Yes, my birthday was a month ago. I’m aware of that. But, today I bought my birthday present! When family members asked what I wanted for my birthday, I requested financial contributions to buy a netbook. And after Mike checked with a guy he knows that sells them, we went with one online from Future Shop. I got a great deal on a very small netbook – which is what I wanted – and in the end, we only have to pay $11 of our own money for it, even with taxes. Shipping was free, which made it even better.
So, very soon, I will be able to pack up my netbook when I take Jenny to kids club, and I can go down to Starbucks or even just stay there at the church and WRITE! Hopefully without major distractions. Or, if I’m at home and Mike is using the computer and an idea strikes, I’ll be able to take it into my room and write in peace.
I have been wanting a netbook for quite a long time and thought I’d be buying one with our tax refund next year, but with this deal and $214 in birthday money (thanks to parents, grandparents and siblings) I can have it now!! If it was our money, I would feel guilty right now about using it, but since I asked for it instead of other gifts, it would actually be worse to use it for other purposes. It has been my experience that birthday money not used for specific items for myself within one month of my birthday, gets directed into the bill-paying fund and disappears forever. Sad, but true. And sometimes not such a bad thing when we’ve really been in need and the money wasn’t given for a certain purpose. But if I did that with this money, the whole family (or those who contributed) would be asking all the time when I was going to get that computer. So, yay! I got it! 
Filed under: Life, in general, Melancholy, Money | Tags: debt, Money, vacations
It is never fun to realize in the middle of the night that you will be overdrawn in the morning. Just as I was drifting off, I remembered our mortgage coming out today and the fact that we did not have enough money in our checking account to cover it or the life insurance coming out in the next few days, either. This does not mean anything dreadful for us, just a transfer from our line of credit to cover it. But it was while I listened to account balances that it suddenly dawned on me – we’re well on our way to having a very large amount of money owed. If we had no plans for the next few years regarding our home, it may not matter, but as it is, there are many repairs and replacements to be made. Not only that, but we have no money in savings, which means that our tax refund this next year needs to be devoted to that so that we have money for a down payment on another house. The thought of bringing another baby into this 800 square foot home is a bit scary to me, at least in the long term view of things.
So with this eye opening experience comes the death of a dream: our kid-free vacation. I suddenly realized, at a quarter to one in the morning, that if we took the vacation we’ve been planning, we would be borrowing another large amount of money from our line of credit – probably well over a thousand dollars. Added to that is the fact that while Mike will have no problem getting time off, his company does not bank vacation hours, so we would have to pay him his missed wages out of our line of credit as well, adding another thousand or more to make our bill payments. I had been counting on paying off the line of credit in the spring with what will almost undoubtedly be a large tax refund. When I thought about it, I could hear advice that someone must have given me in the past: don’t spend money you don’t have. I should be able to count on the tax refund, but I don’t actually know how much it will be, or if there could be unexpected expenses coming up in the new year.
I really did feel like something had died. I still do. Mike and I didn’t have a “real” honeymoon and the only trips we’ve taken without any children were before Jenny was born. With each pregnancy, I committed myself to finding time to take a trip of some sort on our own before the new baby came. The unfortunate thing is that due to one thing or another, we never took that trip. This time was no exception to my committment, although the planning had started before I knew I was pregnant. And this time will apparently be no different from the past – I will have dreamt about this week or so alone with my husband and having a break from my kids – and I will have to give it up. If the plan was six months away, it might be possible to work our way out of the debt and scrimp and save for this vacation, but as it is, we have a limited window of opportunity. If we went ahead with our plan to go on a cruise – my ideal vacation as I wouldn’t have to do any work – we would have to go no later than the 3rd of January. Our latest plan was to go in the middle of December, just before Christmas. And now that dream must die, for the sake of being good stewards of our money.
