Team Talk
Friday, September 28, 2007, by Leigh Anne
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Finally - my current plan for getting dinner on the table (at least part of the time) is the tried and true old fashion method of Menu Planning. At this season of my life - older kids who drive themselves (well almost all of them - still get to carpool Tessa around) - I actually have a little more time to cook meals each evening. I really enjoy cooking - the thing I don’t like is deciding what to cook!! To help with this problem I keep a master list of meals I know my family likes - and a list of recipes “to try” (these I usually save for weekends when I have more time) I have found that the true secret to being able to prepare a home cooked meal for my family is not so much how much time I have but rather having a well stocked pantry.
There are certain ingredients I always have on hand. A well stocked pantry comes in handy on the nights when you need to throw something together fast. By taking the time at the beginning of each week to plan out what we are going to have for dinner I save time (no multiples trips to the grocery store each day) and I save on stress (What’s for dinner!?!?). I have a master list of about 30 meals I know my family loves – each Sunday I sit down with the list and figure out what we will have each night, taking into account the week’s activities, meetings etc. On ballet nights that I have to drive carpool I know I need something that can be prepared ahead of time (crockpot etc.) Nights when I don’t have any meetings or activities I will pencil in something that might take a little bit more time and try out new recipes on the weekend.
The following are things I found are a must for my pantry. By keeping these ingredients on hand I can throw a quick yummy homemade dinner together quickly: Having a well stocked pantry and a meal plan really helps prevent those last minute “What’s for Dinner” meal crisis!
In the Freezer
Chicken (breasts and thighs)
Hamburger (patties and ground)
Tortellini and Ravioli (love the cheese and chicken ravioli from Costco)
Bread dough and frozen rolls (love that Texas Toast)
any other meat your family likes
In the Pantry
Dried Pasta (various shapes and sizes)
Balsamic Vinegar and other various flavors (raspberry, red wine, white, apple cider etc.)
Seasonings (taco, au jus, montreal chicken and steak, Jane’s Crazy Salt, dried onion, dried garlic, various dried herbs, cumin, red pepper flakes)
Bisquick
Flour
Sugar (granulated, powdered, brown (light and dark), karo syrup, honey)
Salt
Oatmeal
Baking Soda, baking powder
Olive oil, vegetable oil, peanut oil
Nuts (peanuts, slivered and sliced almonds, pecans, cashews, sunflower seeds)
Bread, bagels, english muffins
Canned Goods:
Tomato sauce and paste, Enchilada sauce, cream of chicken, chicken and beef broth, crushed tomatoes and chopped, green chilies, olives, coconut milk, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk. Mandarin oranges, pineapple (various forms), marinara sauce, refried beans
In the Refrigerator:
Flour tortillas
Sour Cream
Whipping Cream
Fresh spinach and lettuce
Carrots, celery, green onions (seasonal veges)
Sundried tomatoes
Pesto
Mayo, mustard, ketchup
Cheese (parmesan, mozzarella, cheddar)
Fresh lemon and lime or bottled lemon and lime juice
Garlic and Ginger (chopped or minced)
Butter
Cream cheese
Fresh herbs from the garden
Shhh don’t tell anyone but I also keep a bottle of white wine, red wine and cooking sherry in the cabinet!
During different seasons of my family’s life different options have worked. The trick is finding what works for your family. If what you are doing right now is not working – try something new! Try one of my ideas or talk to your friends and see what they are doing about dinner. Feel like you’ve run out of new, fun ideas? Try checking out the food network, get together with friends for a recipe swap or buy a new cookbook or food magazine. Get inspired!
If you have a favorite trick for making sure dinner gets on the table or a favorite quick and easy recipe for those nights when mom needs to get out the door or doesn’t have a lot of prep time – please share with me and others by clicking on comments below and leaving your tip, idea or recipe!.
One of our family’s favorite quick and easy dishes is Brown Butter and Balsamic Ravioli. You can serve it as a side dish or when Jim is out of town the girls and I will eat it as our main dish with a nice green salad - so good and SO EASY!!
Brown Butter and Balsamic Ravioli Ravioli:1 (12 to 16 oz.) pkg. fresh ravioli, any flavor filling (I use a chicken and mozzarella cheese one from Costco) 3 Tbsp. butter, cut into small pieces2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar2 handfuls grated Parmigana Salt and pepper. Bring a large pot of water to a boil for ravioli. Salt water and drop ravioli in water. Cook 8 minutes or until raviolis expand, float to top of water, and are al dente. Melt butter into large frying pan and brown. Add cooked ravioli to browned butter and stir and cook a few minutes. Add balsamic vinegar and stir until coated. Sprinkle cheese over the stop, salt and pepper to taste and serve.
