2013!

I'm always a bit taken by surprise when a month or year is suddenly gone and I'm left feeling totally unprepared for the next one.  Suddenly, it's 2013 and I haven't even evaluated the past year, let alone figured out new goals for the next year.  It isn't as though I didn't know it was coming, it's just that I get so busy, I lose sight of what day or year it is.  We ease into it in November; my husband's birthday and then Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday (food and family, what else is there?)  Then I remember that the advent is coming up, thank goodness we had an extra week this year.  Throw some college finals in for my husband with my late night sewing projects.  I cancelled several because I wanted to enjoy Christmas Eve this year.  I guess the kids will get super hero capes for Valentine's Day.  We don't get to relax after Christmas though, because my son has a birthday two days later.  Then, suddenly, it's a new year and I'm sitting here with blurry eyes and laundry piled all around me.  The kids are all fighting off various sicknesses and ailments that pop up when running with cousins, staying up late and getting up early, not to mention getting soaked in the snow at least twice a day, so it was early to bed tonight.

Now that the house is quiet and the dishes are done, I'm letting myself think a bit about what I would like to work on to make this year better than the last.  I saw this little quote on facebook and thought it fit me so well.

So far I've come up with 3 things:
1. Early to bed.  I am a natural night owl, just like my mom and my sisters.  I am energetic late at night and I can get so much done after the kids are down for the night, but the kids get up early, or at least too early for me to get enough sleep, so I drag myself through another morning, most likely resembling a grouchy bear coming out of hibernation.  I can't make the kids sleep longer (I've tried keeping them up later.  They still wake up at the same time, only grumpier.) but I can go to bed earlier, so I'm going to try.  Perhaps 2013 will be the year of cheerful mornings.

2. Meal plan.  I shouldn't need this as a goal, but I have fallen off the wagon and into the trap of throwing something together at the last minute.  It causes me stress and it causes us to eat the same meals over and over.  Tonight we again had hot ham and cheese sandwiches with tomato soup.  This is in rotation with spaghetti and homemade pizza.  Along with this goal, I want to bake bread more often.  I kind of stopped for a while when we discovered a cheap bread outlet, but when it closed down (keep your twinkie, I want my cheap bread back) bread became expensive again.

3. While my forgetful self will be writing 2012 for the next few months, my brain has a tendency to live in the future.  I have so many plans and hopes for my family, and we're getting closer to them, but I tend to spend too much time wishing I was in my "someday" instead of paying attention to now.  It's going to be a crazy year, with at least one move, but possibly more, depending on job situations.  I want to fully enjoy the area and friends that I have here and now before I move on to the next.  I'm sure when the stress mounts, you'll find me sketching out my dream homestead, but until I am living there I hope to keep it to a minimum.

I hope this year brings you optimism and happiness.  What goals or resolutions have you set this year?

Planner update...needs improvement

I'm going to try the full page variety of planner page for a few weeks.  We'll see if I like it enough to keep going.  I already have a few changes in mind for the page, so I'm glad I didn't print out 52 of these.

  For some reason the lines aren't showing up, but there are lines on that page.  I made them a little lighter so I could feel more free to scribble.  I thought I would really like having my planner right there in my notebook, but I haven't really used it in there.  I did do my meal plan and originally my thought was to take the page with me to the store, but I think that takes too much thought.  I found myself at the store yesterday, without my list.  No good.

Part of the problem is that my desk is too crowded.  I've been organizing different parts of the house, so my desk has been neglected and abused, becoming the dumping ground for items that I found during the organizing that need to find new homes.  The things that actually live on the desk have been smothered by the homeless, causing a bit of a mess.  Among the craziness is the camcorder (recently found), a stack of burnable c.d.s, the thermometer that was used often last weekend on baby, son and husband, a dry erase marker, last year's Father's Day card (husband doesn't know what to do with cards, it's not his thing), the camera and the camera case (sitting side by side so they can take up twice as much space), an old planner, a disk with cider press plans on it, a dictionary (found and needed for the ongoing scrabble games with husband, just needs a good home), a seed catalog, two books I made for Christmas, and the scrapbook from our wedding that I had been looking for and wanted to show the kids.  Oh, and the sewing machine is still here too, I don't notice it anymore.   That's how long it's been here.

If all this was cleaned, organized, and given homes, there would be room to actually set my notebook down and open it.  Today, I will make room and see if that helps the planner situation.  If not, I'll be going back to the smaller, more mobile variety, or I'll put dates on a little spiral notebook and use that.

The Planner Dilemma

Do you have a planner or calendar that you love?  Maybe I'm just hard to please, but I can never find a planner that I really like.    I had one of those leather planners when I was in high school and starting college, but it became just a large checkbook holder, as I never actually opened it to use anything else.  During college, I found that a spiral notebook was my best organizational tool.  I could scribble to do lists, copy recipes, jot down addresses or phone numbers all on one page.  It was everything I needed, well, except for the dates.  It was definitely difficult to plan ahead, but I was a college student.  What did I need to plan ahead for?

