Menu Planning and Almonds

Okay so here is what I like to do to plan my menus....my husband thinks that I am a bit OCD and this is where it comes out.  I am a visual learner and therefore like to see what I am doing.

I take a big wall calendar, but you can use any size that fits the post-its, and I usually plan between two and three weeks at a time.  I have 5 different color post-its...I use one color for Chicken dishes, one for Meats, one for Pastas, one for Seafood, and one for Veggie.

I write out the name of the dish, and the book and page number if I am using a cookbook, and place it on my calendar.  The great thing about the post-its is that I can move them around easily and make sure that I am not doing two of the same type of dish in a row.  This is a huge timesaver for me and lets me easily shift things if I need to.  I can also quickly dispose of the post-its with dishes that we do not like and will not want again, while saving the post-its and shifting them down a few weeks when we really enjoy a dish.

Hope that you try this and let me know how it works for you!



Almonds and Vanilla

Ingredients

1 egg white, beaten
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups whole roasted, unsalted almonds

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Beat the egg white with the vanilla extract

Add the almonds and stir so that all the almonds are coated

In a separate bowl combine sugar, salt and cinnamon and then add to the almond mixture.

Bake at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Remove and let cool on wax paper.  It will be tempting to taste but you must let them cool down!!!

Eat and Enjoy, and share if you really want to.