June 2011 – Page 3 – The Creative Salad

Grocery Shopping List (Free Download)

Each week I feel overwhelmed as I start from scratch on my grocery list. What do we need? What do we usually buy? Most of the time I’m preoccupied and exhausted and, well, can’t remember for the life of me. So I go shopping with a short list and invariably come home from the store and realize I’ve forgotten something. More often I forget 5 things.

I really needed some grocery shopping help. I tried several grocery shop apps for my phone, but found them to be too time consuming. I needed something simple and easy. A list that I printed out once a week and placed on our fridge that David and I could mark as we ran out of items.

So I created this master grocery list that you may download, modify and print for your own personal use.

Our list is mostly gluten-and-sugar-free, so I hope yours will contain things like fresh pizza dough and cake. You know, things I dream of eating. Enjoy!

Can’t find a highlighter to mark your needed items? I’m using a yellow colored pencil, but you could also underline, circle or check off each item. Whatever works best for you and your family.

The Creative Salad New Website

Welcome to our new website, The Creative Salad!

We’re so excited about the new URL and updated layout for our family website. After being hosted at carriespritzer.com and spritzerleyba.com for almost ten years, we’re thrilled to have a new URL that fits our family and is much easier to remember.

Our blog, The Creative Salad, documents our family’s attempt at leading a more creative, playful, inquisitive, and environmentally-friendly life.

We have a new RSS feed that you can subscribe to here in order to never miss a post!

We now have a Facebook page too, so you can follow along and get a glimpse at the inner workings of life with the Spritzer Leyba family, as well as receive updates in your Facebook feed whenever we update the site.

As always, you can follow us at Twitter as well for more personal family anecdotes.

I still have many tasks to complete, including adding featured images to each of the posts (that’s the square images you see to the left of the post titles), update all the links within the posts that still point to our old site, add categories to most of the posts, and more. So, please be forgiving over the next few weeks as we settle in and smooth out all the hiccups.

What do you think?

Father’s Day Picture Pencil Holder

Father’s Day has been renamed Daddy’s Day in our house. Every time I talk about Father’s Day, our daughter is quick to remind me, “No, Mom! It’s Daddy’s Day and it’s in June.” In this day and age, who is this Father person anyhow?! Our daughter calls David, “Daddy,” and there’s an end to it. Now if only I could remember that.

Well, June is upon us and it’s time for us to share our Daddy’s Day present for David.

And, in case, you’re wondering, I already blew this surprise for David. Last night I left it out in plain sight drying in the living room. Evidently he didn’t notice it on his own, it took me apologizing for leaving it out for him to notice. Whoops! Mama’s bad. I’m banking on him putting on a good show for our daughter come Sunday, June 18th.

This simple project took several days to complete, because of the drying time of each layer, so please plan ahead! (i.e. start now because Father’s Day is less than two weeks away!)

We gathered favorite father-daughter photos, resized each of them using Photoshop to between 1 and 2 inches tall, copied and pasted them all into a new document, and then printed that document on a single piece of plain printer paper.

After cutting them out, we marked each photo with the year it was taken, and then adhered them to heavy card-stock cut to fit around an (empty and clean) aluminum can.

We also wrote out some loving messages for Daddy, which I then resized using our color copier-printer so that they’d fit in the remaining spaces on the card-stock.

We then mod podged the card-stock to the can and used clothespins to hold the paper to the can while it dried.

Then we mod podged over the card-stock to seal the photos and add a glossy sheen.

Happy Father’s Day, David! Your girls love you.

Our Favorite Frozen Snack

One of our most beloved afternoon snacks really couldn’t be more simple. We slice bananas and pop them into the freezer for a few hours. The recipe may be similar to frozen banana ice cream but it’s a whole lot less work.

This snack is:

Obviously more healthful than eating ice cream;

More tasty than plain old sliced banana (though we do love topping sliced banana slivers with a dab of peanut butter; they taste great when eaten with a toothpick.);

Plus the toddler can slice up the banana herself, so it’s a family-friendly activity as well.

Evidently if you’re three years old you need to bundle up to eat this frozen treat and run around the house shouting, “BRRRRR!” And then ask for more cause it’s so yum.

We’re not at all dramatic in our house. I can’t imagine where she gets it from.

More Gluten-Free Pasta Options

I recently discovered several new tasty gluten-free pastas that I’m excited to share with you.

My new favorite, go-to pasta, Andean Dream Quinoa Pasta, contains a combination of rice and quinoa, making it more nutritious and tasty than plain rice pasta. The taste and texture reminds me of the Ancient Harvest Quinoa Organic Pasta that used to be my favorite gluten-free pasta back when I couldn’t eat gluten but could still eat corn. (Yeah, the food sensitivity saga continues over here.)

On the right is the Trader Joe’s gluten-free boxed macaroni and cheese, which my family prefers to the pricier (albeit locally owned) Annie’s variety. I do feel some guilt about not supporting a local company, but the $1-2 per box price different is a deal breaker for me when they taste nearly identical and our toddler requests mac and cheese pretty much every day. (Ah, to have a three year olds metabolism…)

Next up, this beautiful pasta by il Macchialiolo. I adore the shape of this gigli shaped pasta, made of rice and imported from Italy. I bought this particular variety on our road trip in a specialty shop in Oregon, but it’s also available online. While this pasta may be pricey, I personally think it’s perfect for a special meal.

That being said, I haven’t tasted this pretty one yet, so it might taste like crap. If that’s the case, whoops! Sorry about that. Hey, at least it looks good.

I personally would rather eat special pasta like this one on occasion than eat the bland, chewy, ordinary shaped rice pasta more widely available in the grocery store (I’m thinking about you, Tinkyada).