Breakfasts this week will include: Oatmeal, bananas, homemade mocha frappuccinos (Joshua only), and cinnamon crunch granola.

Lunches this week will include: Leftovers, cheddar cheese slices, mixed nuts, oranges, peas, bell pepper slices, cucumber sticks, and salads.

This week's dinner menu:

Sunday

• Three-cheese baked spaghetti, green beans, fresh pears

Monday (company coming for dinner!)

• Grilled steak, baked potatoes, green beans, salad, homemade bread, and (if I have time) creamy vanilla pudding for dessert (maybe served with banana slices and whipped cream?)

Tuesday

• Leftover three-cheese baked spaghetti, peas, homemade bread, fruit

Wednesday

• Farmhouse Chicken, green beans, fruit

Thursday

• Salmon Potato Casserole, peas, cooked pinto beans w/Tapatio and sour cream, fruit

Friday

• Leftover Farmhouse Chicken, peas, fruit

Saturday

• Leftovers (whatever I have), chili (from freezer), and cooked pinto beans (in crock pot)

What's on your menu this week? Anything new, or just old favorites? :)

About 15 months ago now, we embarked on a new "make our own" adventure: Vanilla Extract!

Making homemade vanilla extract is simple, and can save significant money long-term, especially if you do a lot of baking!

(Read more for the recipe and pictures...)

Last fall, Joshua surprised me by ordering an EatSmart Precision Pro kitchen scale! I had been wanting a kitchen scale for various reasons, but hadn't taken the time to research and figure out which scale would work best for us. What a fun surprise to have a kitchen scale! And I have indeed been using it regularly since.

Between shopping at Costco, bulk food stores, and co-ops, many of our groceries come in bulk quantities. While it's quite possible to just take wild guesses when making a recipe, it's been extremely handy to have a scale for measuring things. And I've found it's much easier to create a new recipe with exact measurements now that I can weigh how much I'm using!

Some of my favorite items to weigh:

Dry pasta
Dried beans (knowing how much to use from the 25# bag!)
Flour (for exacting bread making)
Fresh fruits
Fresh veggies (especially potatoes in recipes)
Cooked meats (beef or chicken) for the freezer
Shredded cheese (especially when adding to a salad!)
Cheese chunks
Cream cheese (for cheesecakes)

...and anything for which I need to know a calorie count!

This food scale came with a calorie factor booklet, which is a guide to figuring out how many calories are in anything from a banana to watermelon to lettuce to chicken breast to oats.

The "calorie factor" is how may calories are in each gram of food. Pineapple, for example, has a calorie factor of .50 which means that there is half a calorie in each gram of fresh pineapple. I weighed my bowl of pineapple (290 grams) and was able to quickly figure the calories: 145.

This has made it very easy to keep track of calories while eating lots of fresh fruits and veggies!

I also find it's easier to weigh a serving of cheese, chips, nuts, etc. than to measure or try to count (chips).

Features I like about the EatSmart food scale:

Weighs up to 11 pounds
Has a TARE feature, allowing me zero the scale with weight on it
Easy to use
Seems accurate, even for fairly small measurements (I use grams a lot)

Dislikes:

Made in China
The pretty, shiny scale is actually rather plastic-y
The buttons are click-y

Before I started keeping track of calories, I used this scale a few times a week. After starting to use it for food portion sizes and calorie counting, I found myself reaching for the scale many times each day!

Do you have a kitchen scale? I'd love to hear your favorite uses for it, as well as what kind of scale you own!

One of the meals on last week's menu was this delicious recipe for Three-Cheese Stuffed Peppers! We had gotten bell peppers on sale last week, and we all really enjoyed them stuffed with yummy cheeses and spinach. It had been quite a while since I made stuffed peppers so they were a special treat!

My boys thought the stuffed peppers looked a little strange, but after tasting the small portion we put on their plates, they were begging for seconds! It was a good opportunity to remind them that "Mommy always makes delicious food" (well, aside from a few disasters...) and that it's good to try new things!

We had a busy week, making a total of 4 delicious cheesecakes! Two were for a friend's party, and two were in celebration of our 8th wedding anniversary. We had a blessed weekend with company to help us celebrate! Praise God for His sustaining grace and love towards us!

When we made the cheesecakes for our friend, I used a tip someone posted here a couple years ago, about transporting cheesecakes.

I cut a circle of cardboard to fit in the springform pan, and then wrapped it in foil.

I pressed the crust onto the foil-wrapped cardboard (in the pan) and made the cheesecake as usual.

The bottom of a measuring cup works perfectly to press the crust into the pan! Joshua discovered this trick and now we always use it.

When the cheesecake was chilled, we cut it and placed it (still on the foil-wrapped cardboard, but out of the springform pan) on some sticky tape in a flat box, and wrapped the whole box in plastic wrap.

Eliyahu was up at 5am as I was finishing wrapping the cheesecakes, so I took a picture of him with them before Joshua headed out the door to work (they were for a co-worker).

Check out this post for the best way to slice a cheesecake! This is how we sliced all of our cheesecakes, and they were picture-perfect.

More cheesecake tips can be found here.

To Participate in Kitchen Tip Tuesdays:

Post a kitchen tip in your blog. Link to this post, and then leave your link here, so we know where to find YOU! :) No giveaways or non-tip posts, please!

In order to keep the kitchen tips more easily accessible, posts not adhering to these guidelines will be removed. We need to be able to easily find/see what your kitchen/cooking tip is. :) Thanks for your participation! :)

Leave your tip links in a comment. I'll manually add them to this post!

1. Menu planning w/Google calendar (Tara)
2. Freezing unbaked scones
3. Using up lots of bananas (Erin)
4. Tips for deviled eggs (Cheryl)
5. Using parchment paper (Alyssa)
6. Graham cracker crust tip (Kolfinna)
7. Freezing fragile foods
8. Magnet tips (Trixie)
9. Egg salad tip (Rachel)
10. Storing kitchen gadgets (Linda)
11. Easy avocado dicing (Rachel)
12. Fluffier and lighter brown rice (Kristin)
13. Drying dishes (Mary Jo)