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Cooking Day

October 23rd, 2006 at 06:00 am

Started out the day in a bad way this morning. DS woke up early and he snuck around the house to find something to do since his window is locked up now. He found a pair of sissors and decided to cut his and DD's hair. We ended up having to shave his head. DD well, I could shave it, half of it is already cut down that far, LOL. I figure I'll just let it keep growing out. I did trim the obvious long parts of the mess off though. Kids will be kids.
The inlaws came over for lunch instead of diner, so heavy cooking plans were put on a little hold. We discussed how many times kids gave eachother and selves hair cuts while growing up, it was hilarious! After they left, I made two extra meals to freeze; cooked a whole chicken and deboned it, split the meat in half and froze it for later meals. I also baked a batch of blueberry muffins and three dozen chocolate chip cookies.
I'm going to do a mini-loaf bread baking marathon tomorrow. I figure I might as well start as early as I can on the Christmas baking. I like making the mini-loaves because I are still giving a gift, but I can make 2 in one batch. It goes a little quicker, too. With being able to fit more pans in the oven and all. For family I make full sized loaves. When I bake I put in 2 minis and 1 full sized and come out with three gifts at a time. I could put in more, maybe, but that's all the pans I have. I am wondering what the best way to wrap them up for the freezer is, last year I didn't have very good luck with it and some of my bread went bad. I think my problem was maybe that I over-wrapped them. I'm not sure. I just don't want to start baking them till I know how I need to wrap them so I don't end up with bad bread again.
I also have to cut up potatos to freeze. I think they might start going bad if I don't. They tend to go bad pretty quick after I buy them for some reason.

My day (and the grocery shopping)

October 22nd, 2006 at 05:03 am

I was so bummed out last night, and it did carry over into this morning, but I just made a choice not to dwell on all the negative and keep plugging on through it. It wasn't a great day, but at least I didn't crawl in a hole and hide...
Last night I told DH of three goals that I wanted to get accomplish today (meaning I would need his help).
1. Hang shelves in our office/craft area that we moved from different areas of the apartment to one area (it was [i]only[i] two weeks ago that we did this and I'm just now getting around to finishing it off)
2. Grocery shopping for the next 15 days.
3. Give DS a haircut.
#'s 1 and 2 got done, but will have to do #3 tommorrow.
I really tried with this one, but DH didn't feel like rolling out of bed until 12:45 p.m. Got him to hang his office shelf without any problem. Then started the coaxing to hang mine...it was hung by 5 p.m. I can finally get back to work on those Christmas presents for everybody and hopefully get them done by the end of November.
In between those times DS got ahold of a full bottle of calligraphy ink that [b]was[b] sitting on DH shelf. We had to take it off to move it and rehang it. I spent quite awhile trying to get the stain at least somewhat out. I now have a silver dollar sized mostly purple stain under the dinning room table. I really had a hard time with this one because we live in an apartment and we signed a move in special when we first moved in here so we ended up not having to pay a deposit. *stay positive-stay positive-stay positive*
By 6 p.m. we were off to the grocery store. I did have a few splurges. I bought a brown bag of ripe bananas for bread in the hopes of making some and freezing it for gifts, but I'm not sure if it's too early for that or not. If it is I am only out .79. DS and I are allergic, so I suppose I could make some for DH and DD and the inlaws...
I got an extra jar of peanut butter, as it is my weakness to eat it in spoonfulls as a little power snack when things get hectic around here. I end up not having any left for DS when I do that though, and PB&J's are his all time favorites.
I also splurged on 4 boxes of frozen pizzas. They were on sale 10 for 10, which is an ok price. It would have been even better if I had a coupon, but I didn't, so oh well...
I made those splurges and still felt pretty good. The grocery total was $43.99. Off to store #2 for meat.*dum dum dum*
Ran in and out spent $19.55 on meat! Not bad, but it could have been better. I should have bought hamburger at store #1 as it was a little cheaper, but I didn't research it well enough so I guess I'm just out.
So, total grocery store purchase was $63.54. I will still need to get one pack of diapers and a loaf of bread (I wish my freezer was just a little bit bigger) and [i]maybe[i] a block of cheese, other than that I am set for the next 15 days or better.
I'm feeling so good because I have (so far) only used about half of the budgeted money for this 15 day period!
Tomorrow is my cooking day and DH wants to invite his parents over to dinner. I will be extra busy!

Cranberry Baby Food Bread

October 21st, 2006 at 04:12 am

Made some more cranberry bread while I was making dinner tonight. It called for 2 cups of flour, so I put in 1 1/2 cups flour and 1/2 cup oatmeal baby cereal. It still tastes good to me. It's a little more...humm...I'm at a lose for words. I want to say dry, but it's not. I guess- less dense, but it is good.
I have a couple of lemons that I have to get used up so I am making a couple of loaves of lemon bread (DH's fav) and I will put the cereal in that too.
I plan on making a total of 5 loaves of bread this weekend, along with several meals to freeze.
I will grocery shopping tomorrow for two weeks ($120 in the budget). I'm going to try and see how much less I can make it. We still have a whole bag of frozen chicken breasts I got on sale last shopping trip, cooked chicken meat and lots of beans and rice, so I think I should be able to do well. Trying to recoup some of that ticket money, you know.
I had DH stop by the hardware store on the way home from work tonight to get locks for the kids window. I put them on after DS was asleep (so as not to show him exactly how they work). We'll see how it goes in the morning. I still don't think I'll be sleeping to good tonight...

possible new way of cooking for me

October 18th, 2006 at 06:53 pm

Well, I am a little pleased with myself today. My last shopping venture was $120 for all the groceries and non food items for 2 weeks. That was half of the budget for the month. I went over it yesterday because I had to get more milk and some more diapers for DD. I don't feel bad about it though, because DH gets paid again in a few days and we still have plenty of food. So, I'm thinking that I might not have to spend as much this shopping trip.
I bought whole chickens on sale last time and I cooked them and deboned them to put the meat in casseroles and made a big pot of chicken and dumplings with some of it. I have never cooked this way before, but it seems like it saved money.
If I can keep this 2 weeks spending for groceries on the low side I may be able to recoup the loss for the car troubles that we had to break from the budget to pay. At least recoup some of it. $200 is a big chunk to take out of this tiny budget right now.