Plan to Eat Meal Planning Review

Every year, my New Year's resolutions look just about the same: get more sleep, get more exercise, be a better person (don't judge me), and eat healthier. I've taken a solid first step by having good intentions, but when it's Kid O'Clock it can be hard to turn those intentions into results! Setting goals with concrete, measureable actions is crucial for any kind of progress. My concrete action? Meal planning.

So am I eating healthier? Yes and no. Like most people, my eating patterns get better and worse according to the stresses, supports, and celebrations in my life. But beyond those external changes, I've noticed that I do sometimes do better than usual for a stretch. What makes the difference for me is planning my meals, shopping with a list, and cleaning out my fridge regularly.

(I think this last item, as unglamorous as it is, gets a lot less attention than it deserves. If you really aren't going to eat something in the next couple days, freeze it or toss it now. Don't wait until your fridge is a end-stage Tetris puzzle of potential filth containers that you are afraid to open for fear of inhaling spores of some new Superbug. If you can't see what is in your fridge, chaos will take over. Not that I'm speaking from personal experience. *cough*)

So, with great intentions, in 2015 I decided to make a Meal Planning Binder. This is a great idea for someone who is not me. It's great because it doesn't really cost anything! You get all your favorite recipes in one place! At first my enthusiasm gave me the drive to take the time to print out recipes and inventory my fridge, freezer, and pantry. So far so good. Then I had to pick 4-5 meals every week and cross reference the ingredient lists with my inventory lists. I think I made it through a full month doing this, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles! And then Life happened (no really--first trimester icks were a real meal planning roadblock), and I stopped, started again, and then stopped for good other than a rally to make freezer meals in the three days before my due date. Meal planning that way was just more time and brain power than I could muster on a weekly basis.

So what did I do when resolutions rolled around again? Hope springs eternal, so in January of 2016, I decided to try something else, even if it meant it would cost a little bit. First I ruled out apps that do the menu planning for you. My family, it turns out, does not fancy a typical American diet, so we need to put together our own menu. In looking for recommendations, I kept hearing stellar commentary about Plan to Eat. And 10 months later, I agree that it is an AMAZING, well-designed tool worth spending a few bucks on.

It is in many ways like a gym membership, because you only get value out of it if you actually use it, but here are the main reasons I love it:

1. It paid for itself in decreased grocery spending within just TWO WEEKS of using it.

2. You can get a trial month for FREE (and WITHOUT giving them your credit card number). Plus they are about to have a sale! (Read on.)

3. It is easy enough to use that I actually use it.

4. You can upload your own recipes or grab them from the web.

5. You can drag and drop your recipes onto a calendar!

6. It makes your shopping list for you. Let me repeat: IT MAKES YOUR SHOPPING LIST FOR YOU.

7. You can trade recipes with friends.

8. It's on the cloud, so I can access my recipes anywhere, and I don't have to worry about carrying a binder with me.

9. I'm throwing out less food.

Now, I won't claim I plan my meals every week, but I've used it off and on all year. Here's my workflow:

First I drag my recipes onto my calendar to make a plan for the week. I can search among my recipes by ingredient or course or just scroll through alphabetically. If we have a lot going on, I can plan out breakfasts and lunches and even snacks ahead of time (hello, Thanksgiving!). If we have a lighter week, I may just plan out dinners. Once done, I generate the shopping list by selecting the date range I want to shop for. This is the magical part: Plan to Eat will add up the totals you need for each ingredient and group them automatically by department. These functions aren't perfect: When items are worded differently they show up as separate items, and sometimes it can't guess the department. But you know what? I don't care because it SAVES SO MUCH TIME. I open the automatically generated list on my phone and stand in front of my pantry and quickly check off all the staples we have on hand, then do the same for the refrigerated items. When you click on an item, it disappears, so it is easy to go through it fast and focus on what remains without re-writing the list.

