03
Feb 2012

Mocha Chip Muffins

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Last week, I was browsing through a food magazine and saw a recipe for coffee-flavored muffins.  Although I’m not a big fan of coffee, I love coffee-flavored food (especially if chocolate chips are thrown into the mix!).  I used to be hesitant to even tweak recipes for baked goods, and I never would have thought I could come up with a recipe of my own.  I think I was convinced that there was some sort of baking magic that went on in the oven and that any deviation from the recipe would have very bad results.  Now that I’ve been cooking and baking for several years, I’m much more confident in the kitchen.  So I sat down and came up with my own recipe.  I was thrilled with how they turned out, especially given that this was really my first attempt at creating a baking recipe on my own.  I used an egg, since my parents have been providing us with amazing eggs from their backyard chickens lately.  But you could just as easily make a flax egg, so I included that option in the recipe.  I used coffee extract because I like coffee-flavored things.  If you prefer another flavor, you could probably substitute something else instead of the coffee extract.

These are relatively dense muffins.  I’ve found that most of the stuff I bake using almond flour and coconut flour is usually a bit more dense than stuff made with wheat flour.  But that’s just fine, because that’s how I like my muffins.  If you prefer light fluffy muffins though, these might not be your favorites.

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Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a muffin pan (this recipe makes 12 muffins) or line with muffin papers.

Dry Ingredients:

  • 1 cup almonds, ground in food processor
  • 1/2 cup coconut flour
  • 1/2 cup oats ground in the food processor (use gluten-free oats if you’re sensitive to gluten)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp powdered stevia (I just buy the loose ground herb from the bulk section)
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1.5 Tbsp ground flax seed
  • pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients:

  • 1 cup almond milk (or whatever milk you like)
  • 1 egg or a flax egg (I make flax eggs without heating them – works just as well as far as I’m concerned)
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (I made my own in the food processor)
  • 1 Tbsp coconut oil
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 Tbsp coffee extract

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another.  Then mix them together and fold in:

  • 1/3 cup miniature dark chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

The batter will be relatively thick and on the dry-ish side.  Spoon into 12 muffin cups and bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

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Enjoy!  These freeze quite well too.

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Category: food  5 Comments
03
Feb 2012

Kitchen Success!

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Yesterday I cooked one of the soups that I had “crockpot ready” in the freezer.  It turned out fantastic!  It’s one of our favorite soups (the French lentil soup in the bottom left corner of this page), and none of us could tell the difference between the one I make fresh and the one I made by dumping a bag of frozen ingredients into the crock pot.  Definitely a winner! 

So this morning, I spent somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours (I had to help our son with his couch cushion fort in the middle of it, and change a diaper, so exact times are hard to come by) and made five double batches of it for the freezer.  I always double that soup recipe so that it fills up the whole crock pot.  That lasts us two full meals and part of another meal.  So today’s chopping and blanching session should give us at least 12 or 13 meals.  They’ll be perfect for busy mornings when I don’t have time to chop up all the ingredients for soup – all I have to do is dump a bag into the crock pot, add 12 cups of water, and let it cook all day.  Hard to beat that.

I blanched the carrots and potatoes before I added them to the soup bag, and they had the same taste and texture that they usually do when I cooked the soup.  Not sure if it would work if they went in the freezer raw, and I decided to go ahead and blanch the carrots and potatoes for today’s prep session too – it was worth the extra few minutes that it took.

In another kitchen adventure, yesterday I made my own veggie bullion! 

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I got the idea from a reader (thanks Kay!) and decided it was worth trying.  I used this recipe.  The units are all in ounces, so I used our postage scale to weigh stuff before adding it to the food processor.  I didn’t have enough salt (9 ounces is a lot!) so I ended up using about half as much as the recipe calls for.  It’s still very salty and has enough salt in it to keep it from turning solid in the freezer.  So I was able to scoop it out into the bags of soup I was prepping this morning.  By my estimates (based on 1 tsp homemade bullion per cup of water to make broth), the batch of bullion I made yesterday is roughly equivalent to 10 boxes of the bullion cubes that I normally buy for $2.50 per box.  I don’t know how much my ingredients cost, but I would guess somewhere around $8 – $10 (all organic).  And of course the stuff I have in the freezer now doesn’t have yeast extract (MSG) in it.  When I made my soup bags today for the freezer, I replaced half the store-bought bullion with my homemade stuff.  We’ll see how it turns out.  For now, I’m quite excited about it.

Have a wonderful weekend!

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Category: Debt  3 Comments
30
Jan 2012

Freezer To Crockpot Cooking

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I had finally caved in an visited Pinterest, and wasn’t sure if it was going to be awesome or a total time sink.  I’ve since found that it cuts way down on the number of tabs I have open in my browser at any one time.  Instead of just leaving tabs open, I’ve been pinning them onto boards on my Pinterest page so that I can come back to them when I need them.  Whenever I come across ideas I like (anywhere on the web, not just on Pinterest), I add them to my Pinterest page in the appropriate category.  It’s like a visual to-do list and idea page.  I’m definitely liking that aspect of it. 

