Home tour: The school room

Well, so I'm sick again. Or still. Either way, it's generally unpleasant and not how I would like to spend my time. 

So in lieu of something that would take effort, I'll show you some of my house! I already took these pictures, so it was about as low effort as is possible. 

This is my favorite room of the house. It's my "school room," which used to mean MY school because I was in college. But now I'm not, so it's our homeschooling room. As far as that's concerned, it's about as pleasant as possible, and I'm glad to have a reason to spend more time in here. It's quiet, and it has doors that can be completely closed which is a nice perk. It's intended to be a formal living room, but formal living is for the birds, isn't it? 

Additionally, this room and the adjoining dining room are the only rooms I painted when we moved in. This room was originally ballet pink, and the dining room was a mauve. Hideous. Who in the world would want pink formal rooms? 

I also really enjoy seeing other people's homes. Maybe I'm nosey? Maybe I'll have to take more pictures and when I don't have better blog content slap another room up here. Or not. We'll see! 

Blerg

So I got the plague. Ok, ok, not the plague. But I did get strep throat. And that did put me down for the count. Huzzah! I spent the better part of four days curled up in a ball on the couch. A couple of nights I didn't even attempt sleeping in a bed and just stayed cemented to that couch. Thank goodness for a comfortable couch, I suppose.

So here I am on the other side. I'm not feeling as sick, though the effects of antibiotics are not all stellar. But I can actually swallow without difficulty so I think it's a significant step in the right direction. For those couple of days, we were in survival mode. My husband still had to work and the kids were still home with me all the time because school is out. So it was a lot of makeshift, grab what you can and be grateful, kind of dining. Oh, and perhaps some Subway as well, I won't lie. (I also won't lie and deny loving Subway.)

So now that it's officially the new year and I can stay in an upright position for extended periods of time, I can be productive again! I have Big Plans for myself this year. I have some rough ideas for blogging. I have some dietary changes to make and some 'splaining to do to all ya'll nice people. I have some ambitions for our family, and hopefully some of those things will be ironed out in the next few days so I have yet another thing to stress about. I need to make a new chore chart that is actually workable for our house(since moving, I have never been able to iron it out to be reasonable but actually keep the house clean). And even more than that, I need to stick to the chore chart.

Ok, well, there's so much to do that I could totally overwhelm myself just sitting here. But the husband is out watching a movie and the kids are in bed so I have a few things I need to mark off my to-do list. One thing I already completed tonight was setting up the boys' reading lights by their beds. Their bed frames are super thick, so the clamp wouldn't stick which was frustrating. So I trawled Home Depot until I found a bracket type of thing to screw into the bed frame and clamp the light to. It works, and the boys are happy to have reading lights. Now they don't have to suffer through the indignity of getting out of bed to turn off their overhead light.

Bulking up

I have been wanting a chest freezer for forever. But at one point, we were living in an apartment that didn't have space for one, so there was no possibility. And then we moved into a house, but again, no good place for one because the layout was.... strange(and no garage). And then we bought a house, and there was a garage, but the house needed a lot of other investments more pressing than my desire to have a chest freezer and freeze tons of things.

But then here I find myself, in a house, with enough space, with a garage, and not needing to spend money on this house because we rent it. And just last week I was looking at chest freezers online, but they were expensive! Well, I guess expensive is all relative, but they were more than I wanted to spend on something that isn't necessary, but would just make my life easier. Then on Friday night, while at dinner with friends, they mentioned they had just left Sam's Club and bought a chest freezer. Well, don't ya know, I hadn't even thought to check Sams' prices.

It ended up being a decent price, for a big enough freezer(7 cubic feet). And it's surprisingly not heavy, so I could unload it myself. And so now, hooray, I have a freezer in my garage!

This is what I bought, in case you're considering one.

The thing that makes me really excited is now I have the space to make meals in advance and freeze a bunch of them without having to keep a really small rotation. And I can also make a pilgrimage(the closest one is 2 1/2 hours) to Trader Joe's and stock up on a bunch of stuff for quick meals(like their frozen pizzas, heck yea!). And this will make my life so much easier when it comes to meals. Really. It will. My head is just spinning with ideas. Yay!!!

Yes, I know this makes me a big dork. Oh well.

Meal Plan for 9-23-11

Some of these meals had to carry over from last week's plan because we ended up having some leftovers we decided to use. This is also going to be a slightly redundant plan because I took advantage of a sale recently and stocked up on some stuff, like chicken breast, so I need to use a bunch of that and free up some space in my freezer so I can store leftovers for later use.

