, and will take a simple dinner of bread and cheese, olives and fruit)

Sunday
      Gluten free pasta, and home made sauce (from the freezer stash!)
    

How about you? what is on your menu for the upcoming week? Feel free to share, or add a link back to your blog post; or join us over at Organizing Junkie, for her Menu Plan Monday blog link-up.I'd love to hear from you.

Food Waste Friday: Adventures in Avocados

I just love The Frugal Girl blog. Really - just love!

Each week (well - most weeks) she blogs about her food waste, a kind of public declaration, aimed to reduce her own food waste. And she invites the rest of us to join her!

After my usual Thursday afternoon rummage through the fridge, cleaning everything up, and trolling for food waste, I found an avocado for the bin. Which made me really sad.

Avocados are fairly expensive, and one of our favorite foods to boot. It is rare for an avocado to get wasted.

So I duely take a photo of my avocado to post here ...

 But taking a photo of my avocado like that doesn't do it justice; so I cut it open to show the yucky-ness of the gone off avocado ...

And it's perfect! Save! Needless to say, I am really glad I cut the avocado open!

I also had a really great Food Waste save. I had a couple of portions of oatmeal that had been forgotten, and several jars of fruit butter (homemade pumpkin, apple and peach) plus some homemade apple sauce. All of the jars had been languishing in the fridge for an extra week or two, and I really wanted to use them up before they went bad. I used this recipe, which I have found to be incredibly forgiving to changes. I substituted all of the butter for my apple sauce/fruit butter concoction, forgo-ed the vanilla, and added chocolate chips rather than raisins. Delish!

So, all this means that I am four for four! Four zero Food Waste weeks in a row! Woo hoo!!


How about you? How was your food waste this week? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

Miracles and Gardening

Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden.

Robert Brault

 

What are doing in your garden this season? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

Twinning Tuesday, Wearing your Newborn Twins

There is something, for me at least, quite magical, quite wonderful, about the prolonged closeness that wearing your baby, or babies, brings. It is the ultimate win win! As a parent, you keep your babes close, but you can finally (finally!) get up off the couch and do things again, and your babes will love staying close to you; fewer tears, more bonding, better sleep, more comforting.

After wearing my first born, The Little Guy, for three plus years, I knew that I wanted to wear my twins, and as soon as possible. A little research and I found a couple of methods I thought would work best for me.

I started out with a Moby Wrap, which is a single piece of long stretching fabric, which you can wrap around your self and your Little Ones. These are extremely forgiving with beginners to wrapping, nice and comfortable for newborns, and not too expensive. Click here to see Moby Wraps from Amazon. Chances are, if you are wearing both of your twins at the same time, your Moby Wrap will have a relatively short life, maybe only until they are four months old, but it is still a great way to start out.

There are a slew of articles and tutorials out there on wearing twins, but I found this one in particular really helpful; the lady demonstrating took lots of time to show what she was doing, and talk everything through!



This carry technique is great for newborns, up until they are a collective weight of approximately 20 lbs. At that stage you will probably find that they have a little more head control and are ready for some different wrapping or carrying techniques.

I also spent a lot of time looking for a great video on YouTube (and elsewhere) of someone demonstrating how to do a Cross Cradle Carry for newborn twins, and couldn't find one that I just loved ... so I made one myself! Check it out!

p.s. The Little Guy makes a cameo performance; he was very excited at the whole video adventure.




One thing I would add, which I meant to mention in the video; a Moby wrap is infinitely more forgiving than a woven wrap, and is really a great place to start if your wrap technique is still developing.

If you are a little unsure of your wrapping, I really recommend doing your initially wraps while sitting on your bed or on your couch, and to have your spouse or a friend there to help. I still like to wrap in front of a mirror; it just helps me feel a little more secure, allowing me to see what I'm doing.

And, of course, make sure that there is plenty of room for your baby to breathe, and that their head is not slumping forward into their chest.

I spent a fair amount of time looking through photos of my own newborn twins, and I could not find a single photo of me wearing both of them - how did that happen?! But here is one of me with Baby Girl; I think this was the first time I wore her, at about 5 days old.

 

We will be talking more about wearing older twins in a future post, and spending some time talking about what baby wearing methods work better for wearing two.

What is your favorite babywearing method for newborns? If you have twins, do you wear them? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!