Working Title

Once again I find myself at a fork in the road. Has this happened to you? I can go this way for this end result, or I can go this way for this result. Both have their good and bad sides. Both benefit everyone, but ultimately you choose the one you feel slightly outweighs the other.

This has been about 83.76% of my thought process for the past 2 months.

I found myself no longer in a paying, away from home, working environment. We had enough savings to keep the kids in preschool for about another month so I could look for another job. So I looked ... and looked ... and looked. The closest thing I got was a form emailed letter saying that my application had been received, they keep resumes and applications on file for a year, and if something that met my skills opened up, they would contact me.  Thanks. I was in HR.  I know what that means. And no one goes back through resumes and past applications.

The time came to take the kids out of school. We told their teachers, cleaned out their cubbies, and at the very last minute, Grandma stepped up with a check to cover the next 4 weeks. Enough time for them to (almost) finish out the school year. So I kept looking for a paying job. And looking, and looking, and looking.

Then I thought ... it costs so much to keep the kids in preschool/daycare. For the past 18 months I worked 50 hours a week (on a slow week) in the office, then replied to every email, every phone call, every request from a customer on nights and weekends, I had software at my house that allowed me to run the office from home in case there was a power outage, or other such issue that rendered us helpless, and was stressed to the point of physical health issues, mental health issues, and ultimately I was "replaced" because I wasn't reliable nor was I committed enough because I needed to miss work on occasion when my kids were sick. No lie. I wasn't reliable, I wasn't committed, and I wasn't an asset any longer. WOW!

Yes, these are of me sitting on the concrete floor of the warehouse garage, sorting through massive amounts of invoices that were logged, filed, and recorded incorrectly.

Adding, tallying, and reconciling years worth of purchases that were a total jumble of a mess.

All the while, I’m sitting on an industrial grade floor mat. Wow ... Just imagine what my work ethic would have been like if I had only been committed to my job.

So ... tomorrow I will once again be a full time Mommy, chef, nurse, maid, play mate, teacher, and wife. I played this role for 18 months right after my baby GG was born prematurely, and I loved it. We found ourselves in a money crunch and needed a little extra to get by. We’re out of that pickle now; we’re wiser and know where our priorities lay. Don't get me wrong, the extra money would still be nice, but not at the detriment of my health or my family's health and well being.  But on the same token, the thought of paying someone my entire paycheck to baby-sit my kids is silly to me.

 Soapy water painting is a lot of fun.

This counts as a bath ... right?

Finding that balance of mommy, woman, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, and friend will be both fun and hard. I have glorious plans for how we'll spend the next year and a half until my oldest is eligible for Kindergarten in the fall of 2014.  Here's what I see us doing... 

I'll wake up at 6:30 every morning and ride my exercise bike while watching the news. This gives me a little alone time before the kids wake up, and starts the day off right. If the kids aren't up by 7:00, I'll open their door and go downstairs to have coffee and watch the Today Show until they wake up and come down. Breakfast will follow, and then we'll sit down at the computer and see what activities are available for us for the day. I'm hoping for a lot of free field trips, petting zoos, library visits, picking fruits, and kid seminars at local craft and home improvement stores. Between activities away from home, we'll send time doing creative learning activities. I bought each child a notebook, and we'll pick a letter a week to focus on. We'll cut pictures out of the paper and magazines that represent that letter and glue them into our books. We'll practice writing those letters and studying the sounds. When the weather permits, we'll be outside as much as possible, either working in our small backyard garden, swimming in the neighborhood pool, or learning to ride our bicycles and roller skates. Each meal will be a learning activity too.  We'll learn where our food comes from, how to clean it and cook it and what tastes great.

In addition to the notebooks I bought for the kids, I also bought one for me. Each night, after they have gone to bed, I'm going to write down what we did that day, leaving them a journal of all the fun adventures.

Plans aren't always followed through on. Supper is on the table, but the family was engrossed in a new movie, so supper waited. 

My little Sous Chef.

Our first two heirloom tomatoes of the season.

Tomato blooms for the cherry tomatoes.

