Giveaway Winner(s)

To celebrate the new blog and our new baby everyone that left a comment on the Giveaway post will win a Glade scented oil tin! Yep - everyone! Just email me your address at thebigredpot@gmail.com if I haven't contacted you by this weekend and pick one of the following scents:

Apple Cinnamon
Bayberry
Dewberry
Clean Linen

Be patient with me as I mail them out... or my husband does :)

Menu Plan 11/30-12/6

I found out this morning that we will be having our second child tomorrow so we'll just go ahead and plan this weeks menu accordingly :) We didn't eat the potato soup saturday night because we put our tree up and had our traditional chinese food with it. We had potato soup yesterday so we'll be pushing the jerk chicken pasta to next week.

Monday: Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, green beans and biscuits
Tuesday: Tortellini, Salad and Bread

Wednesday:Birds Eye Steamer meal from freezer
Thursday: Chili and Baked Potatoes
Friday: Chicken Wraps, Couscous and Creamed Spinach
Saturday: Breakfast Burritos and Fresh Fruit
Sunday:Apricot Chicken and Garlic Bread

I'm going to go ahead and make everything tonight and just stick it in the freezer so it's ready to go. I've got a good stockpile of cereal, waffles and cereal bars so breakfast will be easy and lunch will either be sandwiches or leftovers.

Hope all are well and remember that I have a good excuse for my absence over the next week :)

Remember there are lots of other meal plans over here!

Diapers.com

Have you ever used Diapers.com? If not, you should definitely give it a try! Diapers are delivered directly to your front door and they even have coupons on their site to use on your order! Also, they have TONS of other things for sale other than diapers...toys, clothes, etc. Right now they are having a refer a friend promotion where you can get a $10 credit just for signing up. Then you can refer friends and get additional $10 credits. See here:

Special Limited Time Offer! From now through December 2nd, when you refer a friend to Diapers.com, you'll get a $10 credit! It's easy. Just spread the word about Diapers.com, and when someone enters your referral code or email address when placing their first order of diapers or formula, you'll both save! Your friend will enjoy $10 off their order. You'll get a $10 credit in your account for each referral, plus another $1 for every additional order they place -- no limits! Enjoy!

Here's my special code to get started: BETH6705

Lord have mercy my code is Beth... if you know me, you know how much I hate being called that - this should show you how much I want you to save $10!

Through the weekend you can get great additional thankgivings savings plus your free $10 - let me know if you get a great deal on something!

Around Kroger Freebies

If you live in the Kroger Delta Region (and possibly other Kroger areas too) you can score some free food with the below coupons:

.50c Starkist tuna from www.coupons.com will double making the pouches free!

.50c Annies coupon here will make for some free Mac N Cheese (currently 10/10)

.50c off canned Dole fruit from www.coupons.com making the big cans of several varieties free after doubling!

Also, Kraft just released some great coupons here. Our region doubles up to .60c so these .55c coupons will be 1.10 off at Kroger!

You should be able to print two of each of the above listed coupons per computer.

Anyone else absolutely LOVE their Kroger?

Free Plates at Walgreens

If you have a copy of the October issue of All You magazine you can score free Vanity Fair plates at Walgreens this week! They are on sale Buy One get one Free - use the Buy one get one free coupon to score both for free!

Check out more great deals at Money Saving Mom.

Menu Plan - Thanksgiving week!

Last week I stuck to my menu plan every day but Friday... I just wasn't feeling it so we went out to Newks. Newks is a local place that we absolutely love and trust me there are no regrets with that decision!

Good news is now I can just move Friday's meal to some day this week since I already have everything for it. That's the thing about a menu plan...it's just a plan. Give yourself some room for error and things will run so much smoother. Here's what I'm thinking for this week:

Monday: Hamburgers, Fries and Baked Beans

Tuesday: Cream Cheese Chicken Crescents and steamed veggies

Wednesday: Sweet and Sour Chicken and Rice

Thursday: Thanksgiving!

Friday: LaBamba Casserole

Saturday: Potato Soup and Grilled cheese

Sunday: Jerk Chicken Pasta, Salad and Garlic Bread

There will be a lot of cooking going on this week. Not only will I be making a few things to take to my in-laws house on Thursday but Ben has a thanksgiving brunch at work on Wednesday. My aunt has an a.mazing quiche recipe that I'll be sending along with him. I'll see if I can twist her arm for permission and share it with ya'll on here later in the week. We also got a freezer this weekend (thank you Draker's!) and I've been trying my best to stockpile in a hurry before baby #2 gets here. I may or may not have over 30 homemade cinnamon rolls in my freezer right now...

As far as Thanksgiving goes, I'm planning on making a vamped up version of green bean casserole, a "turkey" cheeseball appetizer, maybe a sweet potato casserole and some sort of dessert depending on what my mother in law has planned. I know she is making chicken and dressing and mashed potatoes but I'm not sure what else...maybe I should call her :)

I'll update as much as I can this week but it is going to be crazy busy at our house - we're getting new carpet tomorrow and seeing as how I'm 38 weeks pregnant my main goal is to just make it to thanksgiving on Thursday! Don't forget to enter the giveaway on my first post!

Happy Cooking this week and I hope ya'll enjoy your time with family!

Enjoy tons of other menu's and great ideas over here at Orgjunkie!

