How to Make Candy Buckeyes

So, if you don't live in the state of Ohio, have you ever eaten or made candy buckeyes....or is this just an Ohio thing????  I was born in Ohio and have lived here all my 39 years and we had buckeye trees in the backyard of my childhood home.  My Mom taught me how to make the candy ones when I was very young!  You'll find dozens of recipes online, but I wanted to share my recipe, which I have perfected over the years! ***MY RECIPE HERE!***

Free Food Label Printables!!!

I'm happy to introduce a guest to my blog today!!!  Dana from foodpackaginglabels.net is sharing a fabulous set of FREE Food Label Printables and some great tips on how to clear the clutter and reduce frustration in the kitchen...the most used room in the house!!!


***How to Organize Your Kitchen With Free Food Label Printables***

It’s very easy to make a mess in the kitchen while trying to prepare food at home. For example, you most likely have to open a bunch of cupboards and peek into a dozen food jars scattered around the kitchen in order to find your flour or rice. Baking and meal preparation in general can become a real headache regardless of the kitchen’s storage capacities if you don’t organize it properly. Therefore, kitchen organization is very important, especially if you are preparing most of your meals at home. But how do you arrange everything in order to make your kitchen a more pleasant and inviting workplace? These free printable food packaging labels can make your life much easier. 

The first step is to organize the heart of the kitchen -- the pantry. This space is often cluttered as it is a magnet for accumulating all sorts of items. Removing all the unwanted content and transferring all ingredients into jars and canisters will help you clear the clutter and maximize the space. However, in order to utilize the jars and canisters properly it is best to label them. The collection includes pantry labels that will help you organize the basic pantry items like flour, sugar, pasta, rice, oatmeal and cereal. The labels will help you keep the pantry in order at all times, since every family member will know what goes where without making a mess while rummaging through the cupboards. In addition to this, there will be less frustration and lit will save everyone time. 

If you or anyone of your family members have food allergies or special food dieting needs, your pantry is most likely stocked with allergy safe foods. These healthy tags will help you to label food that is gluten-free, lactose-free or sodium-free. You can even label the dinner leftovers in your fridge in order to make sure that no one would make a mistake even with the prepared meals.

Good kitchen organization and healthy diet often requires careful menu planning. You can hang up this weekly meal planner on your cupboard doors or on your fridge so everyone will know what’s on the daily menu. This will also help you to better plan your grocery shopping, which can save you lots of money and time in the long run.

And last but not least, these lunchbox stickers will put smiles on the faces of the youngest members of the family. Sometimes it’s really hard to get your child eat healthy food. But, by spicing up their school lunches with some fun and inspiring notes can make the challenge less daunting.

These ideas will hopefully help you transform your kitchen into a neat and organized space, where everyone will enjoy working and hanging out. Just download the printables, print them out and give your kitchen a fresh new look!

Single-Serve Breakfast Casserole

Our Christmas Breakfast 2013:

I usually make breakfast casserole twice per year....Easter and Christmas.  In my head, it's a very time-consuming dish, so I save it for special occasions.  But, really it's not that bad!!!  And I recently discovered an even easier way to make it...in the microwave in single servings!!! Brown the meat ahead of time, and the rest can be made fairly quickly in the morning.

PRINTABLE RECIPE HERE

Ingredients:
About 4 oz. ground pork or turkey sausage, browned (I usually brown an entire pound at once and freeze or refrigerate the rest)
1 piece of buttered bread, crust removed
1 Tbs. shredded cheddar cheese
1 egg
1 Tbs. milk
Cooking Spray

Directions:
1. Spray a small bowl with cooking spray. Add the piece of buttered bread.
2.  Sprinkle the cooked sausage on top
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg and milk.
4. Pour the egg/milk mixture on top of the cooked sausage.  Sprinkle with cheese.
5. Microwave for 45 seconds.  Optional: add a little more cheese and cook for another 10 seconds.
6. Remove from bowl and allow to cool on a plate for a couple minutes.  Enjoy!

I cut my bread into a circle with a sandwich cutter so it fits nicely into the bowl;)

Kid approved!!! ;) 

FREE Printable Food Journal

Food journaling isn't just for losing weight (although it helped me shed all my baby weight plus more after Mason was born 3 years ago!).  There are great apps now days to track your food and calories, but some of us prefer the old fashioned food journal!  So here is a printable one that will fit nicely into your 3-ring binder or just hang on your fridge!! Download HERE or click on the image below.

You can fill this out a number of different ways.  For food journaling to be successful with weight loss, we track food & drink portions and calories for each and every thing we put into our mouth.  We figure out our calorie "limit" for the day to reach our goal weight, and try not to exceed it.  I won't go into all the details in this blog post, but I can speak from experience that the success rate of using a food journal for weight loss is usually high.

OR....if you're using this journal simply as more of a health log to make sure you are getting enough fruits and vegetables or not too much junk food, or to compare how you feel based on what foods you eat, then you might just jot down food and portions.

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French Fries! ❤️❤️❤️

Oh my goodness do I love fries! Most of the time I bypass them for a stupid healthy salad. But I'm sucked into the marketing deception of Burger King's satis-fries!!! They are so delicious!!! I know they're still loaded with fat and calories, even if it is 30% less calories, but I eat them at least twice a month now. ❤️❤️❤️ My weakness, for sure!