I'm very excited to be starting this new chapter of my life. I've been on both sides of the working Mommy fence, and, like I said before, there are plusses and minuses to each. I have two or three very good friends who are FANTASTIC Mommies and have zero interest in being home all day with their kids. They find they are much better parents because they work out of the home in a paying employment position. I, on the other hand, find that too stressful. I need and want to snuggle, teach, explore, and experience this time with my babies. I need to not feel pressured and fearful of losing that paid position if my child is sick and needs me. Pretty soon they'll be teenagers, and I'll look back at my journal of the time we spent together and I'm sure I'll cry happy tears and longing tears for their sweet days of childhood. But for me, I would rather look back and sweetly remember the days in the sprinkler, the snowmen, the fall leaves, and the new spring gardens, than to look back and realize that I was sitting in a boardroom while my kids laughed and ran and climbed, and discovered the world.

So here's to skinned knees, "why" a thousand times a day, "She hit me", "Don't jump on the furniture!", baseballs through windows, butterfly kisses, bedtime stories, watching the stars at night, "He's looking at me", the occasional chocolate for breakfast, "I want GranMa!", secretly learning our ABC's, and 123's while playing games, and all the sweet moments to come. 

Cheers, y'all. 

Cheddar Stuffed Meat Loaf

So ... I'm doing another take on my meatloaf.  Making a cheeseburger meatloaf tonight.  Here's what I did ...

2 lbs ground beef
1 medium onion
4 cloves of garlic (or to taste ... we just happen to LOVE it.)
1 egg
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
Salt and Pepper
6-8 ounces of cheddar cheese block
Ketchup
1 medium cast iron pan, oiled or sprayed with your favorite cooking non-stick spray (I used a small drizzle of Canola oil)
1 stove top of your choice
1 oven set to 425 of your choice ... that will fit your pan

Into the food processor put the peeled and roughly cut onion and peeled garlic. Mince thoroughly, but don't liquefy. Using a spatula, scrape this into a large mixing bowl. Add your egg, and whisk to break up the yolk and incorporate into the onion/garlic mixture.  (You're making a slurry here. This way, everything will be mixed before we add the ground beef, ensuring a tender finished product.) Add the Worcestershire sauce and as much salt and pepper as you would like.

Mix just until the slurry is incorporated throughout the meat. Don't squish, pound, beat, and decimate your ground beef. It will not have a good texture if it's over mixed.

Divide the mixture into 2 portions and place the first half into the cast iron pan that you've "greased" however you would like. As noted above, I used a small drizzle of canola oil.

Cut the block of cheese into 2 cubes. Then I cut those cubes in half. Then I cut those squares into triangles. I had 8 triangles. Place 5 of the cheese triangles around the pan so that the longer side of the triangles are making a pentagon, and the points of the cheese look like a star. This will leave you with 3 pieces of cheese, place those in the center of the pentagon.

Press the rest of the meat mixture on top of the bottom half, sandwiching the cheese inside. I then worked it around so that the cheese was completely covered and all the edges of the bottom and the top were fully sealed. Then cover the top in good old fashioned ketchup.  (I wish I had done half in ketchup and half in A-1, but that may be something for next week...)

I placed it on the stovetop on high for about 5 minutes, then placed it into the 425 oven and set the timer for 40 minutes, which brought it to exactly 160 degrees inside.  I let it sit on the stove top to rest, and I used my baster to suction out the excess grease from the pan.

We'll be having it with broccoli, and Mommy is having a Crystal Light Apple Tini with tequila added. It makes it MUCH better than the mix alone. Both kids are enjoying milk, and Daddy is having sweet tea.

A Week of Breakfast for $1.17

Yesterday afternoon I came home with the groceries and started making quick, healthy, freezable breakfasts for me for the week to come. A low fat sausage, egg white, reduced fat cheese, breakfast burrito bowl of sorts. I started with the sausage, which I broke up and browned, like I was browning ground beef for a meat sauce. When it was cooked, I placed it in a bowl to cool slightly as I cooked the egg whites.

Then I cooked an entire large container of store-brand egg-whites in the carton. I added salt and pepper, and cooked them in the same pan I had used to brown the sausage.  Once they were cooked, I used my 1/2 cup scoop and placed 2 scoops (yes, one whole cup of cooked egg whites) into a plastic container with a lid. I had 3 cooked cups, as it turned out, so I initially made 3 portions. I then had 3 containers with cooked egg whites, so I evenly dished out the sausage on each portion of eggs.