This would not be nearly so sad if I thought it was possible to have this vacation sometime after the baby is born. If I knew that I could go as soon as I was done nursing this baby (after May of 2011), I might be able to wait and not feel this so heavily. But Mike’s parents were reluctant enough to take three children – I can’t imagine that they would be willing at all to take all four. We have friends who were going to take our kids for some of the time on this trip, but if we waited, it would be our four kids plus their four and the one or two more that they plan to have in a year or so.
So last night was spent crying and trying hard to fall asleep, feeling that this thing had died in me. This dream of having time with Mike and time away from the kids must be buried now. I don’t know how I’m going to fully give it up and trust God to provide. I’m trying to talk myself into thinking that it was a selfish and self-centred thought to want this vacation in the first place, that it certainly wasn’t what God would ever want us to do. That He would frown upon us leaving our children and spending money on something frivolous.
With all of this comes the sense of responsibility to dig us out of this debt, to work towards fixing the house up to sell (new windows, paint, doors, etc), to save money to go towards another house, to limit our spending considerably in the future. I keep asking myself where I should draw the line. Is it so bad that I should stop going to Bible study because I have to pay for childcare each week and gas to get there? Do I need to get a job? We lived with a huge amount of money against our line of credit for years because of buying our van and we just paid it off last year – I don’t want to live with a shadow over my head again. Of course, there are lights of inspiration in my mind – what if we get another low interest credit card and transfer everything over? But then the answer is still the same – we may not be paying as much interest, but it is still debt. And the thought that we would somehow get some unexpected financial blessing is foolish to me – God would surely not reward our debt. Another little problem we’ll soon be facing is that Mike’s paychecks will be going back to normal again. He has been bringing in an extra five to six hundred dollars in overtime each paycheck, but the overtime will be gone in a week or two and I’ll be faced with making ends meet and paying off debt with that much less money to work with.
I don’t have the answers. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I assume that I will cry a bit every day over my lost trip – the lost time. I spent too much time dreaming about our plan and not enough time looking at reality and now I’m going to pay for it.
Filed under: Home Sweet Home, Kiddos, Life, in general, Money, reading | Tags: large families, multiple children, space solutions, small house, Mary Ostyn, A Sane Woman's Guide to Raising a Large Family
I am currently working my way through A Sane Woman’s Guide to Raising a Large Family by Mary Ostyn. It is fantastic so far. The author is the mother of ten – four biological children and six adopted – and she advocates attachment parenting and co-sleeping andis a Christian to boot. She also has a very relaxed attitude about her large family. She obviously takes it seriously, but isn’t uptight about it. My favourite part so far was when she admitted that she doesn’t make her bed every day. Ahhh, how nice. A little reality when it comes to housework. She talks about the perceptions people have of the mothers of large families – that they are either insane or incredibly organized – and how she is neither.
Anyway, I’ll probably get around to a more detailed book report when I finish the book, but I realized that what I wanted to write about today tied into what I learned reading this book.
One of the things that Mrs. Ostyn advocates is room-sharing between children. Obviously this is necessary in a family with ten children unless you are millionaires and can afford a house with eleven rooms. She also encourages readers to change their current space rather than assume they need something bigger when they add to their family.
I would not be considered the mother of a large family – yet. I intend to be in that category eventually, but with only three children, I’m not quite “crazy” yet, especially living here, where it is very common to have a minimum of four children per family. Knowing that I at least hope for more children makes me want to think of myself this way even now and prepare our family for more children even before we are expecting them (yeah, that answers that question – I am not pregnant again…yet).
We currently live in a two bedroom, one bathroom home with no basement and only about 800 square feet of living space. We have a shed for storage, but no attic and no garage. We have three children sharing one room that contains a bunk bed, a toddler bed, a playpen, bookcase, toy box and Little Tikes vanity. We have a total of two closets in our home. Yes, two. No pantry and a minimal amount of kitchen cabinet space. We currently have over the door hooks or organizers in every room, just for extra space for toys, towels and clothes. There was a time not too long ago that I looked around this house in despair and wondered how we would manage if we could not move before another baby was born. I have talked to God about this and asked that He not give us another child until we can move, but now I think He may have other plans for us. Fifty years ago, families lived in houses the size of ours with four kids – and often more. They did not have huge television sets, computers or an abundance of modern appliances taking up space. Their children did not have every new Playskool toy from the Sears Wish Book (was there a Wish Book back then?) and did not need what our children seem to “need” now.