Then I got engaged and had a wedding to plan.  Suddenly, I needed to know what date it would be two months from Tuesday.  I had to find a planner, and I found the perfect one.  It was basically a half sized spiral notebook, but it included dates, imagine that.  Plenty of room for my scribbles, but it kept me organized.  It was on sale, since the year was already halfway over and I've never found one like it again. 

In my quest to find the perfect planner, I have seen all sorts of varieties.  None of them inspire me. Does that sound funny?  To be inspired by a planner?  I have to be though, or it will become my coaster instead of my planner.  I have to feel like opening it for it to work.  I do not need a planner that lists every hour of the day.  I just can't schedule my days like that, or I get uptight and then depressed when I don't accomplish things the way I scheduled it.  I like the page to contain a whole week.  That way, I can write my weekly to do list right there.  I'm awfully structured in my planner needs for being so unstructured, aren't I?

Last year, around this time, I was getting very frustrated.  I needed a planner, but hadn't found one to suit me.  Finally, I decided to make my own, and I did.  I liked it, I have some improvements in mind, but I like being able to personalize it for exactly what I need.  That planner had the week on one side, and then lines on the other side.  It was basically a book made of folded letter size paper, held together by string threaded through two small holes punched in the spine. 

Now, it's a new year and I am in need of yet another planner.  I'm trying to decide if I should do a full sized paper and keep them in my household notebook, or if I should play with the half sized format again.  I do want to add a spot for meal planning and a grocery list, but if I get too structured and crowded, I won't be able to use it.  I have to have space to scribble and sketch my crazy ideas.  Maybe I'll add a little picture too.  Something inspirational, or a reminder of what I was doing last year at this time.  I'd better get on it though, or I'll be stuck using my spiral notebook again.

Living off of food storage: Meal planning, part 2

I talked a bit about not wanting to go back to the meals we had as newlyweds. I also do not want to go back to our meals from the few years after that. I graduated, we moved, we added two children. Every day, I seemed to forget that dinner doesn't cook itself. Suddenly, it was 4 o'clock and I had nothing planned, nothing defrosted, no energy left to come up with something brilliant. I would call hubby and have him pick up Taco Bell on his way home. Or Burger King, or Quiznos, or... you get the picture.

Then one night, I realized that I was causing myself undue stress. I like to cook, I know how to cook, all I need to do is prepare a little. Back then it was just hubby and I buying value meals, but it was still between 15-20 dollars for a meal. Now, there are four of us, so our fast food bills are closer to $30. When I have a plan, we don't do the desperation fast food meals so often. I love the feeling of having dinner ready to cook, or already cooking. When we are driving around town and hubby asks, do you have something planned for dinner, or should we stop and grab something, I can triumphantly say, "Dinner is in the crockpot!" We save so much money by simply cooking at home. Plus, I'm a little less fat. Win, win.

Knowing how much it helps me, I dove into my new meal plan. As I started working through it, however, I noticed that every once in a while, I found myself dreading the coming week. I felt completely uninspired to cook, something I truly enjoy doing. In trying to figure this out, I noticed that there would be one or two meals planned for the week that were very complicated or time consuming, or just not that great. We didn't want to eat them, or prepare them that often. For example, lasagna is not my forte. I don't have a great recipe, so I don't love the product. I just couldn't get motivated to make it. Maybe if I have tons of spare time one day, I'll make five pans of it and put them in the freezer. On the other end of the spectrum, I love schnitzel, but it takes time and work. That meal is more suited to special occasions, not a monthly making.

For my improved meal plan, I took another look at that list of meals. I made smaller lists, one for things that I like to make and we don't mind eating every month or more, and one for things we like, but may not want that often. Then there is another list- actually a pile of papers in my notebook- of things I would like to try or maybe improve on.

Now, I have a four week rotation of meals. Each week has 4-5 meals planned out. The remaining days, I choose from the other lists, or have a leftover extravaganza. This gives me a great start on the weekly plan, but still allows some freedom for variety. So far, I like it, but I am still tweaking things and adding new things. I had fun trying out summer harvest recipes, but now we're transitioning more into soups.

Figuring out how much I need of what has gotten interesting. I had already stored up most of the food for my first meal plan. I figure I'll still use the basics no matter what I make though, so instead of figuring all that out again, I'm keeping track of what I use from what I had stored. Hopefully this time next year, I'll have it a little more scientific-like. For now, I'm doing old fashioned subtraction.

Here's my meal plan, for now. I'll probably keep playing with it, and I need to add a few things, but this will give you an idea.

