Welcome

My name is Ellen and I’m mom to 2 small children (both under 2 years old… not planned so well but that is an entirely different story).  Mostly my life is organized chaos.  What do I mean by this? Well…

Here is a picture of my kitchen: (if you click on the photos they will open larger)

And here is a picture of my food pantry (and in case you’re wondering I have the contents of the top 2 shelves in an Excel spreadsheet on my computer):

And here is the reason my bottom two shelves are such chaos:

That pretty much sums me up.  And out of all this organized chaos comes raising children, laundry, cleaning, cooking, and all the other chores of a stay-at-home-mom.  But, mostly I’m cooking.  I make breakfast for 3 people, lunch for 2, and dinner for 3 (one child still doesn’t eat solid food).  And I try (and usually fail) to do all of this on a budget.

In my constant quest to be more organized I jumped on the bandwagon of the meal planning craze.  Every Thursday or Friday I diligently sit down, write out my meal plan based on what is in my pantry/fridge/freezer and what is on sale.  On the weekend I go to the grocery (hopefully without kids… my one big-girl outing for the week) and then during the week I typically ignore my meal plan and make something on a whim (but still using the ingredients).

I accomplish this switcheroo because I have an obscene amount of cookbooks (in print… yes, some people still have actual books with recipes), I follow about a thousand cooking blogs, and I’m constantly searching for new recipes.  Some of my meals are an immediate hit, and some are miserable flops.

So, to make me feel less of an organizational failure at meal planning, I thought I would use my experiences for your pleasure for a few different reasons:

1.       To share with you some good recipes,

2.       To warn you of some not-so good recipes,

3.       To give you the reviews of my entire family,

4.       And to make you feel better about your life.

I can’t be the only one out there who can’t stick to a simple meal plan so join me in my chaos.