I will admit that we have too much stuff. We have more clothing than we need, my children have more toys than they need and we have managed to fill much of our space with other things that we very seldom use.
While getting rid of at least some of this stuff will help our space issues immensely, adding better storage solutions will help with the things we can’t go without. One issue I have is running out of places to store food. It is a huge money saver to buy in bulk and limit your grocery shopping trips as much as possible. The problem I have is that when I do stock up like this, I end up with food all over my counter tops and even on the floor in my kitchen because there is no cabinet space left for it. Yesterday while putting something up on the wall in my hallway, I realized that if we put shelves up at the top of the walls in the hallway, they would not be seen by most people (as the hallway is mostly hidden from view when in the living room) and they would hold some of the gadgets I don’t use often, or the bulk foods I don’t have room for in the kitchen. The size of our house comes in handy here, as the hallway is right outside the kitchen and I wouldn’t have to walk far to get to what I needed. Yes, it may make our house look a bit cluttered to have shelves all over the walls, but it is a space solution that is relatively cheap and does not require any actual construction.
I have determined that we could easily sleep four kids in the second bedroom, although the space will get tight when it comes to clothing and toys/books. Under bed storage will be used under every bed (including the play pen when possible) and whatever isn’t needed in the house will go to the shed. I am also considering buying a second, smaller shed to go just off the back deck so that the kids’ clothing could be stored there when not being used (i.e. larger and smaller sizes that are being saved for other kids). In the winter, it is a pain in the neck to have to walk all the way across the back yard to get to the shed for kids and maternity clothes when needed, but there is simply no space in the house for the dozens of bins required to hold all that clothing.
My hope is that by using our space more efficiently, we will be able to stay in this house much longer than we assumed we would be able to. We paid $126,000 for this house four years ago and our payments with property taxes are under $900 a month – you cannot beat that without living in a trailer or renting. Currently, we would have to pay upwards of $250,000 for the size of house we would want to move into – something with a minimum of three bedrooms and a basement. Staying here a little longer will enable us to save money and build up the equity in our home. It will also help us down the road to know how to live in somewhat cramped circumstances and know that we can manage it without any trouble (or without much trouble, anyway).
Stay tuned for more on the book in a few days (I’m almost done!). And if you don’t want to wait, buy the book – or do like I did and check it out at your local library.
This is one for the ladies. Sorry, men – if there happen to be any men reading this totally female-centric blog – this one will not apply to you unless you have another life going on…and I’m not going to get into that.
No, this one is for the girls. Particularly those who are larger in the chest, due to genetics, pregnancy or breastfeeding. I will share with you my story, which has just kept getting worse (and yet, suddenly better this year).
I wore a size 36 DD by the time I was fourteen. I stayed at that size for a while, then put on weight, going up to as big as 42 DD at one point. I had a bad back through my teenage years and even considered getting a breast reduction. When I got pregnant and nursed my babies, I wore a 40 DD or bigger, assuming that I had the right fit. I lost twenty-five pounds on top of my baby weight after I had Elias and it was then that I noticed a difference. I couldn’t wear underwire anymore! I…ahem..just fell right out the bottom of my bra if I did. I assumed that this was due to things being heavier because of milk production. I stuck to wireless nursing bras and occasionally wore underwire if I had to – for two years.
