Managing the Mundane

Everyday helps and hints for everyday life

A collection of ideas for meal planning, recipes, and cooking and cleaning tips and tricks

Let’s face it. Except for holidays and a few special occasions throughout the year, most of life is routine – dare I say – mundane. We get up, we go to work or go about our day, we take care of kids and our spouse, we cook, we clean, we attend after-school activities, church activities, and sporting events, and we fall into bed exhausted, just to start it all over the next day. That’s where this site comes into play. My goal is to help you manage your daily routine a little more efficiently and hopefully make things a little easier and more organized for you. Check out the About tab for more details about me and how this all started. You can get some suggested meal planning with recipes under the Menus tab and some planning, cooking, and cleaning pointers on the Helps and Hints tab.

Check it out!

There are over a year’s worth of menus available on the site now, so I’m not publishing any new menus. However, come back here often as I will continue to post any new recipes that I have found and tried so that you have some new ideas as well. If I come up with any other new helps and hints, I will also post those.

And here are some of those new recipes that I have tried!! The ones that were previously posted are under the button New Recipes to Try! And go back and check out some of the other menus as we approach the summer season. I go back and look for dinner ideas all the time!

Chicken Etouffee – If you have visited my page much at all, you know how much we love Louisiana foods and flavors. I can’t say that I have made etouffee very often, and when I have, it has been with shrimp or crawfish. If you are not familiar with etouffee, it is basically a stew. I found this recipe from laurenfromscratch.com that is easy and quite delicious. You even make your own roux, which I don’t typically do, but it was very easy and most of the ingredients are things that you generally have on hand. It uses boneless, skinless chicken thighs, which are an inexpensive protein. It does call for browning sauce, which I didn’t have, so I Googled it and found that a mixture of soy sauce and brown sugar is a suitable replacement.

Sweet Chili Salmon Bowls – We have gotten into eating “bowls” for dinner quite a bit since they are an “all-in-one” kind of meal. I usually make mine with sticky rice as the grain since that is what we really enjoy. We also really like salmon and especially enjoy anything with just a little heat, so this recipe from halorecipe.com fits the bill. It uses a sweet chili sauce, which you can find at most supermarkets, and the rest of the ingredients are mostly pantry and fridge staples. I do like to use the individually frozen salmon filets that I get from Sam’s. This is also a quick and easy recipe for weeknight dinners.

Easy Lasagna Recipe – I do enjoy lasagna but not all the work involved. I finally found a recipe from castleplates.com that allows me to make homemade lasagna without all the fuss. Since my husband is not a big cheese lover, I only used a small amount of ricotta, and it came out just fine.