Mommy Has to Work

Quick Start Homemade – Cookbook

October 21, 2013 By Anne

School is back and so is the full fall schedule. Dinners can get old and time consuming. So do you do? Try new quick and exciting recipes!!

I received a new cook book to review, Quick Start Homemade from Southern Living. I love Southern Living Cookbooks. They always have easy to follow recipes, beautiful pictures and lots of tips and tricks.

The Quick Start Homemade Cookbook has over 180 recipes using everyday staples and ingredients like pasta, salad, store-bought pizza dough, eggs and rotisserie chicken. Items you can pick up easily and put together a great dinner.

Each nutritious recipe has been triple-tested by the Southern Living test kitchen and Quick-Start Homemade includes great pasta dishes like Skillet Ziti, made in half the time of baked, and Green Bean Pasta Salad with Lemon-Thyme Vinaigrette, a 30-minute recipe with an extra tip for preparing the recipe ahead of time and freshening up before serving. The “Pastry & Pizza Dough” chapter lets fresh pizza dough, piecrust dough or puff pastry do most of the work and features inventive pizza recipes perfect for a mid-week meal, as well as savory hand pies and pot pies. In “Rotisserie Chicken,” crowd-pleasing dinners like Chicken Enchiladas and Chicken Pot Pie with Cheddar Biscuits are no-hassle, but with a homemade touch.

I looked through the book and wanted something super easy. So I picked the Breakfast Pizza.

Here’s what you need:

1 – 8 oz can refrigerated crescent rolls

1 – lb. sausage( the book calls for hot, but I used mild)

(I also used 4 slices of bacon!)

1 – 28 oz package of frozen hash browns with onions and peppers

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

4 large eggs (I used 6)

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 375. Unroll crescent rolls and place in 13 x 9 baking dish. Bake for 5 minutes

Reduce oven to 350. Cook sausage over medium heat until it crumbles and is no longer pink. Drain and sprinkle over crust. I added my bacon here as well.

Prepare hash browns as directed and spoon over sausage and bacon. Sprinkle cheese over hash browns.

Whisk together eggs, milk and salt and pepper. Pour over cheese.

Bake 350 for 30-35 minutes or until set.

I had so many more pictures from beginning to end but my card was not in my camera so all those pictures I thought I had I didn’t. So this a picture of the leftovers that we have been eating since I made this on Friday. A great dish! The extra eggs and bacon was a big plus for my family.

I’m looking forward to trying more new and easy recipes!! No more boring dinners for us!

Anne

I'm a mother of 2 who likes to get involved in too much! Besides writing here I started a non-profit, I'm on the PTO board, very active in my community and volunteer in the school. I enjoy music, reading, cooking, traveling and spending time with my family. We just adopted our 3rd cat and love them all!

The Bargain – Book Review

October 18, 2013 By Anne

Another Amish novel was on my reading list. The Bargain by Stephanie Reed is the first in the Plain City Peace series. This Amish book was a bit different from others I’ve read. There were several English characters in this one and it was set in the 70’s. A lot of 70’s references in the book, raggy jeans, tied dye shirts, the war and peace rallies. I really enjoyed this one. Stephanie Reed did a great job with the characters and I look forward to what happens in the next book.

Betsie Troyer’s cousin was called to war and someone had to learn the new leather shop business so Betsie volunteered. At the same time her parents decide to leave the Amish faith and move leaving Betsie and her sister behind. In order to learn the new business Betsie stays at an English home where she learn a great deal about the English and they in turn learn a lot from her.

Michael and Sheila are the fun English characters in this book and they add a lot of fun to the reading.

It’s 1971, and Betsie Troyer’s peaceful and predictable life is about to become anything but.

When their parents flee the Amish, nineteen-year-old Betsie and her seventeen-year-old sister Sadie are distraught. Under the dubious guidance of a doting aunt, the girls struggle to keep the secret, praying their parents will return before anyone learns the truth-a truth that may end all hopes of Betsie’s marriage to Charley Yoder.

Stephanie Reed lives on the outskirts of Plain City, Ohio, site of a once-thriving Amish community. She gleans ideas for her novels from signs glimpsed along the byways of Ohio, as she did for her previous books, “Across the Wide River” and “The Light Across the River.”

Learn more at Stephanie’s website: http://www.stephanielreed.com/

I received the book to review. Opinions are my own.

Anne

5 Home Office Products You Didn’t Know Existed

October 15, 2013 By Anne

This is a partnered guest post.

Do you ever have that freaky experience when you realize that something you always believed to be true is now wrong? I don’t mean, like, believing in dragons or anything (although dragons are totally real, they’re just misunderstood dinosaurs), but like growing up thinking Pluto was a planet and then learning that the science people changed their minds. Or telling your high-school-aged niece that more kids take the SAT than the ACT because not all schools accept the ACT and then finding out that you’re now wrong, on both counts.

What I mean to say is that if you think you’re using the best home office products, you’re probably wrong, because in the past few years companies started launching all kinds of new things that none of us know exist because we’re too busy checking Facebook. Or something.

So here are the top five home office tools you’ve never heard of, that you should be using RIGHT NOW:

1. Leg Cord Managers

Yes, we’ve all seen the lifehacks: use kitchen twist ties or those little plastic things that come with your loaves of bread to keep all your cords out of the way.

Except my office is already too much like my kitchen — I mean, I eat nearly every meal there — and I don’t want any dang bread ties on my expensive computer cables.

New solution: leg cord managers. Basically, you stick these skinny pockets to the legs of your desk, and then you slide the cords down the pockets. Boo-yah.

2. Office-friendly food trays

Remember that part where I said I ate nearly every meal at my desk? Office supply stores now make food trays for workers just like me. Hold the tray on your lap, or try to balance it on the six inches of your desk that aren’t already covered with papers. Or: just put it on the papers.

Office-friendly food trays are lightweight, easy to clean, have high edges to combat liquid spills, and don’t at all look like you’re in a hospital or eating at a high chair. They’re designed for the modern worker, the one who doesn’t have time to sit at a stinkin’ table.

3. Paperless scanning software

Sure, you probably have a scanner, or if you’re like me, you probably go down to the copy shop once a week and scan a bunch of business receipts. (Once I did this while still wearing my fuzzy bunny slippers. I literally forgot to take them off before getting into the car.)

But did you know that scanner software is now paperless? This is on the level of “cats and dogs living together.” It blows my mind.

4. The standing desk

This one’s a cheat, because you’ve probably heard of a standing desk, but you probably haven’t tried it.

Ladies and gentlemen, a standing desk will change your world.

Even better: you don’t have to invest in one of those fancy standing desks from Ikea, and then stand over it in frustration, trying to figure out how the little blobby man is gesticulating you to put the pieces together. (Dear Ikea: Use your words.) You can just grab an ordinary milk crate, or some of that cheap wire cube shelving, and build your own elevated laptop station. Then stow your milk crate under the desk when you want to sit down again.

5. External battery-powered USB charger

Sometimes you want to get out of your pajamas and go do work around other people for a change. However, that brings a problem: all your lovely outlets are right there, and usually coffee shop outlets are already filled by other weirdo freelancers. (Not to mention that most coffee shops hate it when we run up their electricity costs.)

The solution: an external battery-powered USB charger. These things cost, like, twenty bucks. They fit in your pocket. They have a USB port, and when you plug something into that port, like your phone, your iPad, or your laptop, it charges. Never be chained to a coffee shop outlet again.