Then I went into a very expensive lingerie store in town and asked to try some bras on, stipulating that they had to be soft-cup. The girl asked my size and I told her I was a 40 DD. She said she didn’t think so. I told her my problem with underwire and she said I was probably wearing the wrong band size. She looked at me and said that while I did need a larger cup size, I was in fact quite “tiny” around the ribs. Boy, did that make me feel good! She recommended a much smaller band size and a MUCH larger cup size. I tried on everything from F to I, and I ended up in a 36 H. Yes, that’s right, H. And yet as soon as I put the right size on, I felt better. I looked better. It was amazing!
I kept wearing nursing bras from Wal Mart for some time, but only because I was still nursing too much not to. I wore my nice new yellow lace bra when I knew I wouldn’t need baby access. When I stopped nursing so much, I started wearing my new bra all the time. Until it started to look a little worn. So I went back in to the same store and tried more on. The one I liked best was plain – smooth cups, no seams, tan, with one tiny little bow. But, man, did it make me look good! It managed to make me look two or three sizes smaller than what I am, which is always good in my book. There was no price tag, but most of the bras I tried on were between forty and sixty dollars. Expensive (far more expensive than Wal Mart), but worth it. I asked about the price of this plain-Jane bra….$94! I knew we couldn’t really afford it then, but figured I’d wait on it and go back.
So, I went back yesterday and bought it. With tax, it came to $106, which makes it the most expensive piece of clothing I’ve ever bought (other than my wedding dress). But it was so worth it.
What women don’t seem to realize is that support is so important! Particularly when you are nursing a baby and you get heavy chested. I have so many friends who say their husbands balk at expensive bras and tell them that they can’t spend the money. Well, sorry, guys, but you don’t have boobs. We do. You don’t have an extra five to ten pounds hanging out in front of you, dragging down on your shoulder muscles and pulling on your back. We do. And I say we budget in good bras – they will be far cheaper than years of massage, chiropractic work or physiotherapy. So maybe you wait until the next paycheck – maybe you save the money you make on a yard sale or get for a birthday, but get yourself a good bra! If you are nursing, get yourself a good nursing bra and a nice one for when you don’t need one anymore. I have one friend in particular who sags halfway to her belly because she isn’t wearing the right size bra. She says her husband doesn’t want her spending the money and she doesn’t want to be measured. I am certainly not telling you to ignore the values of your husband or disrespect his wishes. But it may help to explain the benefits of a good bra. It may also help to take him along with you so that he can see the difference a good one makes. I always take Mike and always get his opinion on one before I buy it. That way, even though it is more of a utility item for me – one I use every day – it becomes something sexy in his mind.
Anyway, I hope I haven’t gone too far or been too explicit, but there are some things that people (particularly Christians) are afraid to say, and I am just not afraid to say this. Get a good bra! It’s worth it!
My favourite thing: Garden Party brown fabric headband: $10
Cheeky Cosmetics: pure mineral makeup
My favourite thing: Sample pack of five powders: $5. You pick your own five samples of blushes, eye shadows or liners, foundations or pure pigments. Shipping is free, too! This is something I’ll probably be buying soon since it’s so cheap, and would give me a good idea of whether I really like their product before I commit to buying full size.
My favourite thing: Long wallets with zippers: $24. These are made with paper, then covered in heavy vinyl and sewn – they’re very pretty and have change pockets with zippers and space for cards and bills.
Freckled Nest: albums, accessories, etc.
My favourite thing: Wood grain photo booth album: $15, but I also love her pocket mirrors and pins, which are $5 or under.
Luv2Have: unique handmade jewelry
My favourite thing: Hand-etched tree of live pendants: $18
Northern Warm Things: fabric, iron-ons, pre-cut quilting squares
My favourite thing: Iron-on sock monkey patches: $1-$5. I have bought fabric sqaures form this seller as well, and have more on the way now – a great way to make patchwork quilts without having to do any cutting!
Pitter Patter Knits: knitted baby accessories
My favourite thing: Black and yellow bumble bee hat: $11
My favourite thing: Mother of pearl flower necklaces: $18-$30. This seller is actually right here where I live, which is very cool.
