7-Day Menu Planner for DUMMIES - Rebel Review

"New-NEW Culinary Classic...NOT Just For Dummies!"

7-DAY MENU PLANNER FOR DUMMIES
by Susan Nicholson, RD/LD
(Wiley, 2010)

[Paperback, 342 pages, $19.99 U.S. - buy for less on Amazon.com]

Being a woman "of a certain age" and married for 20+ years, I have been cooking for a long time. I admit, I am far from gourmet: I don't specialty shop; I don't watch the TV cooking shows or reality shows starring angry chefs and their desperate-to-please minions; glossy gourmet food and recipe magazines make me nervous.

I do have skills. I have one small shelf of cookbooks in my kitchen. I can cover the basics, having more or less successfully fed and nourished a healthy family of five for some time now. Culled from a 25-year-old, well-worn copy of the cooking classic: BETTY CROCKER'S COOKBOOK (1987), family magazines and, in more recent years, recipe searches on AllRecipes.com for the iPhone and iPad, I have compiled my very own cookbook: a mish-mash of photocopies, hand-written classics and typed recipes, all carefully preserved in plastic page protectors and haphazardly "filed" in a white, plastic-coated (easy wipe!), 3-ring binder.

However, having said all of that:

Even with my vast and very practical culinary knowledge and experience, I love, Love, LOVE Susan Nicholson's 7-DAY MENU PLANNER FOR DUMMIES. An instant new-NEW classic, this book should be a treasured kitchen bible for every man, woman or young adult trying to prepare and serve nutritious, delicious, affordable and do-able meals for a family, couple or even healthy meals for one.

Susan Nicholson is a registered dietitian and creator of the 7-Day Menu Planner newspaper column, featured in major newspapers and in online syndication, too. She is a culinary professional and a talented writer with a lot of experience and a great sense of humor, which makes 7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies more than just another cookbook.

7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies gives you a year's worth of weekly dinner idea and recipes that "take about 30 minutes to prepare, contain an average of 30 percent calories from fat, and use common ingredients to save time and money." It is a well-organized and simple roadmap for menu planning, offering great recipes, practical instruction and tips, and a very consistent weekly plan of coordinated dinners: Family Night; Kid's Night (not just for children!); Express Meal; Budget Night; Heat and Eat; Meatless Night; and Easy Entertaining. I love the fact that the week's meals are coordinated to use ingredients in common and a central philosophy of reduce, re-use, recycle and re-format throughout the week's plan. (Trust me, not repetitious, you will not get bored!)

7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies makes planning and preparing meals less of a chore and more fun: simple, easy, quick, healthy and delicious. Whether you are an old pro in the kitchen or a culinary "noob" (as my kids say), make room on your cookbook shelf for a new classic:

7-DAY MENU PLANNER FOR DUMMIES
★★★★★

OMG Recipe & Rebel Review: 7-Day Menu Planning for Dummies!

Happy Holidays, Rebel Readers! A special gift recipe from RebelHousewife.com and 7-Day Menu Planning For Dummies by Susan Nicholson (reprinted with permission from the author). This is one of the easiest, best, *yummiest* recipes I have ever made -- enjoy!!!

Check out the Rebel Review:
7-DAY MENU PLANNING FOR DUMMIES

Pasta with Tomatoes, Spinach, and Gorgonzola

(henceforth, a.k.a. Gorgonz Penne in the Rebel household)

Prep time: 15 min - Cook time: About 5 min, plus pasta - Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

8 ounces penne pasta
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 cloves minced garlic
3/4 cup half-and-half
1/2 cup low-fat or regular gorgonzola cheese
2 cups fresh spinach leaves

Directions

1) Cook pasta according to directions; drain.

2) In a large nonstick skillet, heat oil on medium. Add tomatoes, salt, crushed red pepper, and garlic to skillet; cook 1 minute, stirring occasionally.

