Freezer Friends Swap Today!

I’m so excited. Today is our first freezer friends swap of the season here at my house. We have added one person which makes our group 6. I have always thought that 5 was perfect because when you cook a meal you want to multiply it by 5 so that you are left with one meal for your own family and then 4 for the freezer friends. Multiplying meals by 5 was challenging enough so we will see how 6 goes. I am so excited to get five new recipes in the freezer. This time around I made Creamy Cajun Shrimp Pasta to which I was shocked that there were no objections. I can’t believe that out of 6 families there is no shellfish allergy, seafood dislikes or whatnot which makes me really excited because I think this dish is potentially one of my all-time favorites and it’s so fun to share something with others that you think is so delicious.

Here it is, Creamy Cajun Shrimp Pasta:
1 (8 oz) angel hair pasta or penne pasta
¼ cup butter
1 lb shrimp, peeled & deveined
1 clove garlic
½ t black pepper
1/8 C all-purpose flour
2 T Cajun seasoning
2 cups cream
¼ t salt
¼ cup parmesan cheese

Melt butter in large heavy skillet over medium heat. Saute shrimp for 1 minute on each side. Stir in garlic, and cook for 1 minute. Remove shrimp with a slotted spoon; set aside. Stir in flour and Cajun seasoning. Cook, stirring for 5 minutes. Gradually whisk in milk, then cook until thickened. Add parmesan. Remove from heat, and season with salt. Return shrimip to sauce, and spoon over cooked pasta.
This recipe found its way to me through a freezer friends group of two years ago. Thank you Rachael!

My All Time Favorite Kitchen Tool

Actually, I am not sure that it could be considered an actual “kitchen tool” but it certainly is a tool in my kitchen. I bet my sister-in-law had no idea how valuable this simple Christmas gift of years past would be to me. Ever since I opened up the gift package several years ago it has sat on my kitchen counter and I probably look at it twenty + times a day. It’s a simple recipe holder with a glass front and oak base which matches the oak floors in my kitchen. I believe the sturdy materials add to its value since I have seen many recipe holders made of plastic. I’m not certain a plastic recipe holder could hold the heavy hard-backed books that I sometimes put in mine and the plastic may not clean up as well as the glass in mine. I put my menu in the recipe holder and reference it throughout the day. I also put to-do lists behind the glass as well as any recipe that I am currently fixing and there are adjustments on it for thick stacks so I can pull all my recipes for the month and stack them neatly behind the front menu. Not only is it handy but it keeps everything neat looking and for someone like myself who does not like kitchen clutter of any kind on my counters it is a perfect fit.

Breakfast Popsicles

An Old Favorite Returns

We often have fruit smoothies for breakfast. I mentioned them before but I will elaborate. Basically I freeze browned bananas (after peeling them) three at a time in a freezer bag. In the blender, I toss in a bag of frozen bananas, a few frozen berries, some yogurt (plain or with fruit), some whey protein powder, and orange juice or whatever fruit juice we have or some milk if none and mix it all together. The kids love these smoothies and haven’t tired of them. When there are leftover smoothie slush I pour the remaining liquid into popsicle molds for later. Then we’ll have popsicles for breakfast on another day. They used to think the popsicles were great but somehow it lost its appeal and we haven’t had the popsicles in nearly a year. Well I broke out the popsicle molds again and we had breakfast popsicles this morning and the kids loved them all over again. I suppose it’s like the toy rotation method, sometimes you have to put it a toy away for a while, get it out again and it’s like brand new.

I just read in Martha's Everyday magazine that you can make similar smoothies with rolled oats. I have not tried that before but will give it a shot next time.

Efficient Kitchen Processes saves time and Money

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that there are many tasks in the whole food kitchen that can be done efficiently to save time. Warning: I’m about to babble on yet AGAIN about how great meal planning is. Here it goes. If you have a menu printed out with the ingredients in each meal, when you go to chop your onions for the first meal of the week it is super simple to scan the rest of your week to see if you can chop up 4 onions instead of one for later use. Throw the unused portions that you have chopped in a container and throw them in the fridge. This kind of efficiency can be used in so many ways to reduce the time you spend in the kitchen without sacrificing a whole food diet.

