C-Day Eve

I'd like to appologize for yesterday's lack of post. As a beloved uncle always says, "I was busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest." That's been the case pretty much all week.

Due to said business, my advanced preparations remain unprepared except for the 20 lbs of chicken that The Hubs and Wrench were kind enough to prepare for me. Raw chicken is not my thing so I am eternally grateful to them for handling that particularly unsavory aspect of C-day.

Here are my predictions about how tomorrow will go:


My kitchen before:

Yeah...WISH that was my kitchen...




My kitchen after:





Me before:

Wish I had that sweet hair bow...



Me after:



Luckily, my lovely friend of many nicknames is coming over tomorrow to help stir, chop, and dial 911.

Cut me Mick.

Good Idea #3: Non-Negotiable Priorities

I am a busy gal with a lot on my plate. I usually manage to keep about 3 out of 10 (or so) balls in the air and, considering how hopelessly clumsy I am, that's quite a feat. However, on an all-too-regular basis, important things slip through the cracks. Usually those are things that will benefit only me so they sort of get pushed aside, namely, my health and my spiritual wellbeing. My next good idea is to remedy the sweeping-under-the-rug of these important aspects of my life by making them Non-Negotiable Priorities.

1- My health: I work 40 hours a week as a desk jockey. I work 10 hour days with a 40 minute commute each way. After work, there is almost always something going on that requires my attention and by the time the weekend rolls around, all I want to do is sleep. In short, I don't get much exercise. Deplorably little, in fact.

In the past I have gone through spurts of furious gym activity, but they are invariably short-lived. I sat pondering when to carve out time for regular exercise: before work? I have done that for short periods of time, but since an AM workout requires me to get up at 4:30 am (the hour my husband affectionately calls "the buttcrack of dawn"), after a few weeks I am exhausted. After work? There are about 27.5 reasons that a PM workout doesn't work, I'll spare you the details. So when, me hearties, am I supposed to exercise? During the one glorious hour of the day that is mine to use how I will -my lunchbreak.

I am not going to train for a 5K (yet) or start pumping iron, I am just going to get out and walk. Walking is simple and requires no special equipment, and is easy to commit to. Basically, I just want to get in the habit of being active, so 30 minutes of physical activity most days of the week is hereafter a Non-Negotiable Priority.

2- My Spiritual Wellbeing: For those of you that don't know me personally, you may or may not know that I am LDS. A Mormon. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (For those of you who don't know much about us Mormon folk, we don't all go door-to-door in white shirts and ties, that's only the missionaries. And I am and always will be my husband's only wife. That is all.) As a practicing member of the church, regular scripture reading should be a more important priority than it has heretofore been. I will read every day, even if I only have time for a few verses. I used to be really good about this but life has sort of gotten in the way. Not anymore. Now my scripture study is a Non-Negotiable Priority.

What personal needs do you have that are not being met? How would your quality of life be better if those needs were satisfied? My challenge to you is to find a need in your life and make the filling of that need a Non-Negotiable Priority. Maybe you need a creative outlet. Maybe you need more "me" time. Whatever it is, share it in the comments!

"The Prep Work" and "I hate the DMV"

I went shopping on Friday and came in about $40 dollars under budget! That even includes some non-food items. So, all told, a month's worth of delicious dinners cost us about $190. Sweeeeet.

Today I filled out my handy-dandy Advanced Preparations List. It was a bit of a pain, but I think it will save me a lot of insanity on C-Day. I took my shopping list and crossed off every item that did not need any advanced preparation. (Pretty much everything that is either in a can or just needs measurement.) Then for the items left, I looked through the recipes and figured out what needed to be done. With a little luck, I will have all of the thawing, chopping, dicing, browning, and shredding done Thursday night (C-Day Eve...bohm, bohm, baaaahhhhh...)