I diced an onion and started to slowly saute this with a little vegetable oil and salt. I went to the fridge to get the bell pepper, and then thought ... no ... I don't want pepper and onion in it. I think I just want egg white, sausage, and cheese. So I got the shredded reduced fat cheese, and sprinkled a little on top. I put the lids on the containers and let them sit out a little while on the counter so I didn't put hot food into the fridge.

My onions are still caramelizing on the stove, I'm not unaware of that. But, supper needs to be planned too, so I turn off the onions and leave them in the warm pan to continue to use it's residual heat to work to my advantage. 

This morning, I put one of my breakfast bowls in the microwave and pressed the handy-dandy "reheat" button. In 3.25 minutes, I had a hot yummy breakfast that was ... HUGE!  This recipe should have made 6, not 3 portions. I'm STILL STUFFED!  Of course I ate the whole thing, but I am now going to split the remaining 2 containers into 4 total.

The cost of this adventure?  The reduced fat sausage was $2.99. The generic carton of egg whites was $3.79. If you add a little in for tax, that makes the two roughly $7.00. Since I should have turned it into 6 servings, that means I have created a way to have breakfast all week for $1.17 per day. Now, since I actually made only 5 servings, because I ate the equivalent of 2 this morning, "my" cost for this is $1.40 each day.

Next up ... about that onion...

The Saucy Dish Garden

Here it is. The report on the garden.

The garden was constructed from pallets, as you may remember from an earlier article. We filled them with a topsoil mixture purchased from the local garden center that is a mixture of compost and local dirt. A friend of ours warned us about using only topsoil, as in her case, it became too compacted and didn't allow the roots to really grow well, and the end result for them was a diminished crop. I asked about this at the store, and was told that the top soil they "make" has compost in it, so should be fine. If I want to add more compost to it, I can, but he doesn't feel it's needed.

So I started planting.

This is an experiment from a Pinterest Pin. I saw that you can grow celery from the root-end of the stalks just by placing it in a glass of water on the window sill. I did just that, and low and behold, it worked! So after I saw new roots growing, I put my new little celery plant in the dirt outside. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Next, I planed a chive plant and a thyme plant that I've had in small plastic containers for about 8 years. I left them outside the first year, thought they were dead, but ignored the pots for the first few weeks of spring. When I checked on them, there was new growth!  I've had them outside ever since, and have loved fresh chives and fresh thyme from these exact same plants year after year. Now they are in the garden, and they are very very happy.

Like the celery, I had scallions that I didn't use up in time. They were looking a little rough, droopy, and down right dead, to be honest. But, I had my celery growing in a glass on the windowsill, and thought I'd see if I could revive the scallions too.  And I did. They grew beautiful roots, they shed their dead shoots, and started to sprout new bright green stems for me. So, again, like the celery, once I saw hefty root growth, I put them in the dirt too.  

Here is a shot of the celery a few days after putting it in the dirt.

Another tip from Pinterest said that you can plant a garlic bulb that's sprouted. So I did. I'll keep you posted on it's progress...

A pretty sunshine shot of the scallions.

Then I bought 3 pepper plants. One is a jalapeno, and I honestly can't remember the other 2. I have at least one sweet pepper, one that's big enough to stuff, and the jalapeno.  You can see them here with the celery.

In with the chives and thyme, I planed 3 types of tomatoes. A purple heirloom, a Big Boy, and a cherry. I also bought basil, rosemary, oregano, and flat leaf parsley. The basil I put in with the tomatoes because "what goes together, grows together".

The parsley, rosemary, and oregano are in the far box with the scallions. I had intended to plant cucumbers as well, and low and behold, my son came home from preschool with 2 sprouted cucumber plants from a science experiment at school. I put them in the dirt, found an old metal grate to use as a trellis, and placed it against the edge of the deck for them to climb. They are not thriving. I think I'll have to go to the garden store and buy established plants to "replace" Boo's seedlings.