Besides dinner meals, I efficientize (ooo, a made up verb) several breakfast processes also. Whenever I make pancakes for instance I will get out my bowl plus two airtight containers. I measure out my dry ingredients first and triple my recipe into each container. I then label with the kind of pancake and the needed ingredients on the airtight containers since we have 4 or more different pancake recipes regularly. I also do this with several cookie mixes and muffin mixes and most anything that I bake often.

Other ideas include tripling rubs or spice mixes. We like a yellow tumeric rice recipe but there are about 5 or 6 dry ingredients to it. The recipe goes so quickly when it is already mixed up and it takes so little extra time to quadruple the recipe when I already have the ingredients out. I also have a blackened catfish recipe that I like to make so I make a big batch of the blackened seasonings and it lasts many meals.

I believe that the more of these processes that you approach with efficiency in mind the more second nature it becomes for you. It’s like trying to establish a new good habit or way of thinking. You can approach many tasks with an efficient mindset but the kitchen holds the most opportunities.

This efficient approach also lends itself to less waste and therefore money savings. For instance, we love our pumpkin pancake recipe but it only calls for 6 T of pumpkin puree. One can of pumpkin puree holds a lot more than 6 Ts so unless I want to get myself into trouble with those browned buttered frosted cookies (and I have in order not to waste pumpkin puree), I will measure out as many 6Ts in containers or baggies to freeze as the can holds. Then when I get out my premixed pumpkin pancake mix, I just microwave the frozen 6Ts of pumpkin puree, add my butter and milk and we are cooking. Also, in October my menu had three dishes that used canned pineapple chunks. This was no coincidence. The pineapple chunks were needed for two recipes and a third recipe just called for pineapple juice to marinate the meat. When I cooked the first entrée that called for pineapple I scanned the rest of my meals and saw that I needed to divide the can for the second recipe (rather than let the kids gobble up the pineapple) and save the juice for the third.

So when you are all wondering how I cook so much with 3 young kids, I swear to you that I do not. I have freezer meals, crockpot meals and simple pasta meals during the week and I efficientize processes as much as possible for the other meals. The most time I spend in the kitchen for a meal is when I am making a massive amount to freeze or when I am trying a new recipe. It can be done.

“Most Important Things” To-Do List

It comes of no surprise that I am a list person. I love daily lists, I love weekly lists, I love meal planning lists, house cleaning lists, shopping lists for each store that I shop, I love lists. I should really get a bumper sticker that just says I LOVE LISTS. Not only do they help me to organize my time but there is great satisfaction in crossing something that I have accomplished off my lists.
Our very wise Associate Pastor, Father Michael, said in a homily recently that how we spend our time ought to reflect our values. When this life is over how are we going to explain how we spent our time? We are all given the same amount of time in a day, but it is interesting how differently we each spend it.

Most of my lists have action-type tasks on them like “clean under couches” or “return library books” but lately I been thinking about that time management homily and I think my lists could be an opportunity to prioritize my time so that I do get to truly the most important things in life that so often get pushed aside for the action-type tasks. So I am sitting here making my daily list here while I write this post:

Find all library books around house
Pick up library book on hold & return found ones
Read more about Moses with Carter (Exodus)
Write a note to grandmother & have Vivian help w/ picture
Play ball with Dillon
Print out rosary to start saying decade of the rosary with kids with our bedtime prayers
Complete daily household chore list
Contact star wars guy to set date for Carter’s birthday party
Call St Augustine’s again and St Malachi’s regarding baked goods
Bake breakfast muffins for freezing

In looking at my list, it is obvious that the most important things are totally doable and do not take up that much time at all. Lucky for me I am used to sticking to referencing lists throughout the day and crossing items off so I shouldn’t have much trouble. A master list of “Most Important Things” will be helpful. Each day I make up my daily task list I can be sure to incorporate a few of the items on the Most Important Things list. One new organizational scheme always spurs more for me. I love it. I am also picturing a new family meeting where we include the kids in prioritizing our “Most Important Things” list so we all understand what truly is “Most Important” in our family and ensure that we spend our time accordingly.

