Whoa! I gotta say I’m excited at how excited everyone has been about my No Cook November! Hopefully all you ladies (and gents) will be inspired and start your own No Cook month and open up a little more time for yourselves.

My friend, Leah, asked me how I was liking NCN this afternoon.

I love it!

Hands down.

I know I’m only on day two, but there is something about having dinner “done” by 10 am that makes a girl smile.

Anyways, I thought I’d share what I do to plan for a month of meals.

We have a large monthly calendar that hangs on our fridge. At the end of every month I write up next months meals (ok, ok, I confess, I have waited until the month starts before planning). First things first, I see what we have planned for the month and assign the easiest meals for the hardest days. Thursdays are killers around here. Jonathan has work and then class and I have the girls all day till my Body Attack class. So, I usually make bean and cheese tacos, salad or spaghetti on these days. Our babysitter never complains, so I keep it really simple.

After all my easy meals are on the calendar, I start filling in.

With a red pen.

Red on my calendar always means food.

I did that as a way to make the meal stand out, catch the eye and hope that people would want to join us for dinner.

And just so you know, you can always join us for dinner.

Always.

Anyways…. back to my planning.

I will put down oldies but goodies.

I will put down surprises (Jonathan loves him some steak!).

I will put down something more adventurous (i.e. time consuming).

If I plan to use chicken one night (for a soup or stir fry), I will plan to thaw extra to use two night later. The same night I thaw it, I grill it on my Foreman (LOVE my Foreman) and use the grilled chicken for a salad or something two days later. A sample week might look like this:

– Turkey tenderloin with potatoes and veggies
– Tex Mex lasagna
– Turkey salad (using leftover turkey from Monday)
– Spaghetti (using leftover ground beef from Tuesday)
– Bean and cheese tacos (a staple for my family!!)

I have several “healthier” cookbooks that I take ideas from, but I love All Recipes and have gotten some amazing recipes from them.

I plan to eat leftovers or sandwiches on the weekends, as we tend to be on the go and need food that is quickly reheated and doesn’t take much time to cook.

As for getting good deals on food….

I plan ahead.

Way ahead.

Like buying 40 pounds of ground beef and chicken ahead.

When Fareway runs an amazing deal on meats, I buy it and freeze it. I might not have pork on the menu this month, but it will be on next month’s! Example: Monday Wal-Mart was marking down a lot of meat that was coming up on it’s use/freeze by date. So I bought a lot. I mean A LOT. I have no plans to use it this month (with the exception of a few things), but I will set out to use it over the next few months. I don’t worry so much about saving 50 cents on sour cream or that sort of stuff, so I’ve stopped really running around town looking for the best deals. I won’t move around meals because potatoes are on sale this week but I don’t have them on the schedule till next week. I figure if it’s going to save me lots of money (like $5 plus) then I will budge. But I’m way too lazy to buy something that is on sale when it’s inconvenient for me.  On the other hand, it’s nice knowing what we’re having at the end of the month when pasta sauce goes on sale. I buy it and save it for three weeks.

So, that’s pretty much what I do. It’s not too hard and after a couple of months is really quite easy. I love it. I love having everything planned out and ready to go. Makes life that much simpler.

Last week we bought a pumpkin for carving. I was at a loss as what to do with all the pumpkin guts so I asked my BFF, Google.

Turns out you can just puree up those puppies.

So I did.

I set aside the pumpkin seeds for roasting, then I tossed all the guts into my blender (a little at a time) and hit “puree”.

I ended up with about 30 oz of puree.

With all my yummy pumpkin-ness, I made some new favorite treats I thought I’d pass along.

Pumpkin Pancakes*:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons brown sugar (I used sucanat instead)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I ran out of cinnamon, so I used pumpkin spice)

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups milk

1 cup pumpkin puree

1 egg

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons vinegar

In a separate bowl, mix together the milk, pumpkin, egg, oil and vinegar. Combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, allspice, cinnamon, ginger and salt, stir into the pumpkin mixture just enough to combine.

Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

I made about 4 pancakes the first day and saved the batter. It filled up 1 1/2 12oz mason jars. It was even better the second day! And the third. 😉

Pumpkin Muffins*:

1 small sugar pumpkin, seeded (about one can of puree – 2 cups)

3 cups all-purpose flour (I used 2 cups whole wheat flour and 1 cup all-purpose)

2 cups white sugar (I used sucanat)

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons ground cloves

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup vegetable oil (I used olive oil)

3 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 12 muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners. *Makes 24 muffins.

Split pumpkin in half. Remove seeds and strings. Place on baking sheet, cut side down. Cover with foil and bake in preheated oven until tender, about 90 minutes. Remove pumpkin pulp and puree in blender. Measure out 2 cups pumpkin puree; set aside. *Again, you can just use the canned puree, or homemade puree.

In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and salt. In a separate bowl, beat together 2 cups pumpkin puree, vegetable oil and eggs. Stir pumpkin mixture into flour mixture until smooth. Scoop batter into prepared muffin cups.

Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

Jonathan and I both agreed that these taste awesome, but are lacking something. Next time I make them (which might be pretty soon – as they are almost all gone!) I’m adding chopped up cranberries.

I’m picky when it comes to food. Not picky in the sense of food preference, but picky in the if-this-cereal-is even-within-a-two-month-expiration-date-from-today-I might-just-not-eat-it. I have some irrational fears and consuming “post marked” goods is one of them. The thought of eating cookies that say “Best by” two months out gives me the willies. But, if I want to be frugal maybe I can’t always be so picky.

This morning, Julia and I drove out to Kalona to visit the Central Discount Store. I have heard some people recommend the place and knew that they were open today (they are owned/ran by some Amish and are only open 3 days a week), so since Julia fell asleep in the time it took us to leave our house and pull into Fareway, I decided to let her sleep a little longer and make the drive out.

Here’s my loot from the trip:

In all my total was $7.42. With that I got:

– two boxes of Optimum Raisin Bran cereal

– 4 bottles of organic, diary free, gluten free ranch dressing

– one box of Back to Nature mint cookies (yummy!)

– two boxes of organic chocolate cake mix

– two boxes of organic chocolate icing mix

– one box of organic kid’s granola bars

The best thing is, these are all brands that are sold at New Pi that I always want to try but never have the heart to spend the extra money (with the exception of the cookies – I have bought those before – kinda a weakness of mine 😉 ). I can’t say for sure how much I saved, but to give you a small idea, the salad dressing alone is usually $3ish per bottle and I got it for 50 cents per bottle.