Armed with my list on my phone, my grocery trips go faster since I don't have to meal plan in the aisles (talk about existential malaise) and my list is already grouped by department. No wifi or data coverage at the store? No problem, it still works offline. I save money by avoiding buying things I already have, buying fewer convenience foods, and eating out less often. If there is a sale at the store, or if I can't get something I need, I can access my recipes, plan, and shopping list on the go and make changes quickly. When I get home, I can click on the calendar and pull up recipes on my phone or on my computer and get cooking knowing that I have everything I need.

There are so many other little features that make Plan to Eat great. You can add prep notes to help avoid those "Oh crap!" moments when you forgot to thaw the meat or set up a marinade in advance. After a meal, I can add notes or adjust and save changes to the recipe (less butter, more salt, double quantity, etc.). If you do need to halve or double a recipe (or apply any multiplier), the program will do the math for you! You can even give it a star rating and share it with friends.

Over time it is taking less and less time to meal plan and to cook. How? I am slowly, finally learning how much cooking we actually need to do. Before, I couldn't seem to find our "sweet spot" between staring listlessly at a fridge full of unused ingredients and staring hungrily at the fridge after realizing I am missing a key ingredient for that night's dinner. Usually I over-plan, and therefore overspend and overeat. This fall, I attempted to make a 5-week plan for the first month of school to make sure I didn't fall off the wagon at a busy time. Of course, who can definitively plan that far out? (I don't want to know.) It turned out to be more cooking than I had time or fridge space for, so I quickly dragged recipes to the next open days. That 5-week plan ended up being dragged out over 7 weeks with minimal effort. I was glad to have a rough plan and the flexibility to change when I realized the mileage we were getting from leftovers. Saving time planning and cooking, and cutting down on our food waste, were the perfect accompaniments to achieving my eating goals.

Intrigued? Go get your free trial! Convinced? It is only $39 for a whole year (starting after your free trial ends)! The people who run this site have clearly got it together. At that price, it only takes avoiding a couple fast food runs to get your money back. Plus, if you like good vegetarian fare, you can grab some of my recipes on there!

Book Review: My Little Sister Ate One Hare

This post contains affiliate links.

My Little Sister Ate One Hare became a fast favorite for my middle child. The little sister in the story eats the strangest things, starting small:

"My little sister ate 1 hare. We thought she'd throw up then and there."





The little sister goes on to eat more and more disgustingly delicious critters, building from that one hare to nine lizards. Gross! Each verse includes a rhyme and repeats previous verses to build the suspense and silliness. It is great for toddlers and preschoolers who are starting to count and rhyme, especially those who have a little sister of their own at home.

But what about number 10? Spoiler: It turns out the one thing Little Sister can't stomach is peas, and she upchucks all the critters she has swallowed! Kevin Hawkes created delightfully silly artwork to show just what that might look like.

Books for Young Readers

This post contains affiliate links.

Once a child starts reading, finding books at the right level can pose a challenge. BOB Books and easy readers are a great place to start with a new reader. But after that? We find we need to balance the reading difficulty with appropriateness. Too tricky and the child gets frustrated, too simple and they lose interest. And then we have to consider the content. Will it be too much for my sensitive child? Promote questionable behaviors in my impressionable copycat?

I will be posting some of the readers and chapter books that have worked well for our family, especially series that help satisfy a voracious reader, but also some individual books. There are a few ways of measuring the difficulty of books, and you can look them up on Scholastic's Book Wizard. I prefer using the Guided Reading system, which ranks books from A to Z, as well as the easy readers that rank books up to Level 5.

BOB books are roughly levels B to G. These are great little books with lots of picture clues! They have short sentences based on building up familiarity with the sounds each letter makes. They help a child feel successful rather than overwhelmed--a BOB book was the first book my kid read on his own.

Modern and classic picture books, I Can Read!, Step Into Reading, and similar books bridge the gap from phonics series to simple chapter books. We have shelves and shelves of picture books that capture the kids' imagination. I was skeptical at first of the easy readers, but have found they are very popular and I am constantly having to re-shelve them because they are read so often! The simpler books (My First/Level 1) have very simple stories with short sentences. By Level 4, these books are divided into short chapters, but with friendly, larger text.