Perfect Baked Potatoes

That's right. I said it. Perfect. Seriously. We lived in Germany when I was in high school and ate at a lot of great german restaurants. My mom once asked an older german lady how she got her potatoes to taste so great and she actually shared her secret. Sure enough, next time we made baked potatoes my mom did what she said and voila! Success! Now, I'm going to share that secret with you. Here's what you need:

Baking Potatoes

Olive Oil

Salt

Here's what you do:

Scrub your potatoes clean. I actually use a scrubber for this because I like to eat the whole potato...I know, weirdo. Once they are washed and scrubbed, dry them off with a paper towel or dish rag. Pour a palm full of Olive Oil into your hand and coat the outside of each potato. You may need to do this more than once depending on how many potatoes you are making. I typically make 3 at a time and one palm full is enough for that. Place your potatoes on a baking stone or pan and cover with freshly ground sea salt. Sea salt really does work best but if you don't have it then just cover with regular salt.

Bake your potatoes UNCOVERED, UNFOILED, just as they are with olive oil and salt on them at 400° for one hour. If you have really large potatoes you may need to bake an extra 15 minutes. Potatoes should 'give' when you push on them. What happens when you bake them with the foil on, is the potatoes basically boil inside the foil. Too much water gets trapped inside and you end up with bland potatoes with a weird consistency. Trust me on this one.

If you don't listen, you're likely to end up with potatoes like this...

(Ha! I jest.)

Best.Baked.Potatoes.Ever.

Baked Tortellini

This is definitely one of our absolute favorite meals. Ben got something similar to this at a restaurant one time and I thought "I could definitely make that!" Over time, this is the recipe I have come up with. I'm excited to share it with you because it is so easy to make and tastes like you've worked much harder than you really have :)

There are lots of different things you can do with this to make it your own, so feel free to experiment! Here are the ingredients:

2 bags of frozen cheese tortellini
1 jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce (I love the Ragu Sauteed Onion and Garlic)
1 jar of your favorite Alfredo sauce (I always use Bertolli for this one)
handful of fresh parsley (just tear some off and add to taste)
2 garlic cloves
freshly ground salt and pepper
mozzarella and Parmesan cheese (optional)

As you can see above there are a lot of places you can substitute whatever your family likes best or whatever you have on hand. If you make your own sauces then just use equal parts of each type of sauce. If you don't have fresh parsley, use dried. If you're not a big "top it with cheese" fan, then don't! One thing I definitely do recommend is using frozen tortellini. It's much better than what you get in the refrigerated section and almost always cheaper. I have never used the dried but for some reason that just weirds me out. If you make your own, well, then what are you doing reading a blog about cooking?! This recipe makes a large 13x9 pan of tortellini, but I often cut it in half for our family (by only using one bag of tortellini) and freeze the other half of the sauce for the next time I make it.

Here's what I do:

Boil the tortellini, drain and set aside

Add the two sauces, parsley, salt, pepper and garlic cloves to a blender or food processor

Sauce will be pink with all sorts of pretty green flecks of parsley in it

Spray your pan (8x8 for one bag and 13x9 for two bags) add tortellini and cover with sauceBake uncovered at 350 for 30 minutes. If topping with cheese, simply add around the 20 minute mark and continue baking uncovered for the remaining 10 min. (If you like your cheese to brown a little then either cook a little while longer or turn your broiler on for about 2 minutes.)

Serve with Salad and Garlic bread.Watch the plates lick themselves clean. Hope you Enjoy!

Menu Plan 11/16-11/22

I know, I know this is a day late - sorry about that! My husband wrote such a sweet and moving post on our family blog that I decided this was the week to put up the new blog and it took me until today to get around to it - hey, give a 37 week pregnant lady a break already! Here is our menu this week...mostly easy (refer back to the 37 weeks pregnant reference).

Monday: Turkey chili dogs, homemade sweet potato fries and fresh fruit
Tuesday: Tortellini, Salad and bread
Wednesday: Baked Potatoes and Chef salad
Thursday: Sante Fe Soup and cornbread muffins
Friday: Cream Cheese Chicken crescents and salad
Saturday:BBQ Chicken, Macaroni and Cheese and green beans
Sunday: Beef Stew and Crusty Bread

Baking: I think we'll make some classic chocolate chip cookies this week along with some homemade bread for the stew on Sunday. The last time I made homemade bread it was a disaster so here's hoping I can do better this time around!

The new format will be posting the recipe to each item as I make it as well as a review. Some things are old, family favorites and others will be new recipes that we'll decide whether or not to add into the mix! I always welcome any questions, critiques, suggestions, you name it and I look forward to hearing everything ya'll have to say.

I'm not even going to bother with a post about monday's meal - I totally cheated. I didnt get to the grocery store for this week until today so last night I used a package of Turkey Hot Dogs and a can of 98% fat free turkey chili to make chili dogs. I then cut up a sweet potato, tossed it with salt, pepper and garlic powder and tossed it in the oven to make fries. Voila - dinner. Hey, the boys were more than happy to have hot dogs. We'll try to make up for that with the rest of the week.

Happy Cooking!

First Post and Giveaway!

I'm officially starting a new blog. It will look different than our family blog and rightly so - it's not going to be about our family! On this blog I'm going to post our menus, recipes, deals around town and some product reviews. I hope you're as excited as I am - I think it will be so much fun to share all of that with ya'll! I love to cook for my family and am always looking for fun new ways to make dinner and save a dollar here and there - I bet you do to! It won't be as detailed as other blogs are as far as the deals are concerned, but I do want to share things I stumble across along the way! To start things off with a boom let's do a Giveaway! The TWO winners of this contest will be selected by random.org and will win their choice of an Apple Cinnamon or Bayberry Spice Scented oil candle and warmer! Winners will be announced Monday, November 30th. Want to win? Just leave a comment - any comment with your contact email and which scent you want!