I’ve found that I don’t spend too much time browsing Pinterest, but when I do, it’s nice.  I can sit here and nurse our little guy while I scroll through ideas for bathroom tile (since we’re going to be putting a bathroom in our basement soon).  And I can easily save the ones I want to show my husband later on – without leaving eight new tabs open in my browser.  Good all around.

A few days ago, I was browsing around Pinterest and came upon this genius idea:  Freezer-to-crockpot meals.  Yes!  I can do this.  I love my crockpot and use it several times a week.  I also love the idea of just dumping a bag into the crock pot, adding some water, and letting it do its thing.  She’s got a ton of other freezer cooking recipes on her site too. 

I wasn’t sure about the idea of just putting the veggies into the freezer raw, since I know a lot of stuff needs to be blanched first.  Plenty of comments on the site indicated that people had no problems with it, but I decided to blanch some stuff first.  I read that potatoes can turn black if you freeze them raw, and I wasn’t sure about carrots.  So I chopped up a ton of potatoes and carrots and blanched them for a couple minutes before I prepped the freezer bags.  It only added a few minutes to the total prep time, and I was doing several meals at once – not a big deal.  If you try this and don’t blanch anything, let me know how it goes!

Here are my first two meals:

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The recipe came from the Costco magazine (bottom left corner), and everyone I’ve ever made it for has raved about it.  I make it at least twice a month, and always make a double batch (which fills my crock pot right to the brim).  Instead of broth, I use water and veggie bullion cubes, so I added the bullion to the bag along with the lentils (rinsed), brown rice, raw onions, garlic and celery, and blanched carrots and potatoes.  A double batch fits nicely in a one-gallon ziplock bag.  All I have to do when I cook it is add 12 cups of water plus one bag to the crockpot.  And it was pretty easy to make a second double batch at the same time. 

This would make a great gift for a family with a new baby or anything else that makes cooking more of a chore than usual.  It would also be a good idea for a get-together with friends.  Each person could bring some ingredients and you could all chop stuff up, blanch whatever needs it, and then stuff a bunch of bags.  Everybody goes home with lots of different ready-for-the-crockpot meals.  Sounds like a winner to me.

I also roasted a bunch of onions and garlic so that I could prep this amazing tomato soup (I cook that one at least twice a month too).  I already have lots of roasted tomatoes in the freezer from last summer’s garden.  So I just combined the spices with some bullion (in place of broth) and the roasted onion and garlic and stashed that in jars in the freezer.  Now all I have to do when I want to make that soup is dump the onion/garlic/spice jar into a pot with a jar of tomatoes and a can of coconut milk and some water.  Couldn’t be much easier than that.  Roasting onions and garlic is easy, but it’s time consuming.  This way I don’t have to think as far in advance about dinner, since everything is already roasted and in the freezer. 

I also prepped the Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken recipe from the original site that I found on Pinterest (link is at the start of this post).  I left out the chicken though, so mine will be BBQ veggies.  I might add tofu or something like that after I cook it, but I’m sure it will be good either way.

I really love this idea.  It makes batch cooking for the freezer seem a lot more do-able.  I spent about 90 minutes putting together enough food to fill the crock pot six times (a full crock pot lasts us at least two meals), and I had a three-year-old helper the whole time.  Definitely not as challenging as spending the entire day in the kitchen for once-a-month cooking, but it will make my crockpot days a lot easier!

If you have links to other sites that have recipes and ideas for prepping crockpot meals ahead of time, please share them in the comments. 

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Category: food, health  15 Comments
22
Jan 2012

More Improvised Exercise Equipment

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Remember when I told you about the walker I started using as a dip station for my Bodyrock workouts?  Well, I have another inexpensive, DIY piece of workout equipment to share with you.

They use sandbags as weights on Bodyrock all the time.  The one they use sells for about $100.  Of course there was no way I was going to spend that sort of money on one.  So I’ve been using the dumbbells that we’ve had for years, and they work ok most of the time.  But heavy metal dumbbells aren’t the most comfortable thing to have stuck behind your neck while doing lunges and squats.  They’re meant to be held in one hand, so it’s a bit awkward and uncomfortable to hold them by the ends.  I use a 30 lb dumbbell for squats, and I have to wrap a sweatshirt around my shoulders to keep the weight from digging into my neck.  Not to mention the fact that it’s hard to get a good grip on a dumbbell if you’re holding it with two hands – and I don’t like the idea of possibly dropping a 30 lb weight on my head or toes.

So I thought about that sandbag some more.  And then I made one.

I went to Goodwill and found a sturdy duffle bag that has handles on the top and both sides.  It was $4.

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Next, I raided my fabric stash and found an old flannel sheet.  I cut five rectangles of flannel to make into bags, and I sewed around the edges twice to make them nice and strong.  I also had a couple of fabric bags that had once contained soap nuts – perfect, since all I had to do with those two was sew them shut once they were filled.

We have a pea-gravel driveway in our side yard, and I used our postage scale to weigh some gravel.  6.25 cups of gravel weighed five pounds.  So after I had seven open-top fabric bags, I filled each one with 6.25 cups of pea gravel.  Then I sewed the tops shut.  Easiest sewing project ever.  I triple stitched the tops closed, folding over the hemmed edges before sewing over them to contain loose ends.