Purpose Design: Gourmet spice kits and homewares
My favourite thing: Large spice kits (Thai, Southeast Asian, Indian, French, Persian, Italian, and everyday spices): $28. This seems so incredibly reasonable to me – I think I’ll have to buy some soon!
Recupe Fashion: repurposed handmade accessories, crochet, gifts
My favourite thing: Tea wallets: $9. They will carry up to eight tea packets – I think this is such a great idea for carrying your own teabags with you.
There are so many more shops in Canada and in the states that I like, but I thought I’d stick to listing ten of them from Canada for now. All prices are actually in U.S. dollars, so in Canada, they are a bit more than what I listed, depending on the exchange rate.
I now have an explanation for why my pain has been so bad for the last few days and why my pain pills haven’t seemed to be working as well. I have an infection in my throat. Obviously, this is not great, but it’s nice that I know why I was hurting and now have antibiotics to clear things up. I should know in twenty-four hours or so how much of the pain is from the infection and how much is just the healing process going on. I also got another bottle of pills that will definitely last me – there are more pills than the last time, so no worries there as I’m sure I won’t need even half of them (I hope!).
When I went out to get my medication, I stopped in at a kids store to look at premie stuff for Noah – no luck there – and found some very cute rubber boots and a dress for Jenny, both for ten dollars. I then went and picked up some stuff at the health food store and went next door to the movie store to look at their pre-played DVDs. They had a whole corner of the store with DVDs that didn’t have covers for $1.99! I got some chick flicks, a few family-type movies, an action movie and three Sesame Street DVDs for the kids. The irony of this is that L.H. was just talking about media and taking a break from it…we will someday, but apparently not quite yet. 
Filed under: Faith, Money | Tags: being happy with little, finances, Money, Psalm 37:16, riches vs. righteousness
For a reminder of what I’m doing this month, read this post.
Psalm 37:16
A little that a righteous man has
Is better than the riches of many wicked.
There are many times when I think that money would be the answer to every little hiccup in my life, that it would erase my worries and make me perfectly happy. I could have exactly the house I wanted, could afford to go on vacations every year, pay someone to clean my house (and you have to know that would be my favourite part). But then I remember thinking in the past when we’ve had an increase in income that life would be perfect from there on (or at least a bit closer to perfect), and yet we always end up living more or less the same way. This verse is a great reminder that we should be happy with what we have, even if it is very little. It is perhaps easier to fill your life with God when you do not have much materially, whereas with an abundance of money, anything can be bought – time can be filled up with every earthly pleasure.
At the moment, my great desire is a larger house. We live with three small but growing children in a two bedroom, one bathroom home that is around 800 square feet total. I know that God has plans for us and it is best to wait for His timing in this area of my life, but at times, I wish we would somehow acquire enough money to move sooner rather than later. I have to remember that to be righteous, I must seek after what God wants in my life, and not what I want. And when I am looking to Him to satisfy our needs and desires, I find that I am happier with the little that we have. I would rather have righteousness and very little than many riches and a dark and sinful life.
This verse of the day comes from VOTD.
Does that title sound too familiar? Well, this time it’s writing, not knitting. And it’s blogging, specifically. I haven’t quite made up my mind about it, and I’ll need more information before I decide for sure, but it sounds good right now. I write a lot during the day anyway, and if it’s an easy job to do, why not make a little money on it? The weird thing is that I had just been considering this possibility in the last few days and I hadn’t really said anything to anyone about it yet when a friend of mine said her husband is looking to out-source some articles for a website. Anyway, I’ll keep the blog up to date on what happens with this, but right now it’s mighty tempting.
