Resolutions for 2014

2014 will be full of changes for my family! Adjusting to new things can be tough, especially large-scale things like where we live, work, and volunteer, and who shares our life with us. Instead of nailing down a bunch of quantifiable goals, I've decided to change things up. I have had long lists of resolutions for previous years, but 2014 bodes to be both simpler and fuller in several ways. So my new year's resolutions are less numerous, but larger in scale.

CC by BazaarBizarreSF (Flickr)

Food This Week 25

Wow - with a whirlwind of holiday with the family and some scheduling mishaps that seemed to shorten the event, I was happy to fall into my bed last night after dragging piles of presents inside from the car. Highlights this Xmas:

• a red cloth coat
• hers-and-hers Sonicare brushes
• 4 large Kilner jars for pantry storage
• a homeowner's journal, in anticipation of our upcoming status
• a fancy rolling pin (for my sweetie)
• roast beast dinner
• turkey dinner
• hiding all of my sister's presents and leading her to them on Xmas morning! (in the garage, on the bookshelf she asked for)

Food This Week 24

Last week saw multiple restaurant meals and potlucks -- the social season is truly upon us! This week's menu includes big family meals at other people's houses, so the meals we eat at home will be fairly simple. Both of us have to work on the 23rd (and my wife works during the day on the 24th), but we'll be with my parents and sister and the extended family for Xmas Eve and Xmas Day.

Food This Week 23

Today I was out in the world so much! I met coworkers for lunch (missed my direct bus, so took a different bus, a train, and a shuttle instead), came back home, and then set out for the eye doctor's a little later. I get to have laser vision correction in a few weeks, it turns out. Yay! Being able to see what (it seems like) everyone else can see! It's a present to myself. 'Tis the season, after all. This weekend is my wife's birthday; she shares it with a friend of ours, so there will be much celebrating! She always gets a separate birthday present from me -- no lumping it in with Xmas. It's driving her crazy that she can't open the box yet.

Food This Week 22

Is everyone surviving their Thanksgiving leftovers? We had more than I'd planned for, which is really a lovely worry. Extra food (a HUGE banana squash, soup, garlic, and packet of ham from my mom, donuts from a coworker, cupcakes we had an expiring voucher for at a nearby bakery) made appearances several times. My wife brought home a whole bunch of extras from her work's catered dinner (she had to work a midnight shift on Thanksgiving), so we've had turkey cottage pie, turkey soup, and plates of plain leftovers for a while. She made a mole de pavo that's on the menu for tomorrow after we run some errands. Everything's been repurposed and eaten or frozen by now, but it will reappear! (Spaced out a bit, though.) I don't think we need anything from the grocery store this week, either. We'll see how boxed mac & cheese tastes with almond milk, which is all I have in the house...

Food This Week 21

Last week my coworkers and I left the office -- they're doing some major construction and we'll all be relocated until the new year. Some people will be working in a temporary office space in the city, but my team gets to work from home instead. So I am looking forward to hot lunches! I hope my hard-working wife will be able to come home to a cooked meal on frequent occasions. And, yes, I will be happy to work in my pajamas.

Food This Week 20

Thanksgiving is here! Almost. We'll be eating a minimum of 3 turkey dinners next week, because the fixings are on sale, and because I loooooove turkey barley soup. This weekend I'll make a low-key turkey dinner and put up the turkey carcass for soup and extra sliced/shredded meat for planned leftovers. On Thursday, which most people in America know as Thanksgiving Day, my wife and I will be with my parents, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandfather (and perhaps assorted others) for dinner. This is a surprising twist, because my family always celebrates Thanksgiving on Friday (an excellent tradition). We'll be doing that as well, with a slightly different cast of characters -- largely because my wife has to work a double shift. (Customer service is like that.) So I'll have a weekend with my family, and she'll have a weekend of... driving.

Food This Week 19

I've resigned myself to exceeding this month's grocery budget, because the holiday sales are so good. For example, this past week I scored a free turkey, but had to make a $25 additional purchase. Specific flavors of Progresso and Chunky soup (which I grew up eating and like to have in the house) were only a dollar a can (down from $2.99), and frozen pumpkin pies were BOGO. I stretched a little. We're getting food that will keep and that we'll enjoy eating, at a good price, and we have the money, so it's worth it to me. Also, did you know that hams are really expensive? I'd never bought one before, but I've been pricing them out at several stores. It helps that I'm getting a 10% discount because I answered supermarket surveys with the info on my receipts. Still over budget.

Food This Week 18

November is Eat at Home month -- no restaurant food until December. The freezer has lots of meats, and the pantry is fairly full, too. With so many holiday deals at the grocery store, I expect we'll have lots of yummy meals. I am especially looking forward to the traditional post-Thanksgiving turkey barley soup.

Food This Week 17

Food This Week 16

I have been enjoying my BEAUTIFUL new chest freezer. It's a smaller model than I had planned on getting (5.1 cubic feet as opposed to 7.2), because the closest store didn't have the first one available. I could have ordered it online and had it shipped to the store, but I saw the smaller one in person and realized that it had plenty of space for our current needs. Given that it would be easier to move, take up less space in the kitchen, and was about $30 less, I thought it was okay to change plans. (Plus the price recently dropped, and because of Sears's Price Protection policy, I got an additional credit when I followed up.)

