Kosher Wine Sale 1/30 ONLY

I know Passover is so early this year and it's only January so we should hold off, but there's a great deal today. Kosherwine.com is running a sale with free shipping on cases. And there are a couple of bottles of wine that are at great prices.

The Mt. Hermon Red is $5.99. This is a great basic Red Wine. And this is an amazing price on the wine.

The next is the Dolcemente for $7.99. Another good basic wine.

The cases can be mixed, so you can supplement with your favorite wines.

This deal is only good today. So act fast.

Free Falafel at Pitopia on Monday 11/26

Pitopia will be celebrating its first anniversary on Monday. They will be giving away free Falafel's throughout the day.

Organizing Yourself

A Jewish Homeschool Blog, put together a nice booklet of organization. I'm seeing all sorts of organization booklets like this on the internet from organizing months to weeks, to days. What's great about this booklet is that it takes into consideration keeping kosher and Shabbat. For example there is a checklist for Shabbat.

I personally do a lot of our organization digitally, but I think this is a great visual tool. I hope to see other ones like this.

A New Soda Stream Machine

We held out a long time before buying a soda stream, only because we had cut out soda almost entirely or only had it occasionally. But the rest of our family already had soda streams and we were fortunate to borrow one for 6 months when a family member was is transition. I'm not a seltzer drinker so plain water, doesn't really make me excited. But the flavors are a lot of fun and making a combination of them is also fun. Over Rosh HaShannah, we combined the Cranberry Raspberry with the Gingerale.

Recently Soda Stream released a new Soda Stream product.

New Soda Stream Revolution

Our favorite flavor is the Orange Mango, although I find it difficult to find it in the stores. I was fortunate to be in a baby store in Columbia, Maryland where they must have had every flavor and picked it up on a whim. So glad I did. The only thing I found it I constantly was overflowing, so I had to be careful to pour the syrup in slowly as not to overflow.

Orange Mango Syrup

Planning Menus

The hardest thing I have always found about planning menus is taking all the ingredients I have and planning a menu based upon the ingredients in the pantry.  My goal this summer was to try to reuse the items we already owned and limit our shopping trips to once every two weeks. It means trying to plan more efficiently ahead of time and then trying to actually use the items we have in our pantry.

Tools I used:
Google Calendar. I have set up a separate Google calendar for Dinner, where I list what we are planning for meals over the next two weeks and then it syncs with mine and my husband's blackberries. I put in the notes a link to the recipe if it is online or a note of where I can find the recipe.

I also use SuperCook. It's probably one of the best tools out there. I list all of the items I have in my pantry and then I put them in. I then list things I don't want to use. So Ham, Pork, Bacon, etc. is on the exclusions list since I keep kosher. The website is great if you are part of a CSA (community supported agriculture). I really had no clue how to cook chard or kale the last few years ago.