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I put a sandbag (gravel bag?) in the zippered compartment on each end of the duffle bag to help keep them from all clumping together in the middle.  Then the other five go in the main compartment.  That gives me a 35 pound sandbag, and I can reduce the weight in five pound increments as needed.

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I used it yesterday for my workout, and it’s so much better than the dumbbells.  I was able to hold it behind my neck without it digging in, and it was easy to keep a good grip on the handles.  I love it!  The whole thing cost me $4, since the gravel and fabric for the bags were stuff I already had.  Even if you had to purchase the fabric and gravel, it wouldn’t be expensive.  The Goodwill store near here has 99 cent jeans days when all the jeans in the store are on sale for 99 cents.  You could buy a pair of jeans and chop the legs into sections to use as sandbags – all you’d have to do is sew the top and bottom shut.  And it doesn’t have to be pretty – you don’t even have to turn over the rough hems if you don’t want to.  Pea gravel and sand are both pretty inexpensive too.

This whole project took me about an hour, although that was with two kids “helping” me.  I’m guessing it would take less than 45 minutes if you were uninterrupted.

Hooray!  I now have a dip station and a sandbag!  They aren’t as pretty as the fancy ones, but they’re functional and that’s really all that matters – especially when they cost a fraction of what the fancy ones do.

EDIT:  For any of you who are also fans of Bodyrock – Zuzana has her own YouTube channel now, and is posting new workouts: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZuzkaLight?feature=watch  You can also follow her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ZuzkaLight  I think she’s great, but I’m also happy with the new team at Bodyrock.tv.  So I’ll be mixing it up with workouts from both of them.

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Category: health, just my life, the simple life  3 Comments
18
Jan 2012

Too Much Inspiration

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EDIT – just discovered the fitness and food sections on Pinterest.  I might have to up my time limit from five minutes to fifteen.

I have been purposely avoiding Pinterest for quite some time.  From what I had heard, I knew that it could be the sort of site that could suck me in and turn into a major time waster, so I just avoiding going there in the first place.  I don’t remember what convinced me to finally go check it out a few weeks ago, but I did.  And sure enough, half an hour later I was still browsing around.  Damn you, Pinterest.

I loved looking at wide-open, clutter-free rooms and clean kitchen counters.  I got some good ideas for food storage, toy storage and garage organization.  And seeing all of those neat spaces inspired me to get up and clean my own kitchen.  So I did.  After half an hour on Pinterest, I spent the next half hour making my kitchen sparkle and (sort of) look like the immaculate, minimalist kitchens that I had been eyeballing online.

But the next time I went to Pinterest, I found myself looking at all sorts of other stuff – crafty things like altered t-shirt dresses and refinished furniture and handmade birthday wall hangings.  They all looked cute and crafty, but – yikes!  I was over-inspired.  If that’s not already a word, I’m coining it now.  Inspiration is a great thing – if we put it to use and it makes our life (or someone else’s) better.  But over-inspiration seems like it could just lead to… nothing at all except more browsing around online once our crafty DIY to-do list gets too long and becomes paralyzing.

Simplicity is awesome.  But sometimes we tackle a DIY project in the name of simplicity and it ends up being way more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive (and maybe not as enjoyable) as we had planned.  If it’s something you truly love doing, then by all means – do it.  But if you’re forcing yourself to do crafty things because you think you should or because your friends are doing it, or because (fill in the blank)… you might want to ask whether you’d be better off without it in the first place, or looking on Craigslist or at a thrift store to see if you can find a used version of whatever it is.  If you love quilting, make a quilt.  If you just think you want to love quilting but actually hate it, go buy a quilt at a garage sale – if you actually need a quilt (that post is worth reading no matter what you think about quilts – and it’s funny!).  Otherwise, carry on without a quilt.

I’ve been back to Pinterest a few times since then.  I set a five minute time limit for myself, which keeps me from browsing around for ages (Why is it that time goes by so fast when we’re online?  Why does it not go by that fast when we’re stuck in traffic?  Questions to ponder…).  And I focus on areas that can help me organize and simplify the life I already have/want.  For example, I’m looking for good ways to organize toys in our playroom.  We don’t have any furniture or shelving in there, so everything is on the floor.  There has to be a better way.  And of course, knowing me, it will have to be something I can buy used that won’t cost a lot of money.

But the problem with browsing around and looking at toy storage ideas is that it can easily lead to browsing around and looking at all sorts of other home improvements.  Which can lead to jealousy or a desire to upgrade things that really don’t need to be upgraded.  As an example – my kitchen is fine.  It’s clean and orderly (and no longer contains a yeast packet that expired 8 years ago).  My counters are clear (well, most of the time anyway) and I have ample space to work.  My counters are laminate and my cabinets are plain light-colored wood.  My stove has metal coil burners, and while I prefered the glass-top stove that we put in our old house, the one I have now works just fine.  Nothing in my kitchen is fancy, but I’m able to cook all sorts of awesome food there, and everything works just the way it should.  I could spend a ton of money making my kitchen look like something from a magazine.  Or I could spend a ton of hours replacing the fronts of my cabinet doors with old barn wood and painting our dining room table to give it a crafty “distressed” look.  But I’m not going to.  Because I would rather spend that money and time doing something else.

