The Plan to Eat Blog

10 Recipes for Homemade Ice Cream

Have you made homemade ice cream before?

I'll admit that I haven't, but I've seen quite a few homemade ice cream recipes lately that make me want to run right out and get an ice cream maker!

If you're looking a fun, healthy and delicious dessert this summer, here are 10 ice cream recipes that make my mouth water:

1. Homemade Ice Cream...in a Bag

All the fun of homemade ice cream without special equipment or extra work, you can make ice cream in just a couple of minutes with this simple and easy recipe for ice cream in a bag. It's a great summertime activity for kids as well.

2. Maple Walnut Cookie Dough Ice Cream

Aimee from Under the High Chair shared this maple walnut cookie dough ice cream recipe back in May, and I can almost taste it as I read her descriptions and look at her pictures.

3. Strawberry Ice Cream

I'm with Michelle at Brown-Eyed Baker on this one. Strawberry ice cream has never really appealed to me, but her pictures look divine, with real chunks of strawberry throughout the ice cream, and I'd like to give it another chance with this recipe!

4. Lemon Pie Ice Cream

I bet this lemon pie ice cream from Christie's Corner is refreshing on a hot summer day!

5. Blueberry Ice Cream

This blueberry ice cream recipe from The Dinner Files can be adapted for a variety of add-ins, but my 4-year-old has been begging me for blueberry ice cream lately (honestly, I didn't even know such a thing existed!), so she will be so excited to see this recipe!

6. Coffee Ice Cream with Chocolate-Covered Espresso Beans

Mmm, I love coffee anything, and this coffee ice cream from Day Dreamer Desserts sounds delicious! I love the addition of the chocolate-covered espresso beans!

7. Chocolate Oreo Ice Cream

My favorite ice cream flavor has always been cookies and cream, and who could resist this delicious chocolate oreo ice cream from Catie's Cakes and Cookies?

8. Cake Batter Ice Cream

My husband and I have a bit of an obsession with cake batter ice cream lately. It's cold and delicious, with all of the deliciousness of cake batter and ice cream rolled up into one. I can't wait to try this recipe from Annie's Eats for myself!

9. Pistachio Ice Cream

If pistachio ice cream is more your thing, be sure to check out this recipe that Veronica shared at Divine Caroline, which she says keeps the nuts from getting too soft in the ice cream.

10. Vanilla Bean Gelato

Simple yet delicious. Shaina at Food for My Family shares her vanilla bean gelato recipe, which she says is perfect for root beer floats. Yum!

The good news is if you're willing to invest a little time, you don't even need any special gadgets or tools to make delicious, flavorful ice cream right at home. 

Have you made ice cream at home? What's your favorite ice cream flavor?

Photo by Shaina Olmanson

A Plan-to-Eat Moment from Kait

Kait recently left a comment on an older post with her new monthly planning system. It's such a great idea that I wanted to be sure everybody else had a chance to read it as well:

I just came up with something that totally changes the game for my meal planning! I have a full-time job, so planning is essential for me, otherwise...hello $5 hot'n ready from Little Caesar's.

I like to shop once a month for all non-perishable stuff and then once weekly at the farmer's market for fresh things.

Today I created stores in Plan to Eat and titled them by week for the next month. Then I selected each week to display in the meal planner tab and drug all the produce items to the appropriate "store" that I had created.

Wah to the la...one shopping list for an entire month with produce listed weekly! I nearly cried...

I don't know about you, buy I can't wait to give this a try for August!

Do you plan your menu weekly or monthly? Have you ever tried shopping just one time and picking up the remaining perishables as needed?

Photo by Natalie Maynor

The Importance of Having Healthy, Ready-to-Eat Foods on Hand

Changing your diet from processed, unhealthy foods to fresh, healthy ones doesn't come easily for most people. It takes time and effort -- to read and learn, to prepare, to create new habits -- and it often involves two steps forward and one step back.

As we go through this journey in our own home, I've learned that the key to making lasting changes is to make them one at a time rather than trying to change everything at once.

We've started with some little changes -- whole wheat flour instead of white, made-from-scratch dinners and fruits & veggies for snacks -- and these changes naturally encourage other changes as well.

