If you’re feeling the start of a cold or flu, I love emergen-c to give me a little immune boost. Try a free sample at Emergen-C.
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- Instant Coupon - Save an additional $5 off Sonicare brush heads at drugstore.com! Offer ends 02.06.2011.
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a friendCreamy Broccoli Soup
The turmeric added to this soup gives it a tang of Indian flavor and a beautiful lime-green color.
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup water
4 cups broccoli, chopped (mostly florets)
2 medium potatoes, diced
2 tbsp. lemon juice (fresh is best)
1 ½ tsp. turmeric
½ cup half and half (NOT the fat free kind!)
Place broth, water, broccoli, potatoes, lemon juice and turmeric in a large soup pot. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the broccoli and potatoes are fork-tender. Let cool for 10-15 minutes.
Process the broccoli mixture in batches in the blender, using the pulse button at first and gradually increasing to puree. Pour blended soup back into the soup pot, add the half and half, and simmer for 5 more minutes, or until the soup is warmed. Do not let the soup boil once you have added the cream.
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.How to Search for a Work at Home Job
Save 15% When You
Spend $75 or More.
Use Promo Code 19377.
Many people want to work from home, especially moms that want to be readily available for their children; but they just don’t know where to start. Just like any other job search, you will need to put in some time and effort, but once you do, you’ll be happy to find that there are a lot of work at home opportunities out there.
Here are three tips to get you started with your work at home job search:
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Search Major Career Job Sites. Start by searching the major career sites like Career Builder and Monster using the terms: “work at home”, “work from home”, “home based”, “remote”, “virtual”, “telecommute”, and “telework”. Because companies are trying to save money in this tough economy more and more businesses are hiring people to work from home.
Just for fun I’ve searched on Career Builder for “home based” positions, and I’ve come up with many pages of results. Yes, you’ll need to take the time to scavenge through these, but the opportunities are there for the taking.
I Fired My Housecleaners…
It could be a cultural thing, but I live in an area where hardly anyone cleans their own home. I hadn’t cleaned my house since my oldest was born, and my husband gave me the housekeeping as a gift. What a great idea for a Mom with a new baby! I was hooked and I’ve been paying someone else to clean my house for the last 11 years. Last month I realized that the family budget wasn’t going to sustain the extra $400 a month I’ve been paying for cleaning. And so I had to let them go.
I’ve already had a number of those “I Love Lucy” moments as I’ve taken on this project. I’ve broken a vase and a picture frame in my hurry to get the living room dusted. I accidentally emptied the entire contents of my Hoover Windtunnel on the kitchen floor when I hit the trap door prematurely. I also learned that a dog will actually drink from a toilet that is filled with Chlorox Bowl Cleaner. There’s definitely a learning curve, but I’m going to keep trying!
For those of you who clean your own house or are considering taking on the housecleaning, I’ve compiled a Letterman-style list of the top 5 reasons that you should clean your own house.
Top Five Reasons You Should Clean Your Own House
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It burns 400 calories per hour, depending on your intensity, which I increase by listening to disco music while I vacuum.
Two kids eat for free at Boston Market!
To get free food you have to spend at least $6.00 on an adult meal but you can put $8.00 in your Wish Jar if you feed the kids for free! Check out the salads on their website. They have some inexpensive healthy options. Personally, I love their mashed potatoes and gravy! Visit http://www.bostonmarket.com for details. Extended to January 31, 2010.
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.Grilled Flank Steak with Honey-Soy Marinade
If you hate to cook, whip up this marinade and have your spouse throw this on the grill. 
1 flank steak, 1 ½ to 2 pounds
For marinade:
¼ cup red wine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/8 teaspoon pepper
Place steak in a shallow glass dish. In a small bowl, stir together all marinade ingredients. Pour marinade over the steak. Cover and refrigerate for 2-3. Remove from refrigerator 30 minutes prior to grilling.
Prepare grill. Remove steak from marinade, reserving marinade, and grill 4-5 minutes on each side, turning once, for medium rare. Brush steak with reserved marinade as grilling. Slice steak thinly on the diagonal and arrange on a warmed platter. Serve immediately.
Good sides or starters: Brown rice and salad tossed with Asian dressing.
