Hands up those that have a cleaning schedule!1

Ive been really busy this week, snowed under by  laundry all thanks to being lazy last week. I still am not done and I wonder if I will ever be caught up on my laundry and ironing. I'm sure one day, some day I wont have to worry. In conjunction with meal planning Ive thought of coming up with a cleaning schedule to help me get through the week and maybe I wont feel as overwhelmed as I do sometimes.

A cleaning schedule is basically a timetable for the week which says what you do on each day in terms of cleaning. In my household Tuesdays is garbage day so I clean my fridge on Monday so that I can throw out anything that has gone off from the previous week. I prefer to go to the supermarket on a Thursday because fruit and vegetables go on sale and I get the weekly local paper then too. Get it?

My cleaning schedule looks like this ( I try as much as possible to stick to it)
MONDAY - Laundry (weekend clothes), Vacuum, Clean fridge

TUESDAY- Laundry ( bed linen, towels, bathroom mat),Change bed linen, vacuum and dust furniture,Ironing, Wash garbage bin

WEDNESDAY- Laundry, Vacuum and mop entire house, Ironing











THURSDAY- Supermarket and rest

FRIDAY- Laundry, vacuum, ironing

WEEKEND- REST!!

This is what works for me, I may skip a day here and there and not stress about it but I have realised thhat doing my laundry everyday helps keep it to a minimum even though my laundry bin is always full.

Something Ive been meaning to do properly

So I have been missing in action for a few days because I have been trying to get organized by doing some menu planning and ermmm being lazy.  I admit that last week was very unproductive just because I really had no drive to do anything and that has left me with tonnes of work to catch up on this week. Lesson learnt!! The lesson being that laziness does NOT pay.

So this month I decided to do some menu planning that is the easiest way I have discovered to getting my grocery list just right and not having to stress about what to make for dinner. Menu planning can be daunting if you've never done it before (Ive done it a couple of times) and once you find the proper way for you to go about it then you're set.

I realized that I have almost 20 recipe books that I have collected rarely used. Instead of throwing them away I decided to pick one and base my dinner menu on just that one for the month. So most of my menu is based on that book and a few easy recipes that I will share with you.My first pick is a very sentimental one for me, the first recipe book I got just after I started living with my husband.

So my grocery list and menu planning began. What I then did is I went through the recipe book and came up with 11 recipes that I will make twice this month and I added 4 more easy recipes to the mix to make a total of 30dinners, 1 dinner missing I know, on the first Friday of the month we have takeaways so I don't need to plan for that night. If you have dinner plans for other nights during the week then you can also put that in your calendar too.

After doing that, take another piece of paper and right down the ingredients and amounts of each recipe then depending on how many times you're making it multiply it by that. For example if a recipe calls for a can of tomato puree and you're making it twice then you need 2 cans. After that you have a complete grocery menu for your dinners Do not forget to add your sides and salads. Also include your snacks, breakfasts and lunches.

I hope that helps you to also make up your monthly grocery list and menu plans and not have to scratch your head on what you are making for supper. Look out for all the recipes that I will share this month from this recipe book and some of my own and I know I will make a few experiments too. Enjoy!

From mushy bananas to dessert.... Reminds me of my sister

What do you do with mushy bananas, you know the ones that have been in your fridge for over a week and the skin is going black and soft. I usually freeze my bananas when they start looking like they are about to go mushy but I already had 4 bananas that I had frozen for smoothies (which I still haven't made) and I thought of my older sister and a dessert she used to make when I was younger. Banana fritters!! Yummmmm, the taste of my childhood, it brings back memories of yummy smells and yummy memories.


My taste tester ( my son) said they were "hmmmm very licious", Im starting to suspect foul play or maybe Im just a good cook cause my son says "hmmmm very licious" to almost everything I make. Since I tasted these and thought they were delicious, I agree with him that they were very licious indeed.

Ingredients
2 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup milk
2 cups all purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 tsp salt
3tsp baking powder
1tbsp oil
icing sugar to dust
Cooking oil for frying

Method
1. Mix bananas and milk in a bowl, add flour, baking powder and salt. Mix eggs and 1 tbsp oil and pour into flour mixture.
2. Heat oil in a deep saucepan and fry tablespoonfuls until golden brown. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with icing sugar. Serve warm with custard or ice cream or golden syrup. Enjoy!

Warm potato salad. EXPERIMENT!!

Sunday must have been one of my laziest suppers, I lie, I have a number of lazy suppers that I have been making. I decided to make a potato salad but with a twist. I didnt want to make the normal potato salad with mayonnaise and all, I decided to mix in what are normally green salad ingredients. My family are my guinea pigs, I experiment once in a while and warn my hubby just before he eats it and wait for his expression after the first bite. I missed the first bite because I had a feeling this was going to be good.