So here we are. Here is the garden as it stood a few weeks ago. I'll get updated pictures later today and add them to another blog tomorrow. I honestly don't think I'm watering it enough. We had a week of rain last week, and all my babies looked VERY happy about that. I have also used a vegetable plant food, but I am not using any sort of pesticides. I'm gardening with natural things, like egg shells to deter slugs, the basil will keep the worms off the tomatoes, etc. I'm hoping that all of my companions will protect and benefit from each other.

It's been so much fun. Every single day I go outside in the morning with my coffee, and look at everyone. Yeah, I talk to them too. I pick little sprouting weedlets from the dirt, I inspect the tomatoes for fresh blooms and I pluck the "suckers" to keep the main shoots strong and healthy. I made a salad dressing last night with the parsley, thyme, and rosemary, and it was SO GOOD!  I'll be sure to put that recipe up soon, too.

Stay tuned for the progress of The Saucy Dish Garden...

Simple Meatloaf

Last night's yummy creation was just a basic meatloaf. Here is what I used and how I did it...

2 pounds ground chuck
1 pound ground turkey
1/2 a bulb of garlic
1 medium onion
1 egg
salt and pepper
2 Tablespoons dried basil
4 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Ketchup

The garlic clove that I used was one that had a zillion little tiny cloves instead of several larger ones. I used A LOT of them. I peeled the garlic and threw them all into the bowl of my food processor. Then, I peeled and cut up the onion into a medium dice and put that in the processor too. I whirred them together until they were the size of rice. Not a full puree, but not chunky either. (ps ... using the processor did NOT eliminate the onion fumes and the tears.)

I dumped that into a large mixing bowl.  I added the egg and both meats. I added some salt and pepper, and the basil, then added the Worcestershire sauce. Then I just used my hands and mixed it all together. I'm a BIG believer in not working the meat too much. I hardly touch ground beef when I'm making burger patties because I want them to stay tender.

After the mixture was well mixed, I put it into my HUGE cast iron pan with bacon drippings to grease the pan. Then I covered the top with a coating of regular store-bought ketchup. I had my oven preheating to 425, so while I finished waiting for the oven to heat up, I started cooking the meat loaf on the stove. I turned the burner on high to get it seared on the bottom, then I turned it to medium/high after about 5 minutes. Once the over was at temp, I slid the meatloaf into the oven.  Now ... I thought it wouldn't take very long since I had started it on the stove top, but it seemed to take FOREVER. I checked it after 15 minutes, no where near done. I checked it another 15 after that ... nope still not close. I bumped up the oven to 450 and told everyone dinner was in 15 minutes.

I had leftover broccoli and sugar snap beans from an hour devour platter, so I dropped them into salted boiling water, put the lid on, and just let them sit in the hot water until we were ready to eat. (They were PERFECT!)  I put a pot of rice on, with a chicken bullion cube and a bunch of dried parsley. 

15 minutes later, I took the pan out of the oven, and the instant-read thermometer went right to 180.  Since I used the mix of turkey and beef, I wasn't messing around with the temp. It needed to be 180 to make me feel "safe" about eating the turkey in the mix.

Dinner was served with a pie-shaped wedge of meatloaf, rice, broccoli and sugar snap beans. I cut the kids up for them and added more ketchup for them. They ate it like they hadn't seen food in weeks. They are 3 and 4.5, by the way, and thought this was AWESOME! My Honey put pepper flakes on his (both helpings), and I just ate mine as it was.

The bottom had an awesome crust from me starting it on the stove. The top was that awesome thick, sticky ketchup crust. It really was awesome. And we have at least half left over for tonight, which is great because the first thing my 4.5 year old son asked me this morning was, "Mommy, can I have for supper tonight what we had last night again?". I thought we had more sugar snap peas, but I don't see them now. I hope he's OK with green beans.

Hope you enjoy it. :)

To run or not to run ... that is the question

Last week one of my goals was to complete JUST week 1, day 1 of the couch to 5K app on my phone. I downloaded the free version, because I'm not going to spend money on it until I know for sure that I'm going to follow through with this.