So while I think it’s awesome to see all the crafty, amazing things people have done on sites like Pinterest and BetterAfter, I think it’s just as important to remind ourselves to be grateful for what we have and to allow ourselves to stop improving when everything is fine the way it is.  So instead of browsing Craigslist to find a dresser that I can turn into a craft storage area, I’ll read this post and remind myself that my house feels much better with less furniture in it – even if it’s impossibly cute, crafty furniture.  And I’ll keep getting rid of clutter instead of trying to organize it. And I’ll find some second-hand shelves that will work just fine to store toys in the playroom.  They probably won’t be amazing or worthy of being featured on a home-improvement website, but they will get the toys up off the floor, and that’s really all that I’m looking for.

I know a lot of my readers are big DIYers and into crafty stuff.  So tell me.  Do sites like Pinterest inspire you?  Or do they just make you look around at your own stuff and feel like you need to change/upgrade everything in sight?

As an aside, I found this cookie recipe yesterday on Pinterest.  They are amazing.  They took five minutes.  And our son loved squishing them with a fork to make the lines on them.  I subbed walnuts instead of peanuts and used sunflower seed butter instead of peanut butter, because that’s what we had on hand.  They turned out fantastic.

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Category: home improvement, just my life, minimalism, other bloggers  27 Comments
16
Jan 2012

Give New Life To Empty Glass Jars

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Several years ago, I got rid of nearly all of my plastic food storage containers.  I have several pyrex dishes with lids and lidded casserole dishes that I use to store large quantities of leftovers.  But most of the time, I use empty glass jars. 

My freezer is full of repurposed glass jars holding things like flax seeds, chia seeds, and hemp protein.  I order stuff like that online in bulk and it comes in big plastic bags that can be a bit unwieldy.  So when it arrives, I dump the bags into several jars and stash them in the freezer.  Much easier to dump chia seeds out of a one-quart jar than a five pound bag. 

My fridge is also full of glass jars.  I buy nuts and seeds from the bulk section of our grocery store, and store them in the fridge in glass jars.  When I make salad dressings and smoothies and soups, they get stored in glass jars (if they make it as far as the leftover stage!).

I use empty glass jars to store stuff in my pantry too. 

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Remove the labels, wash out the jars, and glue on new labels.  Easy and free and much better for keeping track of everything than it would be if I kept them in the bulk bags from the store. 

Jars are also a great way to shake up protein supplements or any other powdered drinks.  I mix things like powdered greens, probiotics, spirulina, protein, etc. with water every day.  I use my blender for smoothies, but when the ingredients are powdered, shaking everything together in a jar is a quick and easy solution.  Much faster and more effective than stirring them in a glass with a fork (always ends up chunky.  Spirulina chunks?  Yuck.) and less expensive than one of those purpose-made “shaker jars” that some of the protein powder companies sell.

Another way I love to use empty glass jars is for giving edible gifts.  I enjoy cooking and baking, and food is always a welcome gift.  I don’t ever want to give people food in containers that they feel they need to return.  And I don’t like the idea of buying disposable food storage containers just for the purpose of giving food to someone – seems like a waste of money and resources.  So instead, I save the nicest of my empty glass jars for this purpose.  Large, wide mouth jars make great containers for soup.  Smaller jars – especially if they have interesting shapes – look great filled with bite size cookies (or dough balls!) or spiced nuts.  Fill jars with layered ingredients for “soup in a jar” or “cookies in a jar”.  Use your imagination!  spruce them up with some pretty fabric glued to the lid.  Tie a ribbon around the top with the recipe attached.

One caveat.  Please don’t use this as an excuse to have 100 empty jars cluttering up your shelves!  I have a lot of jars in use in my pantry, freezer and fridge.  But that means I don’t really need any more.  I save the nicest ones these days to use for food gifts, but I make liberal use of the recycling bin for most jars we get these days.  Save the jars you can use right now or in the immediate future.  Recycle the rest.  And enjoy your recycled, frugal, plastic-free food storage!

I know you guys have plenty of other ideas for repurposing glass jars around the house.  Please share!

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Category: clutter, just my life, organic living  18 Comments
10
Jan 2012

Saying No – So That You Can Say Yes To What Matters

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I’m a people pleaser.  Always have been, probably always will be.  I want to make people around me happy, and that means that saying no is not my strong suit.  If people ask me to do something or go somewhere or help them with something, I usually say yes.  That’s fine most of the time, but sometimes I’d prefer to say no.  And that’s harder than it sounds.

My husband is very good at saying no, and very good at putting his family first above all else.  If something is going to interfere with his time with us, he says no, and it doesn’t bother him at all.  But for me, I find myself saying yes more often than I’d like, in order to avoid the guilt that sometimes goes along with saying no.

I’ve always been able to say no to things like girl scout cookies and the guy who comes to the door selling magazines to pay for his spring break trip to Mazatlan.  But it’s much harder when it’s someone I know.

I’ve been getting some practice with saying no lately, and although it’s still not easy, it feels much better afterwards, knowing that I’ve stayed true to myself and the people who matter most to me.

