A Few Questions

I could use some input on a few items.

1.  I rarely take time to clean the house because I hate it and because working full time and having a kid makes cleaning difficult.  So...

Does anyone know of someone in the Holland area who could clean my house?  Or a good service? 

Does anyone have someone clean their house?  Do they come while you are gone?  Is it worth it?

2.  I love bread and baked goods but hate the time it takes to make something.  So...

Does anyone have a good recipe for dough that I can make ahead and bake later?  Or make a big batch and bake a smaller portion when I want to?

3.  We are finalizing a kitchen remodel, so...

Does anyone have anything in their kitchen that they LOVE?

Does anyone have anything in their kitchen that they really wish they had?

I would love to hear from you!  Thanks in advance!

Apple Sauce

Yesterday, we made apple sauce at my mom's house. My mom and Rachel got started in the morning, Lucy and I joined them shortly after lunch, and Heather came a little after that. My mom had picked right around 13 of those reusable grocery bag things of apples.

Lucy was in the crib there for close to 2 hours, but if she slept it was for 20 minutes. She talked and talked and talked, so I just left her there. Later she helped by taste testing.

Here is my mom cutting up apples. For the most part, she took care of cooking the apples while Heather and I cut them up. I don't have a picture of that though.

Here are the apples on their journey to become sauce:

My mom has this handy grinder so we didn't have to peel anything. It shoots the peels out the one end and the ground up cooked apples out the other. Rachel manned the apple crank.

I only have fuzzy pictures of Rachel because I forgot to put the flash on. She sure was having fun!

Here is the sauce. Yummers!

We decided to try putting it in quart sized baggies, like I do with my freezer meals. My moms friend, Beth Ann, had just made apple sauce and used baggies too. Here is Heather writing on the baggies.

Rachel put the apple sauce into the baggies. My mom had the idea to use big tin cans like we use coffee cans to make putting the apple sauce in the bags easier. I'm going to use this idea on my next cooking day for putting toppings into baggies. Yay!

Lucy helped too by playing.

When Lucy and I left, there were close to 50 bags in the fridge. We are picking it up today when we go for lunch. It will be a great side dish for the freezer meals!

A Fall Outing with Grandma

This morning we, Matt, Lucy, Matt's mom, and I went to downtown Holland. It was a little chilly but a lot of fun. We got coffee at JP's, went to the farmers' market, bought Lucy new shoes at Lokker's, stopped at the library, and looked at plants at Younker's Gardens.

This isn't the best picture of me, but we saw 2 police officers and one of them gave Lucy a sticker. She unzipped her sweatshirt, stuck it on her shirt and then zipped it back up again. This picture is of Lucy showing Daddy her sticker.

Here are Lucy and Grandma Ehinger sitting in a swing. Lucy wanted to sit there just so she could play with the bunny. She was WAY more interested in the bunny than the chair or the picture or Grandma at this point. She started bawling when we walked away and had to leave the bunny.

Lucy picked out a mini-pumpkin and 2 gourd things to take home. Here she is showing Matt what she got.

At home we set out our new pumpkins on the front porch. Happy Fall!

After lunch, Lucy and I went to Grammy's house to make apple sauce. I will write about that later.

Sow Housing

Today, I spoke at a conference about sow housing. It went really well and had a lot of people thank me for speaking and tell me I did a good job. It was pretty cool! This is the second time I've spoken at a conference, and I really do like it. I thought I'd share a few pictures from my presentation.

Here is a picture of stall housing for sows. These sows are all either pregnant or going to become pregnant soon. Each sow has her own space to keep her safe from the other sows. Sows fight a lot when they are mixed until they establish their pecking order. Right after they are weaned, they need time gain a little weight back after nursing a big litter. In individual stalls, we can feed them individually and can easily see if one of them is not eating because she is sick.

Once the sows are confirmed pregnant, about 5 weeks after being bred, they are moved to pen gestation. Below is a picture of sows that are pregnant in one of our sow units. We keep them in pens here. The barn is round, so the pens are pie shaped.

Here is another sow unit. This picture also has pregant sows in pens.

Here are gilts (first time pregnancy) that were at my farm at the time. Unfortunately this barn burned down.

This is a personal favorite of mine. Isn't this pig so stinking cute?! She is about 200 days old, 300 lbs and is ready to get preggers.