3) Stir in half-and-half and cheese; cook 2 minutes or until slightly thickened, stirring constantly.

4) Stir in spinach and pasta; cook 1 minute or until spinach wilts, stirring occasionally.

Per serving: 350 calories, 13g protein, 10g fat (26 percent calories from fat), 5.3g saturated fat, 52g carbohydrate, 24mg cholesterol, 388mg sodium, 4g fiber.

Week 48: Wednesday - Meatless
Pasta with Tomatoes, Spinach, and Gorgonzola makes a terrific no-meat meal. Serve it with a romaine salad and Italian bread.
From 7-Day Menu Planning For Dummies by Susan Nicholson, pages 269 & 271.

7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies makes planning and preparing meals less of a chore and more fun: simple, easy, quick, healthy and delicious. Whether you are an old pro in the kitchen or a culinary "noob" (as my kids say), make room on your cookbook shelf for a new classic:

7-DAY MENU PLANNER FOR DUMMIES
★★★★★

iPad Mom & Dad

I am blogging on an iPad, which is amazing.

Conveniently enough, Apple released the iPad very close to Dear Hubby's birthday in March, so I pre-ordered for delivery on Magical Saturday, when the UPS trucks carried the specially-marked boxes to the masses, in many cases under armed escort, Brinks-truck-style. (It sure beat camping out in line at the Apple Store Friday night!)

So we have one -- a big one (64 gig memory), which I insist on calling the MaxiPad, much to my husband's chagrin. (They really should have thought of that during the name branding stage. I love the thing, but the name is unfortunate.). We are trying to come up with a new family moniker for it, since there is a name for everything in our household: The desktop iMac "Big Mac"; our GPS navigation system "Lois" (subtle reference therein, involving Malcolm in the Middle and 2001: A Space Odyssey). The current family truckster is the "Big Blue Deuce" -- I don't always fully understand or remember the references and antecedents myself, but I think that was a mash-up between a NASCAR homage (although we are not fans of Kurt Busch, the driver of the Miller Lite #2 Dodge) and the Robin Williams' movie RV (the "big [green] turd").

Anyway. We're working on it.

Not only has It eased the transition to 44 for my Prince Charming, It has changed our family, technologically. Although we admittedly have plenty of -- and perhaps more than enough -- screen options in our home, the iPad is in constant demand, and it's not just the novelty of a new gadget. DH and I constantly have to fight the kids for time on the new toy.

Hubby uses the iPad in the morning, to browse the news and weather from various sources. He has been transitioning, with the iPhone, from our old-school daily and weekend Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) to USA Today, which offers the best presentation and format -- on the iPhone -- of national news and also has a Motor Sports category (for the NASCAR news, of course).

USA Today has not made the best transition to the iPad (where the heck is the much-loved Motor Sports category?!) and there have been rumblings of moving to a paid subscription model, so we'll see...

Strong contender for news on the iPad: NPR, which Mommy now prefers. And the AJC finally has an app, which is useful for a touch of local news. Just don't expect much more than that, as our local rag seems to have fired most of their real journalists and editors to pay minimum wage interns to regurg(itate) AP News headlines, pretty much verbatim.

But I digress--

Mommy also likes the iPad as an interactive, easy-to-read, easy-to-wipe-clean source of recipes with pictures, which makes cooking easier and more fun, especially if I switch over to the ABC app in-between and use the iPad as a faux-TV in the kitchen to catch up on my shows. (Actually, who am I kidding? I don't really watch much TV and the kids appreciate that ABC app way more than I do. Now if I could cue up GLEE while I'm in the kitchen (not the new GLEE app that I am supposed to sing with, the real show), that would be awesome.

For recipes, I like:
AllRecipes Dinner Spinner
Epicurious
and the Crock-Pot iPhone app

I am also addicted to an iPhone game that is way-better on the iPad: Word Warp (kind of like Boggle). Don't even get me started. I love that game!

