Making Life Better.com
Feel good, look good and get more out of life.
That is the motto for a site created by Unilever called makinglifebetter.com. The site has beauty tips, recipes, family night ideas and more in numerous categories geared towards moms and families.
During the summer, moms still have to do the every-day stuff from laundry to doing dishes, but other things about our daily lives change, especially if your children are old enough to be in school. Summer changes everything! One thing that we do differently in the summer is what we eat and how we eat it. Whether prompted by a change in schedule a change in attitude or a change in the availability of certain foods or food prep methods like grilling summer has it’s own challenges for meal planning.
In order to help provide families with some variety this summer, makinglifebetter.com has teamed up with Jennifer Bushamn, the author of “Kitchen Coach” cookbook series. Together they have created the Family Fun Book that is filled with ideas, tips and affordable recipes to make it easy to prepare great home-cooked meals. You can actually download the Family Fun Book for FREE!
The makinglifebetter.com website is attractive and well laid out, and I especially love the recipes section. It is well organized, provides nutritional info and allows for user ratings and comments. It has actually inspired me to start planning some meals and experimenting with some of the recipes to try and make some great meals for my family.
So, go check out the free Family Fun book and learn some fun food ideas from The Kitchen Coach, including tips on how to get your kids in on meal preparation, plus plenty of advice on how to keep your meal ideas fresh, easy to prepare and budget friendly.
I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Unilever/Making Life Better. Mom Central sent me a gift card and a copy of the Family Fun Book to thank me for taking the time to participate.
Crock Pot Lasagna – I made dinner and it didn’t suck.
I am not good at cooking. I blame my short attention span but I also just think I’m lazy. I’d rather stick a prepared meal from a package in the magic cooking box and have it come out done in 3 minutes. Sure, maybe they taste like cardboard, but I don’t have to get my hands dirty or take time away from watching my soaps (ok I don’t watch soaps…mostly HGTV) in order to prepare them.
Last night, the fabulous Christy (The Write Gal) over on Momdot emailed me a recipe for Crock Pot Lasagna and since my husband was coming home from a business event today I didn’t think he’d want to worry about cooking. So I decided to give the recipe a try.
First of all I had to shop.
The ingredients for the recipe are as follows:
- 8 uncooked lasagna noodles
- 1lb ground beef
- 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1 (28 oz.) jar of spaghetti sauce
- 1/3 cup water
- 1 (4oz.) can of mushrooms
- 1 (15 oz.) package of ricotta cheese
- 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
Ok, so first I had to solve my first dilemma – do lasagna noodles come COOKED? Once I sorted through that and realized it meant that you don’t need to cook them ahead of time, I searched my house for the other ingredients. I found ground beef in the freezer, which was no surprise. In our house my husband buys all of our meat at the local butcher shop and I refuse to go in there because of the smell. So for me finding meat in the freezer is like a vending machine. The food just magically appears in there, I never have to buy it myself.
Anyhow, I had to go out and buy the rest of the ingredients except for the Italian seasoning. My husband has a cabinet full of spices, one of which was labeled “Italian seasoning” – imagine that.
Below is a list of the items (and a photo for dramatic purposes) and their prices. Since I never buy the meat, I can’t tell you how much the ground beef is, but this should give you a rough idea of the cost of the recipe, you just need to add in the beef. I shopped at our local store which has some prices higher than a big chain store, but I save on gas. I usually buy generics when I can.
- Box of Lasagna noodles (uncooked, hehe): $1.89
- Jar of spaghetti sauce (26 oz. was the closest I could find): $1.99
- 1/3 cup water: FREE lol…
- No mushrooms….I have a rule against eating fungus so we are leaving those out.
- Container of ricotta cheese (15 oz.): $2.50
- Bag of shredded mozarella (2 cups): $.99 (I bought a whole bunch of these and put them in the freezer – great price)
- I also got a loaf of fresh Italian bread (it was still warm!) for: $1.99
Total spent (including the bread): $9.36 plus whatever ground beef costs. So without the bread, I bet you could do this meal for $10 which isn’t too bad. It looks like it will easily feed 4.