We’ve been waiting for over a month for Mike’s tax refund to get here and I just checked and it’s in the bank! The problem is that it’s over a thousand dollars less than what we expected it to be. We were audited for our charitable donations, which is why it has taken so long to get to us, but I would really like to see Mike’s assessment so I could understand why it’s so much less than we thought it would be. I thought I was so careful when I did the math! If this is the case, we’ll have to rethink a little of the money distribution that we had planned out. We have five thousand still owing on our van – we’ve transferred it around from line of credit to low interest credit cards for a while now, and managed to whittle it down this far, but we were planning to pay the whole thing off with this money. We also have to get the power steering fixed in our van and my wisdom teeth surgery in June is going to cost us over eight hundred dollars. I have to say right now that a little extra income is sounding even better. Mike might be due for a raise soon, but that’s just a guess and I don’t know when it would be happening. I’m starting to think maybe it would be better not to have my wisdom teeth out this year….
I guess I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself. For now, I’ll just wait to find out whether this is all the money we’re getting or if they made a mistake calculating our return. But I doubt that…I mean, when does the goverment ever make a mistake when it comes to money? Even if they made one, they didn’t…if you know what I mean.
Bah! I need to do something else – this worrying isn’t doing me any good.
Filed under: Food Blogs, Kiddos, Money, The H Word | Tags: books on CD, cleaning, eating out, free writing, kids, potlucks, pregnancy test
This is going to become an exercise in free writing, because while I had something very witty to write earlier today, I have forgotten it entirely. However, I will start out with a point. This is what I’ve been up to:
I have learned, in the last few weeks, that listening to books on CD helps me to get laundry and housework done without realizing that I’m working. Really, I can do an hour of work and at the end of it, I only really remember the story line on the book. I have done something like this in the past, but it has never been quite this successful. I was using the strategy of listening to music and sometimes talk radio on my MP3 player while doing laundry and other things, but I really do think this works better. Also, I think my library has eBooks that can be downloaded for free, so I may try this and then I can put on some headphones and work all over the house rather than being stuck in one place. Because of this strategy, I have been keeping up on my laundry and on Friday, I managed to clean out one whole corner of my living room – this is progress, even if it seems like only a small step.
I spent nearly a week thinking I was pregnant – being more or less convinced that I was – until I took a test and it was negative. Don’t tell Mike that, though. He requested that if I take a test and it comes back negative, I not tell him, because he just cannot bear the thought of wasting money on negative pregnancy tests. I have a history of negative results at various times, and we had previously agreed that I wouldn’t take a test until I talked to him about it, but I decided that I might like to surprise him next time and I had to find out if that was okay. He said he didn’t mind if I didn’t tell him I was taking a test, but to please not tell him if it was negative. He blames it on being Mennonite, my Grandpa would say it’s because he’s Scottish. It has one explanation unrelated to ethnicity – he’s cheap. It’s okay – he knows this. It’s not offensive to him to be accused of thrift. For the record, I bought the cheapest test at Wal Mart. It was five dollars. My mom said that my peace of mind is worth five bucks, and I agree.
There is more, but now I’ll talk about what’s going on right now.
I gave the kids a choice tonight. Once Erik was in bed, they could either keep watching their movie or they could go to bed. Elias picked bed (seriously! what a great kid!) and Jenny is finishing the movie. It is past her bedtime, but this just means that she may sleep in later than eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Please, oh please.
And as usual when I write, I have been interuppted. Jenny is in bed now, but I imagine I’ll have to go in there at least once before they actually go to sleep. It’s usually something amazingly important that they need – Jenny tosses her blankets off and needs “covered up”, as she puts it; Elias needs a kiss – we don’t mind this one so much, it is awfully cute; Jenny needs to blow her nose and has misplaced the handkerchief that is usually under her pillow. It is usually found the next day under her pillow, but I guess in the dark she just can’t figure that out.
Mike is playing two back to back hockey games tonight. In different towns. Ah, the life of a hockey wife. His first game was at 8:20, which means that it’s over by now and he’s probably gathering his things, taking off half of his equipment and driving ten minutes to get to his next game, which starts at 9:45. I am so glad I stayed at home. Not that I wouldn’t love to watch his games – I just really don’t want to do it with three kids tagging along.