In other news, today on my way to work I got pulled over. What a wonderful way to start the work week. Since Mondays are so exceedingly joyous to begin with, you can imagine my excitement at seeing the flashing lights in my rearview mirror. For once, I wasn't speeding- my plates had expired. 3 months ago. I calmly explained to the friendly civil servant shining the flashlight in my face that I honestly had had no idea that my plates had expired and that I had never received the customary notice from the DMV. He was kind enough to let me off with a ticket and an admonishment to "Git-r-done." I proceeded to work bubbling with anticipation for the week ahead.

At 11:45 I got on the DMV website to find the location nearest to my office. Lo and behold, there is a branch just down the street! At noon I jumped into my car and drove very carefully down to the Tax Commission building where everything is all puppies and rainbows. After waiting in line for 15 minutes, the cheery-eyed, rosy-cheeked receptionist informs me with astounding empathy that this branch only handles fleet vehicles now and the website from which I got my information has yet to be made aware of the fact. She kindly directed me to the next-closest branch, a mere 30 blocks away. I skipped my way through lunch-hour-rush traffic humming a merry tune, parked, and walked through the door into a sea of people who had, down to a person, had a wonderful day and showered in the recent past. After waiting for another 15 minutes, another bright-eyed receptionist informs me that there is a 2 hour wait and, no, since my plates have expired I cannot complete the renewal process online. So I left DMV#2 feeling like a million bucks and headed to the nearest McDonalds where the speaker-boy got my order wrong three times. Yes, three. And it was a combo. I drove back to work like a bat out of hell and arrived just in time to tell my boss that I would be late yet again tomorrow because the DMV is a ________ piece of ________ _________ with a _______ ___________-_____ ___. (Insert whichever explitives you deem appropriate.)

All in all, it was the kind of day that makes you want to stand up and sing.

I hate the DMV.

A Wrench

A wrench has been thrown into the gears of my carefully-planned freezer meal machine. A friend in need has moved in with us for the time being, we'll call this friend "Wrench." Wrench may be with us for 6 days or 6 months, I don't know, but he's a good guy and we're happy he's joining us. Since we will have an extra person dining with us for potentially the entire month, my plans for how many dinners each recipe would make were thrown off. I sat down to look at it all again and realized that, while we won't have any lunch leftovers, everything else should still work out.

I am going to do The Big Shopping tomorrow at WinCo. (For those of you in the Salt Lake Valley, I highly recommend WinCo. Their prices are phenomenal but they have a full selection of brand-name, high quality foods, unlike an Aldi or something like that. And their prices aren't low because all of the boxes are partially crushed- they're low because the company is employee owned and magical. Like I said, I recommend it. Even if its a drive, its worth your time. Have you ever seen an entire parenthetical paragraph before? I didn't think so.)

To aid me on my flour-in-the-eyebrows-kitchen-warfare OAMC day, I have found some handy, printable lists to keep the chaos down to a dull roar.

Advanced Preparations List- so I can have everything ready to throw together, and thereby reduce the number of burns/knifewounds I will incur on C-Day.

Freezer Inventory List- Although the freezing temperatures cut down on the "science experiment" factor, I still want to keep track of what we've eaten and what we have left.

My shopping budget is $250, but I think I'll come in pretty far below that. I am buying my 20 lbs of chicken breasts from a relative who works at a food distribution company, so I'm getting them for like $1.50/lb! Woot!

Slow it Down

Yesterday I filled out my budget forms. I filled out the basic form and found it was entirely too basic and not much help at all, so I moved on to the cash flow form which I found very helpful and informative. As I talked to some people that have followed Dave Ramsey's plan, I realized that I am not ready to throw myself headlong into it. I don't want to become a Madame Budgetnazi overnight-I am going to take a few months to get into the habit of sticking to our budget, tweak it as needed, and revisit the issue of serious savings in May. Until our savings is up to $1000, we will only make the minimum payment on all of our debt. To me this sounded pretty counter-productive at first, but people I have talked to say that it really works. One thing I am going to do between now and May is to take any money left in our checking account the day before payday and put it into savings. I think that will at least give us a little boost.