While I was setting out my ingredients, my husband came home from his event, which is a good thing for me because I had no idea how to THAW the ground beef. Sure, I know that the magic cooking box can do it, but I didn’t want to mess it up. So he explained to me how to do it. Then I asked him if I needed to brown the ground beef. He asked me what the recipe said. I said it wasn’t clear enough. He looked at the recipe. Below is what he saw:
Directions from Christy:
- Break noodles and place half in bottom of a greased slow cooker. (I spray mine with Pam)
- Brown ground beef in saucepan and drain.
- Stir in Italian seasoning and spread half over noodles in slow cooker.
- Layer half of sauce and water, half mushrooms, half ricotta cheese, and then half of mozzarella cheese over beef.
- Repeat layers.
- Cover and cook on low 5 hours.
Not clear right?
Yeah, I’m totally incompetent. And apparently I can’t read either.
So I managed to brown the ground beef and drain it without starting a fire. I piece did sort of go flying across the room somehow but it was small and no big deal, I just threw it out (you thought I’d say I put it back in the pan didn’t you?)
Then I began to follow the directions and fill the crock pot with the ingredients.
And I do admit I went to look at it like every 10 minutes to see how it was doing. I was proud I made it that far without ruining it and so I was admiring my work – over and over and over!
Below are a series of shots from the preparation and my finished masterpiece.
I did use Christy’s suggestion to spray the inside of the crock pot with Pam, but I think next time I will use Crisco or something not in a spray. It did stick to the sides a little and burn, but overall it was really good. I also think next time (yes, there will be a next time) I will make sure to get our favorite Spaghetti Sauce, Cipriani’s rather than the generic one I bought. The store I went to didn’t have it so I had to improvise. Cipriani’s is our FAVORITE jarred sauce and I know this recipe would be even better with it.
It fed the four of us with no problems and I think even if we had another adult or two eating, we could have made that work because we did have some left over.
So thanks for the recipe, Christy! I had my doubts (because of my own luck in the kitchen) but it turned out pretty darn tasty.
It’s a zoo!
No really.
We went to the zoo.
Yesterday the kids and I packed up with my mom and my nephew and went to the Brookfield Zoo!
It was a beautiful day for it, in the mid 70′s or so, and we arrived just 20 minutes after they opened. Apparantly everyone else in the Chicago area had the same idea to enjoy the cool weather because it was PACKED. So the crowds, combined with a toddler who didn’t get her nap at her usual time, we were only there for 3 hours or so before we headed home. For me and the kids it was a full day because we left at 8:20 am and didn’t make it home until around 4:30 or so, but overall it was a great day.
Abby seems to have a great interest in animals. From a bird on our deck, to a neighbors dog in the window, she notices them and watches them until they are gone. The Zoo was no exception. She pointed and stared at every exhibit we saw.
A couple of our favorites:
That, is Abby the Ostrich. Their eyeballs are bigger than their brains. Which explains why she was just pacing back and forth along the fence. Over. And over. And over.
In the viewing area under their habitat, the sea lions (there were 3 of them) were swimming right up to the glass and then turning abruptly. They did it again and again for at least the 20 minutes we stood there. The kids loved it because they were RIGHT THERE close enough to touch (if only the glass was not there). Afterwards we went up to the outside area of their habitat and watched the zookeepers examine the sea lions, feed them treats and show us their tricks. It was a lot of fun. And guess what, one of the Sea Lions was named Abby too!
We fought the Illinois Tollway and WON!
Disclaimer: We had a legitimate dispute and are not just toll-jumpers who did something stupid and are now trying to get out of it. If you knowingly missed tolls, did not keep your I-Pass account up-to-date or anything else that would put YOU at fault for toll violations, I strongly recommend you accept the responsibility, pay your fines and move on.