Tomorrow is our English Corner potluck. With any luck (haha), there will be lots of Asian food carefully made by all those wonderful Asian students we have in English Corner right now. And if I did my job right, I will have convinced Vivianna, our Colombian student, to bring something authentically Colombian. I was all prepared to make Vietnamese salad rolls - a time consuming venture, but well worth it – but when I went grocery shopping, I couldn’t find any mint. If I had more time, this would not have been a real problem – I would have just gone to another grocery store – but I had one shot at getting my ingredients and that was tonight, before Mike had to go to his game. So, after some hemming and hawing, I decided on potato soup. Not exotic, but incredibly delicious and very fattening (the way I make it anyway..it’s not something we eat often). I also bought two boxes of couscous and two bags of Edamame, thinking I may make a few side dishes to bring along as well. The invitations say to bring a main dish, appetizer or dessert, but I generally bring one or more of each. After all, I make the invitations, and I am also aware that many of those attending are poor college students and, strapped for time, will just pick something up from Price Smart on the way to the potluck. So I try to make enough to feed a good deal of them in case there isn’t much to choose from. It doesn’t hurt that I LOVE to cook.
Oh, yeah, here’s another thing I’ve learned recently. If I keep in mind that I will always be able to go out to eat on Sundays after church, it makes it easy to skip going out during the week. We nearly got pizza twice this week, but me being Scottish and all (heehee), I held on and made supper at home. And then, lo and behold, Mike’s parents bought our lunch today so we didn’t spend any money on going out the whole week! Wow! This is amazing! But seriously, it is a step in the right direction as we were eating out more than is healthy for our bodies or our bank account. I decided one Sunday afternoon, after a shared meal at A&W with the whole family, that I enjoyed eating out after church, even felt that it was something of a tradition I wanted to keep – for now, anyway, and that it was worth skipping meals out the rest of the week for that one treat on Sundays.
Well, I’m starting to get dizzy watching the words appear on the screen (I know – I could never do this for a living ). I think I’d better stop while I’m ahead, or I might stop making any sense at all and just start talking about how strange it is that I get dizzy when I write and feel as though my hands are miles away from my body….oops, there I go.
Time to go do something productive. Like build houses on the Sims.
Filed under: Food Blogs, Happiness, Home Sweet Home, Life, in general, Money
Today I made tropical coconut black bean soup. It is a soup that has to be put together and then pureed in a blender, which I generally do not have a problem doing. However, something to do with the heat of the liquid, or just having too much liquid caused the hot soup to spew forth from the blender just as I turned it on. Twice. You’d think I would have learned the first time to come up with another way of doing it so that I wouldn’t have to clean up coconut milk and black bean skins again. But the second batch (all that wouldn’t fit in the first time) did the same thing. I had just cleaned up the mess from the first burst when I had to do it all over again. The soup was good, though.
