Day Thirteen

I should have posted this last night but this cold finally caught up with me and I went to bed early. After watching "Chuck" of course, and skimming through "Dancing With the Stars." After all, we have to have priorities.

Yesterday was a good day. The sun was shining, the crisp fall air is here in force, and for most of the day I felt really good. I walked to work - the car didn't move all day. I had put spaghetti sauce in the crockpot before I left for work so I came home to my house smelling yummy. And I'm almost half way through the month.

One of the nice things about this Month of Nothing has been the way it has freed me up to say "no" to things. Want to order books from the school book order? Sorry, no, it's our month of nothing. School fundraiser selling vats of chemical tasting cookie dough? Sorry, no, it's our month of nothing. These are all things which are "optional" but which, sadly, I usually cave in to when the sweet little faces of my children turn to me and plead, "Please?" But they are things that I probably should say no to more often, or at least be more selective. Maybe let them buy one book from the book order instead of a set. Buy one thing from the fund raiser instead of many, or don't buy from this fund raiser but spend a little extra on bingo night when the whole family is together having a good time.

I guess this is what I wanted out of the Month of Nothing - a fresh look at what I spend money on and why. Do we need books from the book order or could we check those same books out at the library? How many fund raisers can we really support? (I've been the PTA president for three years and been involved for 11 years so don't yell at me that we need to support our schools! I know how underfunded our schools are and fully recognize the need to fund raise. But when we get hit with three different fundraisers in one month I question whether we are going about it in the best way.)

Hopefully, when this month is over I won't go back blindly to my old ways. Hopefully I will have a new awareness of what is actually need vs. what I just want. And hopefully my family will also.

Meals today were:

Breakfast was homemade bread toasted. For the cheese bread I used my Bread Making 101 recipe, rolled it out after I punched it down after the first rise, brushed it with melted butter and sprinkled grated cheddar cheese. Then rolled it up and put it in the pan seam side down. The only change I would make would be to use less sugar in the original recipe. The slightly sweet bread with the cheese is a little odd. If you use 1/4 c. sugar instead of 1/3 c it should be fine, though it might need to rise slightly longer.

Lunch was bits and pieces. I had a cheese stick and the last of the lunch meat, an apple, a yogurt and a homemade granola bar. The little kids had yogurt, apples, graham crackers. I'm not sure what Hubby had.

Dinner was the afore mentioned spaghetti sauce over tortellini, sliced tomatoes from the garden, fruit cocktail from a can.

Jill

Menu Plan Monday (and Day Twelve)

I'm still in my "Month of Nothing" and going strong. I only spent $35 last week on groceries and I'm on track to do about the same for this week. I baked today so that we would have snacks for the week. I made another loaf of cinnamon swirl bread and then, because I have one kid who swears she doesn't like cinnamon, a made a loaf of cheddar swirl bread. It turned out pretty good. I just rolled the dough out like I would for a cinnamon swirl loaf and then brushed it with melted butter then sprinkled grated cheddar cheese, rolled it up and put it seam side down in the pan, let it rise then bake. It is good. Yum. Probably what I will have for breakfast tomorrow (if there's any left, that is).Doesn't that look good? I really need to work on my photography skills, they are not the best.

Meals for today were:

Breakfast was toast as we were running out the door to church.

Lunch is our big meal on Sundays, we had overnight waffles with jam and it was so good.

Dinner is whatever you can find on Sundays. I made apple oatmeal bars and a big bowl of parmesan popcorn. Some of us at only that. And I make no excuses. So there.

Here is the menu for this week. I'm going to buy a chunk of black forest ham and I'll make it last for several meals.

Breakfasts:

• Homemade bread toasted
• oatmeal with berries
• muffins
• cereal

Lunches:

• leftovers
• yogurt with granola
• various bits and pieces

Dinners:

• Ham fried rice, fruit
  
• scalloped potatoes and ham, salad and/or veggies
• ham and bean soup with bread
• croquettes (we call these croquettes but they are really rice balls filled with mozzarella cheese and chunks of ham. The balls are rolled in bread crumbs and then either deep fried or, what I do, baked. The Italians call them arancini which means "little oranges" because they look a little like oranges when they are finished. Here's a recipe for arancini but I don't use the peas), fruit
  
• Funeral Potatoes (a scalloped potato type thing, I know, I know, two scalloped potato things in one week. I pointed this out to my family when they suggested it but they didn't care. Whatever, potatoes are cheap. Fish Mama posted an almost identical recipe this week. Check out her Cheesy Potatoes)
• Leftovers or pancakes

I should only have to buy the ham, some fresh fruit and veggies, sour cream, milk, yogurt, and a few other things I'm out of. I won't shop for this week until Tuesday night or Wednesday so for the rest of the week we'll be having the rest of last weeks menu (I'm off because I started my "weeks" when the month started and October started on a Wednesday).

