Review: Plan to Eat

I know I've talked about how having a meal plan has saved my sanity on more than one occasion. I have in the past, signed up for meal planning services online, but always ended up using a simpler system where I would pick the meals and make my own grocery lists. But then each week, I'd sit in front of a blank sheet of paper (or a new week on my "meals" google calendar) and wonder what we should eat that week. Who knew sustenance would be so much work? You have to consider what you have in the pantry and freezer, how much time you'll have to cook on any given night, the various food preferences and aversions of your family members, and with the price of food these days, what's on sale and whether you are prepared to go to two or three stores just to get the best prices. Then there is the matter of tracking the plan - you want to see it at a glance from your kitchen counter (so you'll remember to take out the chicken to defrost beforehand), you also probably want to be able to access your grocery list when you're on the go, and you may also want to be able to check your menu from work if you are facing unexpected dinner guests. Then there's the cooking process, you need to track your recipes for all but maybe the most common meals that you can make from memory. You want a place to store recipes that you find on Pinterest, in magazines, or that you get emailed to you from a friend. You need to be able to access the recipes in the kitchen, and preferably not have to kill a tree each mealtime by printing them. No wonder people get overwhelmed by the idea!

Enter Plan To Eat.

This one website truly does it all. There are three key stages to the meal planning process on their site. The first is Recipes. Here you can enter in your recipes, either from scratch, or by importing from most* recipe websites such as AllRecipes, FoodNetwork, etc. you can also quickly enter recipes by copy-pasting from an email or other location. Your recipes are categorized and searchable, and you can queue up ones you want to try soon to make them even easier to find. There is a social aspect as well, you can add friends and browse their public recipes and easily add them to your recipe collection too. They have a browser shortcut that you can use when you see a recipe elsewhere, just click "add to an to eat" and it will neatly import the recipe while you keep browsing.

Then you have the Planner. This is a calendar like layout with your recipe inventory on the left. Each day has sections for breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks. You can easily drag and drop recipes, or add individual ingredients to a day's meal if needed (canned tomato soup, crackers, carrot sticks, anyone?). You can update serving sizes so if you make a big pot of oatmeal at the start of the week you can repeat it in the meal plan daily but set the servings to zero so the site will know you only need to buy the ingredients once. The calendar view can be adjusted to see a lot or just a little, and it does a good job of highlighting the current day so you know where you are at. You can even type in notes in different sections of the day so if you need a further reminder of things that occur in your life that affect meal planning, it's there (6pm swim lesson, for example). There is also a very good feature that lets you copy meals, it's super flexible so you can select what to copy and what day or dates to copy from and to. I really like this feature for planning my kid's school lunches, so I can figure out a week or two of lunches, and then have them repeat for as long as I want to.

So you now have your recipes in place, and your plan set up for the day/week/month. What's next? Grocery shopping, of course. The site has a Shopping List feature that you can customize by selecting which dates on the planner you want to shop for. You can check items off the list if you already have them at home, and take what's left and do your shopping. The shopping list section has a pretty cool pantry feature where you can actually put an inventory of your pantry (or fridge, freezer, etc). This helps you keep track of what's in your house.

One feature that is missing (though the makers of Plan To Eat say they are working on it) is inventory auto management so that if you cook something with items in your pantry, it reduces the quantity you have left. Right now if you want to do that, it's a manual process. There is a neat pantry related feature though that is called "cook from my pantry". It's exactly what it sounds like, it compares your pantry to recipes in your recipe section, and finds things you can cook with the ingredients you have on hand.

All in all, Plan to Eat is the most comprehensive meal planning site that I've used so far, and I like it enough that I signed up for a year of usage. The first 30 days are a fully featured free trial, and you don't have to give your credit card info to sign up so it truly is risk free. I think I paid maybe $40 for a year of service and I found this pretty reasonable. I still use it weekly and I love the fact I can access my recipes and meal plan from anywhere. I've checked it from my computer at work, from my iPad in the kitchen, and from my phone on the road or in the grocery store. If you want to try Plan ToEat for yourself, you can go right to their site, or you can help me out by clicking through on this referral link (http://plantoeat.com/ref/q8aygx1zcq) to sign up. If you wish, you can also add me as a friend and we can share recipes. Happy planning!

Nursing Covers - Udder Covers and Cover In Style by Hooter Hiders

I'll admit, I'm not really that big on "covering up" when nursing my baby - it's usually too warm for her and me, she is at that distracted age where she would just grab it and pull if I did try to use a cover, and it's just one more thing to carry around.

However, there are occasions where a coverup has been perfect. Take for example the time I had to nurse my son in the hospital waiting room when he was just a few days old. Neither of us had any idea about breastfeeding and so latching was an awkward and time consuming process (with way more exposure than I was comfortable with at the time). Or how about the times that I have ventured out to church with a baby, that isn't exactly the kind of place where I'd like to whip out a boob... Not to mention that not everyone is as easygoing as I am with breastfeeding in public, and some places even give nursing moms a hard time (that is awful, I'm glad no one has ever told me to cover up, I think they would have gotten an earful!).