I made a honey mustard salad dressing, so good that I had dreams about it, Im not kidding, I had dreams of making chicken salads and all sorts of salads I swear I could have lived on salads alone. Thats how good it was!

I gathered my salad ingredients and kept tossing things in until i was satisfied.I had some caramelized onions that I had leftover from the burgers that I was serving the salad with so I chucked those in too. I will also include the recipe for the dressing so that you can have food dreams too. LOL.

Warm potato salad
4 medium potatoes, cubed
1/2 cucumber sliced
2 carrots, cut into sticks
handful green beans
butter lettuce
1 onion, sliced in half rings
1 tsp brown sugar
oil
Ina Paarman garlic and herd seasoning

Method
1. Parboil potatoes, 10 mins until soft and then deep fry until golden, drain on paper towels. While potatoes cook, heat oil in a saucepan and fry onions 5mins, add sugar and continue to fry until caramelized.
2 Steam carrots and green beans 5 mins but leave them crunchy. Mix potatoes, carrots and green beans and sprinkle seasoning.
3. Mix in the rest of the ingredients.

Honey and mustard dressing
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 cup olive oil ( i used vegetable oil)
3tbsp honey
2tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp black pepper.

Method
1 . Pour all ingredients in a jar and shake or in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Enjoy!!

Saturday Night movie Shrek!! colored popcorn and flavoured water.

 Last night, the first Shrek movie was on TV so hubby, son and I decided to watch it and I have been dying to make this colored popcorn it reminds me of the coloured maputi I used to have as a child and it tasted just as good. I decided to have it with "naartjie water" as this treat was too sweet for any other juice.

The movie was great, much better than I remember and my husband who doesnt normally like animation movies (he doesnt know what he's missing) enjoyed it too. My son however fell asleep 20 minutes into the movie.... I didn't mind, more popcorn for me!!

Naartjie water is what my son calls "very licious" water, LOL. It is easy to make and some like it (my son and I) and some dont (y husband). Its a great way to flavour your water naturally and affordably and you can let your kiddies have as much of it as they want since its just water and fruit.

You can use most fruits oranges, lemons, limes, watermelon, pineapple and Im sure you can even infuse some apple in there. Usually you are supposed to steep the water for 24hours so that the taste matures but I had it right away.


Coloured popcorn recipe
1/4 cup popcorn kernels unpopped
cooking oil
1 cup water
2 cups sugar (white or caster)
food colouring, as many as you like, I used 3

Method
1. Pop popcorn as usual and divide into 3 baking trays.
2. While popcorn pops, dissolve sugar in water and boil 15mins
3. Divide caramel into smaller containers with a dash of food colouring in each

4. Pour and mix into popcorn trays and leave to dry about 20-25mins

5. Mix and serve

Naartjie water
2 medium sized naartjies
water
mason jar or jug

Method
1. Peel naartjies and place in jar. Use a cooking spoon to smash the naarjies so that some of the juice comes out. Do not smash to a pulp
2. Fill jar with water and refrigerate.

Enjoy!!!

Pear sauce

I have made apple sauce before and I really enjoyed it with some plain yogurt, I remember making apple sauce muffins while I was still learning to bake and that did NOT come out well. I had some pears in the fridge that were not as crunchy as I like and noone was eating them so I thought why not try pear sauce.

There are a number of ways to enjoy this sauce, by itself, with plain or greek yogurt, in a smoothie, warm on a pancake or in your icecream. I bet there are other ways that I havent tried or dont know about. Its pretty simple to make and I then packed it into portion size containers with my plain yogurt so that when I need that fix i just grab one from the fridge and enjoy.

You can make this for your kids too, get them to eat fruit, or even for babies but you would definitely have to reduce the sugar or not even use any. Try it!

Ingredients
8 pears, peeled, cored and cubed
1 cup white sugar
3 cups water

Method
1. Boil your pears with the sugar until soft about 30-45 mins until soft.

2. Blend or mash to desired consistency and cool.

3. Enjoy

Chocolate, peanut butter NO BAKE cookies

I made these cookies when my toddler son was napping, it took about 5 minutes to mix and almost an hour to set (too long). On seeing them, my husband declared that I could definitely survive in the bush if I could bake without an oven. I hope you enjoy these as much as my family has, my son shouts "mama, cookie" at least twice a day.

Ingredients
1 3/4 C sugar
3C instant oats
1/2C milk
1/2C smooth peanut butter
1/2C butter/margarine
1/4C cocoa
1tsp vanilla essence

Method
1. Mix butter, sugar, milk and cocoa powder in a saucepan and boil for 2mins.
2. Remove from heat and add oats, peanut butter and vanilla.
3. Drop spoonfuls onto a baking sheet lined with wax paper and let cool and set until hard, about an hour. Store in an airtight container in a cool place (mine are in the fridge).

* NOTE* I found these a bit on the sweet side so if you don't particularly like them sweet, you can substitute the 1/4C of sugar with another 1/4C peanut butter.