One thing that has made a huge difference in our eating habits is simply having healthy food on hand and ready to eat. It's not enough to just have a pineapple sitting on the counter; it needs to be cut up and ready to serve.

Because we've realized that we're much more likely to eat healthy, fresh food if it's already prepared, every Sunday after dinner I spend time cutting up a ton of fruit and veggies and preparing other food for the week. This last week, I washed the blueberries and grapes, cut up strawberries and pineapple, boiled a dozen eggs and made a double batch of whole wheat waffles for later this week.

These are now in the fridge and ready to go, which makes them actually easier to serve than a lot of other snacks or side dishes. It also means a whole lot less ends up going to waste!

Do you keep cut up fruits and veggies in your fridge? What other tips do you have for making healthy changes to your diet?

Step by Step Menu Planning

There are a few different approaches to planning your menu. I thought I'd share my method first, and I'd love to hear how your method differs!

First, I write down all of our commitments for the week that affect the meals that we'll be eating at home, taking with us on the road or eating out.

Next, I begin filling in the breakfasts, lunches and dinners that are staples in our home: peanut butter & jelly, cereal, homemade pizza, etc.

Once these are filled in, I begin adding additional meals to the plan. Our family has a heavy preference for Italian, so I have to consciously look for other cuisines or we'll end up eating pasta every night! I try to choose from our favorite meals and add in at least one new recipe for us to try as well.

Plan to Eat has really simplified this part of the process for me because I now have a recipe book of all of our favorite meals as well as the new recipes we've tried, and I don't have to sit on the couch chewing on the end of my pen as I try to come up with meal ideas. I keep a folder of recipes that we'd like to try on my computer, and I import them to Plan to Eat as I add them to my meal plan.

Once I have my menu planned, it's time to make my grocery list. Before Plan to Eat, I would start by writing down all of the staples I need: milk, eggs, produce, etc. Then, I would make notes next to each menu item of the ingredients I needed to get from the store.

Now, I simply click over to the Shopping List tab, mark off any ingredients that I already have, add any from my Popular Items list and I'm ready to go.

I planned for the full month of June in the beginning, and I loved having it all done. In July, we've been so busy that I haven't really been planning as steadily as I'd like, so I'm looking forward to getting back on track for August!

How do you meal plan? What's the hardest part for you?

Using Fresh Garlic: Health Benefits, Recipes & More

Garlic is often touted as a super food, with health benefits ranging from clearing up acne and lowering blood pressure to slowing cancer growth and curing the common cold.

It's said to be:

• antibacterial
• antiviral 
• antifungal
• antimicrobial
  

Most of us don't want to be eating a clove of garlic a day, and while there are supplements available, it's important to choose only high-quality supplements made from natural, living cloves of garlic, which comes at a price.

Instead, look for ways to incorporate fresh garlic into your meals, especially recipes that allow you to add the garlic last, as overcooking it can mitigate many of the health benefits.

Although I currently add garlic to my meat sauce, I'd like to start incorporating it in more meals (which shouldn't be hard since Italian is always popular around here), and I've put together a list of must-try recipes:

• Garlicky Shrimp & Spinach Pizza

• Lemon Garlic Grilled Artichokes with Easy Aioli

• Garlic Green Beans

• Fresh Basil Pesto (to use in the yummy panini recipe she has halfway down the page or this Chicken Pesto Pasta, which we already love!)

• Garlic Vinaigrette Dressing

• Lemon Garlic Tilapia

• Fresh Garlic Bread

If you're looking for a simple way to prepare garlic, be sure to watch this quick video. I personally use my garlic press most of the time, but I like the other options as well and may try some of those instead.

What's your favorite fresh garlic recipe? Do you look for ways to incorporate this super food into your diet?

Photo by Adam Bindslev

Kitchen Tools That Serve Double (or Triple!) Duty

I'm a big proponent of simplifying and decluttering in the kitchen (well, really, everywhere, but we're talking about the kitchen today!), and so I rarely keep specialty tools around. The truth is I went a little overboard when my husband and I first got married and set up our home. Between a Pampered Chef bridal shower and actually working as a consultant for a while, I had just about every gadget imaginable.

