Food continued...

When I was at April's last week, and I saw her cool recipe book, a photo album with her recipes in there, I thought maybe it was time to add some more recipes to mine. Like I said in the first post, I am kinda basic when it comes to meals. Makes for easy shopping, easy planning, and well, just makes it easy for me!

However, I did have quite a few magazines with some recipes in them, and I have a ton I've printed out online that were just in this binder. Therefore, I decided it was time to get a little more organized so I will want to use them.

I really did like the photo album that April had, but the truth is, I already had this binder, I found these tab folders in my school stuff that have been used for about 3 different things already, and so I just put it together. Now, looking at that pitcher of Spiced Iced Tea makes me want to serve it right on up! Hows about you?

Now that I am trying to keep better tabs on my spending, I'm tucking my receipts away in this binder as I plan. That way I can really see how much meals are costing me and better choose when I can afford to go all out, and when I should just do some biscuits and gravy! The Kitchenaid Mixer I bought, which is fantabulastic, has some great recipes in it. Exciting. Then this free book the kids got at Chick-fil-A, well, we've gotten a ton of great ideas out of it!

Alright, so once I got the tabs and recipes together, I labeled them as follows: Drinks, Holidays, Bread, Beef, Chicken, Sides, and Dessert.

To keep better tabs on spending, I'm keeping this log for the next few weeks. I want to tally up what I'm spending on personal items, cleaning, and household items. Eating more natural, cleaning more natural, and trying to just live more natural can be simplifying once you get in the groove, but getting there is, well, sometimes not simple at all. If anything becomes an idol in your life, it just isn't healthy, and bottom line is it is sin. So I really am trying to be honest with myself about my motivation to make the changes we have made over the last 3 years. A big part of being a better help meet is to keep a better log of what I'm spending when I order my tea tree oil, my vitamins, and my cleaning supplies.

I have by no means "arrived" to where I want to be as a wife and mother, however, I am enjoying my journey getting there. Addictive personalities can be tough if you don't have a support system that keeps you grounded. I'm blessed to have great sisters, grounded parents, true friends that actually like me, and a husband who supports me better than any other man could on this planet! With my children getting more and more independent, I'm enjoying finding time to educate myself on different ways to enjoy this life God has blessed me with. I hope when you get inspired, you are surrounded with peeps as good as mine.

Meal planning, recipes, and grocery shopping - inspired by April

Okay, so it seems as though when you yap about your take on food, the way you prepare it, the way you get it, the way you store it, even the way you eat it, that people are going to have questions for you.

One of my closest friends read an article that I gave her out of a bi-monthly newsletter I subscribe to and after reading it, she decided to make some changes.

I spent some time with her last week going over her menus and explaining where I get all of my food. She is able to shop on a pretty tight budget, and although I am fairly frugal, I couldn't exactly tell you what I spend on groceries.

So, let me give you a run down of how my grocery shopping worked last week, and well, we'll just start there.

I did my shopping on Friday. I started at Wal-Mart for pasta, an onion, a small bag of green onions, all-natural Tom's toothpaste and deodorant, Cajun seasoning, Sargento Mexican shredded cheese, Alfredo sauce, and a new rug for the bathroom. Sams for Welch's grape juice, (which I found was cheaper at Wal-Mart :( darn), brown sugar, regular sugar, bananas, tomatoes (thanks to gina who told me they were pretty good), green peppers, milk, all-natural Classico spaghetti sauce, all-natural chicken, Ricotta cheese, shredded Parmesan cheese, shredded Mozzarella cheese, and grapes. Beckley produce for eggs. Amish Barn for honey, which I am still trying to decide on where the best place is going to be to buy it, and sliced turkey. And then at Trio Consignment I found 2 pairs of shoes for Emma, and for me, a skirt, a shirt, and 3 pairs of capris....that didn't really matter, but I had to tell you that! by the way, had a credit and got it all for $8!

After talking with my friend, I realized that I cook very low maintenance meals for the most part. Greg loves them, I love them, and the kids love them, however, why is it I refrain from using some extras to spice things up? hmmmm....I don't know.....so I decided to live on the edge a bit and I bought some of the Cajun seasoning she had shown me at her house. Well, the seasoning she was asking me if I approved of...ha

Friday night I made spaghetti, and normally I just brown the meat, add my sauce, boil my noodles, and bam, that's it. I decided to chop up a tomato, a green pepper, and some onion to flavor the meat a bit. Then I added the sauce to simmer, and stirred in a cup of shredded mozzarella. The kids and Greg noticed the new sauce and loved it! Thanks for the inspiration to not be so boring April :)

Saturday for lunch, it was Mexican, and then that night, it was leftovers from Mexican. That's right, we do eat out, on rare occasions...We budget to have a meal out, as a family, once a week. Greg always picks Mexican, and the only one I love is the one at Beckley Crossing...their taco salad with chicken vs beef is soooo good! However, we all have learned to opt for water vs soda (which is hard for us pop lovers) and we no longer order the cheese for our chips, just too pricey.

Sunday was lunch at mawmaw's, which is always as far from healthy, organic, or anything of that matter as you can get, and as always, it was to die for yummo! Finished it off with a Reeses peanut butter cup and washed it down with a Mt. Dew. Now, are all of you people who have me on a pedestal feeling better? ha

Monday I decided to get a little off track again, and pulled out the Cajun seasoning I bought. I heated up 2 tblspoons of olive oil in my Wolfgang Puck pot ( love it ), and diced up 2 chicken breasts. While that was just starting to brown, I chopped up some green onion and a green pepper and threw it in, then lots of Cajun seasoning and some cracked pepper. While my whole grain pasta was boiling, I poured in my Alfredo sauce and then added 1/2 a jar of water. Drained pasta, stirred it in, got out Ethan and Emma's servings and then finished it off with some more Cajun seasoning for me and Greg. Again, yummo!

