For the Love of Peanut Butter and Living in the Now

I had a plan. I was going to raid my extensive recipe collection for my favorite things to make with peanut butter because that is the topic of this week’s podcast – “For the Love of Peanut Butter”. Instead, I decided to drive out to West Texas for a few days with my hubby, Mark, to visit friends and family while he does his annual service at South Plains College as a member of the Sound Technology Advisory Committee. I figured I could write my blog in the car on the way down and have it posted first thing Monday morning. What I didn’t count on was sleeping almost the entire drive after having only two hours of sleep the night before, and my failure to make copies of my recipes before I left. So here I sit, with no recipes, and no idea how I can write a blog about peanut butter. So…change in plans (although I will share a family favorite recipe at the very end).

Two years ago, this situation would have sent me over the edge. I don’t really deal with change. I’m not flexible. I get stuck in routines and plans, and I get anxious and even angry when those plans don’t go my way. I really don’t want to sound like a broken record, but reading Eckart Tolle’s “A New Earth” was a life-changer for me. So now, instead of getting all bent out of shape over not having the supplies I need to complete my task and feeling the crunch of not having finished it in time, I am calmly looking at what happened and trying to find the lesson to be learned in all of this. Tolle has helped me learn to accept what “is” and move on, rather than dwelling on what “should” have been. I can look at what went wrong, tuck that bit of knowledge away for the future, and start looking for a solution rather than someone or something to blame.

As I look back at why I might have wound up in Lubbock, Texas without my recipes and a fully-written blog post, I think it is pretty clear that “Perfect Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance,” as my husband would say, as does getting a good night’s sleep the night before – two topics we’ve discussed on our podcast are the main culprits. I had started packing for my trip earlier in the week, but when I reviewed the list, I didn’t think everything through to print several of the documents I would need while on my trip (not just my recipes). And the sleep issue came about because I was up very late trying to get it all packed – something I should have done much earlier in the week. I was living “behind the clock,” as Amber would say, and it was my own fault. I tried to do too much, didn’t follow my own plans, and let distractions and spontaneous opportunities steal my time and deplete my energy.

Good planning is essential to creating a balanced and purpose-driven life. I like to call it “being a grown-up.” Think about it this way…children are not capable of thinking in the long term. When you tell them that Santa comes at Christmas, and it’s only July, that time span feels like an eternity. They can’t really plan in the short term, either. They might want to eat a snack at 5 o’clock when dinner will be served just an hour later. A child’s focus is entirely on the now, and what they want in the moment – instant gratification. A child does not think ahead or plan for the future. As we mature, we (hopefully) learn to delay gratification, understanding that there are more important things than play, acquiring the next toy, or eating a whole package of cookies. We learn that work comes before play, actions have consequences, and instant gratification is a fleeting comfort. 

Can you imagine if we all lived our lives with the mindset of children? Stop for a moment and picture your life lived as a 10-year-old child. What would that look like? Would you eat junk food all day, stay up all night, skip school or work to play video games, buy every gizmo, gadget, and sparkly object that catches your attention, and get mad whenever things go pear-shaped? Do you do that now?

An adult, a mature adult, has the capacity to differentiate between what they want and what they need. A mature adult can put off what they want in order to take care of what they need. Planning, responsibility, forethought…these are all hallmarks of a mature adult. But what about now, you ask? Isn’t this idea of thinking ahead, planning for the future, and taking care of responsibilities ahead of time in direct opposition to living in the now? Absolutely not. 

Living in the now does not equate to YOLO (you only live once), which became so popular with younger generations a few years ago. Eckhart Tolle teaches us that acceptance is an important aspect of living in the now. Accepting our responsibilities without complaint – doing the things we must do, managing the tasks that are required or expected of us, following through on the commitments we’ve made, and engaging in the everyday necessities of life – these are the characteristics of maturity. It is in the acceptance of these responsibilities that we find we are living in the now. When you can go through the motions of a dreaded chore while embracing the moment that is, accepting, or even enjoying, the process without complaint or grumbling about what you would rather be doing – that is the essence of living in the now. Be in the moment. Savor every minute of every day…every task, every duty, and every burden in surrender and peace rather than thinking about what you would rather be doing, or worse yet, shirking those obligations in favor of momentary diversion or fleeting pleasure.

So go ahead and plan. Plan well. Think ahead. Consider every possibility. Look at every detail. Give yourself time to take care of your responsibilities, and then add some extra time to it and schedule it to be done before it is due. Use the Eisenhower Matrix to plot out what is urgent vs. what is important. And always, always follow through. Drive your life like you mean it. Live it like you are an all-star batter, hitting that mid-field home run that affords you the leisure of jogging through the bases with no worries, rather bunting and then sliding into first just in time to avoid being tagged out, only to have to worry about how to get to the next base and the next. Be the grown-up. Make the plan. Follow through.

Is it foolproof? Not in the least. Will you still have to play catch-up, switcheroo, or scramble to get things done? Count on it. But it won’t be as stressful. It won’t throw you out of sorts. And you will be amazed at how much time is left over for all that fun stuff when you actually plan everything out.