This is the point where I need to put the iPad down and go to "Mom's Mac" to finish this article. While the iPad is very cool and blogging shorts on it is totally do-able, this piece just became a long and I need easier document navigation and formatting tools to review, edit and publish...

(This is not even what I should be working on at the moment, but there you go.)

New Year's Resolution #1: EMEALZ

It has been A Monday, spent mostly at the vet with Mocha-the-Dog. Before I get to THAT (next post), have to talk about food, recipes and meal planning; one of my New Year's Resolutions (yes, we're back to THAT this year, although I thought I had aged out of that particular angst...guess not).

I got a Crock Pot for Christmas (among other, somewhat more glamorous gifts, I assure you), which I am actually very excited about. I am going to be (kind of) homeschooling our 9yo ADHD/Aspy Phenom for the rest of the year, and I need to establish some order amidst our typical chaos and get a little more organized about running the house and feeding the animals around here. Fortunately, Santa also brought a great cookbook:


Yum, with pictures!

Beyond that, even, I came across an unbelievably terrific -- and CHEAP! -- meal planning service for busy Moms (thanks to a Twitter mention from @ConfidentMom two weeks ago): E-MEALZ Easy Meals for Busy and Frugal Families - I signed up today using advertising code "dave" for 20% discount (working as of 12/28/2009). I subscribed to the Publix Family Meal Plan (they have several options) for $5/month and I get a complete 7-dinner plan, menu and grocery list each week, coordinated to the sales in the Publix flyer that week - wow!

Armed with my awesome new Crock Pot, a great cookbook and menu & meal planning help from EMEALZ, I am ready:

New Year's Resolution #1
I will plan, research, shop and make wonderful, healthy meals for my family this year so we can lose a little weight, save a little money and enjoy greater health & happiness in 2010!

Yeah. I'll let you know how it goes...

Easy Recipe: TANGLED TWISTERS - breakfast or snack

As far as snacks go, it is a wonderful thing to have a 10yo Drama Queen who likes to cook, bake, experiment and make a god-awful mess in the kitchen, which I don't mind (for the most part), because the results are always so very yummy.

This recipe is tried and true, easy and delicious, from DQ's favorite cookbook:

New Junior Cookbook (Better Homes & Gardens)

TANGLED TWISTERS - pages 48 & 49

Sugar and spice make these chewy pretzels especially nice.

INGREDIENTS
1 11-ounce package (8) refrigerated breaksticks
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon margarine or butter

UTENSILS
Baking sheet
Ruler
Measuring spoons
Small bowl
Spoon
Small microwave-safe bowl
Waxed paper
Wire cooling rack
Hot pads
Pancake turner
Pastry brush

1. Turn on oven to 350°. Grease the baking sheet. Save until Step 3.

2. Open the breakstick package and remove breadsticks. Gently pull or roll each breakstick on the countertop to make a rope of dough about 20 inches long. Shape each rope of dough into a pretzel by crossing one end over the other, forming a circle and leaving 4-inch tails. Holding a tail in each hand, twist once at the crossover point. Carefully lift the tails and place over the center of the circle. Place the ends of the tails over the circle edge and tuck them under to make a pretzel shape. Press ends to seal.

3. Place pretzels on prepared baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Put baking sheet in oven. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until pretzels are light brown.

4. While pretzels are baking, put sugar and cinnamon in the bowl. Stir with the spoon to mix. Save until Step 6.

5. Put the margarine or butter in the microwave-safe bowl. Cover bowl with waxed paper. Microwave on 100% power (high) for 20 seconds or until margarine is melted. Using hot pads, remove bowl from microwave.

6. Place cooling rack over waxed paper. When pretzels are baked, turn off oven. Remove baking sheet from oven with hot pads. Use the pancake turner to transfer pretzels from baking sheet to cooling rack. Use the pastry brush to spread melted margarine or butter over tops of pretzels. Sprinkle with sugar-cinnamon mixture. Serve warm.

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