Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

I’m looking forward to getting everyone back into a scheduled routine this week including my night owl husband!  We’ve had a pretty laid back summer and did fairly well getting out the door on time but there was a few days of sleeping in that can’t happen once school starts.

My plan this week is to make a few meals in the slow cooker and also have a Friday Family Fun Night with a themed meal. . Ironically on my way home from Toronto one of my husbands friends who works for Jarden in Florida (the maker of Crockpots) asked me to check out their new Crockpot iPhone App, it’s still in the soft-launch process, but I’ll be sure to report back on my findings after playing with it for a few weeks.

This weeks menu:

Slow Cooker Lasagna- this was a big hit with the Slow Cooker Club and I actually didn’t end up testing this one out yet. I made a couple of substitutions as I was too cheap to by ricotta, so I went for Cottage Cheese instead.  Can’t wait to try it!

Slow Cooked Prime Rib Soup- This is a specialty of mine.  I don’t really have a recipe, I just whip it together and it’s always delicious.  I use the leftover meat and bones from a Prime Rib Roast as the base, but first I sauté the veggies (potatoes, turnip carrots, onions and celery if I have it) in some butter and salt and pepper then I add the Prime Rib and bones and let it slow cook all day with a little thyme for seasoning.

Home Made Pizzas- I’ve posted my Pizza Dough Recipe before a couple of years ago, it’s super easy to make and is so tasty. I think I’ll also make some mini pizzas for the boys lunches as well, now that they’ll be coming home for lunch (this should be interesting)! Mackenzie really likes Donair Pizza, so I’ll do one of those, mini-pepperoni for the boys and BBQ Chicken for Andrew and I.

Seafood Chowder- This is my Christmas Eve staple, but I generally make it every couple of months.  I noticed Fresh Haddock was on sale this week, and I have some frozen lobster already to add to it.  I really like the Sobeys Chowder Mix as they don’t add Salmon to it, I’m not a big fan of Salmon.  Perhaps I’ll make some fresh bread to go with it, Helen has been experimenting with some breads on her blog so I should go check it out!

I’m going to do a separate entry for my Friday Family Fun Night, can’t wait!

This week’s must have iPhone app is called Little Chef!

I can’t say just how much I love this free App!

Math, fractions and measurements have always been one of my strong points, but growing up in the 70’s & 80’s had me learning both metric and the old imperial measurements. Often I can’t remember the conversions between the two and I find a lot of my recipes tend to have a combination.

What Mini-Chef will do is convert your kitchen measurements for you! So if you’re doubling a recipe and don’t want to have to measure out 8 tablespoons of something, you can just measure out 1/2 cup instead! Or maybe your recipe says 32 ounces of something you’ll know that is 4 cups! Very handy for both moms and dads!  It is lacking grams and milligrams, maybe I’ll email the developer and see if they’ll add them!

I decided to add a new category to my blog for iPhone Apps I think are cool and or useful, I’ll try and add a new one each week.  If you have one you recommend email me canadianparents@gmail.com , I prefer to feature free Apps, but if there’s something you think is great then let me know!  I have an iTunes card burning a hole in my pocket!

So as you read in the title, I’m going to tell you about Smug Shot for the iPhone.  As you’re probably aware the iPhone has a built in camera, and I must say the quality is pretty good!  You can see some photos I took with it on my entry titled A Burst of Fall Energy

So what Smug Shot will do is after you have taken a photo on you iPhone you can then choose to upload your photo to SmugMug an online photo hosting site.  No it’s not a free one, but for the minimal cost it’s worth it in my eyes over the free ones. The process has been seemless and all of my photos I chose to upload are now already uploaded making blogging them so muck quicker! Thumbs up to SmugMug & SmugShot!