As usual, I didn't do it.  I found a LOT of reasons not to.  It was raining every day early in the week, and I know I can't do week 1, day1 on the first day, and I didn't want to start mid-week, because then I might not make my goal, and that would discourage me, and I wouldn't try again. I had my step-mother's memorial to plan, and I was spending a lot of time thinking about that, coordinating what friends and relatives wanted to bring, etc. I am still job hunting, and if I don't sit in front of the computer actively looking for a job, then how can I validate my time outside being selfish by going for a walk and a run when I'm not contributing to the overall wealth and growth of the family. 

See ... I'm a pathological "starter", and according to the rant above, a fantastic excuse maker. I'm very good at starting things. I bet I've started more than a million projects in my life, but actually finishing them ... well ... that's another story.  I jump in with both feet, knowing FOR SURE that this time will be different.  "I really will do it this time." "But this time I 'REALLY' want this, and I've got a 'PLAN'." "OK, next time I start to slip away, remind me that I want this, and I'm telling you to remind me that I want this."  WHOA ... what's that over there ... I need to go investigate that.  Wait ... what was I doing?  I can't remember.  Oh well, must not have been important since I cant remember, so I'll go start supper.

So ... today I did it. I dressed in my running gear right when I first woke up. I put on my socks and running shoes before I took the kids to preschool.  (I'm a bare-foot or flip-flop girl by nature, so socks and shoes is a big deal for me.) But ... see ... it was cloudy again, so after dropping the kids off, I went to Starbucks, to the Dollar Store, and it still wasn't raining. Humph. Hello!  Where are my excuses now?!? AHAH!  My cell battery was almost dead (how I have NO idea since I swear I plugged it in last night, but it was just about dead as a doornail this morning), so I sat down with what was left of my coffee, watched a few minutes of Kelly and Michael, and let my phone charge. After about 15 minutes, it had half a charge, so I plugged in my hot pink ear buds from TJMaxx (with the adjustable rubber nubs that don't hurt my ears and don't fall out) and I turned on my phone. I selected the running app, turned on the play list I had made (all by myself, thank you very much), and left the house for a walk/run. 

My original goal for today was to walk the whole time.  Let's just see what this feels like after so long. Let's see what the weather is like. Let's not push it.  The point is to get out and move, it's not to run a marathon on day one. (Oh, PS ... if I'm not instantly the best at something I tend to quit. Never grew out of that 3-year-old mentality for some reason. Yes, I know it's a flaw, and I'm aware of it, so that's the first step ... right?)

So the nice mans voice told me to start walking, and a good song was on, so I happily followed instructions. (At this point, while reading this, my husband and a few of my other long-time friends have just passed out at the idea I would follow directions.) I walked the sidewalks of my neighborhood, feeling great in the cool overcast weather. My Wonder Woman t-shirt alerting the world to my presence. I iPhone tucked into my bra so I could use both arms to swing and really get into the walk and not futz with my phone. 

Then the nice man said to begin to run. This too sounded like a fine idea, so I thought I'd give it a try.  And before I was sore or tired, he told me to slow down and walk again. SWEET!  This is AWESOME!  I'M RUNNING!  I'm a runner. WOO HOO!  So I strutted down the road using my walking feet listening to the music, when he told me to run again.  So I did.  And low and behold, it kinda started to feel like work after a little while, but then he said to walk again, so I graciously did as I was told. No, not told, suggested.  As it was suggested to me.  Yeah ... that's better.  So again, I walked along feeling very proud and excited. Then it was suggested that I run again. Well, OK, it's not too long, he'll tell me I can walk again soon, so lets try it again.  "He's going to say I can walk again soon, he's going to say I can walk again soon, he's going to say I can walk again soon" was my mantra soon into this third running segment. And he did.  There's a very pleasant chime right before he talks, and I didn't even wait for his voice after that chime. When the 4th chime came on saying it was time to run, I did so again, also knowing that it's not a long spell of running, and I "think" I can do this.  The mantra was in my head the entire time on the 4th running segment.  Good LORD it's starting to feel like "work".  On the 5th running segment, I didn't follow his suggestion to run.  Then, on the 6th and final running segment, I had to cut it short.  His sweet voice told me I was in my final 5 minutes of cool-down, and then I needed to stretch.  I turned around and headed for home.

Then I posted that bad boy to facebook, did my stretching and some old yoga moves I remember from my gym days, and kicked off my shoes. Just in time to see the first raindrops fall onto the deck.

