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Archive for May, 2008

The 3 year-old blues: no, I am not talking about sad 3 year olds, I am talking about sad parent’s of 3 year olds! For any of you out there raising someone this age - hats off to you because this is tough! Let me just give you the run down of my morning.

6:20am - “I want cereal” “I want a peanut butter and jelly” “I want a different kind of cereal” “Peel this banana”

6:30am-8am - I let both kids watch TV for, gasp!, 1.5 hours! Call the parenting police! My usual guideline is 1 hour a day, tops, for both kids, but this morning I must’ve sensed that it would be a tough day so I let them watch PBS Kids for a bit longer than usual. That was probably the quietist most peaceful moment of the day.

8am - 12pm - Sheer h*ll. He wanted food constantly, then he couldn’t get along with his big sister. Then both kids got their corn chips taken away when they couldn’t stop complaining about who got more. Then he pulled her hair, REALLY hard. He got sent to his room. Then he wouldn’t stay in his room. Then there was the tortilla incident, oh yeah, but that was after the Throwing Stuffed Animals at Mommy incident. The tortilla pieces were left in his room (where they aren’t supposed to be in the first place) so he was told to pick them up. Oh boy did that unleash some fury. Let’s just say that about 1 hour later he finally picked up the tortilla pieces, which were now torn completely into shreds, making them very hard for him to throw away.

I don’t normally recommend drinking as a way to solve one’s parenting problems, but let’s just say that the normally disgusting-sounding Bourbon, which was all the alcohol we had in the house, was sounding REALLY good at about 11am!

The Alcohol Alternative - Cupcakes!

Once big sis was off to kindergarten for the afternoon, I figured the only thing that was going to get me and little bro through the next few hours was to bake something. So I came up with cupcakes. After some complaining about how he does NOT like cupcakes, I got him started. He cracked the egg and put the cupcake liners in the cupcake pan. Then he worked the Kitchen Aid like a pro and helped put the butter in the microwave. 30 minutes later we had some cupcakes and he decided that yes, indeed, he DOES like cupcakes! Well imagine that. So do I.

Nothing can cure a bad day like some cooking. This whole experience just shows how important it is for those of us who have little kids around to keep cooking supplies on hand at all times!

I am a new blogger, as evidenced by the fact that this blog was started a month and a half ago. I think I became addicted to blogging the minute I started this thing. Not only have I spent a lot of time researching and writing the posts themselves, but I have spent a lot of time figuring out how to get the word out to people about the blog. That second part, getting the word out, I told myself I wouldn’t do much of because it takes time away from all of my other responsibilities. You know - like my day job and my family! But then I get sad when I take a lot of time to write a post that not many people will read. So I start looking for ways to promote it and bam, there I am, addicted to blogging.

I also can’t get enough of going onto Google Analytics to check out how many hits I’ve gotten (now that must be narcissism or something), or see where on the world map people are reading from, or to see what I’ve made off of Google AdSense. Uh, yeah, not a lot.

If I am to keep up this blog then I need to set some limits for myself. Like maybe 45 minutes to research and write a post, 5 minutes to check stats, and 10 minutes to read other relevant stuff for material, all adding up to 1 hour a day. That was my original intent with this blog and I need to stop going WAY past that in terms of time! I am sure I can write good stuff, pass on my wisdom, research recipes, and whatnot within my time limit. What I will have to cut out is all of the stats checking and blog-promotion stuff.

I do want to make sure, though, that I shout out a big THANK YOU to all of the readers who have ventured to read this new blog and who, I hope, will continue to read it. Some of you are even coming back to read things on a repeat basis! I hope I can keep providing you with the information you need to feed your family well on a limited budget!

