MiMeals Meal Planning App

A few weeks ago I went in search of a good meal planner/grocery list app.  I downloaded ALL of the free ones but none of them really fit the bill.  I found MiMeals and it looked like what I was looking for so I decided that $1.99 was pretty reasonable and if I hated it, wouldn’t hurt me too much.

I was thrilled that I could add recipes and then with a flick of my finger, add all the ingredients to the grocery list.  I entered all my meals for the week and added them to the grocery list and set out for the store.  I was a multitasking, digital age mama – throwing stuff in the cart and tapping the item to toggle it for removal.  I hit the trash can at the top of the page and chose remove checked items and it shut down.   Hmm. I tapped the app icon and it opened right back up with all of my items on the list, none of them removed.  I toggled a few of them, clicked the trash can and again, it shut down.  I reopened it and my list was still full.  I figured it was better than losing the list and decided to just do my shopping and not try to delete items.  When I got home, I went to the app store and saw that other people were having the same problem.  The developers were very apologetic and wrote on their page, that you needed to uninstall and reinstall.  I did and lost all my recipes.. Ack!   Ok, I thought, this won’t kill me, let’s see if it works now.  Nope. I still had the same issue.

Not ready to give up on this app with so much potential I sent an email to the developer.  In it, I told them about my issue and made some suggestions about features I’d really like to see.  Within a very short time, I heard back from one of them, who sent me a very nice note saying that they had fixed the issue and submitted it to the Itunes store and were just waiting for them to approve it.  He told me that most of what I had suggested was in the release and that one of my ideas he really liked and would think about implementing it.  The email was so nice and he was so pleasant and I was really happy with the communication.

Today, Itunes informed me that the app had an update, so I rushed right in to download it. It was so worth the wait!  This app is really beautifully done.  First of all the interface is really beautiful.  Great colors, easy to navigate.  And yum, who doesn’t love a big bowl of oranges?

You input your meals (and you can move them back and forth between all meals and favorite meals).  You can date them if you like, I just kept today’s date, but you could really do this for each day of your planned week, month, year, whatever.

Open a meal and tap “add ingredients to grocery list” and that’s it.  Do this with all the meals you want to have for the week and then you can add other things manually (like my conditioner there).

I’ve been really beating up the grocery list and it hasn’t crashed at all, so that’s obviously fixed!  For $1.99 you really can’t go wrong and with such nice people behind the app, this one is truly a no brainer.

Check it out!

**Disclaimer: I was not in any way compensated for this review.  I bought it, loved it and decided to write about it. **

What Fresh Hell??

We’re two days away from our move and in an effort to feed my family something nourishing before we switch to the 48 hour fast food haul, I made home made soup and a tossed salad for dinner last night.  As I was ladling the soup into the bowl, I spilled some of the boiling hot soup on my hand. As I watched the piece of celery seemingly solder itself onto my skin, my brain struggled to keep up with what was going on.  I just sort of stared at it.  I had a bowl in one hand and the ladle in the other and as the pain started to register, I struggled with the decision of what to do with everything.  Apparently, I put the bowl and ladle down on the counter and ran to the sink to run cool water over the burn.

This all happened in a matter of, maybe, three seconds.  And in retrospect, I spilled a drop on my foot as I was juggling – because I have a vague recollection of a searing pain on my foot and the evidence of a small, red spot.

As I stood at the sink, sobbing while the water ran over the burn, I couldn’t help but think about how the hell I was going to manage the rest of this move with one burnt hand.  That made me cry harder (I’m a cry-baby, deal with it).  The pain started to subside and I watched as the burn started to turn into a blister.  The blister grew and changed all evening and today it looks like this:

It doesn’t hurt anymore, unless something touches it, but you’d be really surprised how many things I do that rely on that part of my hand.  It took me about 20 minutes to put my hair in a pony tail.

Moving day is Thursday and I’m really grateful that all the breakables are already packed and that Jim’s home to help me tape up boxes and that the kids are old enough to really help out with everything.

The worst part is remembering the stupidity that caused this.  The ladle was bigger than the bowl and as I was transferring the soup, that little voice told me that the bowl was full enough.  Did I listen?  Nope.  Now I’m packing for a move with one hand.  Brilliant Christine.

Cool and Refreshing Taboule

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m clearing out the kitchen so that I don’t have as much to move.  In going through the contents, I came across two boxes of Near East Taboule that were on the BOGO list a couple of weeks ago.  I don’t know why I bought it, taboule is simple enough to make, but I did and now I was faced with moving it, or eating it, so we ate it.

2 boxes Near East Taboule
4 kirby (or salad) cucumbers – or 2 regular ones, chopped
a mess of radishes, sliced thin, then chopped
1 med. red onion sliced super thin
4 med. tomatoes, chopped
1 can of black olives, rough chopped
1 can of Garbanzo beans (chick peas)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Juice of 1 lemons

Prepare taboule according to package directions, set aside.  Prep, chop and combine the vegetables, olives and beans

Add taboule mixture to vegetables.  Add about 3 T. of olive oil and the lemon juice and toss gently to combine.  If it seems too dry, add a little more oil and juice, but don’t over do it!

Cover tightly and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours, even overnight.  When serving squeeze a little more lemon juice over it.

This was so good.  So different from what I usually make, when there are lots and lots of flavors, this was so much simpler.  Just a bright, fresh, delicious summer meal.

House of Gems Contest

House of Gems is having a really yummy give away… I mean, who couldn’t use a $1,000.00 shopping spree for baubles and beads and stones? (oh my!)

From their contest rules page:

Looking for a Few Good Featured Artists:

Do you do a happy dance when you come across a gemstone you don’t already own?

Do you find that every conversation you have comes back to your latest jewelry project?

Do you love to help other people on their projects by giving tips or showing them step-by-step how to do things?

So what are you still doing here?  Go to their entry form and enter yourself!

What?  Did I enter?  Of course I did!  You can see here, here, here, here and here.

Good luck!

Grandma’s Hands

The other day my daughter came to me with a bottle of nail polish and a request to paint her nails. I got a towel and put it under her hand to protect the table and shook the little bottle. The quiet little clicking sound made me immediately nostalgic and I sort of slipped into a half meditative state as I remembered another time, another hand, another bottle of nail polish. The color is the same – my daughter has a penchant for dark red polish, just like my grandmother, her great-grandmother, who she only remembers through my memories.

My grandmother’s hands were more gnarled every year from her severe arthritis and after her stroke, it was impossible for her to do something simple like paint her nails. These hands who had held five of her own children, ten grandchildren, knitted countless sweaters and blankets, pulled weeds and planted flowers every spring for many decades and cooked almost every day of her life, those strong hands were rendered almost useless and it frustrated her so very much.

My beautiful grandmother was more than a little vain and she loved to have her nails polished a vivid, dark red. She had impossibly strong nails. They never broke even though they were her greatest tools back when she could still master the movement of her hands. We’d sit at her kitchen table and I would polish and it always made her feel pretty. You could tell just by the cock of her head as she would admire her freshly painted nails.

I’m so glad I have these memories of my grandmother. I visit them very often and they comfort me. As I painted my daughter’s nails, I told her the story of her great-grandmother’s nail color preference and I can only hope that she felt a small connection to the woman she’ll never know, who was such an important part of my life.

Next Page »