We did really well for quite some time..not going out to eat and only eating things at home that were made (mostly) from scratch. We had a week or two of reverting back to the old ways, but we’re committed again to sticking it out and not spending so much money on restaurants. Think about it: the average meal at a sit-down restaurant costs us $30, since we now have to get Jenny a kids meal if we want to keep her happy. Considering that I’ve had far better food made at home than in restaurants, the meals we eat often could be worth (in taste value) more than what our average eat-out meal costs us. And yet we spend so little on the things to make the best of these meals. Veggie ground round (a very often used staple food in our house) runs a little under $2 per pound at the Wholesale store - each package actually has the equivalent of 1 1/3 lbs of ground beef. Good for tacos, black beans, hamburger and rice, chili, meatloaf…almost anything you can make with gound beef can be made with Yves Veggie Ground Round. Rice: I bought a bag of brown rice yesterday that will last us for three to five meals for under $2. I used to buy canned beans at about $1.79 a can, which was enough for one meal. Now I can spend $3 and get enough black beans or lentils to last me for a month. Produce can run up the bill if I get things out of season, but I try to be in a habit of buying things when they’re cheap. Tomatoes on the vine, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, and onions are common fresh produce picks for us, and for a reasonable amount of them, I might spend $10-$20 and use them for a total of six different meals. Frozen vegetables run a little more per bag, but I really only buy peas now, to be used in fried rice and as the ocassional side dish. Pasta: by buying at Wal Mart, I save money. I can get a box of whole wheat pasta (which is enough for part of one meal) for under $1.50. For baked spaghetti, a family favorite, I need one package of ground round ($2), one and a half boxes of whole wheat spaghetti ($2.25) and around a quarter of a bag of shredded Italian mix cheese (which I buy in two packs for about $13, making the amount needed for this dish worth about $1.75). Throw some peas, broccoli, cauliflower or a salad onto the plate and you have a complete meal for under $10. Food for the ENTIRE family for a third of what we spend in a restaurant. Not too shabby.
When the math is done like that, it makes me wonder why we ever bother going out. And then I remember that sometimes I just don’t feel like cooking or can’t think ahead enough to decide what to make. I don’t think there is anything wrong with going out, but I would like to cut down again on how often we do it. I’d rather take the time and money to get a babysitter for the kids and use our out-to-eat-nights as date-nights instead. Not only do we get some alone time, but the meal is often cheaper without worrying over kids meals.
The real trick is planning. Plan before you shop by paying attention to which stores are the cheapest for which items, who is having a sale, whether you need what’s on sale or not and what you’re close to running out of. Plan while you shop by sticking to your list but also paying attention to deals you didn’t know about before (canned soup for emergencies on sale for 50 cents a can is hard to pass up). Plan whole meals by deciding what you’ll need for just one meal – vegetable, rice/pasta/etc., protein. If you’re having people over, remember this in advance instead of going super shopping the day before and paying more than you ought to (I’m just learning this one). Plan when you get home by making lists of what you have and what can be made from it. Plan by doing some amount of food prep when you buy things. I have started buying onions and mincing them in the food processor, then freezing them so that I don’t have to chop onions when I want them. Quite often I’m reluctant to use onions even if I have them because I HATE chopping them. But right now, I have three or so small bags of minced onions that I can throw into a meal effortlessly. I also do things like cutting apart the bags of ground round in the fridge so I can just reach in and grab instead of having to cut them when I need them. Little things like that make it so much easier for me to feel like cooking. The quicker I can throw things together and the more it appeals to me, the less I mind doing it.
The other part of meal preparation is mentality. One mentality to avoid is that it’s just food, it doesn’t matter what we eat as long as we eat something (which leads to lots of trips to McDonalds YUCK). Make each meal satisfying by putting thought into it. This will sound strange, but connecting with the food emotionally will help you to enjoy the prep more. Lentil soup has become a comfort food for me, through and through, and when I say that connecting emotionally will help, it is lentil soup that I think about. When I saute onions and garlic and measure lentils out, I think ahead to how comforting this meal is: I’m making an emotional connection with the food. Not as weird as it sounds, I promise. Another mentality to avoid is that it’s another form of slavery we housewives/domestic engineers/stay at home moms/etc. have to endure. I have learned that what I’m thinking while I cook greatly effects how I enjoy the meal. If I think about it as a valuable, important service to my husband and children, I can smile and imagine their satisfaction with it, and that it is nourishing both body and spirit to share a meal together.
I know a few things I’ve said have been a little new-agey sounding, but I think they’re quite legitimate and that God smiles down at me when I’m thinking this way about making a meal. It has been a long and somewhat hard transition to make, but it is saving us time, money and emotional hardship in the long run. We sit down together each night for supper and enjoy each other’s company. The kids may be too young to understand it now, but I’m positive that they will appreciate it later.
That was fun. This may become a regular feature. Stay tuned….