Food Budget Update

First off, our budget is looking so great this month! I am excited to announce that we only spent $707 this month on food. I don’t expect that we will spend any more money in the next few days either. So that brings us in at $93 under budget! You know, it has actually been really easy to get our food budget down and it makes me wonder just how in the heck we were spending SO much ($1100-$1200/month) on food before we started keeping to this budget. So, since we have been eating relatively well (we are not living off of beans and rice alone, here!), it makes me realize that if we were to start eating off the super-cheap stuff we could probably cut it down by at least another $200. For now, though, I am satisfied to keep it at this level of spending.

Emergency Supplies

Secondly, after reading Frugal Dad’s recent post Is Recession Preparing a New Breed of Survivalist? I remembered that our emergency supplies are probably all out of date. We have about 12 gallons of water in the garage which is probably 1.5 to 2 years old. I need to remember to dump it on the garden and buy new water. We also need more canned food. This all leads me to another thought: about a year ago I saw a picture in some random magazine that showed a middle class family standing proudly in front of a rack of emergency supplies that they kept in their garage. Now, I think that is great, but the weird thing about the picture was that the rack had like 10 boxes of cereal on it. It is so funny that we have gotten so out of touch about basic survival that we would think that cereal is the way to go. I mean, yeah, it is fine if your power is knocked out for a few days, then you’ve got cereal (what about milk?!), but if it were a true emergency I would think that cooking basics like 10 or 20 pounds of flour, sugar, salt, etc., would be the best and most versatile thing to have. All of that was a long-winded way of saying that I might spend that extra $93, or some of it at least, on new emergency supplies.

Do you ever sit down to make a grocery list and realize your mind is as blank as the piece of paper in your hand? Maybe you’ve made all the family favorites recently and just aren’t into making them again this week. Or maybe nothing sounds good. When this happens to me, I have several tricks up my sleeve, and one of them I will share with you here. I guess that doesn’t make it a secret anymore!

The Secret

What I do is simply go to the website of one of those make your own frozen entrees places, look at their menu for the month, and take note of any dishes that sound good. Then I either attempt to make something similar without an actual recipe or I find a recipe online that is similar to the one on the website. There it is. My secret weapon. So when your mind draws a blank try out this tactic and you’ll probably wind up with more than a week’s worth of meal ideas!

A few days ago we had nothing planned for dinner. In days past, I would have a) gotten take-out or b) ran to the grocery with a recipe in-hand. Since I am now in the save-money mode, these two options aren’t the best. Take-out is too expensive (and not usually healthy) and running to the grocery for just one meal wastes time and gas money.

So instead I dug through the cabinets and found half a box of whole wheat noodles and a large can of tomatoes. Ah ha! Not only that, but I also had some fresh asparagus that I hadn’t cooked yet. Since I am not totally well-versed on making pasta sauce I looked up some recipes on Epicurious and looked at the major ingredients. Thankfully I also have an AeroGarden with basil, I always keep a few heads of garlic around, and I had some left-over wine. Here’s what I came up with: A beautiful-looking pasta sauce with canned tomatoes, crushed basil, garlic, and wine. Topped with some cheese and a few small basil leaves. Add to that a side of asparagus and it looked as if I had planned this meal out! Take a look:

This is the great reward for those of us who know a little bit about cooking: we can save money by putting together ingredients that we have lying around. It is also really helpful to keep in-stock some of the basic cooking ingredients in your well-stocked pantry (see my post on that subject!). 

What Steps Do You Take To Learn To Cook?

The way I learned to cook was in steps:

1) Use recipes for everything (from age 10-19)

2) Watch someone else cook who knows how to whip things up without recipes/from memory (age 20)

3) Use a combination of recipes (80% of the time) and trying to create things on my own (20%) - age 21-29

4) Use a combination of recipes (50% of the time) and trying to create things on my own (50%) - age 30-31

Do I think everyone learns to cook this way? No! I am sure there are plenty of people who taught themselves from books or just from trial and error. I assume they had a lot of errors along the way, though. I am a bit more risk-averse so I was probably slower than most to start trying things out on my own.