Oh, and as promised, here is a family favorite peanut butter-based recipe that you probably haven’t tried – Thai Rice Salad. I discovered this recipe over 30 years ago when I worked for Furr’s, Inc., a regional supermarket chain based out of Lubbock. The company hosted a Food Fair at the local convention center, and the corporate office employees (me) got to attend the night before it opened to sample food, take home swag, and learn about various vendors and suppliers. Uncle Ben’s rice had a booth there, and they were giving away free recipes. As my husband is a huge fan of Thai food, we decided to give this recipe a try and it is truly one of our family favorites. You can serve it warm or cold, and I have prepared it with various forms of cooked chicken including boiled and rotisserie. I hope you enjoy it!

Click here to download the full recipe

Listen to the podcast this week and then join us on MMC Chat for discussions of all things peanut butter. And don’t forget to comment about the blog below.

TikTok Made Me Do it

It’s 2022. I hear this phrase all the time: “TikTok made me do it.” As I made my annual work gift sacks this year, I thought about that over and over. Last week, I was randomly scrolling on TikTok and I ran across this video “Gingerbread Latte” pour-overs by OneSweetMama and thought those would be the perfect gift to give my coworkers this year. Boy, I was wrong.

On the podcast this week, we are talking about handmade Christmas gifts. Every year, I make gift sacks for my coworkers. I put a lot of thought into making them, catering to each coworker. Last year, I bought a bunch of mini Christmas mugs from the store and filled them with different things such as snacks, mini lotion, and hand sanitizer. This year, I thought I’d take a step up and make the latte pour-overs for everyone and pair them with my annual pumpkin spice cake cookies. 

We mentioned on the podcast that sometimes handmade gifts can be more inexpensive to make than buying something. Generally, baked goods are not too expensive to make. The most expensive part of the pumpkin spice cookies that I make is the Lily’s® less sugar pumpkin spice chips that I use. However, I didn’t take into account everything it took to make these TikTok latte pour-overs. 

For starters, I had to buy a gingerbread silicone mold. While at Michael’s™, I also bought Sweet Tooth Fairy® vanilla candy melts. The recipe also called for a gingerbread spice blend and recommended one to buy online. However, I decided it might be cheaper to make my own (it wasn’t). The recipe also called for cinnamon (which I had) and instant dark roast coffee. I had only ever worked with candy melts a handful of times and every time I had, I usually burned them. So, I was very careful to get the melts to the right consistency before adding the rest of my ingredients to them. Working with a rack of silicone molds was difficult and I ended up making a mess getting the mixture into them. 

Gingerbread Spice Mix

My molds were also too small for what my recipe needed. The recipe told me to let them sit and harden in the refrigerator for 10 minutes (I waited for 20) and because the molds were smaller, they were also deeper, so, my test gingerbread bomb fell apart. The second one, I let sit overnight and I tried it the next morning. Man, was it strong!

My takeaway: working with candy melts is hard but practice makes perfect. The latte pour-overs in the small gingerbread molds came out sugary and strong. Next time, I will get larger molds. However, the flavors were amazing. If you use the small molds, I suggest eight ounces of hot water instead of six. The process was not as time-consuming as I thought it would be; however, it is a bit costly if you make your gingerbread spice from scratch. If you are looking for something inexpensive to make for your coworkers, I do not recommend this. If you are looking for a gift to give someone who loves coffee, I recommend this.

Finished Product

I want to hear from our readers. What handmade gifts do you like to give for the holidays? Have you ever tried making latte bombs before? How did it go? Let’s continue the conversation below!

Recipes linked below:

Gingerbread Latte Pour-overs

Gingerbread Spice Mix

Please check out our Downloads For Our Readers page for a PDF of these recipes.

The Secret Is...

In this week's podcast, we talked about the seven secrets to a perfect holiday. The word “perfect” is relative. I’ve learned over the years that perfect doesn’t exist if you set your expectations too high. Something will always go wrong. I want to say the biggest secret in my mind is that there is no secret to a perfect holiday.

One of the most memorable holidays I had with my family was one of those holidays where everything seemed to go wrong. I call it the “Great Pumpkin Disaster.” That year, my grandmother, my mom, and I decided to make a trio of pumpkin desserts: Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin cupcakes. 

My grandmother is a perfectionist when it comes to all things pumpkin. She is always the one to make the pumpkin desserts. In fact, she never lets anyone in the kitchen when she is cooking. On the flip side, she won’t let anyone cook in the kitchen without her (because it is her kitchen). So, it was nearly impossible to cook your own recipe without her input. That being said, maybe I could have used her input that Christmas, but I was always irritated when I tried to cook in the kitchen and she constantly hovered over me. My grandmother used to say, “Too many cooks in the kitchen...”

My mom and I cooked first working on our pumpkin bread and cupcakes while kicking my grandma out of the kitchen multiple times. I love making cupcakes and it was the first time I had ever made pumpkin cupcakes. The result was pretty disappointing. My cupcakes sank in the middle and only a few turned out edible. I didn’t understand what was wrong. It had to be something wrong with my grandmother’s oven, but no one believed me. Next, my mom’s pumpkin bread came out of the oven as hard as a brick but still, no one believed me that there was something wrong with the oven. My grandmother claimed it was because we wouldn’t let her help us.