For simple chapter books, Flat Stanley (M), Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures (M), and The Magic Treehouse (M) were hits. Once we found characters we liked and got comfortable with the level of suspense, we stuck with a series for a while before moving on. We took turns reading as my reader tested out his comfort level.

The Boxcar Children series (O) is great for kids who are ready for longer, more complex stories. The author, Gertrude Chandler Warner, wrote the original books, and then even more were added so there are over 100! We were also delighted to discover that our library had some of the stories as audio books, and it kept my kids' attention and let me get some work done! We are working on story telling, so I asked my son to pick a book to "review." Here is his pick and what he had to say about it.




The Boxcar Children Mysteries #2: Surprise Island

Because their grandfather owns an island, the boxcar children get to sleep in a barn, and they have their own rooms. And it starts raining, and they have pans so they can catch the rain water so that way the barn doesn't get flooded. They pick from a garden which is behind the barn, and they have what they picked for one of their meals. They go on a boat. They found a very, very high shell pile. They found a tiny cave, an arrowhead, and an axe head (I think so). Then they almost get caught in the tide. Their dog, Watch, saved them. Violet got a violin. Near the end of the story, it's Benny's birthday. I think he turns 7.

Next up? Our favorite nonfiction books, The Cat in the Hat Learning Library!

Rock Tumbling

After my son showed an enduring interest in rocks and minerals, I purchased the National Geographic Professional Rock Tumbler. It comes with the reusable tumbler, a pound of rocks, a color informational booklet, the grit used in tumbling, a strainer, and a few jewelry accessories. I find it is the perfect centerpiece for a unit study on the rock cycle and can pair well with earth science, chemistry (intro to the elements), and geography. Whatever direction you and your kid want to take it.

What I love about rock tumbling with a 5-year-old is how it teaches patience. The process takes a few weeks to complete, but you get to check on your rocks every few days to see how they have changed. If your child is ready to keep a research notebook, this would be an opportunity to practice simple observation and record keeping.

Here's what the rocks looked like on arrival:

The tumbler came with 1 lb of rocks. This is what they looked like before tumbling.

To polish these rocks, there are four packets of grit that you use in series, starting with the coarsest. The tumbler consists of a motor with belts and a watertight barrel. Getting started takes only a few minutes and my son was able to do most of it himself. Just open the barrel, place the rocks inside with Grit 1, then pour enough water to cover them. Seal up the tumbler, place it on the motor, press start...and be patient. The first step takes 3-5 days at high speed.

This is what our rocks looked like after four days being tumbled with Grit 1:

These are the same rocks after about 4 days of tumbling. Smooth, but not shiny.

My kids were impressed and liked comparing the before photo to the smooth rocks in front of them! They looked shiny when wet and dull as they dried off.

The messy part of this project is switching between grits. You can do this outdoors or set up a waterproof table covering. When you open the tumbler, you are left with the rocks in a slurry of rock powder, grit, and water (which cannot go down your house's plumbing). We went outside and poured the contents of the tumbler through the strainer into a disposable plastic tray (thanks, IHOP takeout!). We rinsed the rocks to see if they had rough edges and decided they were smooth enough to move on to Grit 2. Then we poured the slurry off outside and set up the next round of tumbling.

I find it is hard to mess this project up. If the rocks hadn't been smooth enough, we could have poured the slurry back in the tumbler. If you run it too long, the rocks are just smaller than the could have been. The time it takes to wear away the rough spots varies depending on the hardness of the rocks you start with. If you have your own rocks, you'll want to tumble batches of rocks with similar hardness. Time to pull out Mohs scale! (We are already collecting rocks to use in a second batch. I am excited to see what happens to our local finds when polished!) 