Anyone have any tips? What has worked/not worked for you in the past?

Good Idea #2: Debt-busting

Compared to a lot of people, The Hubs and I don't have a lot of debt. In fact, for as young as we are, I'd say we're relatively comfortable financially. We own a house, we pay our bills, and we have enough money to have a lot of fun. HOWEVER- we are bad about budgeting. And saving. And paying off debt. I have always admired people who know where every penny of their income is going to go before they even get paid. People like that seem to be in so much more control over their finances and thus have a greater degree of financial freedom than people like me who budget/save/pay off debt sporadically. But how to do it?

I've come up with a plan loosely based on Dave Ramsey's teachings. I've never read any of his books, heard a radio show, or been to one of his seminars, but I have read about his ideas and they seem pretty logical. The whole process seems large and looming, so I've broken this down into steps. (If I'm plagiarizing anyone here, its unintentional. I promise.)

Step 1: Make a Budget.
This seems pretty daunting to me, but I found a basic budgeting form that breaks it down a little bit. (Here is a more detailed form.) I am going to start using cash for a lot more things, pretty much everything but bills. The Hubs is unwilling to give up his debit card but has agreed to use cash for lunches, entertainment, etc. I haven't filled out the form yet, but once I do, I'll let you know how it goes.

Step 2: Mini-Emergency Fund
Stash away $1000.00 for small emergencies- car repairs, unexpected large-ish expenses, etc. When we have paid off our credit card in the past, invariably some small emergency arises that we don't have the cash for, and boom- We're back in debt. So before we REALLY start throwing money at our debt, we are going to accumulate $1000.00 in savings. Once we reach that, we will start putting more towards our debt, but keep building this fund until, probably YEARS from now, we have an entire year's income in savings.

Step 3: The Snowball
This is pretty basic- I listed all of my debts in an Excel document in order of the amount owed. Then beneath each one I put the minimum monthly payment. Then below that I listed what my payments would be once the smallest debt was paid off and I could add what I had been paying towards Debt X to the minimum monthly payment for Debt Y:

Debt X was $40 a month, Debt Y is $50 a month. Once Debt X is paid off, I can put $90 a month towards Debt Y)

And so on.

There are more steps in Dave Ramsey's plan, but these are the ones I'm going to work on for now. We just paid off one debt so technically we could start The Snowball rolling, but I'm going to take what we were paying on it and put it into our Mini Emergency Fund first.

So my next challenge: Fill out the budget sheet and find ways to cut back. Coincidentally, I think the Freezer Cooking will be a big help to our food budget! (sidenote: I dreamed last night that I went to do my freezer shopping and forgot my list...)

Good Idea #1: Part 2- The List

After I compiled all of my recipes, I made a shopping list. Seems pretty straightforward, but I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything so I went about the list-writing in a methodical fashion. I looked at one recipe at a time and wrote down all of the ingredients. The amount of each ingredient I would need, I put in parentheses next to it:

Chicken Breasts (6)
Salt (2T)

Then I moved on to the next recipe. If there were duplicate ingredients, I put the amounts in parenthses next to the amount for the last recipe. If there was a new ingredient, I added it to the list as follows:

Chicken Breasts (6) (8)
Salt (2T) (.5T)
Bacon (2lbs)

Once I had gone through all of my recipes in this fashion, I added up all of the amounts to get the total I would need for my big cooking D-day:

Chicken Breasts (14)
Salt (2.5T)
Bacon (2lbs)

Next, when the shopping day arrives, I will root through my freezer, fridge, and pantry to see what and how much I already have. If I have enough of a particular ingredient, I will cross it off of the list and forbid The Hubs to touch it. (If anyone would like a copy of my shopping list, email me.)