I'm excited for this week's menu - most of these recipes are family favorites and so everyone should be happy at the dinner table all week. Weeks like this make a momma proud.

If you want ideas for how to make your crew happy at the dinner table, visit Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas.
Jill

Day Eleven

Free grapes are great, unless you go crazy and bring home 70 lbs of them that you have to do something with today!

That is what I did today. Stupid girl. We went out to a beautiful farm on Sauvie Island and we could pick as many grapes, apples or asian pears we wanted. There were tons of apples, but I'd already done applesauce for this year so I just got enough for lunchboxes for the next week or so. There were very few asian pears so I just got a couple.

There were TONS of grapes! Purple concords, white concords and some that looked like champagne grapes. I got lots and lots of purple concords - 70 lbs worth!
Here they are all lined up on my counter. Here's what they looked like 6 hours (and a really sore back) later:
That is 25 quarts of grape juice. Supposedly, this is concentrated juice and I should be able to water it down and get a half gallon from each quart. I'm excited. I've never done grape juice before, it is a lot of work but I'm thinking it will be worth it. Especially since these 25 quarts cost me nothing except a lot of work!

Meals today:

Breakfast was an English muffin and chocolate milk for me. I left and was gone until 1 pm (picking grapes) so I don't know what everyone else had.

Lunch was leftovers for everyone. Roman Rice and beans wrapped up in tortillas.

Dinner was one-eyed Egyptians. I got three eggs today from my chickens! That means it is safe to start eating eggs because the chickens will produce enough to cover our use. Yeah!

Oh, I did buy a bottled water today. I took a Sudafed before I left to go picking and then forgot to take a water bottle with me. Sudafed dries me out and I was so thirsty! So I caved. Only 99 cents though.

Tomorrow I'm baking, for sure!

Jill

Day Ten

I had the day off today and it was lovely! I slept in, which did my cold a world of good. I still am very snuffily and drippy but I don't feel horrible.

My sister and I went and visited my other sister in the hospital (she had surgery but is doing fine), and then we went out to lunch. Yes, you read that right, we went out to lunch. And I paid for my lunch. And I didn't feel guilty about it at all. I know that I'm only supposed to be spending money on necessary things. But I felt like this was necessary - now that my sister and I are both working we never have time to get together and I really miss that. We really needed to connect. If I want to be really "good" I could count the $8 from Baja Fresh towards my $50 for the week. If I do that, I still have $7 left for another gallon of milk and some fresh fruit later in the week.

I am going to get free fruit tomorrow. I have a friend who invited me to go and I'm not sure exactly what it is going to be like but I'm going to go and check it out. There are apples, pears, grapes and "berries" although I have no idea what kind of berries. What kind of berry is still producing in October? I'll update you all tomorrow.

Meals for today:

Breakfast was who knows what! I had toast, some people had leftover pancakes from last night, some people had cereal.

Lunch was Baja Fresh for me, ramen noodles and apples (courtesy of Jana) for the kids, office provided lunch for Hubby.

Dinner was Roman Rice and Beans and fruit. We actually liked this fairly well. I think I would make it again but "tweak" it a little to fit our tastes.

I'm going to bed early so I can get some sleep and hopefully get rid of this cold!

Thanks for the suggestions on what to make. I'm definitely going to make cookies and brownie bites sound yummy!

Jill

Day Nine - In Which I Get a Cold

This morning I had a headache. The kind that is centered right behind your nose and eyes, you know? I thought, "That's weird, it almost feels like a sinus headache." I took a couple of motrin and felt fine the rest of the day.

Then while I was fixing dinner, it hit me.

"I'm getting a cold." I thought.

Then 15 minutes later I started sneezing. Then the congestion hit. Then the body aches. About an hour later I felt miserable. I'm now laying in my bed in my pajamas hoping that I have Nyquil (or the generic equivalent) in my medicine cabinet. If I don't, I'm in big trouble 'cause I'll never be able to sleep if I don't.

Do you think cold medicine is a "necessity?" I guess the answer depends on whether you are the one with a cold or not!

Meals today were:

Breakfast was english muffins with jam and chocolate milk (regular milk with Hershey's syrup added - don't judge me, we like it.), and apples.

Lunch for me was the last of the Thai noodles and snacks from treat day at work. Hubby took leftover Cornbean casserole from Tuesday night. The kids took yogurt, fruit, graham crackers, cheese sticks, etc.