I will post updates after we are finished with Grits 2, 3, and 4. If you are thinking about buying this kit, here are a couple more things you should know:

After the first batch, you'll have to get more grit and a source of rocks if you want to do more. (There are many options online for rough rocks if you aren't planning to collect your own. Grit can be purchased on Amazon, and I'm still looking into other options.) This kit comes with only enough grit for one batch. The tumbler itself is reusable and is reputed to last years.

It is a bit noisy. I find it is not quite as loud as my dishwasher. In fact, it would make a great alternative to a white noise machine! We were slow to start using it because the kids didn't like hearing the sound at night, so we ended up putting it in the garage.

I picked mine up on sale, but there is also a cheaper version by the same company. I have not tried it out, however.

Got questions? Let me know in the comments!

(The links in this post are affiliate links. It does not change the price of the items, but if you purchase something I will receive a small commission.)

My Favorite Popsicle Molds

Living in a HOT climate, I love to give my kids popsicles for snacks. Making my own means I get to decide what goes in them, but it always ended up being a hassle. Way back when, I bought cute ones that look like a star, but the handle didn't catch the drips all that well and they were hard to clean. Plus it would take several minutes for the popsicles to thaw enough to slide out. Even then, sometimes the popsicle stick would tear through and then I'd have a mess AND a sad kid. It was time to find something better!

Somewhere I stumbled across the existence of silicone popsicle molds. This is the brand I purchased (Sunsella Silicone Popsicle Molds, affiliate link). I wanted to share now because I noticed they are ON SALE for $7.99 for a set of 6, which is $3 less than what I paid when they were "in season" back in June!




It works a lot like the yogurt tubes (like GoGurt and Chobani tubes) except with a cover. You just push them up from the bottom, and the shape makes them easy for kids to eat without dripping. (Of course, kids can still turn them upside down, but that's clearly an unavoidable occupational hazard!) You need to put them in a cup standing up to freeze them, but then they can lie on their side and don't leak. I decided I wanted a dozen so I could keep several ready to go.

So far, I've used them with leftover smoothies and fruit juice, and the kids beg for them. They are dishwasher safe, so I've been happy too :)

Book Review: More Parts

If there is a child in your life with a tendency to take the things you say literally, the story in More Parts will leave you in stitches. No, not literally!

This book is a great read-aloud for a child who is starting to understand the idea of idioms and poetic language. The book portrays the increasing anxiety of a young boy who listens to all the adults in his life talk about breaking your heart, stretching your legs, holding your tongue, and more. It's a lot of fun to read together!

Bringing Nature Inside: AntWorks Ant Habitat

Did you ever try to make an ant farm when you were a kid? I remember being fascinated by the workers and especially the queen, then disappointed when the colony didn't survive long enough to get established.

Fast-forward a couple decades to the present day, and my son got a space-technology ant habitat for his birthday. This thing is brilliant! It looks simple: A container filled with a clear gel. But the gel does double duty, serving as both the tunneling medium and as sustenance for the ants. It was originally designed to allow the study of ants in space, where the gel would not collapse during re-entry the way soil would. The at-home version is about the size of a paperback book. It is not designed for a colony, but more for the opportunity to observe ant tunneling behavior. (No queen required!)

So my son and I opened it up and he immediately asked the most obvious question--where do we get the ants? Well, you can order a package of harvester ants from AntWorks, but living where we live, I thought it would be no problem to find some on our own. (Let's be honest, I would not have been surprised had the ants found the habitat without any help from us.) Hurray for ant hunting! Our first attempt involved a bit of pancake syrup and a plastic tray. We got a whole mess of tiny little ants, plopped them into the habitat...and then watched them squirm and squeeze their tiny tushies out through the two minute airholes, leaving us with an empty habitat. For our second attempt, dear hubby took our son to the park and went "fishing" for ants. Syrup on a stick, because we're high-tech like that. A fun time was had by all. I'm still not sure if they are leafcutters or harvesters, but we got about 16 ants ready for their new home!

