I haven't gotten my 15 minutes of blogging in for quite awhile now.
However, yesterday I started to get plans in shape to change that. I was working on a schedule, and trying to get one in place.
I was also trying to get my family onto the same page as I was, however they were being confrontational about the whole thing. There were a multitude of excuses of "why nots".
I hate "why....nots..."
Over half of the day yesterday, I was doing meal planning. My version of meal planning is trying to get one dinner listed in my calendar for each night. For the year. Some nights are easy, like Christmas Eve. We always have fondue on Christmas Eve. Holidays are easy too. It's the rest of the year I have trouble with.
Here's what I do:
Each day of the week is assigned a certain type of meal, generally by the protein, but not always.
Sunday = chicken/poultry
Monday = pork
Tuesday = pasta
Wednesday = soup/stew
Thursday = beef
Friday = sandwiches/pizza/vegetarian/breakfast for dinner
Saturday = leftovers
From there, I hit my cookbooks. Yesterday I started with one I had only tried one or two recipes from in the past, and worked my way through it. Now, I know that Wednesday is soup/stew night, so I found all the recipes for soup or stew or chowder or whatever, and filled in as many Wednesday night from that cookbook as I possibly could.
Sometimes, recipes for soup or whatever are in a different section, like chicken. Or vegetarian. It can be a hunt to find them, so I go page by page. I went as far as I could in that cookbook for each day.
Once I had gotten through that book, I picked up another. One that had a lot of recipes that I know my family likes. I got all those into my schedule. This way we have a nice combination of things we KNOW we like, and a whole bunch of new stuff too.
On days when I don't have any writing to do, I can go through and try to get some of these dishes made ahead of time, effectively turning them into freezer meals. If they don't work as freezer meals, I can at least get most of the ingredients together into one bag, label them and put the date when we're suppose to have that particular meal.
Next on my mass re-organization of my life, I'm going to be coming up with a cleaning schedule. Let's hope that works, too.
Or at least it's imperfectly perfect.
Showing posts with label freezer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freezer. Show all posts
Monday, February 1, 2016
Sunday, January 10, 2016
New Year, With a Difference
So this morning I managed to sleep through my alarm. Both of them. And my husband trying to wake me up. I'm blaming the rainy weather.
Trying to get back into some sort of schedule after two weeks of almost no schedule is really hard.
Yesterday I also took the time to sync up all the calendars in the house. I look at the month ahead and discover just exactly how busy I am. Every day. For a woman who is suppose to be a "work from home mom", I seem to be never home anymore. Karate practice, basketball practice, basketball game, doctor's appointments, teaching at the school... Pretty much, each one of those things takes up one day, and the entire day's schedule must revolve around just that one event.
The upside is that since I'm a writer, I can pretty much write anywhere. I don't need a computer to do it, I can use a pencil and paper, and then add it into any document later on, when I get home. This is especially awesome since where the kids have basketball and karate has no wi-fi. Strange in this day and age, I know. At the doctor's office I can get wi-fi, but even the guest accounts need passwords and pins and stuff like that. So, I drop back to a small notebook in which to jot ideas and use my microcassette recorder in the car.
Yeah, remember microcassette recorders? For those of you too young to remember, it's what we used before we had tablets and phones that could double as a voice recorder. Mine was really advanced, and could be set to record only when someone was speaking. That was to save tape space and batteries. I set mine on voice activation when I'm in the car, which means it runs all the time between the kids and radio. But I still do manage to get some ideas onto it. I also set it up to record when I'm in the shower. Why do I always get my best ideas in the shower? I don't know. Once I remember planning out an entire series of novels when I was rinsing dye out of my hair. I pretty much even had the first couple of chapters outlined out. It was awesome. I didn't have a recorder going at the time, so I lost it all. Taught me a lesson, let me tell you.
At any rate, I'm trying to schedule better, and I'm planning on trying to get more stuff out of the way on Saturdays and Sundays. I still need to get my dinners planned out for the coming months. Soon it will be time to hit the cupboards and freezer to do just that. We'll see how all this goes.
I wish you all luck in the new year for a imperfectly perfect year. Or at least the next couple of days.
;-)
Trying to get back into some sort of schedule after two weeks of almost no schedule is really hard.
Yesterday I also took the time to sync up all the calendars in the house. I look at the month ahead and discover just exactly how busy I am. Every day. For a woman who is suppose to be a "work from home mom", I seem to be never home anymore. Karate practice, basketball practice, basketball game, doctor's appointments, teaching at the school... Pretty much, each one of those things takes up one day, and the entire day's schedule must revolve around just that one event.
The upside is that since I'm a writer, I can pretty much write anywhere. I don't need a computer to do it, I can use a pencil and paper, and then add it into any document later on, when I get home. This is especially awesome since where the kids have basketball and karate has no wi-fi. Strange in this day and age, I know. At the doctor's office I can get wi-fi, but even the guest accounts need passwords and pins and stuff like that. So, I drop back to a small notebook in which to jot ideas and use my microcassette recorder in the car.