Popularity: 29% [?]
Categories: Family, Recipes, Team Talk
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Wednesday, September 26, 2007, by Leigh Anne
As a continuation to my “What’s For Dinner” post, today I want to share with you a few of the various methods I have used over the years to help make sure we enjoy “Family Dinner Time” - at least some of the time!
1. Once a Month Cooking - Once a month I would get together with a friend, in one of our kitchens, and together we prepared enough meals (about 20-25) for each of our families. We developed a list of recipes that our families liked and that froze well. (avoid things with sour cream) We each bought our own ingredients and worked together to prepare all the meals – it was an exhausting long day (we always had pizza for dinner that night) but at the end of the day I had a freezer stocked full of meals my family liked for the rest of the month! We froze most everything in large Ziploc baggies. I did this for several years until my friend moved away.
2. Dinner Group – After reading about the idea in a magazine I asked 3 of my friends who had families about the same size and age as mine if they would be interested in forming a Dinner Group. Each of us took one night of the week (Mon.- Thurs.) and prepared dinner for all 4 families. Each of those evenings a home made, hot meal would be delivered to my door. In order to make this type of group work you need to have families about the same size (no fair if one person has one child and the other has 10!), and similar tastes in food. One a month we would meet together to go over recipes, review ones we liked, didn’t like and go over new possibilities. This was also a fun social opportunity for us too. The only downside to the dinner group is that once in a while you get a really bad meal. Now I have to say in the 2 years or so we did this we only had one bad meal – but it was BAD. My children will never eat meatloaf again – meatloaf is not suppose to be gray - but that night it was and even my husband, who eats just about anything, wouldn’t eat it. So – don’t ever serve any of my family meatloaf!
3. Dream Dinners, Dinners Ready, Cooking Accomplished etc. A couple of years ago I discovered Dream Dinners like many of you and have tried various other meal prep places. Each month my neighbor and I would go together and in about an hour, working together and fast (you know me) we were able to walk out of there with 12 meals each, ready to be put in the freezer. This was more expensive than my Once A Month Cooking concept but a lot less work! This worked well for us for a while until my family decided they missed my cooking. I think this is a perfect idea for those who don’t like to cook or just have NO time to cook– you can give your family a good “home cooked” meal with a small investment of time each month. I still like to keep a few of these meals in the freezer for those “emergency” nights when cooking a meal from scratch just isn’t going to happen.
I will share my current Meal Plan on Friday!
Popularity: 19% [?]
Categories: Family, Team Talk, Time Management
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Monday, September 24, 2007, by Leigh Anne
Aren’t there times when you just cringe when you hear those words – especially those nights when you are rushing to get out the door to a home event or team meeting. Even as much as we would like to imagine otherwise – the troops do need to be fed!
This Monday - Sept. 24, is National “Family Day – A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children” In a newspaper article I was reading this week they gave some pretty amazing statistics in favor of eating dinner together as a family – The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in NY found that the more children eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink and use drugs.
Now I know that eating dinner together as a family is no guarantee that your children will never get involved in smoking, drinking or drugs but it can help. I was fortunate to grow up in a home where every evening at 5:30 p.m. our family had dinner together. Now this was the 60’s and the 70’s where life was a little slower paced and children weren’t involved in 20 different activities on a weekly basis! Having grown up eating dinner together as a family (my husband did too), eating dinner as a family on a regular basis has always been an important part of our family dynamic. We have learned to be a little more flexible (o.k. so it may not happen EVERY night) and creative (more on that in a minute) as a result of the life style we live today but it is still something that can happen – it just takes a bit of planning and creativity!
Running a direct sales business where you leave the home a couple of nights a week to hold events adds another dimension to the whole “family dinner time” thing. What use to be referred to as the Family Dinner Hour – is now more like the Family Dinner 15 minutes. I’m not sure the amount of time is as important as the fact that you do connect and share that time and food together.
I have learned different methods and strategies over the years that have enabled us to eat dinner together as a family – at least the majority of the time. Now I must admit, especially when the kids were smaller – sometimes the family dinner time was enjoying (I use the term loosely) a Happy Meal in the car together on the way home from soccer practice, sometimes it was a frozen pizza eaten standing up around the counter, or a grilled cheese sandwich! Nowadays, with teenagers who drive themselves places and have a long list of after school activities and jobs on top of that, we have had to get more creative. My 14 year old dances 2 nights a week meaning she has to leave the house at 5:00 p.m. and doesn’t get home until 9:00 p.m. – that makes the “family dinner thing” a wee bit of a challenge. On the nights she has dance the routine is - I fix her a light dinner (usually leftovers from the night before) and sit with her while she eats – at least she has part of the family. Not ideal, but it’s the best we can do right now. We make a real effort though to make sure we are eating together as a family at least 2-3 nights a week.
