by Nicole Dean

Feeding a family is a big job. Kids want to have food on the table three times a day, seven days a week. Mom knows she needs a bunch of emergency recipes that can easily be created in minutes. When you’re running late, and time’s running out, you want meals that Dad can put together, too. Here are some fast meal ideas that you’ll love.

Dunk It: Lucky for us, kids love dip. Cut some fresh cucumbers, carrots, zucchini, broccoli, celery, and bell peppers and serve them with ranch dressing. Even finicky veggie-haters will eat their veggies with dressing on them.

Sandwich Building 101: Your child will love experimenting with whatever you have on hand to build a sandwich. Use buns, waffles, bagels, English muffins, or dinner rolls to begin with, or anything you have on hand. Now you can start adding peanut butter, fruit, meat slices, vegetables, cheese, hummus, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, or hard boiled eggs, or whatever jumps out of the refrigerator at you. Let your child give it a try and remember, it is a work in progress.

Never Fail Noodles: Every pantry should have an assortment of noodles at the ready. When dinner plans are unsure, noodles will be there to pull off a family-friendly meal in a minute. Start some noodles boiling and search the kitchen for goodies to add. Try adding some leftover vegetables to your hot noodles and topping with cheese. If you have a can of chicken broth you can make a quick soup with noodles and some celery and onion. A skillet dish with some hot, cooked noodles, pasta sauce stirred in, and topped with cottage cheese makes a great mock lasagna.

Roll ‘Em: Tortillas make a great go-to meal when you’re running out of time for dinner planning. If you have any leftover meat, chicken, fish, or vegetables, black beans, pinto beans, or cheese, you’ve got the makings for a very fast burrito. The ingredients are endless; as endless as your leftovers!

Heavenly Spuds: I believe potatoes are a meal almost by themselves. Of course, adding all the toppings make potatoes a fabulous meal in just minutes. You can microwave a potato in about 4 or 5 minutes. Now top your hot potato with anything you like. Try any meat or veggies that you have leftover, put a little shredded cheddar, Monterrey Jack, mozzarella on top and you have a full meal. You may even want to add a little crunch with sunflower seeds or even some chopped peanuts.

Soup Warms the Soul: Fill a pan with broth and veggies. Then, just throw in whatever you have in the house, meat or beans, leftovers, a can of diced tomatoes, noodles or rice, and spices. You just made soup in minutes.

Turn the Day Upside Down: You can have breakfast any time. Cereal, eggs & bacon, waffles, and pancakes are all so much more delicious when they’re unexpected. Breakfast is always better at night.

Next time you’re in a position to make a meal in a hurry, refer back to this list and presto – you’ll have dinner on the table in minutes.

Nicole Dean is the mostly-sane mom behind ShowMomtheMoney.com – a fun and informative site to help moms achieve success working from home. She welcomes you to learn more ways to save money in her Frugal Moms section. Be sure to sign up for her free tutorial for work at home moms.

The town we live in held a daddy daughter dance for the community and I had the wonderful opportunity to take my five year old daughter to it.

For weeks my daughter and I have been excited about going out together, just the two of us. Since the quads were born we haven’t had much time for just us, so this was a pretty big deal. We got to get all dressed up in our fancy clothes (mine were a lot tighter than I remember) and Macey wore a nice little red dress with a white fuzzy Boa around her neck.

We went out to dinner and had a good time talking about school and what we were going to do at the dance. When we got to the dance she started out very shy and had a hard time getting out on the dance floor with other kids she didn’t know. After a couple of minutes one of her friends from school came over and got her dancing. I would go out with her on the slow songs and we would dance until the song ended and then she would run off with her friends again, that is kinda what I expected, as long as I got a little time with her.

Overall we had a very good night and the dance was a lot of fun, I would recommend a night out with your children on a one on one basis to anyone, I forgot how much fun it could be. On a side note, I was very impressed at the turnout of the dance, the maximum number of couples at the dance was 135 and I bet there was at least that many. It is nice to see daddy’s taking the time to spend with the important parts of their lives.

Deeper on my journey of TLC’s “ton” offerings this season, I stumbled across two similar, yet separate, stories of the super-obese.  “Half-ton Teen” and “Half-ton Mom” – both were pathetic and disturbing at the same time, and had the same sense of sadness about them.

Enter half-ton mom, Renee Williams, age 29, who weighed in at 900 lbs.  She convinced doctors to perform gastric bypass on her, even though she was the largest person at the time to have gastric bypass performed.  Typically they ask you to lose weight first to make the operation and recovery odds better.  Ms. Williams felt her situation was too dire to wait so she proceeded w/the operation.  She had a heart attack and died 12 days later, leaving two children behind.

What is most shocking about this story is that Ms. Williams was just your average mom not that long ago.  She had a car accident in 2003 that crushed her leg, making it impossible for her to work.  She got depressed, began to eat, and 900 lbs. later, there she was.  That is both sad and yet you can relate at the same time.  Isn’t that why we watch all these shows in the first place? Because on some level we can relate to what they are going through?  For any person that’s ever been injured or eats out of emotional depression, etc. I can totally see this happening to a person without ever thinking you may reach the massive weight of 900 lbs.

