Category Archives: Time Savers

Fresh Juice “On-the-Go”!

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Good news, Omaha! If you enjoy fresh vegetable juice but hate the clean up (and don’t mind spending the extra money), you can now get fresh veggie juice at Juice Stop.

I did so recently at the Aksarben Village location (not sure if it’s available at all locations).

They keep celery and carrots on hand, but they allow you to bring any of your own veggies that you’d like, as well.

Last time I stopped in, they were out of celery, so I popped on down to Wohlner’s Grocery and brought some back for them to make my drink.

They’ll also put fresh fruit in it, as well, if you prefer. Judging by their menu, carrot, celery, apple and orange are popular options.

I bought a large juice (to share with Chad) and ordered just celery/carrot; it was yummy and refreshing….and I didn’t have to clean my juicer (score!).

 

 

“Cook on STRIKE” Night!

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Every once in a while, even I get fed up with cooking and (especially) doing dishes! Yesterday, my day did not go according to plan so I was finishing up my errands at 5:30pm (instead of 3pm which I had hoped). Since Whole Foods was my final stop before heading home, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to grab some pre-prepared dinner and take a break from meal preparation and dish doing. There are very few ready-to-eat meal options that I can eat without having some sort of MSG reaction, but I have found a couple “go to” options for such occasions. Here’s what we had last night. Cost of this meal was about $10 for the 2 of us (since we only ate 1/2 of the chicken), but we ate more beans/chips/veggies than show on this plate…

Smoked Chicken from Whole Foods deli ($4, since we ate half) – Contains: “chicken, garlic, sea salt, black pepper, thyme, sage, ginger, bay leaves, celery, brown sugar, onion, red bell pepper, parsley & canola oil”

Organic Canned Baked Beans ($1.50) – Contains: “organic white beans, water, organic sugar, organic tomato paste, organic molasses, sea salt, organic vinegar, organic brown rice flour, organic onion powder, organic mustard powder”

Baked Kettle Chips ($2.99 for a tiny bag; we ate them all) – Contains “potatoes, sunflower or safflower oil, sea salt”

Large organic cucumber ($1.65)

Organic baby carrots (from fridge)

Honestly, I’d substitute something else for the chips in the future, like a side dish from the deli. They didn’t taste very good, I didn’t feel good about eating them, and they were expensive! The chicken was REALLY good, though. Although it contains things we don’t normally put in our chicken (like sugar and oil….especially Canola oil!), at least I understood what all of the ingredients were, none of them were names that disguise MSG…. and the only dishes from this meal were a couple plates and a cutting board! Score!

What are your favorite “strike night” meals? Please share with a comment below, and maybe I’ll feature YOUR meal in a future post!!

Meal planning saves the day!

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Don’t you hate that feeling of struggling to come up with a dinner idea each day? Is your family constantly saying to you…”ugh, we just had that!” ? Or do you often find yourself in the middle of making a dinner when you realize you’re out of a key ingredient?! Sounds like you need a PLAN!

Perhaps you’re familiar with the saying, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.” This couldn’t be more true when it comes to meal planning!! Although it can be tough to motivate myself to do so, I find that my week goes much more smoothly if I take 10 minutes at the beginning of the week to plot out my plan of attack 😉

Then I make a grocery list for the week and make sure I have everything I’ll need before the week even begins. I’m a “once-a-week” shopper, so I usually plan meals earliest in the week that require the most perishable ingreidents, too!