My Family Archives - Page 8 of 15

Fry’s ClickList & Once A Month Meals

September 26, 2017 by Tamara Leave a Comment

Disclosure: The following post contains affiliate links. This means if you purchase an item from a link I provide to those shops, I might receive a commission. I only share products and services that I would personally use and think are a good fit for my readers. Thank you for supporting the brands that support our family. All opinions are 100% honest and my own.

This summer our family was fortunate enough to go on two separate vacations. We ventured to the beach and to the mountains and it was wonderful to get out of the Arizona heat. But once we returned from vacation we never really left “vacation” in regards to our eating.

I started making multiple trips to the grocery store each week because I had no plan of what we were going to be eating for our meals. Which in turn led to the amount of money we were spending on food being over what we budget for monthly. I found myself not being a great steward of my time or our family’s finances as June turned into July and somehow I ended up in September.

Having used Once a Month Meals multiple times in the last year I knew what I needed to do in order to get our food budget back on track.

Once A Month Meals

Once a Month Meals provides everything you need to shop, prep and cook the bulk of your monthly meals in just one day — and freeze those meals for when you want to eat them. To start you can pick a meal plan that is based on 7 different dietary preference or you can customize your own.

The recipes are easily adaptable to the needs of your own family. For example, our family stays away from soy and two of the recipes I selected called for soy sauce which I swapped out for coconut aminos.

When your menu is finalized you print out the shopping list, prep instructions, cooking day instructions, recipes, labels, and thaw sheet. Everything is organized for you to be able to succeed in prepping meals ahead of time for you and your family! It is very well organized.

Fry’s ClickList

This leads me to this last weekend. On Saturday night after the kids went to bed I got my laptop out and signed in to my Once A Month Meals account to meal plan and prep for the week ahead. I quickly created my meal plan of 5 recipes, that can be cooked from frozen in my Instant Pot, and went to town on my grocery shopping list with Fry’s ClickList.

I love Fry’s ClickList! If you don’t know about this little gem it is amazing and a huge game changer in how you shop for your groceries. ClickList is an online grocery ordering service from Fry’s. You can shop online and pick up your order at the store…without having to leave your car!

Saturday night I ordered our groceries using the shopping list that was generated based on my meal plan I created. In less than an hour the meal plan was done, groceries ordered, and I never even had to leave my house. Sunday morning after church we drove over to Fry’s at 10am and within 10 minutes we were back on the road with our groceries heading home.

Time To Prep & Freeze

Once we were home Josh headed out to Costco to pick up two packages of organic ground beef that I still needed and I got to work prepping the vegetables and cutting up the chicken. I was able to freeze 2 recipes by the time Josh came home.

My customized meal plan included…

Instant Pot Bourbon Chicken
Instant Pot Teriyaki Honey Chicken
Instant Pot Southwest Casserole
Instant Pot Pumpkin Sloppy Joes
Instant Pot Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joes
Eggo Breakfast Sandwiches (I used gluten free Vans waffles instead)

Each recipe serves 4 and was doubled. When I was finished prepping all my meals my freezer was filled with 10 dinners!

I went from a sad empty freezer…

to a freezer full of yummy meals for my family.

By 2pm my kitchen was all cleaned and I had a loaf of pumpkin bread baking in the oven.

I happen to pick fairly low prep recipes to freeze this time which is why I was able to pick up my groceries, prep the food, put the recipes together, and get my freezer stocked in such a small window of time.

Recommend Reading: Once A Month Meals & Instant Pot Review

The Instant Pot Is Amazing!

The recipes I made called for 6.5 pounds of cooked ground beef. I had noticed in the past that Once A Month Meals suggests using your pressure cooker for ground beef and I have always opted to use my skillet instead.

I decided to use my Instant Pot because there was such a large amount of ground beef to cook. And I am so glad I did! I dumped all my meat in my instant pot added 2 cups of water, sealed the lid, and set the timer for 10 minutes.

I was nervous to open the lid when it was done because I was certain I was going to see a huge glob of meat. To my surprise it worked beautifully! It might be hard to tell in the picture but the meat is finely separated.

The Instant Pot has truly changed the way I use my kitchen and allowed me more time with my family. Once A Month Meals is adding new recipes to their library and has over 80 recipes specifically for the Instant Pot. It is great to be able to take a meal from my freezer directly to the Instant Pot and know it will be fully cooked from frozen and ready to eat in less than an hour.

What I Spent & How Long It Took

The total cost for 10 meals and 12 breakfast sandwiches was $190. It works out to $15 a meal and $2 per breakfast sandwich. I purchased organic meat and produce but depending on the menu you choose, the region you live in, how you shop, and how big your family is the cost of your meals will vary. Once a Month Meals reports that shopping for a monthly menu can average between $150-300.

From the time I picked up my groceries to when my kitchen was clean took 4 hours. Each time I make multiple freezer meals I get a little faster and my system becomes more streamlined.

My kitchen however, is still just as messy.

The length of time this take does depend on the recipes you select and how much prep is involved before the recipes can be assembled.

Ready To Make Your Own Freezer Meals?

Once a Month Meals has two membership options for you to choose between. You can select either a $16 monthly subscription or a $170 yearly subscription. Regardless of whether you choose the monthly or yearly option, your membership will give you access to all nine menus and associated documents (shopping, recipes, instructions, etc.) as well as the ability to mix and match recipes from different menus to create your own custom menus in MenuBuilder.

I would love to know if you have ever made freezer meals? Do you own an Instant Pot?