Dinner was pancakes. Blueberry pancakes and potato pancakes. Not everyone likes potato pancakes and not everyone likes blueberry pancakes so if I make both, everyone is happy. Plus it's really cheap and yummy. We like to do breakfast for dinner. Everyone thinks it's a treat, I think it's easy, and it saves me money. How can you do better than that?

I took cinnamon bread to treat day today, and ended up with extra so the kids (ok, and me, too) had that for snacks.

I'm going to go drink some lemon honey tea, take some kind of drugs and go to bed. I have the day off tomorrow so I'm sleeping in and spending time with my sister. My plan is to bake this weekend so that I have snacks and lunch-box stuffers for next week. Muffins, more cinnamon bread, cookies, etc. Hopefully I'll feel better and have the energy for that.

What are your favorite baked things that you can send in lunches? I'm getting tired of my recipes and need some tried and true ones. Help!

Jill

Day Eight

Wah-hoo! I went grocery shopping today. I made a list in advance (after planning meals for the next week) and only got what was on my list.

Drum roll please!

$35.11!!

And that included food for our bunnies!!! Yeah me! After I got through the check-out line and realized how low it was, I was kicking myself for saying no to a few things. I should have gotten more fruit for lunch boxes, for instance. But now I have almost $15 to make a run later in the week for a gallon for milk and a bag of apples or grapes.

One of the things that has been really great about this experience so far is that it is teaching me what I really don't want to run out of. I have a really well stocked pantry, and I keep it that way so that if I ever really had to feed my family for almost nothing, I could. But I'm realizing some things that I need to stock up on next time they are on sale. Olive oil, for example. I'm almost out of olive oil and that will take up half of my $50 to replace! For this month I would just switch over to canola oil, but I really like my olive oil! Next time I go to Costco, I'm buying two!

Meals for today:

Breakfast was cereal for some people and the last of the homemade bread toasted with homemade raspberry jam on it.

Lunch was Thai noodles for Hubby, rice, beans, cheese, salsa for me, yogurt and bits and pieces for the kids.

Dinner was chicken and rice soup, homemade breadsticks. Yum, it was really, really good.

I got sleep last night and I feel like a human today, amazing how that sleep stuff makes you feel all "well rested" and perky.

Jill

Day Seven

I'm so tired! It has been a very long day. I went to the city council meeting tonight. I didn't speak but just me being there reminds everyone about chickens.

I drove to work and to the city council meeting. I have a little less than 3/4 of a tank left in my car. I guess that is good since it is almost the 8th day of the month. I only drove to work because I was volunteering in Kaden's class before I work, I haven't gotten it together enough to walk and be there by 8 am! I'm walking the whole rest of the week.

I was rethinking my last post (where I said I would have $76 for food this week). I went shopping just before this whole experience began and I'm going to count that as my grocery spending for last week. That means that I will have $50 for this week (tomorrow to next Wednesday). Maybe a better way of doing this would be to say that I have $200 for the month, rather than per week? I don't know.

The other real bummer of this whole experience is having kids in school. My high school junior came home from school the other day and said, "I need $74 for a new choir dress and $40 for a choir retreat."

"What?" I asked. I hadn't seen anything about a choir retreat, and what was wrong with the choir dress from last year, and SEVENTY FOUR DOLLARS for a choir dress? I haven't spent that much on a dress for myself - ever! I think the fabric for my wedding dress cost less than that!

"It's not optional, Mom," my daughter replied. "My choir teacher already paid for both these things and now we have to reimburse her."

Well thanks for giving us parents some choice.

So now I have to pay $114 during my month of nothing. It isn't really optional because, well, because I'm responsible and I won't let my child be blamed by her teacher because her mom went crazy and decided to do a Month of Nothing. But it really bums me out. I wanted to end this month with lots of money left over.

My dryer is making funny noises, also. *sigh* So far the dryer is still running and it doesn't smell like anything is burning up so I'm going to keep using it. Then I'll string clothes line in the garage and hang stuff if I have to!

Meal for today were:

Breakfast was homemade bread toasted. I made two loaves, one cinnamon swirl loaf and one plain bread. We had the cinnamon swirl for breakfast and the plain one for snacks.

Lunch was Thai noodles for me and Hubby. Bits and pieces for the kids. Kaden bought lunch. I think he has two or three lunches left in his account.

Dinner was a Crusty Cornbean pie. It was ok, but no one jumped up and down about it. It was really cheap, though.

Tomorrow is another day, maybe I won't be as tired.

Jill