The point is that you make the best of the situation you have and that you are connecting as a family as often as you can, even if it’s just part of the family. My husband travels quite a bit now (2 days a week on average) so it would be easy to let the “family dinner thing” slide but the girls and I still sit down and eat together (it may be takeout but we eat together)
Some of you know that 18 years ago I ran a Children’s Sewing School out of my home. Each week 35 darling little girls would come to my home to learn how to sew. (now talk about a test in patience!) I taught from 3-6 p.m. two days a week . Preparing dinners on those nights was a bit of a challenge. My solution was I had two “sewing night” meals I prepared – If you were to ask any of my children what Boboli pizza or BBQ winglets reminded them of – they wouldn’t hesitate – their answer would be “Sewing Nights” Yes – boring as it may sound – every Tuesday and Thursday we would have Boboli pizza or BBQ winglet’s for dinner. Even though it wasn’t very original or creative we did have dinner together and reduced my stress level!
After I started my direct sales business and phased out of the sewing school (YEAH), I tried some different strategies for making sure we had dinner together as a family – even on those nights I had to run out the door after shoveling down a plate of food! Next week I’ll share some of those solutions with you. But for now, in celebration of “Family Day – A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children”, please join me in eating dinner with your family tonight! One recipe I always have the ingredients on hand for is “Hawaiian Haystack”. It is a family favorite that everyone likes, it is easy and fast to put together and you can use whatever is in the pantry or refrigerator. It is also a great one for those with picky eaters because each person can design their own dinner. It works well for customer events too where you may be serving a meal – everyone can tailor it to their own tastes and diet. If you have a favorite, fast family meal to share – please hit comments below and leave us the recipe. Look forward to hearing from you – more next week!
Hawaiian Haystack
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 cup chicken broth
2 cups chopped, cooked, chicken
4 cups hot cooked rice
Combine soup with chicken broth. Stir to blend. Add chicken. Simmer 8 to 10 minutes, until heated through. Serve over rice and add any or all of the following toppings.Chow Mein noodles, Chopped tomatoes, celery, green pepper, and/or green onion. black olives, pineapple chunks. shredded Cheddar cheese. slivered almonds, flaked coconut. Basically any leftover you may have in the refrigerator or in the pantry! Serves 6.
Popularity: 19% [?]
Categories: Family, Recipes, Team Talk
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Tuesday, September 4, 2007, by Leigh Anne
Last Wednesday our family drove up to Seattle for the day . It was the last day our whole family would be together before the boys headed back to college and the girls started back to school next week. My boys (all three of them - Jim, Logan and Clark) love the Mariners. Even though I am not much of a baseball fan I must admit I do enjoy the whole atmosphere of the ball park – and the food. So up we headed.
On the drive up to Seattle we drove by the Wild Waves Water
Park . As we drove past, my husband asked me if I had ever been there. I hadn’t and I responded to him by saying “I’m too old for waterparks.” Well that statement was just the beginning of a series of statements that day (mostly made by my children) about things that I was too old to do.
Leading the discussion was whether I was too old to have a Facebook account. Well I don’t think I am and after I received several invitations from others to be their “friend” on Facebook I decided to set up my own page. Of course my children are so embarrassed and even threatened not to accept my invitation to them to be my “friend.” (If you want to be my Facebook friend - just send me an invite – I’m up to 15 friends!) You can even check out my pictures of my evening with Michael Buble (I am definitely NOT too old for Michael Buble!) If you don’t have a Facebook account ask to borrow your teenagers!
The next “too old” statement that came to mind was one I had actually heard earlier in the week from my 23 year old son when he questioned whether what I was wearing was “age appropriate” –o.k. – now this is a 23 year old boy asking his 47 (yes I am 47!) year old mother if her fashionable, slightly trendy but totally appropriate outfit was “age appropriate” – the nerve!
The next statement came when one of the kids told me I must be really old if I was old enough to have two kids in college… they were really asking for it!
Next, after enjoying a lunch of fish and chips on the pier my husband gave me a little kiss and I was informed by the children that I was much too old to be kissing in public!
After I thought about all the things I was supposedly “too old” for I decided I was wrong, I was NOT too old for waterparks – I just had no desire to run around with a whole bunch of other people all day long, in my bathing suit, standing in line just to be encased in some tube full of water twisting and turning ! I was NOT too old. Now if it was an amusement park with roller coasters – I am totally there!
Another thing I am NOT too old for is pimples – just this week one exploded onto the scene. I am sure there must be a few things I am too old for but I really can’t think of any right now. All I know is I don’t plan on being too old for too many things too soon!
