A Quick, Easy, Delicious Way to Answer “What’s for Supper?”

Years ago, when I was a new mom, and a working mom, and a basically really busy mom with a really small food budget and more than my own mouth to feed, I was on the lookout for anything to help answer the age old question “What’s for Dinner?” easier.

I had but few requirements.  It had to be inexpensive to make.  It couldn’t include things I had never heard of, or couldn’t find.  It had to be quick and easy to make.  And it had to taste good.

It was then that I stumbled upon Kraft Foods Food & Family magazine.  The magazines are short (less than 70 pages) and full of recipes for the season.  In fact, I have copies of every issue from 2004 thru 2006. There are many reasons I still have my magazines all these years later.

 

 

                 Short easy to follow recipes

I am not a gourmet cook.  I am a single mom of two teenage daughters.  I don’t have a lot of time too cook.  The recipes included in the Food & Family Magazine are all very simple, easy to follow recipes with basic, have-on-hand ingredients.  One thing to note, all recipes feature Kraft Foods – be it salad dressings, mac n cheese, barbecue sauce, Cool Whip.  If you can take the advertisements in stride, the recipes are great.

Full size, full color pictures

Every recipe is accompanied by a full size, full color picture of the finished product.  If you are a mom, then you know part of getting a kid of any age to try something new is making it look good.  If it looks ‘yucky’ or ‘funny’ they are not going to eat it.  Same goes for some adults I know.  It helps when I’m planning menus, if I can discuss options with my girls and have pictures to show them.  I also like that I know what it should look like when it’s done, so I know I did it right.

Everything is right at your fingertips

The Table of contents at the front is laid out in an easy to read style.  Across the bottom, every recipe is listed and sorted by categories such as ‘Appetizers & Snacks”, “Salads & Sides” and “Entrees & Sandwiches”.  Each recipe is also marked Healthy Living, 20 Minutes or Less, or Budget Wise.  A picture of each recipe is included in the table of contents, along with nutritional information.

They also have them listed under the headers Advice, On the Menu and Timesavers.  Throughout the Kraft Foods Food & Family magazine, they group some of the recipes together in a magazine story format.  This isn’t just a cook book, it’s magazine that incorporates family stories, holiday celebrations, traditions, healthy eating, and fun into their sharing recipes with you.

Back when I started getting Kraft Foods Food & Family magazine, it was free. Just sign up on their website and it was delivered in the mail five times a year.  Somewhere in my many moves, they stopped trying to keep up with me and I no longer received them in the mail.  Of course, I could still get the daily Kraft Foods email Newsletter than included recipes with full color photos.  But they weren’t always what I wanted.

I went online to sign up for the magazine again, only to find that the tough economy seems to have hit Kraft Foods as well.  The magazine is no longer delivered to your front door free. Being a single, unemployed mom, I wasn’t sure I wanted to pony up the money for the magazine given I was getting recipes sent to me daily for free.

But I found, on their website that you can see every edition of the magazine they have published.  The older editions, prior to the Holiday 2009 edition, are still listed by category, and have the recipes listed below.  Click on any recipe you want to see and it takes to a page with the recipe and a full size, full color photo.

Starting with the Holiday 2009 Edition, Kraft Foods started adding the digital edition which is the actual magazine using the website Zino.com.  I was so excited to see that I could still get the great recipes, the same quality and simplicity I loved years ago, free, even if it meant I would have to do a little work clicking through to the actual recipe.

So, when you’re stumped with how to answer the never ending inquisition of “What’s for dinner?” check your pantry, and check out Kraft Foods food & family magazine.  You’re sure to find a quick, easy and delicious family pleasing recipe.

George Foreman Makes Grilling A Breeze

Brian’s mom has a George Foreman G-Broil Supreme that she uses.  All. The. Time. One weekend while the girls and I were there, she and I did hamburgers on it for the girls.  OMG, it was amazing.  So I not so subtly said “Maybe I should tell Santa to put one of them under the tree for me.”