If any of you have been following my adventures with the Illinois Tollway, you will remember that we were sent a violation notice for over $2,000 in alleged missed tolls and fines.
I originally posted here:
Beware of the Illinois Tollway UPDATED
To make a huge, long story short, we were I-Pass customers in good standing when the alleged violations occurred, and we had updated our current address (in Indiana) with the Tollway. We had gotten new drivers licenses and vehicle registrations in Indiana and our Illinois ones were no longer valid.
Over a year after we moved to Indiana, a final violation notice was sent by the tollway to our old address and it was not forwarded by the post office, an old neighbor delivered it to us.
Upon calling to Tollway to straighten it out, they originally admitted the violations themselves were not valid because we were I-Pass customers with a current account, but they claimed they couldn’t void the fines because we never responded to the notices. No one could understand that the address the Illinois Secretary of State had for us had not been valid for over a year and WE had no way to correct that. We did our jobs. We updated our information with the Tollway and registered our vehicles and got new drivers licenses in another state. Upon trying to update our info with the Illinois Secretary of State, we couldn’t because according to their system, that vehicle registration and drivers license no longer existed. Yet the Tollway reps INSISTED it was our responsibility to do something that could not be done.
So what did we do?
First we filed a written complaint, the outcome of which I wrote about here:
Highway Robbery on the Illinois Tollway
We got absolutely nowhere with it.
We also found that while Ohio and Minnesota drivers were getting help with their Illinois Tollway complaints from the Attorney General’s in their states, Indiana said they couldn’t help us.
So we made more phone calls, searched the web for more information and finally came across something that in a way was right under our faces to begin with. The Illinois Tollway has an Inspector General whose job it is to ensure that the Tollway operates without fraud or mismanagement, or at least to investigate allegations of these kinds of things.
So we called.
And that one single phone call, although it would still be a month before we saw things resolved, was what saved us.
We explained our case to their office and they agreed with us that we should not be held responsible for the fines associated with the alleged violations. BUT….they couldn’t do anything about it. What they did do, was give us the name and phone number of a Violations Manager that reviewed our case. It took numerous phone calls, and the manager’s assistant was an angel through the whole thing. They are obviously busy and we had faxed them like 20 pages of paperwork they had to wade through, but finally…
The manager told us they agreed with our assessment of the situation and are cancelling the fines and the collection and simply charging our I-Pass account $8 for the tolls the I-Pass somehow missed.
Three and a half months after our initial phone calls to the I-Pass customer service.
So how does this help the countless others faced with these issues?
While the frustrated angry part of me that was stressed out and faced with the fear of having my driver’s license suspended for the last 3-1/2 months wants to give you the name and phone number of the manager we dealt with, I will not post that here nor will I be handing that information out to anyone via email or any other manner.
The reason I will not is because I don’t know your story, and if I post that information and these folks are inundated with guilty people who are just trying to cause trouble and complain, that serves no one and the innocent people with legitimate issues are less likely to be heard.
But I will leave you with the following information, meant to help those with legitimate arguments against the validity of any violation notices they have received. Again, if you are a toll-jumper or know that you are guilty of the violations, do everyone a favor and just pay it and move on.
If you have tried calling the Illinois Tollway customer service, only to be met with frustrating, mean people who refuse to listen to your story, document your phone calls, thoroughly review your I-Pass account, and if possible, get an itemized list of all of your alleged violations so you can compare them with you account so you can ensure they are legit. Then write your story down in detail.
Then you need to contact the Office of the Inspector General of the Illinois Tollway at this number: (630) 241-6800 ext. 1300. Be patient, be calm and tell them why you believe that the violations and/or fines are not valid and explain that you have attempted to contact customer service with no success.
If they see validity in your complaint, I am confident, like in our case, they will provide you with the name and phone number of someone who will help. You will still need some persistence to get it worked out, but if you are in the right you should not have to pay fines that you don’t owe.
Good luck!