One of our neighbors brought over some cookies at Christmas with a note saying that she was starting a monthly ladies card game night at her house, and was inviting all the ladies in the neighborhood.  Her husband passed away last year, and I can definitely understand where she’s coming from.  But I’m in a very different situation.  My husband and I both work (from home, but we’re still working), and we have two little boys.  We’re also in the middle of finishing our basement and the yard is an ongoing project.  When I have free time, I want to spend it with my husband and our boys, or with our extended family and a few close friends.  I don’t want to make new friends right now.  That might sound selfish or odd, but I just don’t have space in my life to add anyone else right now.  Give me a few years, and things will likely be different.  The boys will be in school, our basement will be finished – by then, I might have room for new friendships.  But for now, nurturing the relationships I already have is my priority.

Anyway, I opted to not attend the first get-together, and figured that was the end of it.  Then a couple weeks ago, the lady who was organizing the whole thing stopped by our house to ask me again if I wanted to join.  I politely told her that we were just too busy with the boys and the basement, and thanked her for inviting me.

A few days later, another lady stopped by with her pre-teen daughter and said that the first lady had mentioned that we’re too busy with the boys and she was offering her daughter as a babysitter so that I would be able to attend the card nights.  Again, I politely said thanks, but no thanks.

Then yesterday, another lady from down the street contacted me to see if I was aware of the ladies night plans and would I like to come along?  My husband said I must be the coolest lady on the block, since everyone is trying to talk me into joining the card game.  He’s sweet.

Anyway, I told the third lady that I’m just not taking on any more commitments right now, and thanked her for contacting me.

In all three cases, I used strategies that my husband and I learned a long time ago when we read The Power of a Positive No – definitely a good book if you have a hard time saying no.  Add it to your library list!

And in all three cases, even though it was a bit uncomfortable for me to say no at the time, I felt good about myself afterwards.  If I had said yes in order to avoid the uncomfortable feeling, I would have been bummed afterwards, thinking “what did I get myself into?!”  I respected myself and my own desires and my commitment to my family and friends.  I avoided spreading myself too thin.  Even though the card game night would only be once a month, it’s easy for once a month things to spawn other commitments too – especially when lots of people are involved.  One of the ladies sells candles at house parties, which means that there would likely have been more uncomfortable moments of feeling obligated to do or buy something in the future if I had become part of that group.  Which would have been a bummer, especially since it’s not really a group that I want to be part of in the first place.

Anyway, I’m feeling good about saying no.  For some of you, this might be second nature.  But I know that there are plenty of you out there who have the same struggles I do when it comes to saying no.  It’s definitely a skill worth building though.  Remind yourself to be true to what really matters rather than what’s right in front of you at the moment.  Make a list of what’s important to you and tape it to your bathroom mirror as a daily reminder.  And then focus on those things.  Don’t sacrifice them in order to please other people or avoid temporary discomfort.

Leo Babauta wrote a post recently about making room for a new year, and the second item on his list involves clearing his schedule as much as possible, which he noted often means saying no to people.  His list is great, and I would add to it a reminder that January 1 is a very arbitrary day to make changes in your life.  You can make changes any day – any hour of any day, really.  And an uncluttered schedule is a beautiful thing.

Before I go, I want to share this DIY post with you.  Three pieces of homemade furniture from one piece of plywood.  Pretty awesome.

 

 

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Category: family, goals, just my life  8 Comments
05
Jan 2012

Kitchen Decluttering

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If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’ve done a lot of decluttering over the past couple years.  I’ve taken numerous carloads of stuff to Goodwill, and have (except for last month when I was on a mission to find stuff for our son’s play kitchen) mostly stopped going in to shop when I drop stuff off.  I got rid of about half of my craft supplies, and I’ve cleared out closets and cupboards all through the house, tossing or recycling or donating stuff that we didn’t need anymore. 

I had already made one pass through the kitchen a year or so ago, getting rid of stuff that we weren’t using.  But I mostly focused on gadgets and excess glassware rather than food.  Last night, I was browsing around online and I came across this awesome blog written by a lady who has managed to get rid of 10,000 things by purging 100 items at a time!  Pretty inspiring if you’re thinking about getting rid of clutter.  Christine’s writing had me laughing out loud, and then it got me up off my butt and into the kitchen to do something about our too-full cupboards. 

I love to cook.  And to shop for groceries.  We eat all of our meals at home (and I do mean all… we took a friend out for his 90th birthday last month and he chose Olive Garden.  But before that, we hadn’t eaten out since September).  That’s how I justify our full pantry, freezer, and cupboards.  But I had noticed lately that there was stuff at the back of the cupboards that I was never using, and it was just serving to make the cupboards a little less useful than they would otherwise be.

So at about 11pm, I was standing in the kitchen surrounded by boxes and jars and bags of stuff that I didn’t need.  Some of it was a wee tad bit expired and went in the trash:

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Yes, we moved to a new house in 2009.  I vaguely remember being in a big hurry to clean out the old house and I think I tossed everything from the fridge and pantry into a cooler and boxes without paying much attention.  But you would think that I would have noticed this when I unpacked.  Or at any time during the past 2.5 years.  Anyway.  Moving on. 