Also, after checking pay dates, time off work, proximity to March, and the alignment of the planets, I have scheduled my cooking day: February 26th. August 6th 1945 ain't got NUTTIN' on what my kitchen is going to look like at about 5pm February 26th 2010.

A Deviation

Lest anyone should start to believe that this blog is solely dedicated to the wonders of Once-A-Month Cooking, I'd like to take a minute to respond to a comment and reiterate why I'm writing this blog. The comment:

"I'm a believer in REAL accomplishment...things that take time and effort and gives one some real satisfaction. As for cleaning and bills...pshh. What fulfillment does that provide?"

Accomplishments in life come in almost as many flavors as Jelly Bellies. I have a rather long list of things I want to do that could be considered "real" accomplishments (learning Italian, hiking the Appalachian Trail, writing a novel,) but the little things in life that pile up can get in the way of "real" accomplishments. For instance, I am going to be going back to school in April and will need my weeknights for homework. However, since I still have a house to run, things like freezer-stocking will help me to stay on top of both homework and housework.

That being said, I do find a certain fulfillment in having my house/home/life in order. When my house is spotless, the laundry is done, the bills are paid and there's a pan of chocolate chip cookies ready to come out of the oven the moment The Hubs comes home, I feel like the world is my kumquat. *Puffs out chest, puts fists on hips, stares stoically into the distance*

This blog is to help me (and anyone like me) experience that feeling more often.

The Plan: Part One- Meals

This part took some thinking. How to change a good idea into a full freezer? Here we go:

Step One: I made a list with a blank space for each day of the month.

1. _________________
2. _________________
3. _________________
etc.

Step 2: I looked for recipes. The Hubs despises casseroles, so that hacked off about half of the recipes in line. For each recipe I considered the following:

1. Does it sound good? Is it really going to reheat well?
2. Will it make enough for at least one dinner with leftovers for lunch the next day?
3. Is there pork involved?

If the recipe answered "yes" to all of these questions, it made the cut. (Note: not all of them involve pork- that was an extra credit question. The Hubs loves him some pig...) I picked 14 recipes that met my criteria and wrote them down next to #s 1-14 on my list.

Step 3: I asked each recipe how many servings it made (I had to guess with almost all of them). If it would make 2 dinners, I wrote it down on the list again. If it would make 3 dinners, I wrote it down 2 more times. I did this until #s 1-31 were filled. Then I rearranged everything so that all the meals were grouped together.

Step 4:Next I copied all of the recipes into the same Word document and after each one I typed the following three questions: How many servings did this really make? Is it a keeper? Did you make any changes? (I rarely, if ever, make a recipe exactly as it is written. Usually I remember what I did, but since I will be cooking 15 dishes in the same day I figured I'd better keep track.)

Here are the recipes I chose:

Cranberry Chicken - 2 dinners* plus lunch leftovers (hereafter "PLL")
Zesty Pineapple Chicken - 1 dinner PLL (I will doubling all "1 dinner" recipes, hereafter, "x2")
Chinese Honey Ginger Chicken - 2 dinners PLL
Lime Pepper Chicken - 2 dinners PLL
Sweet and Sour Pork - 1 dinner PLL (x2)
Chicken Chow Mein - 1 dinner maybe PLL if we're lucky (x2)
Rotini - 3 dinners PLL
Cheddar Cheese Soup - 3 dinners PLL
Creamy Lemon Chicken - 2 dinners PLL
Spaghetti (sauce only) - 1 dinner PLL (makes 2 batches of sauce) (x2)
Chili - 3 dinners PLL
Sweet Onion Pork Chops - 1 dinner PLL (x2)
Beef and Broccoli - 2 dinners PLL
Bacon Wrapped Chicken - 1 dinner (no PLL. This one made the cut on merits of deliciousness.) (x2)

*# of dinners is based on 2 people dining. Remember to adjust accordingly.

