{this moment}

{this moment} - Inspired by Soulemama. In her words: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you want to participate head over to her blog and enjoy.

Let's Talk Turkey

Normally we think of turkey as a food that is reserved for Thanksgiving or maybe Christmas when we have a lot of people around to help us eat it. Our household only has two adults so you would think that roasting a turkey for just us would be rather crazy. However, last week I found a whole turkey breast on sale for $0.99/lb and bought it because I know how much my husband likes roast turkey. I rubbed it with butter and sprinkled on sea salt and freshly ground pepper and roasted it up in the oven until the thermometer reached 170F. I also threw in some sweet potatoes from our CSA for the last hour or so and a loaf of sour dough bread to warm up for the last 10 minutes or so. While the turkey was resting I made up some gravy and we had what many would consider a "fancy" dinner with very little time and effort on my part. I love these sorts of meals because they make me feel like I have done a wonderful thing for my family without having to spend all day at it.

The meal was tasty, but we had a bunch of meat left afterwards. The next day for lunch I'd planned on doing turkey sandwiches, but DH didn't want to wait long enough to cut the bread and just ate the turkey straight. After this we still had turkey left, though at this point it was getting hard to slice.

For dinner that night I picked as much as I could off the bones and threw it in a casserole dish with diced new potatoes and a couple of carrots, both from our CSA share. I added the remaining gravy (thinned with some wine because we didn't have much left) from the night before, put the lid on and baked it in the oven until it was hot and bubbly. I was originally planning on putting some drop biscuits on top and calling it "turkey pot pie", but there wasn't enough room left in the dish so I'm calling it "turkey pot stew". This was quite tasty and there was enough left over for lunch the next day. I then threw the bones into the crock pot with more carrot, some celery, onion and a few herbs. I poured water in almost to the top, turned it on low and wet to bed. By the next morning I had 14 cups of stock that was happy to bubble away until I had time to deal with it. At that point we threw out the bones and said goodbye to the turkey.

The turkey breast cost me $6.47. All the vegetables (except the celery in the stock) were from our CSA share which is large enough that we really have to work to use them. This turkey fed us from Sunday night through lunch on Tuesday and left us with enough stock in the freezer that we won't have to buy any for quite a while. Normally I wouldn't have bought a single cut of meat that large for two adults and a baby because I would worry about it going to waste. However, we finished it off before we got tired of it and had several cheap, healthy, enjoyable meals. From now on turkey will be on my list of meats to buy when it gets cheap enough. Maybe next time I'll even consider buying a whole turkey...

Grocery Sales

Shopping sales can be serious business or a great game.

If you are anything like me you've heard about all those people who pay next to nothing for their groceries and wondered how they do it. How can you get a box of good cereal (eg. Cheerios or Chex) for $1 or free toothpaste? As I look for ways to spend less and live more I started looking into how this works. At first I was sure it wouldn't be useful for us because we don't buy a lot of stuff that comes in boxes and that seems to be what the sales are for. However, I've started looking closer at the grocery ads (with some help of course :-) and have found some money savings.

The idea of "super couponing" is that you combine sale prices with coupons to get a really good deal. One example is that while I was walking down the aisle at a grocery store a couple weeks ago I saw a manufacturers coupon for $1 off 2 boxes of Cheerios. Since we like Cheerios I grabbed the coupon. Since then I have started watching the ads. Sure enough last week I saw a one-day-only sale where Cheerios (and other cereal) was selling at 2 boxes for $3. When this is combined with the coupon the total price is $2 for 2 or $1 each. That's a really good deal, but we don't eat a lot of Cheerios and it isn't saving if you wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

Where I have found the real savings to come in for our family is in shopping the meat and produce sales. I do home canning so when I see strawberries for $0.99/lb I know that by buying 3 lbs. I can make enough jam to last us for several months (or would have been if I hadn't made two batches of strawberry jam in as many weeks when strawberries were 2 lbs for $3, doh). I was also able to find chicken leg quarters on sale in 10lb bags for $3.90 or $0.39/lb. I grilled about half of those when we had family in town and tossed the rest into Ziploc bags with marinade, pushed the excess air out and froze them. I am still very new to this sale thing, but I am already saving money. Having the pre-prepped food in the freezer is a life saver when I am tired and hungry and just want to hit up the local burger joint.