In addition to a couple of seriously expired things, I also found a few duplicates.  Two bags of dill seed (that’s going to take a while to use up…), three containers of cardamom, two bags of ground ginger.  Good thing I like to cook from scratch and use a lot of spices. 

By the time I finished consolidating, purging and cleaning, I had quite a pile on the kitchen table.  All of this stuff will either be donated to family or friends who will use it, or trashed if it’s expired, or recycled if it’s an empty container (I was able to consolidate a lot of stuff so that it takes up less cabinet space.  Three honey jars are now combined into one, for example):

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I also found a few more gadgets and dishes that I didn’t need.  Three baby food grinders?  I think we’re fine with one. 

I came across a few nearly empty jars of cocoa butter and coconut oil that I had used a while back to make lotion.  So I dumped them into a saucepan, melted them down, and filled a container with my newly-minted lotion.  That meant I was able to recycle three containers that had been taking up space in my pantry.

I ended up getting rid of everything in that picture plus about half that much again by the time I was finished.  So much better.  I don’t have to root around in the cupboard to find what I’m looking for.  And everything in the cupboards is stuff that I use on a regular basis.  And none of it expired when I was in my 20s. 

Anyway, I hope Christine’s blog inspires you and makes you laugh.  And if you have anything in your kitchen that expired in 2004, please tell me about it to make me feel better!

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02
Jan 2012

Small Steps To Create A Great Year

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Happy New Year!  I hope that 2012 got off to a good start for you.  I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions, simply because the date seems so arbitrary.  I prefer to make changes throughout the year as I think of them, and January 1 is no different from any other day in that regard.  One difference is with financial goals – it’s handy for us to start over on January 1 each year with those, simply because accounts like IRAs have annual maximum contribution amounts, and we like to get going as soon as possible when the new year starts. For most things though, we make changes as we go and focus on our goals throughout the year.

But I know that the new year inspires a lot of people to make changes, and I get that.  It’s a new beginning, a blank slate for the year you want to create.  And in keeping with that, I thought I’d share some of our favorite habits that help to keep our life happy and smooth.

Notice I said “habits” and not resolutions or fads or quick-fixes.  Resolutions have a dismal success rate, simply because people tend to make big plans and then let them go by the wayside soon after (ever visit a gym the first week in January and then the first week in April?  Notice a difference?).  Fads and quick-fix solutions are similar – if it’s not a sustainable, long-term change in habits, it’s not going to stick.  Not only will it not succeed, but it will probably set you back even further because you’ll be dealing not only with the original problem, but also with the sense of failure that goes along with not succeeding at sticking to whatever resolutions you set for yourself.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about my favorite habits:

  • Make your bed every morning.  I started doing this around the time I turned 32.  These days, I can’t believe that I spent so many years with a bed that was only made about two days a week.  It takes about 30 seconds each morning to make the bed, and it changes everything.  It makes the room feel clean and put-together.  It makes me feel ready for the day.  It makes me much more likely to keep the rest of the room (and the whole house!) tidy, since the bed looks nice.  Honestly, if you’re not already making your bed everyday, this is an easy habit to establish because it takes so little time.  I’m not talking about hospital corners here.  Just pull the sheet up, pull the comforter or blanket up, and put the pillows where they belong, either under or on top of the comforter.  Done.  I’m serious about it taking 30 seconds.
  • Exercise every day.  How much is up to you.  If you don’t exercise at all right now, five minutes a day will make a difference.  And I’m not saying go out and lift weights for two hours a day – moderation is important, as is “active rest” (which means that even on a rest day, you still go for a walk, for example).  I honestly believe that some sort of activity or exercise every single day is far better for setting the exercise habit than scheduling a specific workout Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for example.  Things that we do everyday get etched into our brains more permanently and become habits faster and easier than things we only do sporadically.  So commit to at least some exercise every day.  Walking counts.  So does five minutes of push ups on your living room floor.  So does a game of basketball with your kids at the park.  Do whatever you want.  Make it fun.  Tailor it to the equipment and gear you already have (or do bodyweight exercises that don’t require any equipment at all – no excuses!).  Don’t worry about finding just the right plan or just the right shoes or just the right gear.  Improvise.  Did I already say make it fun?  I’m repeating it because it’s so important.  I remember taking a kick boxing class at the gym several years ago.  I hated every minute of it.  Same thing with a step aerobics class that I took when I was in college.  If I had based my opinions on exercise on what I thought of the step aerobics class, I’d have quit right then.  But instead I found all sorts of exercise that I love.  Personally, I much prefer solitary sports and things that require strength, flexibility and endurance rather than teamwork or coordination.  Someone else might have exactly the opposite preferences and would be much better suited to daily pick-up basketball games.  It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do something every day.  For the last 8 months, I’ve been using Bodyrock.tv for my workout inspiration, and I love it.  It only takes 10 – 15 minutes most days.  It’s free and you can do it in your living room (hooray for not trying to find space in a crowded gym right now!).
  • Eat right.  Skip the fads.  Skip the drastic elimination diets or anything that calls for dramatically different eating patterns for 30 days or something like that.  Sure they’ll probably “work” in the short term, but what happens when you’re allowed to go back to eating something other than celery and yogurt?  Different eating habits work for different people.  Meat, dairy and grains are controversial subjects in the discussion about healthy eating.  So do what feels best for you.  There are some non-grey areas though:  sugar, processed food and soft drinks come to mind.  I would say that the more you limit (or eliminate all together) those, the better off you’ll be.  Prepare your own food.  It doesn’t have to be fancy or take a long time, but eat stuff that doesn’t come out of a box or a can.  Oh She Glows has amazing recipes almost every day, and they’re pretty much always a hit when I make them.  Her site appeals to me because it’s vegan and she cooks everything from scratch, but that won’t be for everyone.  Search around a bit.  Find a cooking site that inspires you.  Subscribe to the feed so that the new recipes show up in your inbox.  Create a way to save the ones that you want to try and to keep track of the ones that get rave reviews.  I have a simple Google Docs sheet where I put links to recipes that we love.  I’ve been using it for about a year, and it’s become a great resource.  I can scroll through it and be reminded of recipes I’d have otherwise forgotten about, and it always provides ample inspiration for what meals I’m going to make in the coming week.  We never have “what to make for dinner?” dilemmas anymore.
  • Spend less than you earn.  This is another one that has become cliche because it gets tossed around so much.  How exactly do you do it, especially if you’ve never done it before?  It’s all about habits, and spending is one area where computers and automation have made it very easy to stick with a goal.  Set up an online savings account.  Don’t spend so long comparing interest rates that you stress yourself out and abandon the whole idea.  Just get it done.  Then schedule an automatic contribution to the account – even $50 or $100 a month adds up over a few years.  The key is to not touch the money once it’s in the account, unless it’s a bona fide emergency.  The definition of that will be different for different people, but I’d say that the more strict you are with what counts as an emergency, the better off you’ll be, and the faster your emergency fund will grow.  If you have trouble with charging more on your credit card than you can pay off each month (without touching that emergency fund!), you might want to consider ditching the credit cards.  Personally, we put everything on a credit card and pay it off every month.  We’ve been doing that for years, and it’s the method that works for us.  Our American Express card puts 2% of our spending into an IRA, and we don’t pay any fees or interest charges.  It works for us, but that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone.  Switch to a cash-only method if you find yourself unable to pay off your card in full each month.
  • Start saving for your future, beyond the basic emergency fund.  Again, automation makes this easy.  If you have access to a retirement plan through your employer, make sure that you’re contributing enough to get the maximum employer match.  Beyond that, if you can contribute the maximum allowable amount, go for it.  You can also set up an IRA on your own and arrange to have contributions made automatically throughout the year (Optimize.com has some good tools you can use to make sure you’re making the most of your savings).  You’ll thank yourself some day.
  • Slow down.  Actively work to reduce the amount of commitments you have and the amount of time you spend multi-tasking.  Are there things in your weekly schedule that you do because you feel like you should, but they aren’t really adding anything of importance to your life?  Try cutting them out and see how you feel.
  • Try going without TV for a while.  This is one area where you might want to do a 30 day challenge or something like that.  Put your TV in the garage or somewhere else out of sight for a month and see how it goes.  If you’re unhappy with the arrangement at the end of the month, by all means move the TV back where it was.  But you might surprise yourself and find that you love all the extra time you have in the evenings.  Netflix and all the other online streaming programs make it easy to catch up on your favorite TV shows (without any commercials so an hour-long show only takes about 40 minutes), and you can always watch movies on your computer too.  We got rid of our TV a few years ago, it was definitely a good decision.  My husband listens to football games on the radio while he works on our basement, and we use a laptop for Netflix.  The monthly fee for Netflix is a fraction of what it would cost to have cable TV, and we never feel like we’re missing anything.  Again, this might seem like something that you’d hate, but you won’t know until you give it a try.
  • Stop buying stuff for a while.  30 days, six months, a year – whatever feels good to you.  You have enough shoes.  And clothes.  And kitchen gadgets.  And furniture.  Truthfully, most of us (including my own family) have far more than we need, and should probably be getting rid of stuff in addition to not buying more stuff.  But we can at least start by stemming the flow of clutter into our homes.  Don’t shop for fun.  Don’t open catalogs that come in the mail (and ask to be taken off their mailing lists so that no more arrive).  If you browse around in a store or page through a catalog, you’ll definitely find stuff you want.  Whether you need it is a whole different story, but wanting things we don’t have tends to lead to dissatisfaction.  And we don’t want any of that.
  • HAVE FUN!  Focus on things that make you happy.  Find pleasure in small stuff.  Don’t wait for the weekend or for your vacation or for a special day… just enjoy today.  Remind yourself of all that you have to be grateful for.  Don’t compare yourself or your life with others (remember, when we do that, we usually don’t know the whole story and we’re comparing our strengths to their weaknesses or vice versa).  Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you.  Smile.  Hold the door for someone.  Shovel your neighbor’s sidewalk.  Be kind without expecting anything in return.  Tell yourself it’s going to be a great day.  Then make yourself right.

Here’s to a great 2012!

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26
Dec 2011

Great Deals (And A Coupon!) At My Favorite Online Health Food Store

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Good morning!  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.  We had a great day surrounded by family, and our son loved his kitchen and felt food.  We set it up in our dining room, and as I’m typing this he’s got an entire meal prepared and served at the dining room table.  And as predicted, our baby had all sorts of fun with the boxes and wrapping paper.  My parents brought over my new walker, and it works perfectly for dips, reverse push ups, and all sorts of leg/knee raises.  I love it!