We all have things in our lives that we may feel we are “too old”, “too young”, “too shy”, “too busy” etc. etc. to do –but are we really? – or is it just an excuse. An excuse not to try something new, an excuse to stay in our comfort zone and not move forward, an excuse not to take a risk. Many times it is just easier to blame our lack of progress on being “too something”. Most of the limitations we feel in our life are self-imposed. The things we feel are holding us back or preventing us from moving forward are truly only “in our head”.
I challenge you that as you get ready to start a “new year” (regardless of whether you have children in school) to take a moment to think about something that you have put off doing, trying, learning, because you were “too something”. Maybe with your business you have put off making those phone calls because you have been “too busy” with the kids this summer, maybe you have put off making a commitment to earning a certain incentive trip or leadership level because you are “too scared” or “too (fill in the blank)
Have you just been making excuses? If you have – stop. Stop being “too old”, “too young”, “too busy”, “too something” and just get out there and give it a try –wear that trendy, fashionable, outfit, sign up for a Facebook account, kiss in public, and yes if you want put on that bathing suit and run around that waterpark! But don’t hide behind being “too something.”!!
Popularity: 14% [?]
Categories: Motivation, Team Talk
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Monday, August 13, 2007, by Leigh Anne
Friday afternoon my husband called and asked me if I wanted to go golfing with him and the boys. My first reaction was “UGGH – I don’t really have time for that”!
I know that spending an afternoon on the golf course may sound like fun to a lot of you. It was a beautiful, perfect “golfing weather” day - blue skies, sunshine, not too hot, a gentle breeze…but still the thought of going golfing, spending all that “time” on the golf course hitting a little ball around just didn’t sound fun to me – I had too many other things “I had to do”. I did begrudgingly say “I guess”. Now – I use to golf. In fact growing up I would spend every Friday in the summer at the Country Club for “kids day”. I even have a few trophies to show for my efforts. But since getting married and having kids my golfing days came to an end. Life was just too busy, it was too hard to get someone to watch the kids or it seemed there was always someone who needed to go somewhere or something else to do that was a “better use of my time” . In fact, I think I have been golfing once in the last 5-7 years. (probably begrudgingly then too).. Well, two Christmas’ ago I came down that morning to find a brand new set of golf clubs and a pretty red golf bag sitting in the corner next to the Christmas tree.
Again, some of you maybe thinking – wow – what a great gift
Well – my first thought was “Why on earth is he giving me a set of golf clubs – I haven’t golfed in years!” In fact my husband doesn’t even really golf! It seemed like such a random gift. And that gift sat in the corner of the garage basically unused (except for one round of golf last summer) for two years. They are nice clubs, a pretty red bag and even a set of fuzzy head covers but I just didn’t seem to get around to using them.
Well I did go golfing Friday and guess what! I had fun! After I got out there and hit that first shot off the tee, which I hate because everyone else waiting to tee off is standing there watching you, I started to enjoy myself. I began to remember why I use to spend every Friday golfing. I had fun with my boys (all 3 of them – husband and two college boys) It was fun to talk with them, learn from them as they helped me remember which club I should use when, have them say “good shot mom!” . I could actually keep up with them too! I enjoyed the beautiful weather and the wonderful flowers in the yards around the golf course – I had fun!
When I returned home I got to thinking. There are other things in life that you put off doing, find excuses not to do, think you are too busy to do, or think you will do it next week, next month, next year. When you finally get around to doing it you think – “Wow, I had fun. I forgot how much I enjoy this – I should do it more often.”
Even in our business there are things that fall into this category – like holding home events. It’s easy to get out of the habit, to say “Life is too busy now, I’ll teach them later” “I want to teach them but I just don’t have time” There have been times in my life/business when life has just gotten in the way and I go for a period of time without holding an event, thinking I just don’t have time right now, or it’s so much work to pack up, get out of the house, etc. But each time this happens and I do get out there I am reminded how much I really do enjoy it, how much I enjoy meeting new people, discovering their needs and helping them find solutions, learning from them and sharing my products with them and I have fun!.
In the busyness of life it is easy to forget what we love about our homebased business, how much we enjoy teaching and sharing with others.
Your company has provided you with many tools to help – they have made it so easy for you. Don’t leave those tools wrapped up sitting in the corner of your garage like my golf clubs - those beautiful catalogs, promotional materials and home events programs. Take advantage of the awesome marketing materials, programs and tools provided by your company.
Take that first step, order those new catalogs, brochures and new products…get on the phone and schedule that home event. You too will find yourself saying “I had Fun!
Popularity: 14% [?]
Categories: Family, Motivation, Team Talk
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