Menu Planning!

Alright my friends I am back to planning menus in bulk quantities because I hate the 4pm "what's for dinner oh we don't have the ingredients" time of day. And I spend way to much on random shit at the grocery store if I don't plan and we eat way to many carb heavy dinners because it is fast and easy. So on to the plan. I wasn't going to share, mostly out of the thought that no one would care what I am eating but I had a friend ask for me to message the plan to her and my camera couldn't take a clear picture and she couldn't read my quick writing scrawl so here we are!

Some of these are quick and easy  to fit nights we have activities or I am cranky and don't want to cook and some are hearty wintery meals and some are just because it was a new recipe I found on pinterest this morning.

I planned 26 meals but some will make enough for leftovers so this should easily feed us a month or more without me having to put more thought into it. Yay!

All of my meals will use meat and dairy free subs but I am using the meat names for convenience

• Panera Copycat Chicken and Rice
• Chili fries
• Spaghetti and shirataki noodles
• Rosemary and Red Wine Beef with gratin vegetables served with green beans
• Rice noodle Peanut Butter sauce stirfry with Beef and Broccoli
• Roasted Vegetable Tarte Provencale
• Baked Tofu and roasted veggies
• Sweet and Sticky chicken and veggies
• Grilled cheese and tomato soup
• Lightlife Lean sausage Meatloaf, Baked potatoes with Broccoli and cheese, garlic mushrooms and strawberry protein powder ice cream
• Bean and cheese burritos green salad with fresh pico and sour cream sauce
• Chickpea Buffalo chicken Salad Sandwiches with choice of ranch seasoned tater tots or green salad
• Pizza wonton cupcakes and raw veggie tray
• Bean soup with bacon crumble,cornbread,side salad
• Tofu fried rice
• Lasagna, garlic bread, marinated italian dressing veggies and olives
• Sesame chicken asian chopped salad and mini spring rolls
• Siracha tofu and stir fry veggies over shirataki noodles
• chicken, spinach and mushroom quesadilla and crockpot refried beans
• Seasoned meatballs in brown gravy, parsley potatoes, garlic butter green beans, and carrot, raisin, pineapple tidbit salad
• Protein waffles with fruit topping and lightlife sausage and smart bacon
• chicken, broccoli and cheese with caramelized onions and mushrooms stuffed into spaghetti squash or baked potato
• Boca crumble ground beef lettuce wraps and brown rice
• Zupa Toscana with tofurkey italian sausage, olive garden style salad and crusty bakery bread
• Stuffed green peppers
• Broccoli Cheese Soup and Biscuit sandwiches with peppered tofurkey, sweet hot mustard and banana pepper slices

While I was typing this up I thought of a couple more, Boca chicken Parmesan, Reuben Sandwiches or a reuben casserole and fries with lots of pickles, tofu egg salad served over spring mix and a silken tofu "egg" frittata loaded with veggies served with the cooked winter fruit compote I made back at Christmas

So there you have it friends. Many of these recipes I found on Pinterest and adapted to fit my food needs with my food sensitivities. Bon Appetite!

A Life Saving Infant Technology

my friends, today I have a very serious post. I will be sharing a face book post from a friend, a fellow mom of three. It tells her story and talks about a technology that literally saved her baby's life just recently. I cried reading it because I am a mama.  I am so very thankful her child is safe and sound today after having this experience.
 My oldest son had asthma and we had multiple very scary moments when he couldn't breathe and we had to rush him to the hospital. A baby turning blue is a horrifically scary experience. I wish I had this technology back then!

Here is the post from my friend, Melissa Hayes:

 I may sound a little like a commercial here, but I wanted to let people know a little more about what led to Adarah's hospital stay this weekend.

She'd had a bit of a cough for over a week, but sometime last week the sound of her cough changed and we got concerned. We called the pediatrician's office, but they had no appointments available to check her out until this week, and she seemed pretty okay at that point so we were going to wait.

On Friday night she popped a fever. In infants under 12 weeks of age, that requires a trip to the ER and initiates a battery of tests. They all came back negative except for one- RSV. A virus that is just a cold for older kids and adults, but can be very scary for kids age two and under, and most especially little ones who were born prematurely or have chronic lung issues like asthma. Adarah was a healthy full term baby though, so it was thought that she could probably recover well at home, but we were given a list of criteria to bring her back if she showed. Basically it was to look for dehydration or respiratory distress.

So in the wee hours of Saturday morning we brought her home. Josh was up most of the night with her, then I took over sometime in the morning to get him some rest. We decided to use our Owlet monitor all day instead of just when we were sleeping, and I'm still thanking God for the foresight there.

She was fussy all day, which is very unlike her. She didn't want to eat even though she was clearly hungry. It was frustrating, but she was always just under the line for when to bring her in. Finally after many hours of dealing with the screaming, she was exhausted enough to fall asleep. We put her down to sleep in the living room and took the opportunity to tend to other tasks. She was 10 feet away from us, but we were attending to everything else in the house/ other kids. We weren't just staring right at her, and I guess reasonably who would be.

At one point her Owlet monitor rang a red alert. I heard Josh's feet hit the floor upstairs and Vicki and I ran to Adarah. She was peacefully asleep, but her color was very pale and her lips were a bit blue.

We woke her up and her color got better, but we obviously took her back to the ER. At no point is blue an okay color for a baby! We explained what had happened and they rushed her back without any wait even though the waiting room was packed, and within 5 minutes a doctor (who was not a pediatrician) saw her and ordered supplemental oxygen. He advised us that he was seeing enough respiratory distress right there to admit, but a pediatrician had to make that call.

Now that she was pink and stable, it took a long time for the ped to come around, but she still saw significant respiratory distress even while on oxygen. (She was now having to work extra hard to pull air into her lungs). We were admitted for observation, and a few hours later when Adarah fell asleep, they cut off the oxygen to test and see if they could reproduce what we saw at home, and they were satisfied that her Oxygen levels were definitely dropping to dangerous levels when she was in a deep sleep cycle.

It all went downhill so fast, we put a sick but stable baby down for a nap, and only a few minutes later she was in big trouble. Without the Owlet monitor on her, she could very well have slipped quietly away in her sleep and none of us would have known until it was too late.

Seriously, best baby purchase EVER. I felt overprotective and silly buying this thing, but now I 100% recommend it to anyone! It's pricey, but it was my big splurge baby item and I'm so, so glad we got it! I'm not sure we would still have Adarah with us without it. 

Link to website for this product is below. 

http://www.owletcare.com