Now enter half-ton teen, Billy Robbins, who lives with his mother who is definitely the enabler, if not promoter, in this relationship.  Billy’s family experienced a loss of his brother (they don’t get into specifics on the show) and from that point on, Billy’s mom shoveled food into him to the tune of 8,000 calories a day.  I think the most disturbing part of this is the mother/son relationship.  To stuff your child to the point they don’t want to leave the house? He chose to be home-schooled because the kids were making fun of his weight so bad.  An update on Billy is that he has lost half his weight and plans to move away from his mother as he has finally realized the relationship is unhealthy, um, ya think!?!

I am really glad he made this decision, food can be an expression of love, but not in those quantities.  While I’ve no doubt that Billy’s mom loves him, I think she has her own set of issues that got in the way of her being a proper parent to him during his emotional time of losing his brother.  I wish them both the best.

Ladies, this one is a great razor for husbands, boyfriends, or anybody that shaves their head. I have been shaving my head for about 16 years, and have used just about every razor known to man.

The Headblade razor is the best option I have found for shaving your head. It does take a little getting used to, I think I cut my head the first two or three times I used it, compared to none with my mach 3 turbo. Once I got used to it, it “shaved” about half the time off from shaving my head and I no longer cut my head with it.

The razor kind of looks like a hot wheels car, it rolls over your head on wheels with the blade attached to the front. The tricky part is teaching yourself to not push down while you shave, if you just glide it over your head it works great.

The razor itself costs $15, the blades cost about 9 bucks, which is about the same as any other descent razor blade, and they have many other guy products on the website to purchase. I have tried a lot of these products and they are good quality and work well, including their clothing line. Anyways I highly recommend this razor to any guy who shaves his head. You can go to The HeadBlade website to check it out.

by Nicole Dean

It’s so important to plan ahead for meals when you’re trying to budget every dollar. I put in a chunk of time to lay out the meals for the entire week, got my grocery list together, and headed out for the store. This was going to be great! No quick stops at the store for some prepared, deli meal this week. This is great!

My bubble was burst, however, when I got home and started putting my groceries away. Lo and behold, I had purchased several items that I already had in my pantry. Now that wouldn’t be a big problem except that I bought those items earlier at a great sale price and now have paid full price simply because I didn’t remember I had them. Unnecessary pantry items purchased at full price. Ugh! Talk about wasting money.

It is time to make a plan so this never happens to me again. For this plan to make sense, I’m dividing it into 4 steps. Let’s give this a try.

Step 1: Remove Everything From The Pantry. This will take a little time, so pick a day when you can dig in. Have a strong cup of tea or coffee, and begin. Pull all the food items, canned and dry, and check each one to see if they are damaged or expired. Throw out anything questionable. Now’s your chance to wipe out the pantry and shelves.

Step 2: Mapping Your Pantry. This will take some organization, but it isn’t difficult. You’ll actually be sorting your food items into categories so that you can make an inventory of what you have. The basic items could be sorted into baking goods, soups, broth, canned diced tomatoes, canned tomato sauce, oils, barbeque sauces, crackers, dry snacks, canned snacks, rice, and so on. Then you’ll need to do the same with your spices. This can be tedious, but start arranging your spices in alphabetical order so that you can check for duplicates. You’ll be amazed how many duplicates you have. Again, check the expiration dates and throw out any spices that you know, or suspect, are old.

Step 3: Create A Working List Of Basic Items. Writing down what you have in your pantry and keeping track of the items as you buy and use them seems like work. Well, it is, at first, but once you start using it, you’ll save time and money just knowing what you already have in the pantry. Using a column and row type paper, list your most often used items and the number you have in the pantry. Then as you use them, cross one off, and as you buy them add what you buy. This method is very easy once you get the hang of it.

Step 4: Use Your List On Shopping Day. If you’re sitting down with your recipes for the week, you can now grab your pantry list and easily eliminate any unnecessary purchases. You won’t pay full price again for staples in your pantry if you know ahead of time that you already bought those items the other week on sale. Now you will stock up on the basics, like canned tomatoes, rice, or broth, when you find a sale, and not buy at full price when you need it for tonight’s dinner.

I love looking in my pantry and knowing that all my basic items were purchased at a special sale price. That doesn’t happen if I keep buying something at full price because I forgot I already had some on hand. Now that I have all my pantry items identified and accounted for, I can check my basic list before I go to the store and eliminate all those extra full price purchases.

Nicole Dean is the mostly-sane mom behind ShowMomtheMoney.com – a fun and informative resource to help moms achieve success working from home. She invites you to learn more ways to save money in her Frugal Cooking section. Be sure to sign up for her free tutorial for work at home moms.

It has been over a year since I quit my job to be a work/stay at home dad, I am starting to get used to it. I feel like June Cleaver staying at home, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids. I do enjoy it, I guess I’m kinda weird like that. I like cleaning the house and making dinner for my family. I think it has something to do with the fact I was raised by all women, my mom, my aunt, and my grandma. Even the boyfriends my mom had were all good cooks and pretty tidy people.

I do realize this makes me sound a little “funny”, but my wife will back me up in saying that I’m just comfortable with my feminine side. Not everyone is accepting or even fully understands the role reversal of my wife and I, or others in our situation, but until you walk a mile in another mans shoes….