I have a new black and white Udder Covers brand coverup and a borrowed pink and white Cover in Style coverup by Hooter Hiders. Both operate on the same premise, they are a rectangle of fabric with a strap attached, and a section of hem between the strap connections that has some boning to make a stiff opening when the strap is fastened around your neck. This opening can be made bigger or smaller by loosening or tightening the strap. Both nursing covers allow this to be done fairly easily using a double d-ring fastener. Once the cover is on, simply bring the baby into position, arrange the fabric around him/her, and rest assured that no one will be seeing anything that you don't want them to. I suppose if you are sitting down and someone stands up behind you, they could possibly see in from the top, but really? Who does that? (Please tell me no one does that...)

The Cover in Style has a terry fabric pocket on one corner, it's great for wiping up any milk leaks or spit up without having to wrestle with another piece of cloth.  Both coverups fold/roll up quite small and so they don't take up much space in your diaper bag. I usually keep mine in the car so that if I happen to be in a place where I need it, I have it handy. They are machine washable (delicate cycle recommended), and can go in the dryer on low heat, though I usually line dry mine.

Both the nursing covers come in a great selection of colours and patterns, I would recommend a lighter colour if you think you'll use it outdoors where the sun can make it uncomfortably warm for you and baby. You can check out the selection of Udder Covers at http://www.uddercovers.com, as well as use the store locator to find a local retailer (and save yourself the $10 shipping!).  Although they don't seem to make the Cover in Style anymore, you can also look at the similar Hooter Hiders and Bébé Au Lait nursing covers at http://www.bebeaulait.com. All of these brands will cost somewhere in the $30 to $40 range.

Bumbo Baby Sitter

If there is one thing that has been an "essential" baby product, it's the Bumbo Baby Sitter.  With its smooth clever shape and the readily identifiable hexagonal box (the presence of which, for some strange reason, increases the resale value on Kijiji and Craigslist!?), it can be found in more and more homes that have babies.  And despite the recall (don't get me started on how I feel about recalls that are not about defective products but about owners thinking a product is going to take over the job of parenting for them...) the Bumbo Baby Sitter (hereafter referred to as "the Bumbo") is still very popular.  It is useful from quite a young age (as soon as baby can hold his/her head steady), until your child either learns to squirm out of it or until his/her legs are too chunky to fit into the leg openings.  I have the Bumbo in lime green, and bought it secondhand for my son when he was a baby.  He wasn't huge at birth, but by the time he was steady enough with holding his head up, his legs were just about too chubby to fit (yes! true story!).  So we did not get much use out of it for him.  My daughter on the other hand, is 4 months now, and still fits into it (despite similarly chubby legs, they must just be a touch slimmer).

We take it with us when we go out to eat (OK, rarely, but on those rare occasions it helps), when visiting family, and even when I'm doing dishes or we're having dinner as a family at home.  It's a very handy place to be able to put her when she wants to sit up and watch what we are doing.  As long as she is in arms reach, we are comfortable putting her on the dining room table, or the kitchen counter (you would have to decide for yourself if you feel that's a good option for your situation).  The chair has a wide base and a sturdy design so most babies sitting relatively still should be pretty safe where they are, as long as they are not unattended.  If I could change any one thing I would make it have a functional handle or handles, so that a) it would be easier to carry from home to car and back again and b) so that it would be possible to carry the chair with baby in it from one surface to another.

The Bumbo is made of a soft foamy plastic type material (advertised as hygienic and non-toxic), it is wipeable/washable (you could even take a garden hose to it if a particular baby poo incident required that type of attention...).  This is great because I know my babies like to spit up just as soon as they are sitting upright, and easy cleanup makes me happy.  It comes in a bunch of bright, solid colours, and you can purchase an optional white play tray (which I suspect would be helpful in making the Bumbo double as a high chair for meals, though I haven't had a baby small enough to both fit in the Bumbo and eat real food yet).

You can read more about the Bumbo Baby Sitter at http://www.keendistribution.com/product/bumbo/bumboSeat.php.  They even make really cute Bumbo covers!  I don't know if I would give up the easy wash surface of the original Bumbo, but it is intriguing to be able to change the look of the Bumbo chair just by changing a cover.

Do you use a Bumbo chair?  Does it make your life easier?  Did you stop using it after the recall?

innobaby Packin' SMART (Butterfly Series)

Anyone that has experienced the joy (not!!) of having a bag of Goldfish crackers empty and crush itself in the bottom of their purse or diaper bag needs a better way to transport crumbly snacks from point A to point B. The innobaby Packin' SMART is a clear BPA-free plastic contraption that is sold as a formula dispenser, but it can hold up to five servings (1/3 cup each) of any snack that is small enough to fit into an oval container about the size of your palm.

Each container has an integrated funnel shaped lid (funnel presumably for easy filling formula powder into the containers, inverted funnel for the lid) and it snaps to the one above and below, making a stack as tall or short as you need. The set also comes with a coloured base and top with built in handle which neatly packs the whole thing into a super portable, spill-resistant snack transporter. The individual section lids have a hole in them but this is blocked off by the lid or container above it. This little hole also is great for shaking a couple of snacks out into little hands, or for easily dispensing formula powder into a waiting bottle.

