[This post is not sponsored by anybody. These are just some hacks that I have been using to make the days a little easier and more fun]
1) Tired of cooking? For an easy inexpensive lunch, dinner, or whatever I recommend having Tyson Honeybreast Tenders on hand. The boys love them, and I love them and that is a ringing endorsement because I don’t usually like bagged chicken nuggets. I ate a lot of them when I was a child and as a grownup, I think that they usually have weird after taste.
Some suggestions for serving them are:
1) by themselves with your own condiments that you purchased and put in your refrigerator
2) with leftover sauces from Chick-fil-A, CFA lets you have up to two sauces for free when you order fries or an entrée so I always request two and I save the ones I don’t use for my own use
3) as a chicken tenders sandwich on bread or a roll with lettuce, mayo, and honey and sriracha. Sweet and spicy!
Just one more idea about food. Aldi makes great frozen breaded, Chinese chicken pieces. I love their orange chicken and General Tso’s chicken. They also have frozen stir fry blend in clear bag that is better than regular bagged frozen veggies. Serve with rice, it makes an easy dinner that doesn’t require much thought.
2) Treat-Yo-Self. Sometimes, you should give yourself small treats that don’t really cost anything. For example, today, my husband asked me if he thought we would go bike riding after the boys woke up from naps because he was trying to decide if he should take a shower. I said, “Treat yo self, you only live once. Take two showers today if you want.” Blog instead of writing trivia a Sunday. Feed your soulo
3) Treat-Yo-Self and buy yourself a small treat if you can. I like preowned clothes, so I have been having a lot of fun looking at the Thredup website and picking out some new things for summer.
4) Have a weekly campfire. For us, sometimes said campfire is after the kids go to sleep. Sometimes wine is involved.
5) Have a new obsession. This week I am obsessed with the musician Jonathan Coulton. He is folk/ comedy singer-songwriter who specifically touches on aspects of geek culture. To the uninitiated I recommend his songs: Re: Your Brains and Tom Cruise Crazy. Also, I listened to a few podcasts that he was a guest on this past week, and I learned that he has a cruise that fans can pay to go on. It is called the JoCo Cruise and now I really want to go on it. Obsessions keep me from spiraling too much.
6) Go deeper into your hobby. What this means for Mr. Katie is that he going to dedicate himself more fully to smoking meats. In the distant past, meaning 8 days ago, he was very into sourdough bread making and while I like bread, I like meat more, so I fully support this change. As for me, during my extensive research on Jonathan Coulton, or JoCo to his fans, I learned that he quit his computer programming job to be a singer-songwriter without a real life plan other than to record a song a week for an entire year (2006). I like being a librarian, at least part of time, and want to keep doing it, but I really writing so I would like to set a quantitative goal to write more per week. Perhaps with the constraints of having small children, challenging myself to write at least one post a week that is not related to trivia is a obtainable goal, though truthfully, I would like to do more than that.
7) Make a delicious dessert and it will make your dinner a celebration no matter what you are having. Your recipe doesn’t have to be hard.
Two weeks, ago I made these Chocolate Date-Caramel Cups. they seem fancy but actually are not that hard. I found everything that I needed in my cupboard already. The chocolate that I used was semi-sweet an not the bittersweet called for in the recipe. It was also left over from a recipe I meant to make a Christmas but didn’t and I used almonds instead of pecan or cashews. I didn’t have Medjool dates but just regular ones and it still turned out great. It was very easy and super delicious.
Another idea was introduced to me by my sister-in-law several years ago. Make chocolate chip cookies, perferably a little on the large side or make refrigerated chocolate chip cookies from the store. Take two larger cookies and put ice cream in the middle. Eat your cookie sandwich! That’s all you need. They are fabulous.
Hi All, what are your life hacks?
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