Breakfast Cookie UPDATE!

Hey, remember those SUPER easy breakfast cookies that I gave you the recipe for? The ones that were so easy to make that it was practically lying to say that I had baked them, but yet the kids absolutely loved them?

Well, I made a few the other day (along with about 60 Pancake Muffins)....

.....and in the process, I found a way to make them better!!

For those of you who missed the original recipe post, I am going to start by posting it below before I move on to the update, which will be at the bottom of this brief repost:

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Breakfast Cookies 

What You Will Need:

Two SUPER EASY Meal Ideas (For Busy People!)

I don't know about you, but I'm busy as hell and don't typically have time to prepare gourmet meals.

Or, when I'm not busy, I'm lazy because I'm exhausted from being so busy.

And I like TV.

I like TV more than I like cooking.

#TrueStory  #NoShame #MaybeALittleShameButNoFilter

Anyway, as most of you know, even though I like TV more than I like cooking, nutrition is still very important to me. And because of that, I'm always on a quest to find simple yet healthy meals to feed my kids.

Today I bring you one of their all-time favorites, and it's so easy that this post serves more as a "hey, here's an idea that you've probably heard of but totally forgot about" reminder, rather than an actual recipe.

Sweet Potato Cinnamon Bites (And More!)

Today was a long day and not just because I gave the entire house a good scrub down, did five loads of laundry, wrote two articles, met with a nonprofit client, went to the gym, and took both kids grocery shopping, but it was a long day simply because it was freezer meal stock-up day (full disclosure, I wrote this on Saturday).

Blah.

I am not a fan of freezer meal stock-up day, but what I am a fan of is eating and we like to do that around here at least several times a day. As I've mentioned in past posts, since I don't want the kids eating cereal for dinner every night of the week, I try to set aside one day a month to get as many meals made as possible and stick them in the freezer for the weeknights. Also, because we are on the food assistance program (food stamps), it helps me budget what I have to spend by making a majority of our meals as soon as our assistance becomes available each month. 

This time around I started with 6lbs of chili.

Guess What I'm Cooking!

Ugh, so remember how excited I was that the computer error in my child support case got fixed? 

Well as it turns out, IT'S NOT FIXED. 

They are now intercepting 40% of it and have yet to be able to tell either myself or Mr. Attorney Man where it's going. So frustrating!!! I'm all over it, but in the meantime guess who at least got their food stamps reinstated!?!

I know, I realize that makes me sound like white trash, but whatever, I'm past caring at this point. But anyway, yes, we are pretty happy. The kids and I have been cooking/baking/eating up a storm over here and so I figured that this would be as good a time as any to answer one of the questions that I get asked most often in real life and on this blog.

Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?

The Girl Child wanted to build a gingerbread house this year, but with our dietary restrictions the only place I could find a gluten and dairy free kit was online and it was $29, plus shipping, plus a several week delivery time.

Yea that's not happening. I don't really have the time to be baking gingerbread walls either, so...sorry kid.

A couple days later I was in the grocery store and just happened to walk past the largest marshmallows I have ever seen in my life. I stood there for a minute and started thinking about the ridiculous amount of cookies the food pantry had given us and the left over frosting and chocolate chips that I had from another project. I grabbed a bag of the ginormous marshmallows, a jar of marshmallow fluff, and headed home.

I decided that while we couldn't make a gingerbread house, we could make snowmen!

Be aware this was made by a 3 yr old so it's imperfectly perfect.

I have to say, not only do I think the project went well but the kids had a blast!!

Do you want to try it too? Of course you do! (I'm feeling a little over confident here)

What you will need:

Easy Bake Pancake Muffins

Winter is coming.

Ugh, I hate winter.

I live in the wrong state.

My friends are all "yay! Winter!! Yay!! We can stop working out, eat brownies, and wear big sweaters!! Yay winter!!" and I'm all "I still have to stand in front of a group of women several times a week in my underwear. Screw winter."

With that being said, winter is upon us and I feel myself slipping into the baking and cooking frenzy that seems to accompany fall in this household. By the time I get the kids home at night, lug everyone in, peel off 3 layers of slush covered winter wear, and turn the heat on that I turned off when I left for work that morning, the last thing I want to do is make dinner.

But....we are all most likely frozen from the inside out and starving; thus enters the cooking frenzy of fall.

As a single working mom I simply do not have time to make three meals a day. Combined with the fact that my financial situation doesn't allow for much wiggle room in the food-budget department, I really need to plan ahead. What this means is that I usually designate a couple hours in the beginning of the month to making meals in bulk and then freezing them. Last week I made 6 pounds of chili. SIX POUNDS of chili you guys.

I then split it up into family sized servings and froze it. After that I made four pounds of taco meat and ten pounds of baked sweet potato cinnamon bites. None of the meals took me longer than twenty minutes to prep and when everything was done cooking, I had quite a bit of food ready to pull out of the freezer as needed.