It came as no surprise when Christmas Eve rolled around and the one gift under the tree for me was a George Foreman Grand Champ Grill.  It’s a bit bigger than Brian’s mom’s, but it’s the perfect size for me and the girls. With just the three of us at home, and me working outside the house, there are a lot of nights it’s just too much effort and electricity to turn the oven on to cook dinner.  With the George Foreman Grand Champ Grill, I can do hamburgers, chicken breasts, steaks, hot dogs, you name it, on the grill in a fraction of the time, using significantly less electricity. And when you’re a single mom on a budget? Every penny you can save, and still provide your kids with healthy, cooked at home meals, is a bonus.

The Grand Champ has the following features:

• At 133 square inches of cooking space, it has the largest cooking area of all the George Foreman grills.  It easily handles 7 servings.
• It has the patented slope design so the fat that cooks off the meat slides into the drip tray away from the meat.
• The Signature Foreman heating elements so that every square inch of cooking space is used and not wasted.
• Preheat indicator light for added convenience
• The dishwasher-safe drip tray offers easy clean up
• It comes with 2 drip trays and 2 dishwasher-safe spatulas for easy food removal.

The girls and I first used ours to cook hamburgers.  I wanted to start off with something easy and with the Grand Champ, they were super quick and easy.  It takes the grill approximately 5 minutes to warm up.  Once the indicator light went off, I put 4 hamburger patties on the grill and lowered the lid.  5 minutes later, I had 4 evenly cooked, right off the grill tasting hamburgers.  In fact, the french fries we put in the oven before we started the burgers took longer to cook.  It was awesome.  Clean up is a breeze.  Once the grilling surface has cooled, scrape the fat, grease and scraps off the grilling surface into the drip tray.  Use a warm soapy sponge to wipe the grilling plates clean, then rinse the sponge and wipe away any soapy residue.  Dry with a paper towel and you’re done.

I have been looking through the cooking guide included with the Grill, and am looking forward to trying out new things.  I also found a website with George Foreman Grill Recipes that I am looking forward to going though.  I am so excited about the possibilities.

You can buy the Grand Champ Family Value Grill, the G-Broil Supreme or any of the other George Foreman Healthy Cooking Products at GeorgeForemancooking.com, at Amazon.com, or at Target.com.

Feature Image: seentvcanada.com

Cookbooks: The best of the best with Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

On principle, I rarely suggest cookbooks as gifts for women.  I also don’t want a vaccuum cleaner for Valentine’s Day or a new ironing board for my birthday, thanks.  Apparently, I have a little feminist rebellion in me after all.

And yet, one of the best wedding presents I received was a cookbook I got from my Nanna.  A cookbook as a wedding present?  Sure, it’s a little cliche.  But I think every kitchen has to have this cookbook in it.

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My favorite low carb cookbook – Stella Style

I’ve been on a primarily low carb diet for about 4 years now.  I mean, if you don’t count the months here and there where I decide to completely sabotage myself and eat anything and everything I can get my hands on.

The thing about eating low carb for that long is that it gets boring.

You can only have so many hamburger patties with cheese or chicken salads before you want to stab someone.

Add that to the fact that I refuse to cook more than one meal at dinner time – meaning my family gets one low carb meal a day – and I absolutely have to find ways to be creative with a low carb menu.

George Stella and his “Stella Style” cooking has saved my diet on more than one occassion.

What I like about this cookbook is that it’s not exactly Atkins.  I don’t follow quite as strict a regimine as the Atkins Diet, so it was nice to find a low carb philosophy that was closer to mine.

“Stella Style” is basically about eating low carb – not counting carbs.  You make foods that are naturally low in carbs – especially “bad” carbs found in things like flour and sugar – and don’t worry about how much of it you eat.  It has been an easier way to maintain a low carb lifestyle long term for me.

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