I know I am totally old school, but I still haven’t wrapped my head around the kids returning to school before Labor Day!! (And this marks our 7
th year of kids in school, so apparently I don’t accept change very quickly!!) That being said, I hope the rest of you have accepted that school starts in August and are enjoying the new school year. For me, when the kids head off to school, I plan, plan, plan, because every year, I have it in my head that I am going to have SO MUCH TIME to accomplish so many tasks that stacked up over the summer. This year that feeling didn’t even last through the first week of school. Part of my problem is that I’m not super at time management, the other part is that I don’t like waking up early and really should get up about an hour earlier to accomplish more before the kids get up! One area I have made vast improvements in, not to toot my own horn or anything, is menu planning. I tried some of the apps that are out there, but they all wanted money to use the “cool” features and that wasn’t part of our budget! So I went to Target, purchased a whiteboard with spaces for 7 days and every Sunday, I sit down and write out a menu for the week. This saves so much headache at 5pm on any given weeknight, or 7pm if it’s a night with activities! I don’t always stick to the menu, sometimes I move things around; sometimes we have extra leftovers, so we eat those instead. My favorite thing about writing out a menu is what our son has deemed “restaurant night”. Nope, we don’t eat out once a week; “restaurant night” is a fancy and fun way to have leftover night. Everyone gets to choose their own meal, just like at a restaurant, someone is the waiter, usually our 8-year old daughter, “because it’s fun”, then at the end we all bus our own dishes and call it a night. Our last blog talked about how to stretch a chicken into several meals. This past week I used a Brisket and stretched it into 3 meals. The first was a crockpot meal, one of my favorite things when I know I won’t be home for the whole day. We turned those leftovers into BBQ sandwiches and will be incorporating the rest of the Brisket into tonight’s “Restaurant Night”. So who knows, they could be beef tacos, another BBQ sandwich or perhaps the original Brisket with some fried red potatoes and Brussel’s sprouts. Here’s the recipe for the Brisket along with links to the others.
http://tinyurl.com/z49ssf5 
Happy Back to School…please leave some comments on your tips to easing back into the school year!!
Easing into Monday Brisket Ingredients: 3 pound Open Space Meats Grass Fed Brisket ½ Bottle Hawaiian Spicy BBQ Sauce 2 tablespoons dried onions or ½ cup sliced onions 8 ounces water ½ cup red wine Salt and Pepper to taste 1 tablespoon Penzey’s BBQ Seasoning https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/bbq-3000/c-24/p-327/pd-s To Make: Salt and pepper both sides of Brisket Place in crockpot Mix BBQ sauce, dried onions, water, red wine and BBQ seasonings together in a bowl (I usually just throw it all in the crock pot to make one less dirty dish!) Pour mixture over meat in crockpot Cook on low for 8-10 hours or high for 4-6 hours After meat is cooked it should pretty much fall apart as you pull it out, you can slice it or shred it Enjoy!!!
