LMG: Every Other Night

Another tip from my future book, The Lazy Mom's Guide to Half-Assing It.

Cook lots of food. Way more than your family can possibly eat in one night (I realize this is probably easier with smaller families). Then you can have leftovers, and you'll only need to cook every other day.

Don't like leftovers? While some things are fine to serve again as they are, sometimes you may need to turn your leftovers into "new food." Here's a short list of foods that can easily be made with leftovers.

• Soup: Shred or cube meat and/or veggies. Simmer with some broth or stock, or put it in the slow cooker. BAM! New food. Crusty bread really takes this to the next level. 
• Pasta dishes: Again, cube meats or veggies. Toss with a jar of sauce and some noodles. To really fool 'em, top with cheese and heat through. 
• Quesadillas/nachos: Cheese, tortillas or chips, and leftovers. That's it. You could also make burritos using basically the same principles. 
• Loaded potatoes: Bake some taters (in the microwave for even more speediness) and top with leftovers. Use big potatoes and put a veggie on the side to make these a whole meal. 

See how easy this is? Now you can cook every other night!

The Lazy Mom's Guide to Half-Assing It

Part one of a series of tips designed to help moms (or anyone, really) look pulled together while doing the least work possible. 

Don't make cookies. Each one has to be dropped and formed, and most likely they end up odd-sized and/or touching. Make bars - use the exact same batter and press it into a greased pan. It will probably take a few minutes longer to bake, but you're not actually doing anything during the bake time. You still get a tasty, gooey dessert with much less work!

Juliet's Life

Welcome to my blog! You may or may not know me, but you'll get to know me as you read on.

I started this blog because as I was setting and stepping out my goals for 2009 it became apparent that I needed a way to track my progress. So here we are. The blog may morph into many other things (and it may happen sooner rather than later), but that's the genesis.

So here are the goals.

• Lose weight. Yes, I am that creative. Since one of the objectives of this blog is total honesty, I'll throw out that my ideal weight (for now) is about 170. This is a big weight loss. But honestly, it's about being healthy more than the actual number, so there will probably be a selection of food and fitness goals here rather than actual weight loss goals. I am thinking that one of the first goals will be training for and completing a bike event ("race", but I'm more about completing the event than doing it speedily).
  
• Professional development in 2009. Regardless of my economy or the state of my current job or whatever, I need to grow my skills. This will both make me more marketable and increase my satisfaction with my work. I'm in communications, and I'd really like to become an expert in internal communications.
• Strengthen connections. I feel like I have strong connections with people I see often, but I would like to keep friendships and relationships with people who aren't in my day-to-day life at the moment. Enter the blog, and there will be some more steps there.
• Increase my practical fun skills (which is a term I pretty much made up). At the moment, this looks like increasing my knitting and cooking skills - two new recipes a month, and some (undetermined) knitting project.

So this is where you come in. Help me stay accountable, and stay tuned for progress. Since there are goals for the blog, we're going for 1-2 posts per week.