Helping Others

Coupon Moms are joining together to help orphans!

Did you know you can help orphans simply by shopping at Albertsons?! A fellow bargain-hunting-coupon-loving mom co-founded One Heart Bulgaria , an organization in aid of 22 Bulgarian orphanages. Bulgaria is a little-known country with one of the highest orphan rates in all of Europe. You can help support this effort and the Bulgarian orphans simply by registering your Albertsons Preferred Savings Card under One Heart Bulgaria. Once you do this, Albertsons will donate 4% of your eligible savings to One Heart Bulgaria in addition to giving you your own usual discounts and savings. It only takes a few minutes, here's what you do:

1.) Go to: https://shop.albertsons.com/eCommerceWeb/CommunityAction.do?action=beginCommunity (or copy and paste into your browser)

2.) click on the "Albertsons community partners" logo on the right hand side

3.) select the "shoppers" option

3.) login by using your preferred card number and the phone number your card is registered under

4.) click on "my account" on the right side of the page

5.) enter the ID # 49001013666 and select "add a partner"

Now, in this small way, whenever you buy food for yourself you will also be putting food in the belly of an orphan and love in their hearts.

You Are What You Eat

I had a question asked of me this week that has really been on my mind. At a class on Monday one gal asked me what we eat. I told her we try to eat semi-vegetarian. What I mean by that is that when I cook I try to only have meat every other day. We eat a lot of veggies and fruit. Cheese and milk for cereal are the basis of our dairy but not consumed in huge amounts. Truthfully some weeks we eat better than others. It depends on the work load at home, the places we need to be each night and/or my mood!

I love trying new foods and recipes-I hate repeating meals and especially having left overs. When I cook I like to try to please everyone without cooking seven separate meals, however this is almost impossible so to make it justifiable in my mind I try to customize my cooking for my family making someones favorite one day and another's the next. I want our family to cut down on processed foods and meats so instead of start World War 3 I just settle with vegetarian every other night or at least twice a week. (I sometimes just pick the meat out of my food or I don't have that piece of steak that everyone else is enjoying.)

I guess the reason I am sharing this is to tell all of you out there that you know your families best and you must be able to choose for yourselves what to feed your families. I am lucky I don't have very picky eaters and my husband is extremely supportive and rarely complains over our food choices. He told me once he really doesn't feel like he can complain since he doesn't do the cooking as long as he is fed he is happy! (I know his least favorites and I do try to keep those choices to a minimum just to be nice.)

I will share with you a few things that have really helped me in meal preparation but please feel free to do what works best for you:

• Keep a list of favorite meals in a note book, recipe book, white board etc... when your in a pinch you can always start there to decide what to make. I broke mine down into categories like: Meatless, Beef, Chicken, Pork.
• Stock up on the things that you need to make these meals. I love, love, love this Excel worksheet from the website foodstoragemadeeasy.net it helps with breaking the meals down, giving you an idea on what you need to store for 3 months.
• Instead of planning meals then looking for what is on sale I look at what is on sale or in my pantry and ask, "What can I make with that?" I use websites like Kraft, Food Network (my favs are Ellie Kreiger and Robin Miller), Family Fun and Betty Crocker as well as Google.
• I never plan what we will have on a certain day, something always comes up or maybe we (I) don't feel like Italian that night. Instead I just make a list, usually on the back of my shopping list, of meal ideas for the week. I make sure I have all the ingredients to make the meals then plug them in when I can. I only plan about 5-6 meals to make room for left over night(sometimes you just can't avoid the dreaded lefter night!) or eating out.

I hope this helps someone out there. If you have some tips that help your family please share!

I guess if it is true you are what you eat then I would say our family has multiple personality disorder!

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Okay, so I am going to be very real with you all today. We are having serious storage problems. The problem lies with the fact that most of my family's earthly belongings are combined with my parents' in the storage room actually meant for food. Now that we are stocking up on food and household items our shelves are literally spilling over. My goal is in the next few weeks to get these shelves organized with a tracking system of sorts for our food storage. I am sharing this with you all today hoping some of you may have some suggestions, sympathy or a good laugh at my expense.

The GOOD

It's like going to the store I love it!

The BAD

There is no rhyme or reason, but at least everything is on the shelf, well, except the two boxes on the the floor!

The UGLY

Seriously do I have to say more?

If your storage situation is worse or nearly perfect then mine email your picture I may have a reward for you!

I can't wait to hear your comments.

Find Six Differences

Free Rice

Thanks to my friend Megan she had this link on her blog. I thought since it had something to do with food I would include it here. My best score was 40. Feel free to post your score using the comment. No cheating! do not use a dictionary Just see how smart you are.

http://www.freerice.com/