This picture transferred kinda funny, but these are pigs that are almost ready to be weaned. They are about 20 days old and probably weigh close to 12 lbs. We keep sows in these individual stalls like this to help protect their babies.

Here is another sow with her babies. These pigs are probably closer to one week old.

Those are some of my pigs! My job is to oversee the people who take care of the sows and gilts in all of these areas. It really is a lot of fun and a great challenge.

A Busy Day

Yesterday was a busy day in the Ehinger household! I did my cooking day and Matt worked a long time on a new section of landscaping. Lucy "helped" with both, but also slept in, took a good nap and played by herself for a while which was more than helpful.

The morning started a little rough for me. When I got to the kitchen at 7am, I found 2 bags of refridgerated food out on the counter! Oops! Thankfully, it only shorted me 2 meals of food, and one recipe made more than anticipated, so I still ended with 32 meals in the freezer.

To keep things flowing for the day, I plan out the order that I'm going to make things. It is important to make sure all recipes are on the list. I forgot to write down chili so at the end of the day when I had extra ingredients, I realized I forgot the chili! Thankfully, that's an easy recipe so I just did it last. I post this list on a cabinet.

I also have all my recipes typed up like this and in plastic sleeves. The ones I'm working on, I tape to the cabinets like this for an easy reference.

Lucy watched a full episode of Sesame Street without getting up. I couldn't believe it! Turns out, she is getting a molar in, so I don't think she was feeling 100%.

This is a new spaghetti sauce recipe that I made curtesy of Jessica's blog. I had a different recipe but didn't really like it. I doubled her recipe and used some of it for lasagna (see below) and the rest I bagged separately for 4 pasta meals. It tasted AMAZING!

Here I'm putting together 2 lasagnas. This was one of 2 recipes that I put in foil pans. I wrap the whole pan with heavy duty aluminum foil when I have it put together.

Most of the other meals I put in gallon Ziploc bags like this. This is a Chicken and Broccoli Cobler recipe. Coffee cans work GREAT for holding the bags. A glass measuring cup works good for scooping. I do 1 scoop in can 1 then 1 scoop in can 2 until I get to the bottom of the bowl so that both bags are equal.

Same concept, but here is our family favorite: Mastaccioli bake. You can put almost everything in a bag other than layered casseroles like lasagna. I put the cheese topping in a second bag and then add it when I thaw it out.

It is important that everything is room temp or cooler when it goes into the freezer. Otherwise large ice crystals form in the food and it hurts the flavor and texture. I've heard from a friend that this is true. I use one side of the sink for cooling with water and ice packs. Some things also go in the fridge to cool.

While Matt was looking for the Michigan game on the radio, Lucy helped make enchiladas. We won't be giving these away, since she was eating off the spoon for the cheese. She really did help some by handing me tortillas and dumping cheese in the enchiladas. Dilbert and Lucy ate quite a bit of cheese. My mom helps a TON on these days too, so for a while we had 3 generations cooking!

My freezer is in the basement, so this cooking day, I tried to minimize trips down there and used a laundry basket. This trip had 8 meals in it: 2 lasagna, 2 mostaccioli bake, 4 spaghetti sauce.

At 2pm, this is what my freezer looked like (and still does!) the second shelf and bottom drawer are other items, but the other 3 shelves contain the 32 meals that I made. As you can see, I still have a lot of room. Using freezer bags saves a lot of space!

When it wasn't raining, Matt was spending his time working on this new landscaping area. I think it is going to look GREAT! Lucy and I came out to watch and Lucy "helped" Matt too by throwing things away and holding the measuring tape.

We were all exhausted when we went to bed, but it was a very successful day!

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Here is Lucy saying "Happy Birthday, Grandma!" (It came out sounding like "blahblahblah gamma." Really. That's really how it sounded!)

We love you, Mom!

Love from Matt, Erin, and Lucy

Big day ahead

Tonight, I'm finalizing my meal plan for the big cooking day on Saturday. Lucy was coloring while I worked on my list. Her favorite color right now is PINK!!
This past week I "scheduled" out a meal plan. I don't stick to the meal plan, but it helps me plan so I know that we won't have a week with all Mexican food or all soup. Dilbert tried to eat this, but thankfully he didn't get it all.