Thursday: Today was already planned. We're having slow cooker Chicken Tikka Masala, with naan and salad.

The rest come from my new cookbooks!

Friday: Chicken Salad with Peaches and Blue Cheese, with bread or rolls.

Saturday: Basic Quiche, with mixed greens salad.

Sunday: Chicken Souvlaki

Monday: Soy-Marinated London Broil, with rice and broccoli.

Tuesday: Vegetable Soup, with bread or crackers.

Wednesday: Chicken Cutlets with Herb Sauce, with vegetables.

I'm excited! Now all I have to do is make up my shopping list and I can get that all knocked out tomorrow! Fortunately pretty much all I'll need to buy is fresh produce because I have nearly everything else already. That is awesome.

What's in my freezer?

Here's your second opportunity to snoop in my kitchen, the freezer!

Because we use so many whole items, I end up freezing a lot because the lack of preservatives gives things a short shelf life. I'm pretty ok with that. I also try to avoid canned products, so I freeze more than I otherwise might.


Here it is! Again, not a very exciting appliance, but it gets the job done! There is much less of a system in my freezer than in my refrigerator. I work on that sometimes, but nothing seems to stick because the contents vary so much.


Top shelf: In the back is a meal-sized serving of green beans and red potatoes, on the other side is a meal-size serving of taco soup, a single size serving of coconut chicken with rice, in the front is chili on the left, and on the right are two two-cup containers of chicken stock.


The top shelf here is basically my "breakfast" section. When I make breakfast items, I try to make extra to freeze. So we have french toast, waffles, pancakes, cooked sausage and bacon, and parathas(not cooked, these are a dough you fry to make a breakfast bread). Oh! And bagels from Panera.

Below that is a whole bunch of naan that I bought already made. I'm working on getting back to making everything from scratch, but I decided to cheat on naan. Then sausage patties, half a bag of wheat flour, and behind that is about half a carton of three-chocolate organic ice cream.

Next shelf is another scattered one. The two big containers in front hold spaghetti sauce and pinto bean soup. Behind that is several packages of fish from Trader Joe's, next to that is a container of macaroni and cheese, and the butcher paper is a half pound of shrimp.

The bottom is the bagged produce. There's broccoli, spinach, peas, mixed vegetables, blueberries, strawberries, and mixed berries.


The doors! Three pounds of butter, fruit juice popsicles, ice packs, and frozen basil.


Then finally.... One chicken breast(raw), two chicken sausages, paneer, deli ham, and then below that is nothin' but nuts. Walnuts, pecans, almonds, sunflower seeds, and so on. To keep these fresh for baking, I freeze it all. Works out great!

Maybe once I get the pantry in working order(which it is NOT right now, lemme tell ya) I can show you that. Then there would be a complete picture of the food we actually keep in our house. Exciting!

What's inside my fridge?

Holy cow! Has it been almost a year?? A year?? I thought surely it had only been a few months. I guess that goes to show what a blur this last chunk of time has been. I perceived 10 months of time as about 5 months. Oops!

But I want to get back into the swing of blogging. So I'm coming back with a 'what's in my fridge?' post. I love seeing these when other people do them. I don't know why. Maybe it's some hidden voyeuristic tendency, but I find it absolutely fascinating. Some magazines have featured celebrity fridge tours, or chef fridge tours, but I find the everyday people way more interesting.

In the past six months or so I've made a big shift toward simplicity. I've made some changes to my home and to my cooking and to my life in general to simplify. I find it aesthetically and mentally pleasing. I'm guessing my fridge will reflect that, and I'm also guessing that what other people perceive as a bare fridge is what I see as sufficient. Because we eat very little processed food, we tend to just have a lot of whole ingredients and those come together into meals. We have very few 'grab and go' food items, even for the kids. If the kids want to grab something quickly, we have plenty of fresh fruit in the pantry.

Ok, here goes!

And here it is! No fancy fridge here. Just a boring, basic white side-by-side. I will say that I do much prefer side-by-sides to the over-under variety. Additionally, this is our fridge about mid-week. I grocery shop once a week, and this is about four days after I did that.

Top shelves... Eggs, of course. Though from the store, not our chickens. With the crazy heat we've been having, they haven't been laying a whole lot, so I've been buying eggs. Gasp! Yogurt(two kinds, blueberry and plain). Sour cream, veggie dip, and behind that a big ol' container of yeast.

Next row down, a pound of bacon, sliced Havarti, deli chicken breast, and a hunk of cheddar cheese(chosen by Ansel).