Filed Under: My Family, Nutrition Tagged With: Freezer Meals, Fry's ClickList, Instant Pot, Once a Month Meals

The Mama Confessionals: My Baby Swallowed a “Foreign Body”

August 29, 2017 by Tamara 1 Comment

Well here I sit at my laptop and resurrecting my series The Mama Confessionals. What is funny is that 8 hours earlier today I had decided it was time to do this. My plan had originally been to write about how horrific postpartum periods can be. I seriously feel like I am in junior high again, and really, who wants to relive that awkwardness. Lets just say that my washing machine has been doing double duty lately on my jeans and I am saying thank you for dark washed denim.

Additional Reading: I Locked My Kid in the Car & Opps..I Peed My Pants.

But instead of writing about all that, life decided get interesting last Tuesday evening around bath time and gave me some new material. Bath time is usually one of two things. A celebratory event that cultivates imagination and fun for 10-20 minutes before the full on bedtime routine starts or a rushed 5-10 minute wash up that usually ends in tears, most of the time it is the kids crying but sometimes I can feel like shedding a few tears myself. Kidding. Sorta. Not really.

So with three kiddos ages 5 years, 3 years and 9 months, I have the two older ones in the tub and little one in his Snuggle Bath Tub <—-Best baby tub EVER! I bathe the baby first and then get him dressed right outside the bathroom door so I can still see the older ones. My little guy had only napped for an hour because we were at Bible study this morning and had preschool drop-off/pickup.

He has been teething like crazy and chewing on everything. Even me. Nursing mama’s you know what I am talking about. Yikes and ouch. He was tired and upset while I was attempting to diaper him and get him dressed and I handed him a plastic comb. The comb or as it is referred to in the emergency room “foreign body” became a chew toy and the next thing I heard was a crack. I quickly removed the comb from his mouth and saw that a few plastic bristles were missing.

After sweeping his mouth and removing the bristles I saw that there was still another in his mouth. I couldn’t get it out and in between attempts he swallowed it.

Mommy guilt is real.

So there I stood. Naked crying baby in my arms and two other naked kids in the bathtub pondering what I should do next. I called Josh at work, trying to sound like I had it together, and explained what had happened.

In the span of 20 minutes, Caden and Maisie were out of the tub and in pajamas, Jesse was dressed, I had a bottle of milk pumped, and Josh was walking out the door with Jesse and taking him to the hospital.

A few hours later Jesse was home, sleeping in his crib, and Josh was back at work. The hospital staff didn’t seem overly concerned. Which was a relief. The x-ray didn’t show anything and so we were told to watch his poop and be on the lookout for any behavior that seems out the ordinary like, slobbering, painful cries, and also refusing to eat. Some of which is just typical behavior for a teething baby.

Less than 24 hours later we found ourselves trying to console Maisie after she fell off a toddler play structure face first at an indoor playground. First let me say that if you are a business owner who operates an indoor playground you might want to think about having mats or padding underneath your play equipment and secondly it would be so helpful if first aid kits were available to your staff members.

We were unable to see where the blood was coming from because their was so much blood in her mouth. The decision was made that getting everyone to the car would be our best option at this point. Caden wanted to stay and play and was upset that we were leaving and Jesse started to join in too. With three crying kids, we loaded up our family and were heading out the door as front desk staff tried to get us to fill out an incident report.

As politely as possible we declined and Maisie began demanding through tears that Josh fix her tooth and make it feel better. An urgent care and dentist visit later Maisie was on the road to healing with no permanent damage done to her face, tooth, or mouth.

All of this to say that there is never a dull 24 hours to motherhood. Each day is different even when it feels like you are doing it on repeat for the 100th time. Be thankful for those ordinary moments because seriously in a blink of an eye you might just find yourself being excited to go on a treasure hunt digging through poo.

Filed Under: My Family Tagged With: Emergency Room, Foreign Body, The Mama Confessionals, Urgent Care

We’re Debt Free!

July 25, 2017 by Tamara 5 Comments

I have been waiting to write this post for what seems like forever. In reality it is has been 6 years. Last week Josh and I made the final payment on our car and I can say we’re debt free!

We’re Debt Freeeeeeeeeeee!

6 years ago we took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University at our church and began to pay off our debt. Here is an overview of what we owed.

Credit Card 1: $300

Credit Card 2: $1,200

Credit Card 3: $7,500

Car 1: $7,200

Car 2: $13,500

TOTAL: $29,700

We went from having 3 credit cards and two car payments and slowly began to make more payments on the lowest credit card we had. Then we used the debt snowball to knock out our debts one by one, from smallest to largest. Once the first card was paid off we added what we were paying on it to the next debt.

We have successfully completed Baby Step 1: Save $1,000 for an Emergency Fund and now Baby Step 2: Pay off Debt. And it feels so good! We are now making huge strides to having Baby Step 3: 3-6 Month Fund completed.

During this time Josh was able to take another class at our church called Truth in Financial Planning. It reinforced what we had already been doing but also touched on several other aspects that we weren’t on our radar yet like a living trust and living will.

Josh and I are a single income family. If we can do this it is possible. We didn’t take vacations or buy new clothes, we gave up cable and our swanky gym membership, purchased a used instead of new car, and really reevaluated what was important to us and our family. When we started this journey towards becoming debt free it was just the two of us and now we are a family of 5!

As hard as it was some months it feels so amazing to say we’re debt free! Looking ahead our goal is to continue to build up our 3-6 month emergency fund and save up a down payment for a house :).

Filed Under: My Family Tagged With: Dave Ramsey, Financial Peace University, Truth in Financial Planning