Happy list crossing off to those daily to-do list people out there today.

A Spontaneous Leftover Day!

Each week I schedule a leftover day. It prevents us from getting burned out on the same food two days in a row and is quite fun to have a completely bizarre variety of food in one meal. I need not tell you that it keeps the grocery budget down as an added bonus. In the event we do not have leftovers (which rarely happens), I’ll throw something together that I have on hand or if we have minimal leftovers that don’t quite make up a meal then I’ll supplement it with something. Last night it was obvious that our fridge needed a leftover day. Somehow I missed a leftover day last week so our leftovers were bursting. Another bonus about the monthly menu planning is that there is no guessing as to how old something in the fridge is. As I switch up the menu I will mark it up so I always know when we had what when I go to clean out the fridge. No fear of eating mysteriously aged food and no risk of wasting food that is only a few days old just because we can’t quite remember when we had that particular meal last.

I especially like an unscheduled spontaneous leftover day because it is a day that I normally would have to cook but didn’t have to. It also means that I can shift everything on the menu forward a day which makes us ahead on the meal planning game because the longer it takes to use up the food we have the happier our budget is.

Another Happy Day at the Bread Outlet

I took out my last 2 loaves of bread from the freezer today so I made a quick bread store run. I was welcomed into the store with a sign that read, "Buy 2, Get 1 Free." yea! I got 12 loaves and 3 for a friend. Happy Bread Outlet Day!

I must confess something. I miscalculated my bread savings in the "Bread Outlet Stores Rock" post because the Pepperidge Farm outlet store charges $1.89 per loaf not the $1.29 I quoted. However, all is not lost because a friend of mine just priced a loaf of Pepperidge Farms at Giant Eagle at $3.69. So if I exclusively shopped at the Pepperidge Farm outlet store rather than the farther away Schwebel's outlet (.89/loaf) at 1.89 per loaf, 365 loaves a year gives me a minimum savings of $657 annually. You can get bread on sale at the grocery occasionally (my friend got hers on sale for $3.29) but that can not outdo the bread outlet's 'buy 2 get 1 free' sale or the frequent 20% sales they hold. So thankfullythe more accurate numbers still conclude that Bread Outlet Stores Rock!

Family Ministry

I have tried to express my thoughts on the family as ministry in several drafts so hopefully this final draft will get my point across, but please bear with me.

I am sure that I am not alone in the world being a SAHM with small children who would love nothing more than to do some good in the world but feel it impossible under our current circumstances. I know lots of SAHMs that do wonderful things to serve others outside their homes and I am constantly in awe of them. To be able to volunteer at a homeless shelter or feed a meal to the homeless or to donate money to a worthy cause are all wonderful ways to give of yourself. I find it frustrating not to be able to do much of anything beyond save a couple box tops for our school or to donate our clothing when it has gone through the last child. I don’t have family around to watch my kids so that I can feed the hungry to or do anything that very young children can not accompany me to. My husband’s work schedule is all over the place and totally unpredictable so I can not rely on him on any day of the week to commit myself to anything. My predicament is nothing unusual.

I have learned, with the help of a couple different mothers groups at my church, that my family is my ministry right now and that is ok. Doing laundry, cooking meals, cleaning up the 100th meal my adorable 1 year old has thrown across the room and certainly teaching my children about God is my ministry to my family.

It stands to reason then that all mothers with their little home ministries can expand their ministry by sharing ideas and helpful tips about their motherly duties. Some of us are better at some things than others. I happen to enjoy the home organization, meal planning and budgeting areas of family life and enjoy sharing ideas that work for my family. I seek advice from friends that are more gifted than I am in areas like laundry, gardening, child rearing and spiritual life.