Next row down..... A package of frozen strawberries from Trader Joe's that are thawing for later use in crepes, overripe bananas waiting to be made into banana bread, a carton of chai, and half-and-half.

Bottom shelf.... This is where I would usually have the giant container of bread dough, but we're in between batches at the moment. A bottle of chilled wine and a bottle of chilled lemonade for guests.

The crisper drawers! These used to be packed to the gills every week, but I've re-worked how we store some items and now the contents are actually accessible. Local tomatoes, local cherry tomatoes, a container of 50/50 mix lettuce and spinach, a head of green leaf lettuce, and a giant stalk of celery. Oh! And what's left of the bag of baby carrots.

Below that, red potatoes, jalapenos(local), onions(local), and half a red onion.

And then the doors.... I so wish we didn't have to hang onto so many things. It makes me kind of twitchy to look at it. But with condiments and sauces, you're sort of stuck. I've pared down as much as I can, but I really do need these things.

Top shelf, pepperoncini, pimientos, red curry paste, peanut butter, garlic paste, ginger paste, and apparently four kinds of jelly!

Below that, the butter. Yum! Three sticks of salted butter, a spreadable butter blend, and cream cheese.

Then, minced garlic(just can't bring myself to mincing my own), dijon mustard, deli mustard, yellow mustard, parmesan cheese, mayonnaise, and ketchup.

And finally, two kinds of milk. Normally we would have two gallons of the kind on the left, which is local non-homogenized milk, but we went through one gallon of that really quickly and rather than drive way out of my way to get an additional gallon, I just picked up an easy to come by organic milk.

Next row, pickles, chocolate sauce, worcestershire sauce, salsa, fish sauce, hoisin sauce, and salad dressing.

And the bottom.... bottled water, seltzer(my newest obsession, no sodium, no sweeteners, yay!), and lemon juice.

Tomorrow..... What's in my freezer?!

Success! (of more than one kind)

I finished Fast Food Nation! I didn't finish it last night, but I did finish it during lunch today. So, I was close to my goal at least. The husband wanted to turn in early last night, so I didn't get much reading time after the boys went to bed(none, I don't think). Ah, well. It's all good. And the book is DONE! It was really very informational. I can't say I learned a ton I didn't already know. It more or less elaborated on concepts I'm already aware of. It's sort of like watching Super Size Me. You already know fast food is bad for you, but the details and the explosion of information renew your zeal about it. If I'm being honest, I would have to admit that reading the book, at times, made me crave fast food. Yes, yes, terrible I know. And no, I did not indulge. And I do not plan to. Oy vey. I think I need to watch Super Size Me again.

And now I'm launching into reading something else altogether. I'm still plodding my way through The Omnivore's Dilemma. But I am also working on improving my overall way of thinking by reading something motivational, in this first case, This I Believe. I will readily and openly admit to being a huge NPR geek. I listen to it often. And now that I've finally figured out how to stream it on my computer such that I can play it on our multi-room stereo system in the house, I am golden! I used to primarily listen to it in the car, and to podcasts now and again(a special favorite is This American Life). This I Believe is something that NPR airs from time to time, and I have always very much enjoyed it. So a book seems perfect!

As for my other success, it was the meal plan for last week. I made my meal plan on Tuesday evening. I printed all my recipes, my grocery list, and the meal plan itself(which is posted on the refrigerator for the week). I went shopping on Wednesday and remembered everything I needed. And every single day I managed to prepare the meal that I had set out to make. So at no point in this last week did we resort to take-out or any other unnecessary anything. Yay! And even one night of the week that I ended up going out with a friend, I prepared dinner for the guys before leaving. As I sit here, the chili is in the crock pot. It's done, but is cooling off a bit before we eat.

Just for fun, here's last week's meal plan:

Wednesday - Garden Gumbo, Rolls

Thursday - Casbah Curried Chicken, Couscous

Friday - Mom's Meatball Stroganoff, Egg noodles, Corn

Saturday - Indian Spiced Chicken, Rice, Israeli Salad

Sunday - Mexican Chicken Stew, Corn muffins

Monday - Fettucini with Bolognese Sauce, Salad

Tuesday - Chili, Tortilla chips

I am also happy to say that we had no food waste! Well, I can't claim that everyone ate absolutely everything that was on their plate. BUT. On work days, the husband took leftovers from the night before for his lunch. In some cases, Ansel and I ate leftovers at home for lunch as well. And if there was still excess, I froze the leftovers as individual portions to use at a later date. So now we have six or seven individual meals frozen. Awesome. That'll help in a pinch. And it means I didn't throw money in the trash.

