Cooking Tips and Tricks

So as we go along in life we almost inevitably get recipes, cooking tips and "secrets" from family and friends. I've had many from my mother but I was very surprised when my friend who doesn't cook much handed me the greatest helpful hint since sliced bread.

I had cooked up my batch of usual mashed potatoes with milk and butter and served them up for supper. When I complained to my friend about their lumpiness and lack of fluffiness. She said two words: cream cheese. I've heard it before and it just sounded odd to me. Call me traditional but milk or cream and butter were the only things dairy wise that went into my mashed potatoes. Long story short, I made mashed potatoes yesterday night and had cream cheese on hand so I said, "sure, why not?" I tried making a small sample with the cream cheese and I was pleasantly surprised. Apparently it's as my friend told me. Cream cheese has the perfect balance of dairy and fat. Spoon liberally into mashed potatoes and beat with electric mixer. The mixer is my tool for making the potatoes light and fluffy, it puts air into them and beats hand mixing, hands down. I have to say that I'll probably make my mashed potatoes this way here on out. Considering the ease of it I really don't see a reason not to!

New Appliances!

I'm very excited for today! Today the appliances that we ordered are finally being delivered to the new house! Granted, they were supposed to be delivered three weeks ago but apparently it took them that long to get the microwave in that was on back order. It's a bit fishy sounding but it gave the builder time to finish all of the tile and hardwood flooring so I'm not horribly concerned. That being said, Monday is going to be a very busy day for our builder. He'll have the plumber there to re-install the bathroom fixtures (they had to be removed to tile the floor) and appliances, the kitchen counter tops are being installed, the carpet guys are going to be there to install the carpet in the remainder of the house and more carpenters are going to be outside finishing the deck. It's a race to the finish since the home inspection is on Wednesday. I hope I don't have to push it back. *Sigh*  I guess I'll just have to wait and see!

Keeping Tidy

So today my hubby and I did some packing. Quite a bit of packing actually. Our son was at his Pepe's (read grandpa's) house and so we took the opportunity to get some stuff put away. Our new house is coming along great and carpet is going to be installed next Monday. We may actually end up signing before September 30th which would be awesome. Unfortunately we still have a lot of packing to do.

While packing was the primary goal today I also got around to making a chore list. I thought, "Well it'll be easier to pack if we keep the clutter down and get into the habit of weekly chores. I've tried a number of things including the popular Fly Lady website and nothing worked. Today I think I found a solution. If you're in the same predicament check out Chore Buster. It's a neat little website done for free that helps you get all your chores out onto a chore sheet, weight them by undesirability and difficulty and voilà. That's all you have to do. Each chore can be tailored, for instance who should not do a particular chore and how often it needs to be done. Pop in your family's names and the chores will be divided equally so that everyone does a fair amount of work. best of all no one gets stuck with the same chore or combination of chores day after day, week after week. As a bonus me, the mom, doesn't have to think too hard! Double bonus: they will email you and your family members weekly and daily, if you choose, to remind you of your chores for the week and day. I'm really excited to give this one a spin! Has anyone else tried it? What did you think?