Pasta Recipe

In case you were wondering what that pasta recipe is that I came up with, I will try to record the gist of it here:

Boil the whole-wheat pasta according to the box directions. In a pot, put a tbsp. olive oil, heat it up at medium heat, then add two cloves of crushed garlic and saute for about 20-30 seconds. Throw in a can of plum tomatoes (if whole, use a potato masher or something to crush them up in the pot). Simmer for 10 minutes. Add 3/4 cup of white or red wine and a tbsp. of sugar (to sweeten the tomatoes if they are too acidic). Simmer for another 10-20 minutes. Add 2 tbsp or up to 1/4 cup of crushed or chopped basil depending on how much you like basil. Add other herbs if you like those better. Simmer for another 10 minutes. Top the pasta with the sauce and some cheese. Serve with fresh, steamed, or broiled vegetables.

If you are trying to be healthy I would aim to make the veggies the same proportion as the pasta - like 50% veggies and 50% pasta on your plate. Before you take seconds of the pasta eat more veggies. We Americans do not eat enough vegetables!

Knowing how to cook is so important when it comes to saving money on food.  It is all too common for people to not know how to prepare a simple meal from scratch, even something as simple as spaghetti.  Add to that most people’s pathetic knowledge of how to put together a nutritious meal and we have ourselves a problem. 

I was thinking about this the other day when my daughter had a little friend over to play.  They are six years old and I was blown away by the difference between my daughter and her friend when it came to cooking skills.  I have involved my kids in cooking since they were old enough to hold a spoon.  They have been cracking eggs for me since they turned two!  This other little girl, mind you, is no dummy.  She reads at a 4th grade level, writes extremely well, and plays the piano with a natural grace.  However, her parents have not taken the time to teach their kids how to do the simplest of household tasks!  I thought that the pre-school years were supposed to be all about learning how to do things around the house like sweeping, mixing, washing, feeding the dog, etc.  Turns out my peers have been focusing on teaching their kids reading and writing and neglecting these other very important skills.

So what was the difference between their cooking skills?  When I handed a bottle of oil to the friend to open, she actually tried to open the thing the wrong way!  She was turning it to the right instead of to the left.  When I told her to mix some ingredients in a bowl she held the wooden spoon as if it were a dagger and didn’t really get to mixing the food at all.  I was frankly quite taken aback by this.  Even though her mom had told me that she hasn’t taught her how to cook because “they are too busy,” I was still shocked at the fact that a six year old couldn’t hold a spoon and mix.  Her parents are simply too busy to wait a few extra moments to have their daughter help mix things or open things.  But aren’t we doing our children a disservice by not teaching them these things?  What is our role as parents if not to teach them these basic skills?

(Before you start worrying that I was forcing my daughter and her friend to do chores during a play-date, let me explain that they were making popcorn and ice cream - both items were for them to chow down on, not me!)

So this is a first post in a series on learning how to cook (no matter what your skills!).  This is a life skill that everyone needs to know.  If all you can do is order a taco from the local fast food restaurant then you will be hurting in any kind of emergency if you don’t have these skills to fall back on.  Not to mention the fact that you could save a lot of money and eat a whole lot better if you can make your own tacos at home!

In my last post I said I would post a picture of my square foot garden. Here it is! The kids and I just took this picture an hour ago. The lettuces and spinach are doing quite well, as are the Swiss Chard and green onions. The carrots are growing even though they aren’t really visible in the picture. For some reason they grow really slowly. I planted half of this garden (8 squares) on April 1st and the other half on May 1st. My reasoning was that then I would get to have salad for a longer period of time. When I harvest all of one square I will replant with another crop after adding a bit more compost for nutrients.

I can’t wait to harvest the first square of mesclun next week. I think you are supposed to harvest that particular type of lettuce while it is still young and small. We should have a good salad that cost us pennies!

With food prices going higher and concern over the environmental costs of shipping produce around the globe, many people are looking for any alternatives that can help them reduce costs and emissions. One solution is to grow your own vegetables and herbs. While most of us think of a traditional garden plot in the backyard to accomplish this, there is a great alternative called square foot gardening.