OK, now I need to get down to business planning this next week. I'm also taking on homemade laundry detergent. It's not exactly "crunchy," but it will be inexpensive. So that's something!

And because posts are better with pictures, here's a picture of the boys from three years ago! Wow! Time flies.

Meal plans for saving! (money AND my sanity)

Dinner is a drain. There, I said it. I get really tired of making dinner. It happens every gosh darn day! Sometimes I wish we could take a day off from dinner. But alas, the kids and the husband won't hear of it!

I used to be a non-planner when it came to meals. I would buy staple ingredients every week and freeze whatever meats were on sale that week, buy shelf stable items as I could afford to stock up, and buy way too many vegetables that would end up going bad before I used them.

It was wasteful, but at that point we were eating all conventionally grown items, so we could 'afford' the waste. Now that I've placed a priority on natural and organic items, the price tag is higher. In order to make up the difference, we had to eliminate waste.

And that's where meal planning comes in. Each week, I plan out the next week's dinners. Lunches are easy.... Leftovers go with the husband to work, Ansel and I eat leftovers if we have them or we eat something easy like sandwiches, and Kadin takes a sandwich to school each day. Breakfast is basic staple items.... oatmeal, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc. So those are just a regular part of my shopping.

This has definitely simplified my life. Because I know what I will be making for dinner, I find it easy to start dinner preparations earlier in the day, or overnight if necessary. There is no last minute panic about what to eat. I also don't wait too long to start, then realizing what I had decided on will take more time than I have available. I can also plan the more time consuming meals for the days of the week when I have more time to devote to them. It is really a load off my mind, AND, I find myself almost never wishing we could just order pizza or go out to eat.

I think I'll start posting my weekly meal plans, and then updating the blog most days about how things have turned out. Here's this week's plan:

Wednesday: Rotisserie chicken(the store-made kind, our natural foods grocery has them on sale), baked potatoes, and steamed broccoli.

Thursday: Pasta with bolognese sauce and salad.

Friday: Chicken mole, rice, and corn.

Saturday: Chicken rollers(a sale item at the store), ravioli(another store sale item), and salad.

Sunday: Burritos(this is a big batch make ahead item) and salad.

Monday: Red lentils, palak paneer, and rice.

Tuesday: Thai pasta salad.

I made bread last night, and will be keeping up with that this week. I also plan to make snickerdoodles for the boys and granola snacks for Ansel, as well as protein bars for the husband.

Off to the store we go! Let's hope I stay under budget again!

Gushing about groceries

OK, so I will admit.... One of the few things I like about the place I live is the natural foods store. I know, I know. But we are only here because of a job, and it's just really not a good fit for our family. But. The natural foods store is awesome. And what's further amazing is that it's actually a chain! And thus being a part of a chain, they offer awesome sales and coupons and such.

Which leads to today. I had three coupons that could all be used simultaneously, so off we went! (fwiw, we were running errands and in the vicinity anyway. I would not have made the whole trip just for this. That's not very eco-friendly!)

So for a whopping $6 and change I got...... this:

That's a pound of ground chuck(all natural, etc. etc.), a pound of salsa, three pounds of local apples, a HUGE bag of organic chips, and raisins. (the raisins were filler. I had to spend $5 to get two of the deals).

Additionally, I DID bake the other day.... Thursday, I think. But I was in such a rush to bake, clean, and so on that I didn't take the time for pictures. We do have fresh bread, banana bread, and chocolate chip cookies to enjoy. And I made peach muffins this morning for the kids and I to eat. Yay baking!

Its grocery Wednesday!

So my new grocery day is Wednesday, for a variety of reasons. So this morning, I spent about an hour planning the next week's meals, making a list, and crossing my fingers and hoping like heck that I would come in close to budget.

So off I go to the natural foods store, happy companion Ansel in tow. There were samples, he was happy.

And wouldn't you know it, I actually came in slightly UNDER budget! I mean, yes, that money did then get allotted elsewhere(what I don't spend on that week's "needs" I put towards staple items). And the great part is that the vast majority of our food this week, including meats, will be mostly organic, definitely "natural," and some local. No HFCS! Woot!

Here's the haul! $112. I promise you, it's quite a good deal for $112. What's hard to see is the four brown packages of meat, and the large bag of organic flour, and things along those lines. And that milk isn't cheap, but totally TOTALLY worth it!

I also have bread dough about to go into the oven, tomorrow I'll make cookies(promised Ansel) and banana bread(have overripe bananas). If I get on a good roll, I might go ahead and make protein bars, but we'll see. Can't put the cart before the horse!

It feels good to be back on the wagon!