Don't get me wrong. I love Pampered Chef products. I think they make high quality, thoughtful and useful tools. But it's important to choose the ones that are most useful to you based on the amount of space you have to store them and how often you'll really use them.

One rule I've set for myself is to try to avoid specialty items that can only be used for one task because I end up storing them 99% of the time for the 1% that I actually use them. It's much easier for me to justify my favorite tools when I find ways to use them for a variety of things.

With that in mind, here are my favorite double-duty items:

Pizza Cutter

Pizza Night is a regular occurrence around here, and I probably don't need to justify owning a pizza cutter, but it's always fun to find extra uses for common items as well. Use your pizza cutter to:

• quickly cut up french toast or pancakes
• create your own break-apart cookie dough
• cut the dough for pastries (try these homemade pop tarts!)

Orange Peeler

The orange peeler is one of those kitchen tools that I would make an exception to my double-duty rule for because it does make peeling an orange so much easier and it only takes up a little bit of space. But the good news is I don't have to make an exception because I use it all the time in another way as well...to help loosen my muffins from the pan. The long skinny end is perfect for sliding around the edge of the muffins so that they'll lift out easily from the pan. The truth is we use it more often for this purpose than for actually peeling oranges!

Melon Baller

The melon baller is an underutilized kitchen tool that often gets forgotten and only used for summer fruit salads. Don't limit yourself to scooping melon balls, though. Try some of these ideas to turn your melon baller into a versatile kitchen tool:

• make perfectly sized cookies every time, using your melon baller to scoop the dough
  
• serve tiny scoops of icecream for a fancy dessert
• scoop out the seeds from tomatoes, peppers and winter squashes

What are your favorite double-duty kitchen tools?

Four Tips for Simplifying Your Menu Plan

Menu planning is a great way to simplify both your grocery shopping and meal preparation. Avoid the 5 o'clock stare down with the pantry by making a list ahead of time of the meals you'll serve each week. 

However, despite all of the benefits of menu planning, the dirty little secret is that it can be a hard and frustrating process. Brainstorming meal ideas ahead of time isn't necessarily easier than coming up with them on the fly, especially when you're first starting out.

With that in mind, here are my top tips for simplifying the menu planning process, and they're tips you can use whether you use Plan to Eat or not!

1. Keep a list of your family's favorite meals.

When it comes to creating a weekly menu plan, half the battle is simply coming up with ideas for your menu. Chances are that you make more than five recipes, but when it's time to sit down and create your plan, how many can you think of off the top of your head?

Save yourself the frustration of trying to come up with ideas for your menu plan by keeping a list of meals that you can choose from each week. I also  like to keep an idea file so that we can try something new along with a few of our favorites.

Admittedly, this is on of my favorite features of Plan to Eat. Not only do I have our favorite meals saved so that I can easily choose from the list, but the recipes are saved as well so that I don't have to go searching for them when it's time to prepare the meal.

2. Group meals according to similar ingredients.

Every week at Food for My Family, my good friend Shaina shares her weekly menu plan. One thing I really admire (besides the fact that most of her recipes use more than five ingredients, which tends to be my cut off!), is that she is thoughtful when grouping her ingredients. She says, "We look to use ingredients in different ways throughout the week so that we’re benefiting from the ability of do-aheads and being able to buy in bulk."

By grouping meals that use similar ingredients, you'll simplify your shopping list, save time preparing your meals and cut your grocery budget.

3. Create weekly or monthly cycles.

Why reinvent the wheel every week? Create weekly menus that work well together and that your family enjoys, and then repeat that menu every few weeks. Once you have 4 to 6 weekly cycles, you won't have to do much meal planning at all.

This is another aspect of menu planning that Plan to Eat makes so simple. Save your favorite meal plans with the click of a button and then load them again on future dates with another click. You could even get a 4- to 6-week cycle saved and you'd never have to meal plan again because you could simply reload it each month, substitute any new recipes you want to try and then double check your shopping list before heading to the store.

4. Be realistic.

I recently did a podcast with Laura from I'm an Organizing Junkie, and we talked through her experience and tips for meal planning. One trap that I know I fell into when I first started menu planning was that I chose recipes that I thought I should be making rather than being realistic about what was really happening in our home.