Here is the plan:

Lasagna- 2 meals

Spaghetti- 2 meals

Mostaccioli Bake- 3 meals

Chili- 3 meals

Sloppy Joes- 2 meals

Tacos- 2 meals

(I make a recipe that makes all the meat/onions/green peppers for the Chili, SJs and Tacos)

Chicken Broccoli Bake- 2 meals (very similar to Bursley food! Go Blue!)

Chicken Broccoli Cobler- 2 meals

Heavenly Potatoes and Ham- 3 meals

Southwest Pork and Bean Soup- 2 meals

Beef Enchiladas- 4 meals

Mexi Chicken- 3 meals

Pork Tenderloin- 2 meals

14 recipes. That will give us 32 meals. I will probably give a few away. We normally eat 5 freezer meals per week, 1 night out or at Bible Study, and Sunday dinner at my parents. That should get us through the next 6 weeks! (Hopefully we will have a completely remodeled kitchen by then!!)

Here is a sideways view of my ingredients list. After my second cooking day, I put all my recipes in Excel spreadsheets so I can easily made shopping lists.

Tomorrow I'll go shopping at Meijer after Lucy goes to bed. Then Saturday I will cook. My mom and Matt are both very helpful by helping cook and keeping Lucy from hanging on me. I can't wait! These cooking days are amazing for our family.

Dilbert

Here is Dilbert. He is our almost 4 year old yellow lab. He has been really skiddish lately on our laminet flooring and he likes to eat paper and pacifiers, but other than that he's a pretty good dog. Here he is cuddling with Lucy's dolls.

Today he ate my Frozen Assets cookbook, or at least tried to. He at the cover and the back cover and about 3 pages in the back. Grr...

At least the main part of the book is okay. I guess I won't leave any more books on the coffee table!

Planning the next big cooking day

For Christmas, Matt gave me the cookbook Frozen Assest: Cook for a Day, Eat for a Month by Deborah Taylor-Hough. This book/concept has been AMAZING for me!!! I realize that it's not for everyone, but if you are like me and have a hard time planning meals and then sticking to the plan and always feel like you are eating mac and cheese for dinner, this may be the thing for you. I will blog on it every once in a while because it has truely changed mealtimes at our house for the best.

This is my cookbook. It has all of my main recipes including the meals for my cooking days. Each cooking day, I choose 10-15 meals and make 2-3 meals worth. My next cooking day is next week. My freezer is almost empty! I have 7 meals left.

This is what we had list night: Chili on baked potatoes

When I make the meals, I put most of them in gallon Ziploc bags and stick a label on with the recipe name, heating/baking instructions, and a date. (I used to handwrite everything, but now that I know what we really like, I have labels made up) The bags freeze really thin to minimize freezer space.

For this meal, I threw the chili in the fridge the day before, then Saturday night poured the chili into a pan, warmed it up, and 20 minutes later we had a yummy meal to eat while watching football. Lucy loved it, too!

This morning I started planning my meals. It's looking good: Chicken Broccoli Cobler, Lasagna, Southwest Pork and Bean Soup, Enchiladas, and many more! Yum!

Allegan County Fair

We went to the fair today even though it was raining. The whole way there Lucy said "Pigs?" As soon as we walked in the cattle barn she yelled "COWS!!" She was equally excited when we saw the pigs. Here are pictures of the sheep which are the only animals she would touch.

My little farm girl!

choose2choose

This is a new website that is by moms and for moms. It talks all about where our food comes from, food safety, and why it's important that we are able to choose what we eat, something that we are very blessed to have. (Right now there are groups that are anti-agriculture and are fighting through legislation to make changes that would cause farmers to not be able to farm pushing food production out of the US.)

Check it out! As a pork producer, I found that the information is very accurate compared to some information that is circulated about our food.

Bubbles!

Lucy LOVES bubbles! She took her first bubble bath a couple months ago and now every bath she asks "Bubbos?" Unfortunately we ran out of bubble bath about 4 baths ago, so it is on the grocery list to be gotten next week. But in the meantime, here are some fun pictures of bubble baths!

Beards look good on Mommy!

Bubbles look good on Dilbert too! (He went CRAZY trying to get them off)

Doesn't she look like a little dwarf? Hopefully she doesn't hate me in 10 years for posting bath pictures...

Photo Solutions Party

I'm excited about this! It sounds like something that I can use help on; maybe you feel the same? Let me know if you can make it!