Plan Your Meals By The Week!

Keep a little more organized by....
planning your meals a week at a time.

make, buy, design, craft, be cReAtiVe
and have a list of what you're going to eat
for dinner for the week...
if you're home during the day... try all your meals...?

Some pros for writing and making your weekly list are:
~being organized,
~not having to say "what am I going to eat?" every single day
~being able to have a more productive grocery list
so you don't buy everything in sight or have to go back
daily b/c you forgot something
~getting up and starting the day off knowing what's for dinner
~being able to eat something different everyday and the stuff
you like or want all because you took 5 minutes to think about
dinner for the week
~lastly, it makes you a little more aware of what you are eating

Oh, & You Forgot Your Reusable Bags AGAIN!

I know, you want to use those reusable bags you got
for free or paid 99 cents for but if you are like me...
you seem to forget them.

Some people say to just keep them everywhere, a few in the car,
one near your purse, one near your door, near your keys, in the garage...
but that can also get annoying having bags everywhere.

For me, I have 3-5 bags and I keep all but one in the car.
I have one hanging right by the door where my car keys are.
I also have gotten into the habit of writing "bring bag" on my grocery
list as well which seems to help!

Dairy Tips

If you can, try to buy milk in cardboard cartons or
non-translucent jugs so that light doesn't seep in, which can
cause milk to spoil more quickly. Store milk in the refrigerator
that is set below 40 degrees, and don’t store it in the door.
Items stored there are susceptible to warm air that enters
the fridge each time you open it.

Discard any unused milk after one week from
opening it, no matter what the sell by date is.
(Milk can be frozen for up to 3 months)
Ice cream has a shelf life for about 2-4 months,
as long as the freezer is set at zero degrees.
Yogurt is best used within 7-10 days from when you purchased it.

Butter is safe in the refrigerator, tightly wrapped, for about
1 month and may be frozen for about 6 months.

Hard cheeses like Gouda (pronounced -"who-da" not Goo-da),
Swiss, cheddar etc... will keep for 3-4 weeks in the refrigerator.

If your block of cheese has mold in it... cut 1 inch around
the mold area, the rest is safe to eat for up to a month.
Cream cheese will keep for about 2 weeks,
Ricotta cheese will keep for about 5 days,
and cottage cheese will keep for about 15 to 20 days.

Tilapia with Tater Tots

This tilapia dish is good for people who are
not so keen on fish... and for people
who enjoy fish- even better!

Ingredients:
1 frozen bag of tater tots thawed
4 cloves of smashed garlic
olive oil
1/4 cup diced tomatoes or grape tomatoes halved
6 or so slices of roasted bell peppers diced up
3 scallions chopped up
several olives diced up (optional)
Salt & pepper to taste
2 TBS chopped fresh parsley (you can used dried)
4 or 5 tilapia fillets (fresh or frozen- thawed)


Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Drizzle olive oil in a pan and fry the tilapia until slightly golden.
Take the slightly cooked tilapia out of the pan and put
tilapia into the pan you're going to bake in the oven.
Cook the hash browns with garlic and salt in the same pan you
just used for the fish with olive oil until golden brown.
(use a potato masher or spatula to flatten most of the tater tots)
Add the potato on top and around the tilapia in the oven-safe
dish/pan along with the tomatoes, scallions, parsley, roasted bells.
Bake in the oven until crispy.
( I like to turn it to broil for the last 5 minutes or so.)

Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Ingredients:
1 pkg. white cake mix

1 pkg. (3.4 oz.) JELL-O Lemon Flavor Instant Pudding

1 cup water

4 egg whites

2 TBS. oil

1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened

2 TBS lemon juice

1 pkg. (16 oz.) powdered sugar

Procedure: Preheat your oven to 350ºF.

Mix the cake mix, jello,water, eggs and oil until it's blended well.
(The batter should be thick) Use a spoon to fill into cupcake lined muffin tins. Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Cool in the pans for about 10 minutes then, move to wire racks and cool completely.

You want to beat the cream cheese, butter and lemon juice until it's well blended.Then, gradually add sugar and beat until smooth. Spread onto cupcakes. Zest a little bit of lemon for color and beauty if you'd like. (not too much zest tho... you don't want tart cupcakes)

Made in Philadelphia

So what are some foods that are highly recognized
in the City of Brotherly Love?

We all know about the Philly CheeseSteaks...
Philadelphians Pat and Harry Olivieri are often
credited with inventing the sandwich by cooking
chopped steak on hoagie rolls in the early 1930s.

Pat's (www.patskingofsteaks.com)
and Geno's Steaks (www.genosteaks.com)
have a highly publicized rivalry. Both restaurants are
located across the street from each  other on 9th Street
and Passyunk Avenue in of course south Philly.

What is so good about a Philly CheeseSteak vs.
a cheesesteak from somewhere else?
The steak meat used for Philly CheeseSteaks is thinly
sliced rib-eye or top round. The steak meat is also usually
cooked on top of  sauteed onions for the flavor and to
prevent over cooking or  more importantly from drying out.
In Philadelphia, most  cheesesteaks go on an Amoroso roll.
Amoroso Baking Company (www.amorosobaking.com)
is a family-owned company that specializes in
baked breads and rolls. The company was founded in 1904 in
South Philly by Vincenzo Amoroso and his two sons.
Philly CheeseSteaks are known for having Cheez Whiz which is
a thick processed cheese sold by Kraft Foods and was first
used in 1953. Cheez Whiz is known to have been used because
it was easy and already a spread/melted texture.

Soft Pretzels are known all around Philadelphia.
They originated in Germany and after they immigrated to
Pennsylvania- Pennsylvania is known to make 80% of the nations
soft pretzels today. Pretzels sold in paper bags are best

rather than the ones wrapped in plastic because the plastic
makes the doughhard making them more often stale.

The 1st American cream cheese was in made in 1872 in New York
by William Lawrence. In 1880, the name "Philadelphia" was used
and put into their brand name after the city that was considered at
the time to be the home of top quality food.
Cream cheese is good for bagels of course but you can also use
Philadelphia cream cheese when you are making a cream sauce
for your pasta dishes, cheesecakes & other desserts along with
adding it to veggies such as potatoes appetizers and more...

Philip J. Baur, a baker from Pittsburgh and Herbert T. Morris,
a Boston egg salesman got together and created a business and
produced baked goods in 1914. The baked goods were so good
that after tasting a few samples, Herbert's wife
said they were so "tasty" so they named the business
Tasty Baking Company (www.tastykake.com)
and came up with the catchy name Tastykake and the
rest is history!

To Drink Or Not

This one is a dilemma ....

To drink or not to drink MILK.

Now, we know milk is good for you

the calcium makes our bones strong etc...?

So many people become lactose intolerant as adults

because their body is not able to metabolize lactose

because of the lack of the required enzyme lactase for our

digestive systems. It is estimated that about 75% of adults

all over the world have decreased activity of the enzyme,
making it harder to digest milk and other dairy products.

The actual dilemma is that...

people usually don't think about it but,

cows are mammals and they only produce milk

when they are pregnant-

so all the milk we drink and have with our cereal

comes from a cow that is pregnant pretty much

her whole life literally. Cows produce milk

after calving and their milk is produced longer than

people produce milk after giving birth but,

regardless many cows are impregnated pretty much

every other year in order to give us milk.

Commercial farms often give a hormone to the cows

to produce the milk for a longer period of time than usual.
See the dilemma.......? hmmm