Now that Christmas is over, a lot of us start thinking about the new year and what we hope to accomplish or change during it.  We don’t do resolutions per se, but we do set goals for ourselves and make plans for what we want to do in the coming year.  For us, 2012 will be all about our basement – we’re hoping to finish it entirely by the end of the year.  And of course we have our standard financial goals of maxxing out our IRAs, contributing to our SEP IRAs, and putting aside money to eventually pay off our mortgage.  One of the best things about automatic contributions to savings accounts, retirement accounts, college savings plans, etc., is that you don’t really have to think about them.  If you’ve been meaning to set up an automatic savings contribution, do it now so that you’ll be off to a great start in the new year.

If any of you have plans to eat better in 2012, you might want to take advantage of a special sale coupon valid until the end of the year at The Raw Food World.  This awesome online store is owned by Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes-Monarch.  They recently had a baby who was born at home in their tub – of course I loved that story!  I’ve been ordering stuff from their store for a while now, and it always arrives with samples of things like chia seeds or Supergreen powder, along with a photocopy of a handwritten note from Matt.

From now until the end of December, you can use the code HOLIDAY18 when you checkout at The Raw Food World online store, and you’ll get 17.5% off any size order (the coupon code works for everything in the store except appliances and exercise equipment, so they’re also offering another coupon – HOLIDAY12 – that you can use on some exercise equipment and some appliances.  Check out their store for more details).  It’s a pretty awesome deal, and I’m definitely going to be stocking up on some stuff this week.

In addition to the coupon, they have some awesome at-cost specials going on at the moment – I got an amazing deal on a bag of 1000 chlorella tablets last week.  And the best part?  Our three-year-old chomps on a chlorella tablet every morning with his breakfast and says he likes the taste!

I buy our chia seeds from them too, and we go through a lot of chia seeds around here.  Our Christmas morning breakfast was overnight oats/quinoa/chia in a mixture of almond milk and coconut milk eggnog (an amazing seasonal treat from the folks at So Delicious).  I had leftover quinoa in the fridge so I dumped it into a bowl with raw oats and a bunch of chia seeds.  Then I added the almond milk and a bit of the eggnog, stirred it around, and let it sit overnight in the fridge.  We had a great breakfast the next morning without any effort at all.  I make all sorts of chia puddings – they’re like magic!  I usually start with 1 part chia to 2 parts liquid and go from there, adding more liquid if it seems too thick.  I blend up nuts and fruit (cranberry chia pudding is a favorite around here) to change the flavor, and we always love a bowl of chocolate chip mint chia pudding during the summer when our mint plants are bursting with leaves.  Chia seeds are a great source of calcium, so if you’re looking for alternatives to dairy, these might be a perfect solution.

One of our new favorite foods – which we also found at The Raw Food World – is kelp noodles.  For about six months now, we’ve been eating very little wheat (or grains at all, other than oats and seeds like buckwheat and quinoa), and I’ve been searching for substitutes for pasta.  We used to eat a lot of whole wheat spaghetti, and I had replaced it with zucchini noodles (made with a spiralizer) in the summer when our zukes were in season, and spaghetti squash in the fall.  I thoroughly enjoy both of those options, but while my guys didn’t mind them, I don’t think they loved them either.  Then I found kelp noodles and my husband and son are coming back for seconds.  They are more expensive than spaghetti, but I’m able to stretch a single package into two meals for our family by adding tons of veggies.  That makes the cost of the noodles much more reasonable (and I love leftovers, since it means I get to skip cooking a meal).  Kelp noodles have almost no calories (6 calories per serving), but they provide calcium and a little iron too.  Their flavor is neutral, so they absorb the flavor of whatever you put on them.  Our favorite thing to do with them is sautee a ton of veggies (broccoli, onions, garlic, carrots, bell peppers) and some tempeh, and then make a variation on Gena’s awesome Asian sauce (I use less oil and more water, but you can tweak it however you like).  Then we mix the sauce, noodles, tempeh and veggies and have a fantastic dinner that comes together quickly and leaves us feeling satisfied but not overly full the way pasta sometimes does.

Anyway, if you’re looking for some inspiration and excellent deals on super-duper food to start off the new year, I highly recommend The Raw Food World.  Everything I’ve bought from them has been great, and they have a huge selection of products.  There’s a link at the top of their left sidebar for “at-cost specials” and they have all sorts of great deals there (like 1000 chlorella tabs or 1000 chlorella/spirulina tabs for $15.95, and those amazing kelp noodles are also in the at-cost specials list right now).  Or you can just browse around the site and know that you can save 17.5% on whatever you buy this week.  They really do have an amazing selection of stuff, which is especially helpful for people who don’t live near a health food supermarket.  In addition, they sell products in all sorts of sizes, so you can try a little of something new or purchase a bulk size if you already know it’s something you love (that would be an especially good idea this week, with the HOLIDAY18 coupon code).  Have fun, and here’s to a happy and healthy 2012!

 

 

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