So here we are.  I made it.  I did it.  I didn't "do" all of week 1, day 1.  I won't count it as done until I can run each time he tells me to run, and I can go the whole time he tells me to.  I'm still hoping that I can make it by the end of this week though.  Because, you see, I REALLY want it this time!

Pallet Garden

Welcome to the beginning of the article on us building our raised gardens out of pallets.  This is hopefully going to give you a more realistic view of how this came together.  It's not all sunshine and roses like everyone on Pinterest wants you to believe.  But they are beautiful, recycled, and, in my opinion, simply wonderful. Not a day goes by that I don't go out back and look at them, touch them, talk to the plants growing, and just marvel at the fact that we started and FINISHED a project.  (More on the garden in a later post.)

Here is the project "site".  Needs some love, doesn't it?

Yup, this is the shaggy over-grown back yard, and the location of the soon to be raised gardens.

Here are the pallets we'll be using.  My husband is a fire fighter and they have a TON of pallets donated to them that are free of chemicals. This is important both in burning the pallets for training exercises, and for using the lumber in a garden.

So we began to take the pallets apart.  Easy enough.  Saw all the pictures on Pinterest, read the reports of how easy it was. This should be a piece of cake, right?

Uh ... yeah ... it didn't really work that way.  The thing with pallets, is that they are designed to be rugged. They are kinda built to NOT come apart easily.  So, the wood split, it chipped, it just didn't want to play nice at all.

We used a crowbar...

And a mallet...

And we ended up with a lot of scrap wood.  This was not what I had in mind. I was getting frustrated with my husband, "The guy on Pinterest said he did all of this in a few hours, and we've been at this all day! What is the problem?". I was getting frustrated with myself because I was doing this to be eco-friendly and all we were doing was making a mess.

So, we took a break and mowed the backyard to get a change of scenery.

Looks better, huh? What ... I'm no Martha Stewart (yet), and I did say "better".

So ... truth be told, my husband loaded the car back up with a bunch of our pallets and went to saw the suckers apart. Yeah .. screw the whole pulling of the nails idea, that was getting us nowhere.  Saw those bad boys right down the far sides, then pry up the middle nail which is usually easier to pry because there are less rusty nails in the center beam. When he got to the shop where he was using the saw, he found a bunch of one foot tall "scrap" 2x4's in a large pile.  BINGO!  We'll take those, if you don't mind.  PERFECT!

And we started to build.  (YAY!)  3 of the boards were the perfect height for our found 2x4 scraps. Again, using what someone else thought was trash is one of those things that just makes me happy. We did buy the screws used to hold everything together. We debated using nails again, but my Honey wanted to use screws, and he was the one dealing with me "suggesting" things all day, so I let him screw it. (ahem)  We used 2 screws per board to anchor into the 2x4.

Even Boo helped when and where he could.

TA-DA!  Look what we did, Mommy!  Here is our garden.  Now lets go get the seeds!

Here is an interior shot of what they looked like as frames.

We made 3 boxes total for our back yard. I am VERY happy with the choice of 3 smaller ones as opposed to a larger one.  I have room to walk between the beds to tend to my plants very easily. Each box is 3'x3'. And as you can see, I've got about a "Kevin-spaced" width between each. Kevin is our cat, in case I have failed to mention that in an earlier post. I especially liked this picture of Kevin and our son, Conner, saying hello.

Then I lined the bottoms with old news paper. I did this to create a weed barrier that would decompose after ensuring no weeds were coming up through the base of the beds. I also lined around the edges because this was where I placed the pavers to give it a "finished" look. 

Here is a shot of the pavers going around the 3 as a single unit. I did not put the pavers down the isles between them. There is still nothing there but the newspaper still at this moment. I'm not sure what I will use there, perhaps just mulch.

There are medium sized river rocks under the deck, so I helped them migrate down to the back side of the beds. Again, using newspaper as a weed barrier.

Then I filled them with dirt.  I added some of my own compost, shook in some shredded paper, and began to plant things to see what I could manage to grow. I bought extra dirt so I could level out the patio that I began building last year with both pavers and large slate pieces that came with the house when we bought it.

The gardens and the patio make-over will be another story.