Our Family

Days 4 - 6

2009-12-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

I'm really not very good at this daily blogging thing. So here's how the last few days have been. I've used a few things from my pantry, and I've stopped at th store when I was crazy busy. I'm learning that I'm not very good at sticking to the plan when it gets inconvenient. We ate out tonight, but that was planned (date night). Earlier this week, I did make some Madras Lentils and mixed it with some rotisserie chicken (Costco). That was good for a couple of meals (and sooooo yummy!). I didn't have time to cook much this week (finals week!). I'm going to try and really stick to the "pantry plan" next week. This experience, even just this first week, has taught me that 1) I'm a wimp, and 2) I need to be better about planning ahead for busy days.

Day Two...

2009-12-07T19:01:00.001-07:00

One word: Someburro's. This is harder than I thought when time is scarce. I decided that writing my papers was more important that being a purist on the experiment.

Lesson learned: I need to plan ahead for those days that I know will be busy (and I definitely knew today would be busy).

Day One...

2009-12-06T21:54:00.003-07:00

I admit it. I cheated. When I decided to do this experiment, I had Jana run out and get some milk and bread. I had just taken the last gallon out of the freezer, so I knew I would need milk. And I also knew that I didn't have time to make bread (finals week this next week), so... But, from here on out, it is what it is. This could be interesting.

Actually, it's already been interesting. Last night for dinner I made taco soup. I decided to "morph" that for tonight's dinner into tamale pie. I drained off the liquid, and then went to the cupboard to get the cornmeal to make the crust part of the pie. Apparently some weevils or other sort of small buggie thingie thought the cornmeal was delicious. I'm glad they liked it. I threw it out to the garbage so that they could enjoy it to their heart's content. Note to self: keep cornmeal and other grains, etc. in a plastic storage container. Duh.

Now what? I decided to grind up the corn chips from last night's dinner in the blender. That gave me about 1/2 c. of powdery stuff, but I needed 1 c. So I threw in the last of some Sun Chips. Okay, 1 c., we're good to go. I followed the recipe directions (shock!) and added my 1 c. of mixed powdery stuff into 4 c. of boiling water and stirred for 5 minutes. At the end of the 5 minutes, it was still VERY runny. Not good. So I thought, "Hmmm, I've got corn tortillas. I'll blenderize those as well." More powdery stuff added to the goopy stuff. Five more minutes. Goopy stuff is now pretty thick. Okay, this might work. I put it into a deep-dish ceramic pie dish and layered the de-juiced taco soup (beans, ground beef, corn, onions, green chiles, etc.) on top. I cooked it according to the directions (I'm on a roll!) at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes later, goopy stuff is still goopy. Not good. Twenty more minutes, goopy stuff is finally semi-solid on the sides, still very goopy on the bottom. Oh well, family is hungry, time to cut my losses and call it good. To serve it, I scooped off from the the top and sides. As I said to my family, "You win some and you lose some!" Believe it or not, it tasted pretty darn good. It would not win any prizes for looks, though.

From the pantry:
Red kidney beans
Corn salsa (Trader Joe's)
Organic cut tomatoes
Chile powder, cumin, salt, pepper
Trader Joe's Corn chips (like Fritos)

From the freezer:
1 # ground beef

From the fridge:
Sour cream
Lite Mexican cheese (shredded)

Wish I had:
Sliced olives

I'm going to keep a running list of what I used and what I wish I had so that I can learn from the experience. If you're up to doing the challenge and blogging about it, let me know and I'll post a link to your blog here!

A Two Week Experiment...

2009-12-06T20:15:00.004-07:00

Two years since my last blog? Seriously? I have never, EVER been good about journaling consistently. Looks like electronic journaling isn't much of an improvement. Still, here goes another attempt. For the next two weeks, at least, I'll be blogging each day.

One of my friends offered a challenge on her Facebook page: for two weeks, eat only from what you have on hand: pantry, freezer, etc. For some reason, this intrigued me and I thought it would be fun to try. Afterall, my pantry could use some cleaning out. After more thought, though, I've decided it's much more significant than that.

First, as member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, we have been encouraged for as long as I can remember to be prepared for future hardships--whether personal or widespread--by having a year supply of food and other necessities. We have not done that perfectly, but we have some basics on hand. I've never really thought about whether we could truly live on it or not. Probably not. So, this two week challenge seemed like a great way to assess whether or not we could get by for a mere two weeks. We all know what difficult economic times our nation is experiencing. The reality of the recession has hit us personally. Just three weeks ago, Alden did not receive his paycheck as expected due to financial setbacks of the company he works for. Fortunately, he received his salary about a week later, and we were fine in the meantime. However, it certainly made me think about the "what ifs" of our finances.

Second, Jana recently spent some time volunteering at St. Mary's food bank. It was a humbling and eye-opening experience for her. Their group prepared various vegetables for distribution packs, and the people at St. Mary's told them that the food they had prepared would help over 1,000 hungry people. Much more of an impact was made, though, when she saw the truck drivers (who were people in need of work) devouring celery they had cleaned and cut up.

Can we really imagine what it would be like to truly be without the necessities of life? What if we really had to live on whatever we had on hand. What if a job loss meant no more liquid cash? What if a blizzard made it impossible to get to the store? Granted, this is Arizona, so that's not very likely--but I do remember in our Utah days there was a snow storm so bad in that we were homebound for a bit (okay, less than 48 hours, but still...) Can we relate to the many, many people who truly have so little during this holiday season? For this reason, and the others mentioned above, we've decided to give this experiment a full go. I'm excited to see what lessons we will learn in the process. I am going to update my blog each day with our experiences. We invite you to join us in this experiment/adventure!

Millenial Kids: "The more things change, they more they stay the same."