Finally, my grandmother made her pumpkin pies, and they almost caught fire in the oven, leading to hysteria in the kitchen as we prepped for Christmas dinner. My grandmother didn’t want to believe that it was an oven problem and swore that it was because she wasn’t cooking. When she pulled the pies out of the oven, they were completely black. My mom and I busted out laughing at the situation. My grandmother got so angry that she took a piece of my mom’s “brick” pumpkin bread and threw it at her head. My mom, in return, grabbed a cupcake and threw it at my grandma. That turned into an all-out war in the kitchen and throughout the house. We started chasing each other and throwing bits of pumpkin at each other until all three of us were covered and we had a huge mess to clean up.

I think back to that day whenever I bake any of my grandmother’s pumpkin recipes. We had to buy our dessert that year, but the memories of that Christmas with my mom and grandma will last a lifetime.

I want to hear from our readers. What is your perfect holiday? What are your holiday secrets? Let’s continue the conversation below. Have a wonderful holiday!

Organization Makes for Quick and Easy Dinners

You may not have noticed, but Amber and I switched things up a bit the last two weeks. We usually post our blogs in a certain order so that the podcast hostess has a blog post on the Monday before the podcast airs. Sometimes things just don’t work out that way, and this week has been one of them. I got upside down and backwards on a couple of big projects and totally failed at getting my blog for this week written in time. Luckily, Amber had hers ready to go, so she was able to swap with me. So in the end, everything worked out okay, but this is exactly the reason I wanted to do a podcast and blog about quick and easy dinners – because sometimes I’m just too darned busy to cook.

On the podcast, each of us named off quite a few recipes that we consider to be quick and easy. They’re the kinds of things that we can rummage through the pantry and find enough ingredients to make in a pinch, or maybe even plan to make when we know we are going to be busy. For instance, every Thursday, I host an all-day-long Zoom meeting with my crafty friends. We work on our crafts and visit just like we did in person before the pandemic. I never want to stop crafting and visiting with my friends to cook dinner, but I do have a husband and niece to feed, and sometimes it’s my turn to cook, so I usually go for something quick and easy so I can get back to the good stuff – crafting. Last week it was tuna salad, but this week I’ll be whipping up those tacos we talked about on the podcast. I like having a large repertoire of things to cook because I get bored eating the same stuff all the time.

One of the things that helps me come up with lots of different options is having a good recipe database. I’ve been collecting recipes for years from books, magazines, and the internet. I literally have boxes and boxes of recipes I’ve saved. Some I’ve cooked, and some I’m not even sure why I saved them. In any case, finding the ones I really like can be a challenge, and I particularly don’t want to spend more time looking for the recipe than I do actually cooking it. That’s why I decided to make a database to collect my recipes.

The form I created for entering my recipes in the database.

A "recipe report" generated by my database with a field for a photo and "ratings" by my family.

You can opt for one of the many recipe software options out there…just do a Google search for “recipe software” and you’ll be sure to find an option to suit your needs.  I started my database years ago, before there were any good software options, and I wanted to be able to customize it to my needs, so I made a simple database in FileMaker Pro. Over the years I’ve created custom layouts and printouts for my recipes, added input fields for my family to “rate” the recipe, and even put a place-holder for a picture in case I ever wanted to “publish” my collection as a printed book. The whole database is searchable by any field, including category, ingredients, source, or even just a specific word. The other day I did a search for “Cheesy” in the title because I couldn’t remember what the recipe was called.

A "List View" of my database, sorted by category.

What’s really nice about having the database is that I can see a running list of all my favorites (only my favorites go in the database), I can sort them by category, and then look quickly down the list of options for something that I can use. It also makes it very easy to print and share a recipe. I shared my tuna casserole with potato chips recipe on our website. You can download a copy here.

Besides looking through a ready-made list of go-to recipes, the other way I prep a quick and easy dinner is by looking through the pantry. Unfortunately, my pantry is tiny, and with 3 adults in the house who have different breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, the pantry gets really full. Sometimes, it gets so full that I can’t even tell what’s in it. Bottles of sauces get shuffled to the back of the shelf, and before you know it, they’ve expired because I didn’t see it there. One of the ways I combat that is to use the free Pantry Check app. As I bring groceries into the house, I simply scan the barcodes, and it adds the item to my inventory list along with the product’s expiration date. Depending on my settings, I can get notifications about items getting ready to expire as well as reminders to update my inventory. And, if I’ve been lax about adding/removing items as I use them (or if I just want a fresh start), I can tell it to clear the inventory. Simple as that. 

List of categories

Items within a category

Oops! These are expired!
Time to toss them out!

For me, staying organized with my recipes and the contents of my pantry is an important part of making sure the meals I cook are quick and easy when I need them to be. How do you store your recipes? Have you used a recipe database? Do you have a go-to system for staying organized in the kitchen? I’d love to hear about it! Comment below, or join us in our MMC Chat on Facebook!