I love being able to put a couple of snacks in for my son, and some for me, and not have to dig for them in my bag or have to carry multiple containers. The only thing I would not recommend is putting any sort of chocolate chips into it, at least not in the summer when they can easily melt in the heat and make a real mess of the container they are in. The innobaby Packin' SMART can go in the dishwasher (top rack), and is built strongly so it will resist any accidental dropping by you, hubby, or child.

If you would like to learn more, go visit their website at http://www.innobaby.com. They are about $20 each, which isn't cheap, but if you think about it, it's cheaper than buying a zillion sandwich bags for snacks, and then ending up with crushed snacks and crumbs in your purse - not to mention the waste that ends up in our landfills from so many disposable packages.

Review: LoseIt! iPhone App

We've all got the baby weight to lose, some of us are lucky enough to lose it while our kids are still babies, others are still toting the baby weight along to preschool graduation, even high school graduation.  I personally called it baby weight til my little boy turned two...then I just called it extra weight.  I did end up losing it though, using an app called LoseIt!  I started using LoseIt! when my son was almost 3, and in about 6 months, I managed to shed almost 20lbs.  Then I got pregnant with my daughter, but instead of abandoning LoseIt!, I adjusted my daily calorie target to account for the extra calories needed during pregnancy.  I don't know if it was just using LoseIt! or if there was something else at play, but I did not gain nearly as much with my second pregnancy than with my first (and that's even with the 9th month of crazy chocolate cravings...).  I'm still using it (most days) now that I'm breastfeeding (again, I added calories to my target to make sure I'm getting enough), and after three short months, I'm only a few pounds from pre-baby weight.

I'm not an advocate for "diets" - fancy and scientific though they may be, the basic concept of weight loss is still limiting your calorie intake while maximizing your calorie expenditure through activity.  LoseIt! app for iPhone helps you to track calories in/calories out in a simple and quick way.  Because let's face it, we're busy moms, we don't have time for fancy journals, point calculations, support group meetings/weigh-ins, or typing in all of the nutritional info of each thing we eat.  LoseIt! allows you to select from the HUGE list of built-in foods, their food database even includes restaurant foods which is handy when you are eating out.  For the odd item that isn't in the database, LoseIt! app allows you to enter in custom foods.  Not only can you enter in custom food data, but you can even enter in custom recipes!  You just add foods to the recipe, say how many servings it makes, and it calculates the calories for you.

The best part is that the app is on your iPhone, so you can have it with you everywhere you go.  That also means there's no excuse to not log your meals.  LoseIt! can be set up to remind you at a set time if you haven't entered, say, your breakfast by 10am.  LoseIt! also tracks your exercise, so anytime you do anything, be sure to enter it in.  It does the calorie expenditure calculations based on the weight you are on the date you exercise, so you'll also want to make sure that you log your weight regularly.

If you want to try LoseIt!, check out their website here: http://www.loseit.com/ or check it out on the iTunes App Store (it's FREE): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lose-it/id297368629?mt=8

Review: Goo Goo Baby Perfect Pocket Bibs

I bought my first Goo Goo Baby Perfect Pocket Bib at a local boutique kids store (read: everything is expensive there).  It didn't come cheap - $24.95 plus tax for ONE bib.  But with all the use it has gotten, I am grateful every time I reach for it that I didn't cheap out and leave it there.  My son is 4 now, so it doesn't get a lot of use, but we do still pull it out whenever soup is on the menu, or anything served with syrup.  I bought a more girly one to use for my daughter when she is old enough to need a bib, and we'll make sure that when my son is finished with his, we'll find a good new home for it.

What's so special about these bibs, you may ask?  Well for starters, they are made of really REALLY cool fabric prints.  My son's bib, for example, is a fabric print called "DIG IT" and is a bold orange, red, yellow, green and blue construction gear print on white backing.  Then, the fabric comes laminated on the front side, so it can be easily wiped clean.  It's a really generous size, and has cleverly placed snaps so that you can fold the bottom bit up into a pocket, then the corners of the pocket fold behind the bib to make the pocket open up a bit so it catches any falling food.  According to their website, the pocket will catch up to 1/2 cup of liquid food (that's a lot of syrup!)   The neck snaps are adjustable to 3 different sizes, and it has fit my son for several years now without any problems.  I love that they don't have Velcro closures, as kids do learn to pull those off.  My son will actually ask for this bib when he's eating something messy, which has got to be saying something good about the bib!

You can have a look at the bib (and available patterns) here on Goo-Goo Baby's website.   They also have a Retail Store Locator page here, but beware, the city search is case sensitive, so while there are several stores in Halifax, typing in HALIFAX will get you nothing.  I got my daughter's bib at a local online boutique called My L'il Package (http://www.mylilpackage.com/store/scripts/default.asp) - I'm just mentioning that because they don't seem to be listed in the store locator (probably because they are an online shop, not a brick & mortar store).