It’s Sunday night.  Dinner is over.  Clean clothes are folded and the last load of laundry is in the drier.  The girls are in their beds and I thought I would share with you how our weekend went.  On Friday night, Jim brought us pizza from Esposito’s.  I grabbed a sliced and headed over to the Florida State Fairgrounds for the Electrodash 5k. Luckily, I was able to spot Caitlyn, Nanci and Kat fairly easily in the crowd.

I left home super early not wanting to get stuck in traffic because I had forgotten to pick up the race packet.  Packet pick up at the race was super easy. There was a big tent setup with a lot of volunteers and the line moved rather quickly.

Once it got dark, it was pretty fun to see everyone in their neon colors.  The light installations throughout the race course were really beautiful.  There were at least 3 different dj booths with great music playing the whole time.  Overall, it was a great fun race.  I had a great time meeting my friends on a cool, Florida night.  The weather was perfect!

On Saturday, I headed over to the market to meet up with our contact for the 10th Annual Credit Union Cruise For Kids 2014 Motorcycle Poker Run event coming up on April 13th.  We are so happy to be the second stop on this Motorcycle Poker Run.  Registration begins at 10 am at the Brandon Harley Davidson on Adamo Drive.  From there, the bikes will stop at our market, Doc’s Pub and Grille in Dade City, Neon Cowboy Bar in Dade City and the final stop at Quail Hollow Country Club in Wesley Chapel.  All proceeds will benefit local children’s charities.

On Sunday afternoon we headed over to Lake Eva Park in Haines City.  We had planned to go to their Aquatic Center which has a splash pad and playground area but when we got there it was closed.  Thankfully, there were two big playground areas which the girls were excited to try.  The playground areas are separated by age groups: 2-5 years old and 5-12 year olds.

We spent about 2 hours just running around exploring the playgrounds.  They also had tennis courts, basketball courts, a special events facility and a lake where you can launch your boat or jet skis.  The playgrounds were well maintained and we’d love to come back to check out the aquatic center next time.

Do you need some meal planning tips?  This past month I finally listened to my husband.  For years I’ve struggled with the familiar 5 o’clock dilemma: What am I cooking tonight? And for about the same time my husband has kindly suggested I make a meal plan.  Well,  I’m here to tell you I’m a convert.  My biggest argument against creating a meals menu was always time.  I always felt it would be so time consuming that I’d given up before trying it.  Meanwhile, I would flounder around a good 15-30 minutes trying to figure what to cook.  Here’s what I’ve learned from this month’s meal planning.

Meal Planning Tips

1. Getting Menu Ideas:
   • Magazines: One of my biggest problems was always finding that recipe I saw in a magazine.  I  would never be able to remember what page, never mind what magazine the Chicken Provencal recipe.  Now as soon as I look through a magazine, I rip out the recipe and put them in a binder of recipes to try.  That way, I can quickly run through one binder instead of a stack of magazines.
   • Blog Recipe Linkups: This is a great way to get a bunch of meal ideas in one shot.  Once you visit these sites, check some recipes and go ahead and print them.  Keep them in your binder for later.  Here are some of my favorites:
     • Wake up Wednesday by Heather’s French Press
     • Meatless Monday from A to Z by Better with Veggies
     • Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop 
     • Healthy Living Blogs Recipe Wednesday
   • Pinterest: While Pinterest has a ton of great recipes, I tend to get side tracked looking at all of the DIY projects and before I know it an hour has gone by and I have nothing written down.
2. Shopping List
   • Once you have narrowed down your meal ideas. its time to write down your shopping list.  Ina Garden has a great process for organizing your shopping list to make shopping easier and quicker.  You basically break down your shopping list by grouping the ingredients by store section.  For example, write down all your meats together, all your dairy together, all your veggies/fruits together.
3. Storing your recipes
   • “Pin it” to your refrigerator.  I can not tell you how many times, I would go through magazines, write down the ingredients, shop for the ingredients, get home ready to cook and the recipe was nowhere to be found.  Frustrated much? Yes.  So, now as simple as it sounds, I just find a magnet and on the refrigerator it goes.  Voila.  A simple solution.

I hope my quick and simple meal planning tips help you on your next meal planning adventure.  Because I print recipes or I take them out of magazines as I find them, once I sit down to figure out a week’s worth of meals and write down the ingredients, it really only takes me about 10 minutes.  If you have other tips for making meal planning easier, please share your tips with me in the comments below!   

This is my first time celebrating Pi day.  Today is March 14 or 3.14 which is the mathematical answer to the symbol Π.  Did you know Albert Einstein was born on 3/14/1879.  At the market we’ll be celebrating “Pi day” with our strawberry shortcake of course.  But at home, I decided to make my first ever real pie.  I say real pie, because I made the crust.  I found this recipe for a peanut butter banana cream pie in the January 2014 edition of Southern Living magazine.  I’ve been holding on to it for a while, so here it goes.

First, you bake the crust which is made up of Nutter Butter cookies.  The recipe asked to mix the cookie crumbs with roasted peanuts, but I omitted the peanuts.

Once the crust is baked, you make the custard.  Keep the custard in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.  Long enough for it to cool.  I think mine was in the fridge for an hour.  Place the cut up bananas in a layer before topping with the custard.

Recipe says to refrigerate for 4 to 48 hours.  I let mine sit for about 24 hours.

The result was a delicious not too sweet pie.

If you are in Tampa Bay area, you can celebrate Pi day by visiting the following local businesses:

Your Pie in Tampa is offering discounts on custom “pies”.

The St. Pete-Clearwater Airport is giving away free slices of key lime and strawberry pie between 1-3:14 pm.