The recipes that make only 1 dinner PLL, I will make 2 batches of. So my meal plan looks something like this:

1. Cranberry Chicken
2. Cranberry Chicken
3. Zesty Pineapple Chicken
4. Zesty Pineapple Chicken
5. Chinese Honey Ginger Chicken
6. Chinese Honey Ginger Chicken
7. Lime Pepper Chicken
8. Lime Pepper Chicken
9. Sweet and Sour Pork
10. Sweet and Sour Pork
11. Chicken Chow Mein
12. Chicken Chow Mein
13. Rotini
14. Rotini
15. Rotini
16. Cheddar Cheese Soup
17. Cheddar Cheese Soup
18. Cheddar Cheese Soup
19. Creamy Lemon Chicken
20. Creamy Lemon Chicken
21. Spaghetti
22. Spaghetti
23. Chili
24. Chili
25. Chili
26. Sweet Onion Pork Chops
27. Sweet Onion Pork Chops
28. Beef and Broccoli
29. Beef and Broccoli
30. Bacon Wrapped Chicken
31. Bacon Wrapped Chicken

I'm not going to assign specific meals to specific days. Since they all have to be taken out of the freezer about 24 hours before they're eaten, I figured we could choose each day what we want to eat tomorrow.

Is that horribly confusing to anyone else? Yeah, I thought so. Put that brain to work (yes, I'll wait.... ready now? Ok.) and join me in my foray into Once-A-Month Cooking.

Good Idea #1: Freezer Meals

Do I enjoy cooking? That would depend on when you asked. If you were to ask me on a weekend I'd tell you that I love to cook and would promptly show you my grease-stained, dog-eared collection of cookbooks. If you were to ask me at about 6pm on, say, a Tuesday, my answer would probably involve crying and throwing things.

I really do love to cook, it gives me great fulfillment to make something delicious. However, I also work full time. My weeknights are usually hectic and by the time Friday rolls around, there is invariably a week's worth of dirty dishes in the sink. That is, unless we've eaten take out every night that week.

Therefore, in the interest of kitchen cleanliness, chaos saving, and my waistline, I am going to try once-a-month freezer cooking. I will plan a month's worth of freezer-friendly meals for March, empty my wallet at the grocery store, and spend one entire day up to my elbows in food. I will stock my freezer, keep an inventory of what is in there, and breathe a little easier after work. Once my meal plan is complete, I will post it for all to salivate over. I will post about my experiences with the meals, the time saving, the process, and the general feeling of being on top of things. If anyone has any freezer meal tips, I'd love to hear them!

Here is a great list of freezer-friendly recipes!

Confessions of a Scatterbrain

I have good ideas. Lots of them, in fact. I have so many good ideas that they all sort of rattle around, clamoring for my attention. There are so many cool things in the world and I want to do them all. And that's where the trouble starts. I rarely finish anything that I start, my house (much to my shame) is a semi-permanent wreck, and I constantly, reliably, forget things. This month I forgot to pay 3 bills. We had the money to pay them, I had the due dates written on my calendar, I just...you know...didn't pay them on time.

This blog is my attempt to get organized and stay committed. I want to actually do some of those cool things that the world has to offer. If any of you would like to follow along and join me on my journey of self-improvement, please do. (I may be the only one who ever reads this, but hey- I'm fine with that. I find myself to be excellent company.)

So here is my first step: Now that I have aired my dirty laundry and made my craziness public, I'd like to take a minute to list some things that I have done right. Hmm...there's got to be something...ooo! I know.

I finished a denim quilt for The Hubs's Christmas present in under a month! (It wasn't some cop-out tie quilt either. Yep, it was a real deal man quilt made from The Hubs's old work jeans and Chicago Bears flannel.)

I helped a friend.

I made a friend.

I made broccoli.

See? I have my redeeming qualities.

So to anyone following along, start by making a list of the things YOU have recently done right. Acknowledge your victories and, if you should feel so inclined, post them in the comments.