Yeah, remember microcassette recorders? For those of you too young to remember, it's what we used before we had tablets and phones that could double as a voice recorder. Mine was really advanced, and could be set to record only when someone was speaking. That was to save tape space and batteries. I set mine on voice activation when I'm in the car, which means it runs all the time between the kids and radio. But I still do manage to get some ideas onto it. I also set it up to record when I'm in the shower. Why do I always get my best ideas in the shower? I don't know. Once I remember planning out an entire series of novels when I was rinsing dye out of my hair. I pretty much even had the first couple of chapters outlined out. It was awesome. I didn't have a recorder going at the time, so I lost it all. Taught me a lesson, let me tell you.
At any rate, I'm trying to schedule better, and I'm planning on trying to get more stuff out of the way on Saturdays and Sundays. I still need to get my dinners planned out for the coming months. Soon it will be time to hit the cupboards and freezer to do just that. We'll see how all this goes.
I wish you all luck in the new year for a imperfectly perfect year. Or at least the next couple of days.
;-)
Monday, March 23, 2015
Weekend Warrior: What Does it Mean to You?
Most people I know, look forward to the weekends. It's a time of relaxation and family fun.
However, when you have a husband that basically works in the retail world, there is no such thing as a normal weekend. Heck, there's no such thing as a regular work week.
Weekends in our house means the kids pitch in and help me out getting housework done. Chores that have been neglected get finished up. Shopping trips get done.
This past weekend we pretty much did the usual: sorted, washed, dried, and put away laundry, and did some cooking.
Sunday I didn't feel very good, and the boys wanted to spend time with their grandmother, so they left me alone to nap all day.
However, the work I got done this weekend was awesome. Since my husband brought home several family packs of chicken leg quarters that were on sale, I decided to use one of them to make up a wonderful huge batch of West African Chicken. This is a fantastic recipe I got from a neighbor, as part of her wedding gift to me. It is truly yummy, and freezes great. I always make way more than I need to for one meal, because once it is in the pot, the cooking is the same, and it makes a fabulous freezer meal.
WEST AFRICAN CHICKEN from Joan H.
2 Tablespoons oil (I used olive oil)
1 onion, chopped
1 4 oz can of chopped green chiles
1 16 oz can of chopped tomatoes with liquid
1 chicken flavored bouillon cube
1/4 teaspoon EACH: salt, ground ginger, and ground red pepper
1 Cup chunky peanut butter (I used smooth, because that's what I had)
6 chicken thighs (or drumsticks)
Saute onion in oil. Add chicken and everything else, except peanut butter to pan. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer until chicken is done (when it gets up to around 165F with a meat thermometer). Remove chicken, debone, remove the skin, and shred the meat. Stir in peanut butter until smooth. Add chicken back into sauce, stir well. Heat through. Serve with rice.
While it's cooking:
I removed the chicken to add the peanut butter. Yum.
The chicken and the sauce.
We were all members of the clean plate club tonight. And look at the smile in the second picture. It was a HIT!
However, when you have a husband that basically works in the retail world, there is no such thing as a normal weekend. Heck, there's no such thing as a regular work week.
Weekends in our house means the kids pitch in and help me out getting housework done. Chores that have been neglected get finished up. Shopping trips get done.
This past weekend we pretty much did the usual: sorted, washed, dried, and put away laundry, and did some cooking.
Sunday I didn't feel very good, and the boys wanted to spend time with their grandmother, so they left me alone to nap all day.
However, the work I got done this weekend was awesome. Since my husband brought home several family packs of chicken leg quarters that were on sale, I decided to use one of them to make up a wonderful huge batch of West African Chicken. This is a fantastic recipe I got from a neighbor, as part of her wedding gift to me. It is truly yummy, and freezes great. I always make way more than I need to for one meal, because once it is in the pot, the cooking is the same, and it makes a fabulous freezer meal.
WEST AFRICAN CHICKEN from Joan H.
2 Tablespoons oil (I used olive oil)
1 onion, chopped
1 4 oz can of chopped green chiles
1 16 oz can of chopped tomatoes with liquid
1 chicken flavored bouillon cube
1/4 teaspoon EACH: salt, ground ginger, and ground red pepper
1 Cup chunky peanut butter (I used smooth, because that's what I had)
6 chicken thighs (or drumsticks)
Saute onion in oil. Add chicken and everything else, except peanut butter to pan. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer until chicken is done (when it gets up to around 165F with a meat thermometer). Remove chicken, debone, remove the skin, and shred the meat. Stir in peanut butter until smooth. Add chicken back into sauce, stir well. Heat through. Serve with rice.
While it's cooking:
I can only say I wish the computer had Smellovision. It smells WONDERFUL. I can't wait to try it.
We were all members of the clean plate club tonight. And look at the smile in the second picture. It was a HIT!
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