Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Once you’ve gotten your house ready and your gifts planned, the next hurdle on the holiday prep list is food. The strategy is pretty simple, really:

Decide what food you want to cook
make a list of ingredients required
purchase them in advance.

Bonus points awarded to individuals who start purchasing shelf-stable ingredients over time, thus […]

Do you ever get bored with food? I get bored with food. And yes, you may call me a picky eater. Or maybe… I’m a fad eater. I get hooked on one recipe or another and enjoy it for a while, then I don’t want to make it anymore.
So […]

Yet another strategy for saving money on food is to make it yourself. Whenever you purchase something pre-made at the store, you’re going to pay for someone else’s labor.
Earth-shattering revelation, no?
Never mind, don’t answer that.
My boys are currently fond of the Lunchables brand of ummm, lunch thingies. I only buy […]

A couple of years ago a friend and I decided to learn how to do the bulk cooking thing.  We looked at Once a Month Cooking, read several cookbooks on the subject, and also referred to the 30DayGourmet site.  Early attempts included a long day of cooking together and resulted in a lot of casseroles […]

I like to think of parenting as a multi-disciplinary job.  Some things I do involve direct interaction with the boys, while other things are more indirect.  How I manage the house, for example.  That is an important facet of my parenting, yet it’s something that goes on behind the scenes, as it were.  Well.  It’s […]

I’ve written boatloads about various fruity ideas for the past 3 weeks, today I want to finish the series by discussing some ways to preserve summer vegetables.
Common ways to preserve veggies are canning and freezing. Drying is also a good method; however I have no experience with drying foods so I will leave that […]

My stomach turns at the smell of most baby food. Not so much the first stages; bananas and apples are pretty non-offensive. Once they move on to the pureed version of turkey and noodles, though, I can’t quite conceive the yellowish gelled glop as food. Combine the smell of this epicurean treat […]

For the second year in a row, I have helped organize the Book Fair at our local elementary school. We use a local shop, rather than Scholastic, and the Fair always has amazing books I’ve never seen before. This is not a fund raiser for the school- we pass on the discounts to […]