Week 1

Meatloaf

Pizza

Roast

Chicken

Stroganoff/ chops & sauce

Sometimes list

Week 2

Burgers

Spaghetti

Chops

baked potato bar

Chick enchiladas/

Sometimes list

Week 3

Tacos /Navajo taco

Stir-fry /Orange chicken

Steak

Meatball/ roll-ups

Chicken

List

Week 4

Sloppy Joes

Soup

Roast/ribs

Fry/grilled chicken

Crock-pot chicken

List

Sometimes List

German noodles

Crepes

Runzas

Brats

Schnitzel

Hamburger Pie

Shepherd’s Pie

Fajitas

Lasagna

Pasta Griffa

Chicken Parmesan

Alfredo Chicken

Cobb salad

Risotto

Stuffed Chicken

Chicken Dumplings

Rotisserie chicken

Soups

Calico beans

Spicy beef

Chili

White Chili

Cabbage

Onion

Stew

Baked Potato Soup

Chicken Tortilla

Tomato

To Try

Tamales

Gyro...

Living off of food storage: Meal planning, part 1

Okay, I talked last time about why I stockpiled food. Now I want to talk about what food to store. There are generally two ways to look at it. You can store things that will last a lifetime - an "in case of emergency" food supply, like my mother's fake meat. Or, there's the store what you eat mindset, where you buy a few extra items that you usually buy while at the grocery store. That one never works for me because I forget to easily, or I don't restock as I use it.

My plan was inspired by a woman from the Everything Under the Sun blog, although I didn't find her blog until after I had heard her plan. What she suggests is selecting 7 breakfasts and 7 dinners that you like and then figuring out how much of each ingredient you need for each meal and then multiply that by 52. Just like that, you know how much food to store for the entire year.

A nice idea in concept, but I don't want to eat the same food every week of the entire year. I've done that with frozen pot pies and it gets really old. I decided to write down every dinner that we like. It came out to be well over a month's worth of meals. It just seemed like a good idea to implement the weekly food idea as a 6 week meal idea.

I went to work scrawling out amounts. Had I followed her advice about writing each of those meals down on a note card, my life would have been easier. However, I seem to need to do things the hard way first. That's just the way I am. I wrote on my recipes, multiplying everything by 13 (threw that extra month in, just in case). Then I had to try to pull all those amounts together.
This is what I ended up with...

This is just one page. The scanner is so smart, it automatically crops the ugly edges off, so you can't see the other 5 pages stacked behind this one. This page is amazingly neat. Did I mention, I did this the hard way?

Finally, I got everything tallied and since we had a good 8 months till we would leave for school, I decided to start doing the meal rotation right away, and I'm glad I did because I found a flaw in my reasoning. This is where those note cards would have come in especially handy.

In the planning, I figured on using each meal about once a month. It seemed simple enough that way, but I found that some meals just don't want to be made that often. Like lasagna, or crepes. I ended up re-evaluating my meals and I came up with a system that I am pretty happy with. I'll let you in on it in my next food storage post, so you can hopefully learn from my mistakes.

Branding day menu

Our branding lunch always has my mom's beef enchiladas. I don't know when she started making them, but I can't remember ever not having them. You need many tortillas, hot oil, enchilada sauce, beef, cheese, and we put onion in the beef too. You could use just cheese, or whatever your heart desires. Oh, and we put sliced olives on top when we remember.
When there were more of us at home, we made a big assembly line. Good times, good memories.

First, you fry the tortillas one at a time in some hot oil. (Mom usually did this) Not too crisp, but it's necessary to keep the tortillas from sopping up all the sauce. I know, I tried it once without that step...yuck.
Then into the enchilada sauce. One sister coats on both sides, then puts it on a plate for the next sister to assemble the parts. Beef and cheese -next sister- roll it up and put in pan. We had another girl in charge of bringing new pans and removing the full ones. (That's right, five women in one kitchen. My other sister was already gone to college when I was big enough to help.) When the pan is full, pour more enchilada sauce over the whole thing, sprinkle cheese on top and then toss some sliced olives on. Then we cover and freeze because this is usually the week before we actually cook them.
The next step is very important. Fry up more tortillas, this time till crisp. As soon as you take them out of the oil, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Tear apart and enjoy the feeling of finishing a big job.
To cook, defrost (or just stick it in the oven after assembled) then stick it in a 350 oven for as long as it takes for the middle to melt. Sorry I can't be more technical on that part. Shouldn't take more than an hour. For the branding, we layer the pans into great big roaster pans and cook at about 300 for the morning hours while the branding is going on.

Then, we make buckaroo beans, also something I don't remember ever not having. We quadrupled this recipe because we usually run out. We had leftovers this year. This recipe is for cooking on the stove top, but when making huge amounts, we use the oven or the big roaster at 300. That's what that little note at the bottom is for.

To go along with these, we usually have several salads, some watermelon, grapes and chips. The kids usually only eat watermelon, grapes and chips, but since it's like a holiday, I let them eat what they want.