Being able to expand my family ministry to other families is one of the main reasons I share my systems, recipes and other things with you. The way I do things are rarely unique but I enjoy these aspects of my family ministry and I hope that there are some moms that might find some of my ideas helpful as I am always looking for helpful tips for my family duties. I’m sure there are friends who think I am over-obsessed with these simple household things but it means more than just meal planning and such to me. It’s the only ministry I can do for right now and that is ok. So for those kind friends who have complimented my blog and thought that I should charge for it (I doubt anyone would pay but it’s a sweet thing to say), please accept my little blog of ideas as my ministry to you just as you all minister to me.

Peace be with you.

Minimalist Preferences = True Frugal Life

Since entering this little blogging world I have spent a little time searching for other blogs that talk about frugal family life or money saving tips and such. This is one of my favorite topics so I am just sure that I will find some good ideas somewhere on-line. One theme seems to run through most all of the blogs that I have previewed thus far, how to spend less on stuff. I hate stuff. I don’t want stuff. I also despise shopping for stuff. So aside from buying necessites like deodorant, toothpaste, toilet paper and soap and such I do not give a rats arse if Walgreens has 20 deals right now on unnecessary things like anti-aging cream, which I don’t believe work, or disinfectant kitchen counter spray. Grocery savings coupons and tips usually include 50 cents off some RiceARoni mix or something similar. No, that is not saving. What would really be saving is buying bulk plain rice and adding your own herbs purchased at a country store at a deep discount. It would be cheaper AND healthier since the cheap version would contain less sodium and preservatives and who knows what other un-pronounceable ingredients. Instead of buying anti-aging cream I would prefer to read about how vegetable shortening or something that most households have on hand might be proven to have anti-aging effects when applied topically or how a mixture of distilled vinegar and water disinfects the same as expensive kitchen counter cleaners. Do you get what I’m saying? The way I like to save money is by truly NOT buying stuff vs. spending less on stuff. Making something out of nothing should be more appreciated than spending less on stuff for the sheer genious of it. I suppose this is why I like Amy Dacyczyn’s The Complete Tightwad Gazette so much. I believe the Gazette is out of print now but there are many money saving tips in there that a minimalist like me can appreciate. My hopes is to share money saving tips on this blog that involve a little more time perhaps and possibly a little more work but a lot less money and a lot less stuff.

I am certain that there are blogs out there that would appeal to my minimalist frugal preferences and when I find them I will be sure to add them to my blog list.

The Halloween Candy Gnome

We have a Halloween tradition in our house that has been passed to us through a very clever friend of ours. We have modified the tradition just a bit but basically this is how we handle the overabundance of Halloween candy that our kids try to stuff in their little bodies. On the night of trick-or-treating, the kids may gorge themselves on their candy until the grotesque display makes my husband want to vomit and he calls it quits for the night. The kids go to bed all sugared up and with queezy tummies. The next day they may have candy treats 2-4 at a time a few times throughout the day. After dinner they may choose one piece of candy per years old that they are. They may eat those pieces of candy whenever they wish. The remaining candy is left out for the Candy Gnome. The Candy Gnome will visit any house that has clearly left candy out for him. We leave ours in our front entry hall in our trick-or-treat bags. He takes the candy that is left out for him and delivers it to all the girls and boys who did not get any trick-or-treat candy such as children in hospitals or those who have circumstances where they can not trick-or-treat. The Candy Gnome leaves a small thank you gift. Last year the kids got “head flashlights” that strap around their heads. They had loads of fun in the basement with those. This year the Candy Gnome was not able to shop without children so if he doesn’t get out to shop today then he’ll have to choose something from the Christmas stash. Right now it’s looking like it will be bank calculator jars for the 4 year old and 6 year old and a threesome pack of balls for the 1 year old.

Happy Halloween!