I'm still no expert and have a lot to learn, but it is kinda fun to sit down and figure out how to get the best deal on things that you would buy anyway. It is also really nice when they day has been busy to be able to pull a bag out of the freezer and have a meal mostly prepared. Normally by lunch time I can tell how crazy my day will be. This means that if it looks like I won't have time to cook the meal I had planned I can grab something out of the freezer and set it to thawing in the refrigerator so that dinner will be taken care of without having to resort to some of the less healthy options for a quick meal. Today is Wednesday, the first day of the new grocery sales. Look through the ads and any coupons you have and see what deals you can find.

Collections

Today there was a post on Nesting Place about using collections to decorate. I have to say that this really resonated with me because I have been looking for ways to update the style of our home and move away from what I call "post college eclectic" and more towards something more sophisticated and well, grown-up.

This would be easy if I were working on an unlimited budget and was ruthless about decluttering, but that just doesn't work for me. While we are no where near poor, like most people, we do have to watch what we buy. As for decluttering, I am trying, but so many of our things were passed down to us and have special memories attached and are still in good condition. The only problem is that they may not match. Add to that the vast horde of yarn and fabric along with knitting and sewing projects in progress and I have a constant battle against entropy. This is why the post about grouping collections of things together as a decorative touch got me thinking. The problem is I didn't think I had anything that I could collect. However, as I walked around my house I was able to find two collections. The first is a grouping of family pictures in the nook leading to the master bedroom. This space is small which makes it hard to decorate, but we finally decided to use the space for family photos, mostly from our wedding. None of the frames really match, but I think it only adds to the look. The other collection is in my sewing room. At one point it was driving my crazy and in an effort to create a peaceful creative space I actually organized. The initial result was useful, but not pretty so I rearranged a few things and placed a DIY felt board with some of my favorite quilt blocks on top of the bookcase. I then added some of those random spinning tools that had no other home to complete the look. I love the look and I am hoping that actually seeing these quilt blocks will help motivate me to continue working on the Dear Jane quilt that I started a couple years ago.

I love the idea of displaying "collections" so much I want to do it in other parts of my house. I have always stayed away from it because I figured it meant more dusting, but this way I am displaying things that I would have out anyway so there is no extra work, just extra beauty. Now I'm off to search the house for other things that I can group together, at least until naptime is over...

Life is Good

Look what I found when I went outside to water the other day.
A couple months ago I planted some seeds from a packet of mixed flowers. It was at the very end of planting season, I planted them too close together and some days I forgot to water them so. They sprouted thickly, but I haven't had many flowers yet and as it is getting hotter I figured I probably wouldn't get any. This, however, made my day brighter. What little things make your life better?

{this moment}

{this moment} - Inspired by Soulemama. In her words: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Baby Preschool?!?

I have a tendency to think about and research issues long before they become a problem. I started looking at what was involved in planning a wedding over a year before my husband proposed. I started discussing baby names two years before we started trying. When I was pregnant I was researching after school programs. I always try to remain flexible when the time comes, but I want to have a chance to do all the research and come to my own conclusions before I have to think about implementing them. This lets me be reasonably prepared when the unexpected happens and helps me remain level headed and confident.) That is what caused me to click a link in an email to learn about homeschooling despite the fact that my only child is not quite 8 months old. I spent a couple days reading through information on curriculums that are available and what my state requirements are. (Shockingly enough I don't really need to think about this stuff for another 5 years or so.) Then I happened across some links for information on "homeschooling" preschool. This excited me because I hoped that I could use some of the information immediately. The lesson plans looked like a ton of fun and were mostly just games and such to play with your child, but they were still designed for older children. It will be another couple years before I can really use them. Finally I happened across a link for a nursery age curriculum. This had "lessons" for babies as young as 3 months. At first I was sceptical because while I would love to teach my daughter new things, I don't want to force it on her and she really is too young for anything like school. But, being me, I looked anyway. I am so glad I did. Basically it has lists of various books, poems, nursery rhymes, scriptures and games to enjoy with your baby. Each is age appropriate for the baby and enjoyable for the parents. As I was going through the various lessons I kept coming across things I had loved myself as a child and since forgotten. I found I could still recite some of the poems from A Child's Garden of Verses. I still knew some of the nursery rhymes, and others were fun to look up and relearn. They even have music suggestions that sent me to YouTube. Below is this week's music. Enjoy.