Food This Week 15

My wife and I are headed out of town this coming week, on a trip to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. I planned it all and managed to keep my mouth shut even when I was dying to tell her (she wanted it to be a surprise), and there will definitely be some yummy restaurants on the itinerary. The meal plan for this week is therefore very simple! Just know that we will be enjoying fresh local foods from our B&B, at least one picnic lunch, and a variety of dinners that neither of us has to cook.

Food This Week 14

Ah, serendipity! When I find myself wanting to make a meal with ingredients I don't have on hand, I add those ingredients to the "when it's on sale" grocery list. Sometimes they sit there for a while, but it reminds me to keep my eye out for a good price on those items, especially if they aren't advertised. This week, when I opened up the store flyer, I knocked off a handful of those ingredients -- one that had been there for about a month, and several that I'd recently added. Guess I can have pesto pasta, pastry, brussels sprouts, potatoes with my pot roast, and apples with peanut butter after all!

Food This Week 13

My bulk purchases from Amazon arrived: whole-grain bread mix and pumpkin bread mix. (I got really tired of waiting for canned pumpkin to go on sale, and this will make a nice easy addition to potlucks or housewarmings and such.) That purchase, plus some coconut oil on half price, took me over the September grocery budget. I'll be reducing the November spending to make up for that, but it shouldn't be hard with all the food we have in the house.

Food This Week 12

The grocery budget is spent (and I went a little over, too, with some bulk purchases that will last a while). And we have no room in the freezer for the mountain of chicken drumsticks I saw on sale, either... but I still wish I could stock up. I want to try this sticky chicken recipe. Or maybe this one. Ah, well -- the sale cycle will come around again. My wife's out of town this weekend, and I'm singing at the wedding of friends and then hitting the Big Book Sale, so it will be a few days of eating up odds and ends and single servings.

Food This Week 11

I've been experimenting with our new (to us) FoodSaver! Although the machine is loud, it does what it's supposed to. It took a while to get vacuum sealer bags delivered (I had a bad experience with the first supplier and had to dispute the transaction in PayPal before placing an order with FoodVacBags.com), but so far things seem to be doing all right. I packaged leftover hot dogs (from the beach bonfire that was cancelled by a Spare the Air day) into pairs for easy defrosting, and hope that the small stacks of tortillas will work the same way. I did have a slight... incident... when it was very late and my brain glitched: I sealed up freshly-baked unfrosted cupcakes without freezing them solid first. Oops. They're kind of... squashed now. Very squashed. But good for emergencies!

Food This Week 10

The freezer is just about as full as it can be. I FIIIIIINALLY was able to get a specific brand of fish sticks I've been craving for a couple of months -- and at a very good price (BOGO plus manufacturer's coupon). I managed to squeeze in 4 Cornish game hens, which were BOGO twinpacks, but had to pass up the BOGO chuck roasts. I moved the Pedialyte pops (still there, although my epic sickness was a couple years ago now) into one of the refrigerator drawers, since they're sealed and won't go bad when liquid. Instead, I've been making ice pops (they're a fun way to use up our stash of herbal tea) in a small mold, but I have to remember to return the little plastic sticks to the sink afterward. The cats like to play with them. The plan, following our decision to move at the end of the year, is to keep stocking the freezer and pantry until November, when we'll begin to eat it all up instead of shopping. Groceries will be light this week, though.

Food This Week 9

When a particular ingredient -- especially a main protein -- is in great supply, it can seem like every meal is made with it. Thankfully, my household is fine eating the same things several days in a row. And it's pretty simple to vary the style of dish on the menu to keep from being bored. A couple weeks ago, we had a lot of beef on hand. Next week it's chicken dishes, because my wife found a BOGO sale on chicken breast and put a bunch into the freezer. (We had a few seasoned packets in there already, and want to use those first.) I could get creative and make chicken soup and chicken curry and chicken salad and chicken sandwiches and fried chicken and poached chicken and... yeah, I don't have that much kitchen creativity right now. So I'm keeping it simple (and sticking with whole chicken breasts). I'll make my standby casserole, for sure, but I also want to try a few new preparations and see how they turn out.

CC by romana klee (Flickr)
(Not the chicken now in my freezer.)

Food This Week 8

Finishing out the month and using up odds & ends... it's another week of pantry and freezer cooking, which is how I like it! We had a ton of eggs to use up, so I hardboiled a dozen for proteiny snacks. That means I can pack one for lunch and not have to be near a stove. The rest will keep (uncooked in the fridge) until we manage to fry them all up. I found a different brand of almond milk on sale, but it proved unsatisfying -- definitely thinner and less creamy than the store brand we've gotten before. I won't use it to make pudding... but it's an excellent excuse for cocoa!

Food This Week 7

Happy circumstance: Mint categorized a purchase of school supplies at the grocery store as Groceries; once that was corrected, I have about $30 more to use for food this month. *cheer* I'll be restocking butter and flour, I think, and maybe getting some apples for applesauce. And treating myself to almond milk. (Cocoa! Pudding! No lactose!)