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.Tis the Season for Planting Your Fall/Winter Vegetables
No matter where you live in the country, chances are your summer vegetables are on their last legs. Hopefully you’ve had a productive and fruitful season and gotten your fill of tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, corn, beans, peppers and eggplant and are ready to move on to some cold weather vegetables.
You’ll have to start by taking out the old plants. After you remove those plants (and toss them into your compost bin or pile!), add a little more organic matter (i.e. compost) to your existing soil to make a welcoming home for your cool weather plants.
If you thought there were too many choices for your summer garden, look at what’s available for Fall planting: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, swiss chard, peas, Asian greens, spinach and a wide variety of lettuces. Most of these plants are compact in size and, with the exception of peas, don’t need staking. This is also a great time to plant garlic, onion and shallot sets.
The good part of planting now is once the rains come, you won’t need to water. That will make for a low maintenance garden that you can peer out to on those wet, rainy afternoons. Most of the vegetables I’ve suggested take between 45 and 75 days to reach maturity and will be fabulous when the farmer’s market is long gone and the only choices for produce are from South America.
Debra Togliatti has her own gardening business: Weed It and Reap: Garden Restoration and Design and is a teacher who gets young children involved in gardening and nature experiences. She lives in the Bay Area of Northern California.
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.Don’t wait…
…to buy Halloween costumes online for your kids. If you order them early, you can put the $10 you saved on express shipping in your wish jar. E-bay is a good resource for costumes because most kids don
Time is Money Time is Money – Part II
On our website, we’re constantly making suggestions of how you can do things for yourself to save money, rather than paying people to do them for you. Take gardening, for example. Debbie’s articles are great if you can carve out some time to spend in the garden. But who has the time, these days?
We all have MUCH more time than we think. Sometimes it takes an assessment of HOW we spend our “free time” to discover where we’re wasting time. Most of us know where the time is going and I call these activities “timesuckers”. The biggest “timesucker” that I experience is email. I know that for some, Facebook is becoming another, though I’m a new Facebook user so I still have my Facebook time under control. Here are some strategies for limiting the time you spend online in these activities.
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Scheduling time for emails/Facebook – If you set a schedule and set a timer when you sit down to email or Facebook, you can more easily get into control of the time you’re spending. In my opinion, 20 minutes per day, 3 times a day is the MOST you should be spending on email, unless you have a job that needs you online all the time.
Streamline Your Meal Prep with a Quick Kitchen Re-org
Is your utensil drawer starting to look like your junk drawer? Do you have a pile of Tupperware with no lids? Is your fridge so full that you don’t have room for your leftovers? If so, you need a Quick Kitchen Re-org to boost your meal prep potential. If you stay focused, this should take between 45 minutes and 90 minutes (depending on how many phone calls, Facebook posts or emails distract you) but will give you more room to function and a feeling of Zen when you open your fridge, pantry or drawers.
To get ready for your re-org, you’ll need three or four paper bags. Label one with “Goodwill” or a charity you know will take kitchen items, label one “recycle,” label one “trash” and label one “food bank”. Make sure your dishwasher is empty so that you can toss in containers and jars from the fridge once they’re emptied. Clutter-free counters are essential to provide a good “staging area” for emptying out drawers and sorting items. Put on some music (I prefer disco when organizing) and zip down this list of areas that will need the most attention.
Refrigerator – You would be surprised how quickly things go bad in the fridge. There is an informative webpage called whatscookingamerica.net/Information/FreezerChart.htm that will help you decide what is still good. Some shocking examples include the fact that chili and soups only stay good in the fridge for 3-4 days and ketchup and chili sauce last only one month. Pull out those crisper, cheese and meat drawers as well for who knows what lurks in the bottom. If you’re really ambitious, pull everything out and wipe down the entire fridge with Fantastic or Windex.
Utensils – This is the drawer that is usually the most problematic when I do a kitchen re-org. Pull out all of your utensils and put them on the counter. If you have doubles or triples and things that you never use, put them in the Goodwill bag. Sort the remainder by how you use them. I keep stove-top utensils in a crock on the counter so I can reach them quickly when I’m cooking. I keep baking and food prep utensils in a drawer, organized in shallow baskets so they don’t get tangled.
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