While I was cooking dinner last night, I went ahead and baked 2 chicken breasts, sliced into long pieces @ 350 for about 45 minutes in a dish on aluminum foil with just a tad bit of butter on top of it. I let it cool and cut 1/2 of it up for chicken salad.

I love chicken salad. However, I had never tried to make my own. Well, let me mention my friend April again here, she had some a few weeks ago that I thought was so good, so I just figured I'd give it a try. I tried to think about things I knew were in different types of it that I liked, and I just put it all together.
Well, it was so good, especially on my homemade bread, that I had an extremely hard time stopping myself from taste testing! Greg was leery, because he said he never likes chicken salad, and yet he was thrilled with it, too.

I didn't really measure out anything, I just kinda did a bit of this and a bit of that. It started with dicing up the chicken, probably about 2 cups of diced chicken. Then I cut up some green onions, and some red. Chopped up some grapes and 1/2 of an apple, poured in about a cup of the cheese and added 3 large whopping tablespoons of mayo.

More on this chicken salad, how April also inspired me to organize my recipes and to get a grip on my spending in the next blog...this one was too long as is :) imagine that...

A Proverbs a day keeps the excuses away...

I read a pretty good book last week. Written by Michelle & Jim Bob Duggar, it tells their secrets of running their home in a frugal manner, and also the faith they are living out loud as a part of the Quiverfull movement. Although I cannot honestly say I have found myself to be convicted in all the same ways, I am finding lots of good tips in their book. Recipes, family chore ideas, and home school tips, just to name a few.

The one that we have applied the last 8 days, and I have grown extremely excited about, is reading a chapter from Proverbs that corresponds with the day of the month. We started last Monday with Proverbs 23 and since we only had 28 days this month, we read 29, 30, 31, and 1 last night.

I have found that Proverbs is addictive. I studied it some last fall, and honestly, I got out of my routine when I hurt my knee and hadn't got back in it!

However, the children and I read it in the morning with our breakfast. Then before bedtime, Greg reads it to us again. We pull out verses we liked, or verses we didn't understand, and then we talk about areas in our lives where we should have practiced more self-control or more wisdom.

However, the biggest thing for me is the the practical application there is in that book. It is not as easy to give into a temptation when you have this fresh scripture in your head that is saying, "If you do this - you are lazy and lacking in self-control, you are better to put a knife to your throat!!!"

I challenge you to try this. I know we all have our own devotions that we like to do. Hopefully you rely more on God to point you in the right direction as far as what scriptures you should dive into for the day instead of just The Daily Bread booklets or a devotional that someone else thinks was good for March 3rd. Or just reading 1 chapter from Proverbs because it is the same # as the day of the month, for that matter!

Now I also want to mention that I'm still really stuck on these thoughts I've had for the past year since Christy Mlekodaj (a missionary friend the Lord blessed me with) shared with me a study they were doing at church about relying more on being lead by the Spirit than trying to personally change your ways to do this or do that. The Word should be our main line of communication that the Spirit can use, it isn't like you're gonna get a neon sign saying, "Stop being lazy. Please turn TV off, computer off, and even the phone off and spend some time with me this evening."!!!

Read Proverbs 3 on March 3rd, and if you have a scripture that jumps out at you, share it with us!

Again - don't just read that and pat yourself on the back like you've just done a good deed for the day! Pray about areas where the Lord needs to strengthen your spiritual artillery, and then get to studying!

What am I studying along with Proverbs??? Submission. All the way around. Submission to Christ, submission to Greg, and even submission to authority that I have a tendency to rebel against.

Ignorance is bliss. This is kinda true, ya know it? There are some things that I may not feel as convicted about, simply because I haven't studied it as I should. But after reading something in the morning, hearing it at night, and then praying that God uses it to help me keep from conforming to the world, man, I'm tellin' ya, a Proverbs a day keeps the excuses away!!!

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List


By Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling Magazine, Issue #1, Fall 2007

*1 - Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?*

2 - Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.

*3 - Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

*4 - Don't assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

*5 - If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.

*6 - Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.

*7 - We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

*8 - Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

*9 - Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

*10 - We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

*11 - Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.

*12 - If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.

*13 - Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.

*14 - Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

*15 - Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.

*16 - Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

*17 - Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.

*18 - If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

*19 - Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.

*20 - Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.

*21 - Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she's homeschooled.

*22 - Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.

*23 - Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.

*24 - Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

*25 - Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!

This is so funny! It is exactly how I feel sometimes. My prayer is I'll remember the grace that God has given me, so that I can answer with the grace He would want me to offer to others!

My investment of thought for the day...

I stumbled upon a blog sometime back and began following to gain inspiration from a fellow homeschooling mama.

Today when I logged in and read her latest post, I was intrigued with what I found.

So, I took a few moments to check out the first article, and decided to throw a comment in there to give some support to Ms. Stringer.

You can read my comment there, it was my investment of thought for the day.

I signed in under the username Cadle.

After you finish with that, I hope you'll find time to read the first post of hers that I read.

Warning: Reading this may change your plans for this very evening

My sister forwarded this to me the other day...

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town.

From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger...he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies. If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future!

He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped Talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind. Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely, much too freely! about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger.

Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave. More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?....

We just call him TV.' Note: This should be required reading for every household in America!

He has a wife now....We call her 'Computer.