The product manual says to expect waiting 24-48 hours to see tunneling. I was really crossing my fingers that we would get timely results that look like the ones in all the pictures... and man oh man we got some very smart ants! Or at least highly motivated! After one hour, they had started their first tunnel, down one side. Every time someone walked past the habitat, we automatically stopped to watch. We could see the ants using their mandibles to tear off pieces of gel, then carrying the crumbs to the service. At his bedtime the first night, my son asked us to check up on the ants. They slept on the surface, without sufficient space below "ground." The next night they slept in their main chamber (bottom left in the picture). Each day, we made predictions about where the ants would tunnel next, and crowed when we were correct. After three days of hard work (for the ants!), this is how it looked:

The ants now seem to be taking a break from tunneling, but they keep moving. I'm happy because we were able to snag some library books about ants to see if we can find out more about why ants tunnel the way they do. And every morning, we check to see if they have done any more excavating.

If this looks like just the thing for your budding scientist, you can get a version of AntWorks with illumnation or without (affiliate links). I can even imagine this being a fun alternative to keeping a fish at the office!

Music Kids AND Parents Like, Part 1

Do you love children's music? Noooo? You've been ready to run to the looney bin after listening to The Wheels on the Bus thirty times straight? Well, I cannot help your child's taste in music, but I can suggest some artists and albums you can start nonchalantly playing in hopes that they will broaden their horizons a bit and you can take back your sanity. This is children's music that I can listen to not just willingly, but enthusiastically. Really!

I'll be posting my list a couple albums at a time, with affiliate links provided for your convenience. If you do buy through Amazon, many of these will "AutoRip" to your cloud, so you can listen to them while traveling without having to lift a finger or pack a batch of CDs.

Caspar Babypants

Sing Along!

This is on our short list for favorites. My son LOVES to dance to these songs, giggles at the humor, and asks lots of questions. What's not to love about a "Butterfly Driving a Truck" and a flea that has dogs? It sparks his curiosity and, simply, all that is best about being a preschooler. I love that it really engages him. Plus, the album is done by the lead singer of The Presidents of The United States of America, along with famous guests, making it a melodious go-to for grown-up ears as well.






Laurie Berkner

Best of the Laurie Berkner Band

I will not lie, the songs on this uptempo album took me a couple listens before I grew to enjoy them. And I do! These are great "activity" songs, lending themselves to counting, singing, and stomping along. There is just the right amount of repetition to be accessible to young toddlers without driving parents crazy, and there are lots of little pearls of learning opportunities. Best, they are silly in just the right way for a preschooler to laugh out loud.






Watch this space for about a dozen more artists/albums...!

Review: DIY Wind Turbine

One of the presents my son got for his birthday was the Thames & Kosmos Wind Power 2.0, a kit to build a functional wind turbine!




Wow I wish I'd had a toy like this when I was little.  Since our move last summer, we regularly drive past a wind farm with several dozen wind turbines, and they captured my son's attention.  So this gift was right up his alley!  Assembly itself has the appeal of a LEGO project as you attach connectors for the basic structure and of a gear toy as you put together the gear box and decide what ratios you want to use.  Although it turned out to be too tricky for little hands to assemble (I had some minor trouble myself--it seems better suited for man hands), my Big Boy was captivated and insisted on attaching the blades himself!  The blades are huge, very impressive at well over a foot long each.  And then we got to set it up in the back yard.  It was not a particularly windy day by local standards, but it was spinning softly on a light breeze within a few minutes.  When it turns fast enough, it generates enough current to light a red LED or power a rechargeable battery, so it has the cache of actually doing something.  And for the older and more patient kiddos, the turbine comes with a booklet with suggestions of ways you can modify the design and corresponding experiments you can run.  We will see whether there is any chance of that holding the 3-year-old's attention--I suspect that part will have to wait until he is a bit older.

