Friday Evening Randomness

• I love my Kitchen Aid Electric Hand Mixer. It's so quiet! I'd never used one before, but hated (thoroughly, downright, refused to use it hated) my jet-engine other one and figured you couldn't go too wrong with the Kitchen Aid name. So I put it on my Christmas List and got one! Yay!
  
  
• I just put the first pan of Coconut Oatmeal Cookies in the oven. And no, I didn't use the mixer. I just used elbow grease and a spoon.
  
  
• It is getting very cold tonight. And supposed to stay very cold for several days. Brr. But I hung laundry outside today and I think it dried all the way. I need to check it because it was too cold to tell if it was dry or damp when I brought it in.
  
  
• I wonder if chef's silently critique restaurant food when they go out to eat (ie, take their wives on a date)?
  
  
• We had our first weekly business meeting tonight. I think it was a good thing we should continue.
  
  
• Daniel is being thrifty - he has a bunch of short 2x4's that had been used before (so they have nails in them), and they are just right for blocking between the floor joists. So instead of paying for and using more 2x4s just to cut into little pieces, he's out pounding out nails right now.
  
  
• And that's all I came up with in the time I had to peck out some blog fodder :P
  

Nourishing Foods - Grocery Shopping

I know some of you have wondered what the "nourishing foods" journey is doing to our grocery budget. And I promised I would post about that. As our eating habits have changed somewhat, so has the grocery budget. We're still not where I'd like us to end up with our food, so this is a continual work in progress. To help me figure out a ball-park weekly grocery budget, I thought I'd share a mini-series of my weekly grocery trips.


This is not a typical week for groceries. Pepsi & Dr. Pepper are not a weekly purchase, and neither are the chips or Bratwursts! But for keepin' it real, this is what I bought today.

1/2 Gal. Homestead Creamery Cream Top Whole Milk (local dairy, hormone free)
1 Gal. Orange Juice
5lbs. King Arthur All Natural White Whole Wheat Flour
Chips
Frozen Green Beans, Breaded Okra and a Stir-Fry Blend
Organic Stonyfield Plain Yogurt
Pineapple Juice
5lbs. Cara Cara Oranges
2 Mangoes
2 Onions
7 Organic Gala Apples
2 Doz. Cage Free Brown Eggs
2lbs. Brown Rice
Beef Roast
Whole Chicken
Marked-down Bratwursts
Dr. Pepper & Pepsi ($9 of the bill!)
*oops! Not pictured:
(3) 8oz. bricks Kraft Cheese
1 lb. bacon

Total: $86.60
($2 of that is a deposit for the glass milk bottle which I'll get back when I take the empty bottle back to the store.)

This week we also replenished our ground beef supply (13lbs. for about $38) and yeast (2lbs. for about $3.50 if I remember right). The ground beef will last quite a while, and the yeast lasts a LONG time.

Now, what will I do with the food I brought home? Stay tuned!! I think another mini-series, "Nourishing Foods - What We Eat" will be coming soon :)

Goals for 2011

Jan. 24th, edited to add: I have blocked further comments on this post because for some reason TONS of spam comments on this post alone are somehow getting through my filter and I'm tired of sorting them out. I hope you understand!

Before February gets here, I want to have my goals for 2011 figured out and fine-tuned. This is a rough draft of what I have so far. I have to say that Courtney's post made me think about each of these as I put them on the list.

As I looked back over last year's list I realized that some of the goals were too precise (is that the word I'm looking for??), and some I should've known from the beginning I wasn't going to stick to them. But I made that list pre-Susannah and had high aspirations for my life I guess! You may notice that with my 2011 goals, instead of "daily" I put "regularly" for some things. There WILL be days that I simply will not get around to or have time to do everything I want to do. Even by writing some goals as "weekly" I'm raising the bar on myself, and probably some weeks I won't get those things done, either.

Personal Goals:
7-8 hours of sleep at night regularly
Quiet time (devotions) regularly
Pay more attention to my everyday appearance (dress, hair, etc.)
Exercise regularly/lose weight
Monthly, scheduled-in-advance, date-night's with Daniel
Do more things to show my love to Daniel
More leisure and informational reading
Say "no" when I need to (don't over-commit)
Be honest when people ask my thoughts/opinion

In The Kitchen Goals:
Make my own vanilla
Make yogurt
Buy a grain mill
Grind most-all of our flour
Buy 1/4 - 1/2 of a cow

Miscellaneous Goals:
30 minutes each week (as much as possible) to work on photo-related stuff
Fill out Susannah's Baby Book
Completely, totally, 100% finish the kitchen
Throw away unwanted, unneeded and unused stuff.

Financial Goals:
Update budget and checkbook weekly
Weekly (monthly?) business meeting
Re-visit the cash-only idea for some categories
Better planning ahead (saving) for big or small things
Start Baby Step #4 and possibly #5
Start Baby #2 Fund (no, I am not pregnant)
Start a cow fund
Find ways to cut expenses (to free up more money for all those other funds!)

His and Hers Breakfasts

This past weekend Susannah and I were away Friday and Saturday nights, traveling to PA to a reunion/Christmas get-together with my Mom's family. That meant Daniel was on his own for food here on the home front. There was bread and roast beef for sandwiches, and plenty of eggs for breakfast.

(An old picture, but he's still cute!)

His breakfasts were

Saturday morning: leftover pizza
Sunday morning...

....

wait for it....

....

it gets worse...

(Are you sure you're ready to hear this?)

Cookies.
Dr. Pepper.
and...
Fritos.

The breakfast of the baching champion, I guess :P

Me? I can't say I've never had pizza for breakfast, or cookies first thing in the morning, but my breakfast this morning was toast and a smoothie :) I think I win. Haha!