At the time, frozen pizzas were a staple for our weekly pizza night, but who wants to write "frozen pizza" on their menu plan? However, it took a few weeks for me to realize that menu planning would never work for us if I wasn't realistic about the meals I was really going to prepare. Sure, I needed to stretch myself and strive to serve my family healthier meals, but it's much easier to make small incremental changes than to try to change everything overnight.

Now, my menu plan includes homemade pizza every week, and I try to make small changes to the things we're eating each time I make a new menu. 

Do you menu plan? How do you simplify the process?

Photo by Jennifer Maiser

What Are Your Must-Have Kitchen Tools?

Yesterday, I asked this question on Twitter:

The answers I received were wide and varied:

 

I heard from a lot of people who, like me, love their Pampered Chef silicon mix 'n scrapers, and sharp knives were a must-have for many people too.

If I had to choose, I'd say my favorites are my small cutting boards and paring knives, which are easy to grab when slicing fruits and veggies. And my stoneware bar pan (also from Pampered Chef) is definitely one of the most versatile things in my kitchen.

What about you? What kitchen tools are a must in your kitchen?

Yesterday, I asked this question on Twitter:

The answers I received were wide and varied:

 

I heard from a lot of people who, like me, love their Pampered Chef silicon mix 'n scrapers, and sharp knives were a must-have for many people too.

If I had to choose, I'd say my favorites are my small cutting boards and paring knives, which are easy to grab when slicing fruits and veggies. And my stoneware bar pan (also from Pampered Chef) is definitely one of the most versatile things in my kitchen.

What about you? What kitchen tools are a must in your kitchen?

A Plan-to-Eat Moment

A couple of weeks ago, we were on our way back from vacation and trying to decide when we would grocery shop for the week. Because we live about 45 minutes from the closest "city", it's not easy for us to just run to the store -- we either end up paying premium prices for virtually no selection at the small-town grocery store or using a ton of gas to drive through the mountain roads to get to the larger chains.

We always throw out the idea of just shopping on the way home, but I never have a list ready. Shopping without a list is not my idea of fun, and neither is trying to put together a list in the parking lot with four tired, cranky kids in the backseat, so we usually just skip it.

However, this time was different. At the beginning of June, I spent an early morning at Starbucks doing some summer planning, which included putting together a meal plan for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the entire month.

This time when the subject of stopping on the way home came up, my meal plan was already done, and because I use Plan to Eat, that meant my shopping list was ready to go as well.

I was able to pull the new mobile site up on my Palm Pre Plus, add a few items from my popular items list and check off a couple items that I knew we had at home. I was literally ready to go in just minutes!

I think that was the moment that I became Plan to Eat's biggest fan!

Have you had a Plan to Eat moment?

Photo by AlishaV

10 Uses for Fresh Peaches

July is the month that makes me wish I lived in Georgia -- not for the sweltering summer humidity, of course, but for the fresh peaches.

I've been craving this juicy, delicious fruit this week (and envying my friends who can have fresh Georgia peaches throughout the season!), so I put together a list of uses for fresh peaches along with some tips for preparing them.

Be sure to share your favorite recipes and uses in the comments as well!

1. Smoothies

2. Fruit topping for waffles

3. Peach sorbet

4. Homemade baby food

5. Peach tart tatin

6. Summer salads

7. Granola-stuffed grilled peaches

8. Trail mix

9. Peach leather

10.Peach cobbler

My five-year-old daughter recently came to me with a list of ingredients and declared that she wanted to make a special dessert with them. After some digging, I decided that this fruit cobbler recipe fit the bill (although we did have to add a crushed pretzel topping to it, ha!), and it was easy and delicious. I plan to make it regularly with whatever fruit is in season, and this month we'll be adding peaches!

Looking for tips on selecting, preparing and preserving peaches? Check out these resources:

• Selecting perfect peaches

• Slicing fresh peaches

• Peeling peaches

• Canning peaches

• Freezing peaches

• Drying peaches

I know we've just scratched the surface of uses for fresh peaches. What is your favorite way to prepare peaches?

Photo by adwriter