Book Review: Simplicity Parenting

I just finished reading Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne. It is good enough that I am going to ask my very busy husband to read it. I would recommend it to current parents and ideally have both parents read it so you can discuss it and get on the same page. One thing that I really appreciate about this book is that Dr. Payne makes it clear which ideas are appropriate for which age groups and generally addresses each idea throughougly across the spectrum of ages. I actually wish I had read the book before my son was walking and talking (and I was laying the foundations of our communication and routines), so for pregnant moms-to-be, I think it would be useful and a refreshing change of pace from the normal parenting preparation bibliography.

In the book, Payne describes both the conceptual framework and nitty gritty ideas for how to bring more simplicity into our children's lives, and as a result into our lives as well. Drawing from his experience in counseling and training as a Waldorf teacher, Payne presents vignettes from his clients (families with kids from toddlers through teenagers) and cites relevant research to paint a clear picture of the role of simplicity in child development and behavior. He explains both theories of why and examples of how children and their parents are affected by a lack of simplicity and how simplifying can change how children behave, develop, and form relationships.

The book focuses on four facets of life that can be viewed through a simplifying lens: environment, rhythm, schedules, and filtering out the adult world. Some of the questions he ends up addressing are ones I had often considered myself: How would my son behave differently if he had drastically fewer toys and less clutter in his visual space? If it has been mostly too hard to establish a rhythm of daily and weekly routines, should I keep trying and how can I do it? Why should I be wary of filling my child's days with classes and other scheduled activities? Is my son experiencing information overload? Payne ultimately discusses these ideas in much more detail, exploring the effects of screen time, advertising, choice overload, talking less while saying more, the role of unstructured time, simple ways to start increasing family connections, what kinds of toys may be helpful versus harmful, and generally how to start small and build up from there.  On that last point, he has worked with families that are so busy and overloaded with parental committments that I can scarcely imagine their struggle and has had success with many of them, so I think the success of these techniques has more to do with being motivated and open-minded than with having a lot of time to devote to an overhaul.

In the last week, I have done a lot of ruminating on simplifying, and actually made the time to take action in the "environment" arena. One morning while my son was at preschool, I bagged up half of his toys (the ones he used the least or bothered me the most) and stashed them. Many things are already flagged to be given away, and others are in a big maybe pile, but they are out of sight and out of mind. And it had an amazing and immediate effect on both my mood and on my son. He now spends more time playing with each toy and is more willing to clean up. And he doesn't seem to have noticed that many toys went missing.  I've also noticed I am spending way less time cleaning, so even in terms of time this change has already paid for itself. Really, this is an easy intervention to try out! (And it's reversible--in fact, Payne talks about creating a "lending library" from which toys can be borrowed or rotated.)

Next on my simplifying action plan is to think about shoring up our routines as a family. We've made a lot of progress on this in recent weeks, and I've seen how much easier my parenting job has gotten in the activities that involve routines. When the little guy knows that it is time to brush his teeth, and believes that is just part of what we do before bed, there are a lot fewer discussions--he is starting to become compliant without any discussion at all. (Amazing!) In addition to starting and sticking to these kinds of basic routines, I plan to follow the lead of several friends and to make an activity chart that my son can participate in. It will have a set of pictographs showing our daily activities (eat breakfast, brush teeth, wash hands, clean up toys, take a bath, etc.) that can be ordered and then moved from a "need to do" column into a "done" column. I think it will help keep both of us on track!

The last big part of my plan is more ongoing--changing the way I talk to and around my son. When a parent says too much, how can he or she listen? And how can it leave room for the child to make up his own mind? When a parent overexplains, what does a child really hear? I expect this will be difficult and require a lot of slowing down my thinking and speaking, but I can see where it would improve my relationships with everyone, and not just my son.

The only downside to this book is that I often found the descriptions of the big picture to be far too long. But perhaps this is because I was already on board with most of the concepts and didn't need written persuasion. For a parent who is feeling a bit skeptical or resistant, maybe it is necessary. Even so, there are some gems buried in that prose that seem to crystallize the take-home messages so well that I think it is worth reading the entire book and not skipping around.  I might even read the book again and write them down to create a poster of the most motivating ones.