Making Life Better

Need some ideas for great meals that cost less and are easy to make? Making Life Better is a website that you may want to check out. I like to cook simple meals and the recipes there are simple and healthy. They not only share tips for cooking, but other great ideas for beauty, family and much more. Unilever, the consumer package goods company, has spent a great deal of time thinking about how to make everyday life better and help us find ways to create great meals and do more with less. The company’s Web site, www.MakingLifeBetter.com, features delicious recipes, affordable meal ideas and tips that stretch your budget and save you time. From Chicken Francese to Savory Roasted Potatoes, the secret to dinner success in my home is to keep a well-stocked kitchen filled with easy-to-prepare, delicious pantry staples with brands I know and trust. Thanks to Mom Central for the information.

I’ve bookmarked www.MakingLifeBetter.com, and here are a few of the great ideas I’ve found:

·Need a budget-friendly meal? Try Baked Pasta Primavera with Ragu Pasta Sauce, which costs less than $2 a serving. Ragu Pasta Sauce has a full serving of veggies in every half-cup of sauce, so this recipe is a great way to sneak veggies into your kids’ diets.

· Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! has new Cooking & Baking sticks that bake and taste just like butter! Even better is that they have 50% less saturated fat than butter, 0g trans fat per serving, and provide an excellent source of Omega 3. More importantly, this is a simple change that we can make to help our families live a healthier lifestyle.

·Your family can also enjoy a perfectly seasoned Pizza Meatloaf that you can prepare in no time with go-to ingredients like Lipton Recipe Secrets Onion Soup Mix and Ragu Pasta Sauce.  With two Lipton recipe mix envelopes in each box, your family can enjoy pizza meat loaf one night, and onion burgers the next!

·And definitely look for Bertolli Oven Bake Meals, such as Stuffed Shells, in your grocery store’s freezer. These restaurant-quality Italian classics can be prepared by simply opening the package, pouring the ingredients in your own oven dish and baking. What a great way to skip the Italian restaurant and enjoy a night in – especially if the kids are gone for the evening.

Stop and Shop for Healthy Ideas

Feeding a family of four healthy food can be challenging.  “Healthy” grocery stores make things easy by stocking only items that are good for you, however, the prices are often high, and not budget friendly.  Our local grocery store, Stop & Shop, has been working hard to make choosing healthy foods easier.

Stop & Shop’s new Healthy Ideas program features a “healthy ideas” symbol that is placed on over 3,000 items in the store.  It makes it easy to shop for healthy foods without having to dissect the label.  Stop & Shop considers calories, fat, cholesterol, and sodium content in their criteria for labeling items as healthy.  In addition, they offer healthy recipes, and healthy “swaps” — foods that can easily be swapped to make a meal healthier.

To learn more about the Healthy Ideas program visit their website at www.stopandshop.com. Thanks to Mom Central for the information.