2007-11-28T15:34:00.000-07:00

We all know how different life is for our kids than it was for us. The world has become a technological wonderland, and innovations that kids take for granted today were almost unimaginable when I was a kid (surfing the Internet from a cell phone?! Neither of those existed then).

When I was a kid and wanted to know what Santa was bringing for Christmas, I did it the old fashioned way: looking through Mom's purse to find "The List" (sorry, Mom!), sneaking in the backs of closets, etc.

Not so, for kids of today! A couple of weeks ago I finished my Christmas shopping, and Josh asked for some hints about one of his gifts. So we gave him a couple of great stumpers, thinking that would be the end of it (the presents were safely hidden out at Alden's office). Oh, no. He knew that I had been shopping at Costco, WalMart, and Target. So what did he do? Well, after getting his hints, he immediately went to costco.com to scope it out! And you know what? Yup, he found it. Of course, I didn't tell HIM that. ;-)

Ah, how true the saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same!"

It's been such a long time...

2007-11-02T12:41:00.001-07:00

It looks like I've been blogging about as well as I've kept journals. My excuse was that I needed to get my camera set up to download some pictures because posts without pics are, well, boring. It's just me going on and on and... oops! There I go again.

Okay, so pictures or not, I'm going to write a bit. Sadly, our dear little fish, Finny, went on to the big pond in the sky. He apparently got stuck under a rock. Josh was very sad. So Jana, being the loving big sister that she is, took him to buy a new fish. They came home with this little tiny betta which he named "Squirt." Apparently Squirt was not a healthy little guy, because he was found belly up just a few days later. Josh was very, very sad. It just doesn't seem quite fair for a 10-year-old to have had to bear the deaths of three fishies. (Yes, we had another before Finny; his name was Jack). So, back to the pet store. This time he picked out a nice, big, colorful, healthy-looking one. Josh named him Lucky. Let's hope so! :-)

Aquine acquisitions aside, life has been a little stressful due to health insurance being up in the air right now. I (Cassi) started the very loooooong process of weight loss surgery in September, only to find out at the end of October that we would no longer have our insurance as of the end of November. That's a very long (and boring) story. But the short version is that we are trying to accelerate the end-process so that I can have the surgery done before the end of November. As of yesterday, everything has been sent in for approval. Let's hope it goes quickly! We have figured out a plan B scenario, but it is not as financially favorable. If you want to read more about my WLS adventure, you can check out my blog link on the left--er--right side of this page (only my family will get that joke).

Jana survived a week of stressful testing. She had the ACT on Saturday and then AIMS on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Whew! That's done. She passed all her AIMS as a sophomore, but she has been trying to up her scores to be eligible for the Regents scholarship (four year, full-tuition). This semester has been a busy one for her. She has morning classes at the high school and then college classes in the afternoon/evening. Between dual enrollment and regular college classes, she has 18 hours this semester. She will have finished her freshman year of college by the time she graduates from high school! Plus, she works about 15 hours a week, although that will likely be changing soon. She has been very successful at keeping all the balls in the air. She is very organized, very hard-working, and she doesn't procrastinate! (She doesn't get that from me, that's for sure!)

Alden is enjoying his new job, crazy though it is. He is totally in his element. They all love him there, as always, and consider him almost part of the family. I'll let him post more, if he comes up with some great stories.

Benjamin Franklin

2007-09-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

As Bekki astutely pointed out, it was indeed Benjamin Franklin who said, "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about." I read it in the flyer for an upcoming Constitution Week celebration.

Going a little greener...

2007-09-09T11:29:00.000-07:00

You all know that I have a passion for environmental conservation, green living, etc. Well, we took another step in the green direction this past week. We installed a high-tech solar-powered clothes drying system. Also known as a clothes line. :-) This environment-friendly addition was the result of our dryer going kaputz. We simply didn't have the money to replace it right now due to the fact that we now have two college students in the family and I haven't gotten any sub work lately (still early in the school year). We found our solution in a $30 clothesline and a $5 bag of cement. Much cheaper than a new dryer!

Believe it or not, the clothes dry almost as fast as in the dryer, while using ZERO energy. Except for the human energy involved in hanging them up, which was not that big of a deal, and in fact somewhat satisfying in an old-fashioned way. The area where we put up the "solar dryer" is already populated by plants which are watered by the 'grey water' from the washer. By using biodegradable laundry detergent, we are able to recycle the water for a second purpose. This is definitely the "greenest" corner of the house. I plan to plant more cutting flowers in this area to make it prettier as well as useful. I think I might also plant a rosemary plant around the base of the clothesline to make the clothes smell even better!

Yes, I'm sure we'll get a new dryer eventually; but for now I'm enjoying the sense of satisfaction that comes with making good use of this Arizona heat and doing something good for the environment.

Venturing into the world of blogging...

2007-09-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

...not to be confused with clogging. The only similarity being that I've never done either one. I'm not sure what the point of a blog is, other than to ease my conscience over the fact that I'm a miserable journal keeper. Let me rephrase that. I keep a miserable journal. No, still not right... Okay, I am miserable about keeping a journal. There. I think that works. The bottom line is that part of me feels that I should write something worthwhile for those who come behind me. The other part of me is quick to point out that "we" stay up too late at night as it is and cannot fathom staying up for another 30 minutes or so writing in a journal. I've always thought that the "handwriting" was integral to the journaling writing (and reading) experience. However, I type faster than I write, so thus it is. My conscience is appeased.

I read a quote recently that said, "Write something worth reading, or do something worth writing about." I can't remember off-hand where I read it or who said it. I'll try to follow up on that. But it's certainly sage wisdom. Here's to hoping that occasionally something worthwhile gets written here.