If you haven’t heard of it before, Square Foot Gardening was started by Mel Bartholomew to increase the yield and decrease the work of gardening at home. I started my square foot garden last summer even before I bought his great book on the subject, using the tips that he lays out on his website. In fact, I ordered my garden box from his website and was extremely pleased with the low price and quick delivery (with two little kids I just didn’t have the time or energy to go buy lumber and build it myself).

The basic concept is that you build a wooden box that is 6″ high, fill it with his special “Mel Mix” which is 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 vermiculite, and plant your seeds in square-foot sections inside the box. The 6″ is deep enough for almost all vegetables, believe it or not, and you can build a frame to grow things like melons and other vine plants to grow upwards on. You can get quite a big yield from this method because the plants are close together, you use less water, and you don’t need chemicals to kill weeds since the Mel’s Mix has no weed-seeds.

The kids and I had a great time with it last summer. I do have to have a lot of patience when we plant because my kids get so excited that they would just as soon dump the entire seed packet into one hole if I am not watching closely. Also there was the “foot print” incident which neither child would own up to, but thankfully the seedlings are growing through the footprint despite the odds.

Since we live in a colder region with lots of precipitation our best crops were lettuce and carrots. This year we planted a lot of different veggies and are hoping for an even bigger yield since we now know a little bit more about what we are doing! Already the lettuces (Mesclun and Romaine) and spinach are growing nicely. I think I will retire my AeroGarden for the summer and start it up again in the fall since we will get all that we need from the outside garden. Please keep an eye out for my next post when I put up some pictures of the garden!

Somewhat facetiously, my husband and I came up with an absolutely fantastic product idea, which we dubbed “Polly Pocket Pants.” Should you be of the entrepreneurial type and want to take this fabulous idea and run, you may want to call it something else, of course.

The Concept: Pants and shirts made for parents. The clothing has little hidden pockets sewn into it that you can hide your treats in and secretly graze on them throughout the day without your children noticing (and thereby eating your entire treat).

How the concept came about: It was 8pm. The oldest child had gone to bed but was not quite asleep yet. I wanted to snack on some Skittles that my husband had so kindly purchased for me hours before. I had not yet had any for fear that my kids would hear the bag rattle. What parent wants to establish such bad candy-eating habits in their children? Not this one. Anyway, so I got a handful of these Skittles out, got my newest book “The Girls’ Guide to Building a Million-Dollar Business” out, and settled onto the living room floor. I put the skittles into the leg of my jeans so they would be hidden should my oldest child decide to get up for any of the myriad things she suddenly decides she has to have at bedtime. My husband saw my little trick and thought it would be a riot if we sewed a pocket into our t-shirt sleeves so we could surreptitiously take little candies out during the day. You should have seen us pantomiming.

So there you have it: I am sure it is one of our best business ideas yet.

For those of us who have children in grade school, these are the days when the daily brown-bag lunch is getting to be a tired chore. We are no longer psyched about putting little “I love you” notes inside to surprise our first graders, we aren’t trying to think of new ways to mix-it-up, and we are probably getting a bit lax on the nutrition standards. Or a lot lax…

So here’s a new idea for a kid’s lunch box item that may just bring a little pep to his/her day, just when it is needed the most. How about, instead of the standard peanut butter and jelly, using pita bread instead? If your kid will tolerate whole-wheat then get a whole-wheat pita (and if not, get regular white pita bread), slice it in half, open up the pocket, and smear some peanut butter and jelly in there. Now here’s the next twist: slice up bananas and fill the pocket with them! Now that is a new and exciting way to eat a PB&J!

Now, one last thing: if your child is as strange as I was when I was a kid, and they like to put potato chips (I was partial to Doritos) on their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, then instead of banana slices, give them a baggie of chips that they can fill the pocket with themselves when they get to the lunch room. [Disclaimer: I haven’t actually tried this idea out yet but I think it would be great!]