Windy Warm Wednesday.

I love the first few days of the week.  I’m home, I’m with my kids and dogs, I can work on my house.  It’s awesome.

Today we had a pow wow, time for the boys to take on more responsibilities and help out around the house.  Too much sitting in their room, too much computer…not enough activity in their lives.  I told my youngest that the day he went out bowling with his friends was the happiest I had seen him in years.  He came home beaming, he had fun…we was (gasp) SOCIALIZING!  So, its time to start implementing more activities in their lives and learn how to be functioning members of society.

I proposed a business plan.  Something the 3 of us could do together to bring more money into the household and to teach them how to build a business.  Its something we could work on slowly and in our spare time. (Not that I have any spare time, but THEY do). Julian has to concentrate on graduating high school, and Dante is looking for work…but looking forward, I think having a family business is a great idea.

After our meeting we got to work.  Julian took the dogs for a walk and did a little art project for me. (More on that later) Dante and I worked on the yard, did a few repairs and then he made us all lunch.

Cooperation rocks.

Two weeks ago, I posted my intention of working on the wood pile beside the house.  Little by little Dante chipped away at it and today I went out and finished it off.  The side yard looks great now. Ironically, since the wood pile has been dismantled I have not caught any rats or mice in my zapper…aaahhhhhhh!!!!!!

 

This morning a can of 7-up mysteriously fell out of its box in the pantry and exploded. Upon cleaning up the mess, that’s when I realized my kitchen is in need of some serious revamping.  So I got a wild hair to organize my pantry and another cabinet. I was excited to find some items that had been stashed away for years that I could repurpose and reuse for storage and decor.

        

OK, this one’s pretty embarrassing…even my cat is saying, REALLY? WHO LIVES LIKE THIS?

         

Here are a few ways I repurposed items I rescued from the cabinet of doom…

Dish drainer:

Placemats and dishes displayed on the kitchen table:

Tall cylindrical vases now used to store pasta and rice, looks cute in my kitchen!

I cut out a few cardboard discs and asked Julian to doodle a picture on each one (that was his art project for today).  These fit right inside the cylinders to protect the pasta from dust, bugs, etc…(it would be cool to find some cork eventually)

Here’s a photo of our lunch too.  Pita flat bread pizzas. Easy peasy and SO YUMMY!

I still have a few more projects I’d like to tackle today, but it feels good to sit and enjoy my couch for awhile.  And it REALLY felt good to spend some time with my kids and get some work done around the house.  My wheels are turning…what can we do NEXT WEEK?

Javalina Sighting.

The other evening, before sunset, my husband and I took the dogs for a walk down the dirt road.  As we made the turnaround to come home I started noticing the different types of tracks in the DG. Dog, person, and…what’s this?  Small unusual prints that I had never seen before, the spread of each print indicated that the animal was probably the size of a raccoon or an opossum…that wasn’t the odd part, however.  The tracks ran perfectly straight.  Rodents tend to scurry, and coyote’s kinda “meander” like a dog…this was a straight line…it really made me wonder WHAT THE HECK CAME THROUGH HERE?

Two nights later, my husband and I are driving home, this time its around 11pm…its dark.  The usual suspects romp to get out of our way…rabbits, a field mouse, and…what’s this?  I could have sworn the back end of a koala bear ducked under the field fence.  Noooo, not a koala bear, maybe a…what? Some kind of pig?  My husband laughed at me, “its a coyote babe.”  That was no coyote…it didn’t have a tail.  It was short and had stubby legs.  He Googled it the next day…Javalina.

This is exactly what I saw.

Great…we not only have every nasty rodent under the sun living here, plus coyotes and wild dogs, mountain lions and skunks; now we also have destructive wild pigs.  My husband was wondering what tore apart his irrigation a few weeks ago.  We chalked it up to coyotes desperate for water, but usually coyotes just chew the hose in one spot.  Our drip lines were DESTROYED.  Now what?

On to other news…

I am back to working on our food budget again, and I’m putting together an idea on blogging my shopping trips, meal planning, menus, time saving ideas, etc…I will eventually make a separate blog site for that, but until then, I am still working on my shopping techniques.  I’d also like to incorporate “how to” videos and offer shopping services and meal planning to others.

Today I was up bright and early…this is how my morning looked:

I only had about $200 to spend (as I mentioned, this was a lean month so my trips to the market have been piecemeal.  Ideally, as mentioned in a previous post, I try to do all of my shopping for the month in one day, hitting 4 or 5 different stores for the best deals…but today we only went to Stater Brothers and Albertsons.  I ended up spending a little over $230, but I still scored a lot of food, including wine, dog kibble and cat food. There is enough meat and vegetables in our fridge for 9 dinners with leftovers for lunches. This should carry us until our next payday.

Today we have been eating the last of our leftovers from last week.  In my last trip I bought a ham (on sale after Easter) it made 2 dinners for us, the second one was ham & cabbage soup…(YUM) and I still have a tupperware FULL of meat.  Great with eggs in the morning, and grilled ham & cheese sandwiches.  Once it is gone, my husband is burned out on ham for awhile. heehee

OK, that was one long blog post.  Hope everyone is having a happy Monday.

Hugs & Kisses from Long Ranch.

Update on Grocery Budget.

OK. I’m stoked.  As we close out our 2nd week of groceries (with 2 more weeks to go) there is STILL plenty of food to sustain us.  I trekked out to the garage fridge to grab milk out of the freezer and a few avocados for dinner.  I told my husband, jokingly, that I “went to the grocery”.  What an awesome feeling to just head out to the garage to replenish a food item that ran low.

I still have chicken breasts, sausages, hamburger meat, shrimp, steaks and tri-tip…on paper it looks like that will last us at least 10 more days, but I’m hoping it stretches 2 more weeks.  How cool would that be that my first attempt at this would be a success?

I did have one fail last week.  I ruined a big batch of homemade dog food…I was so mad at myself.  I just have to remember to budget my time better, and not try to squeeze too many projects into one day.

I have had several HUGE successes, however. One is that my husband has lost 5lbs since we started this.  We are eating really well, but not snacking at night.  Truth is, we don’t even crave the snacks since we are eating really good food.  The other is that he has found that he LOVES cream of wheat.  I was shocked to learn that growing up in the South, he never ate this as a child. Coming from the mid-west, I grew up on the stuff. I bought a small amount from a bulk bin at Winco…not sure if he would like it.  Well, it is now his favorite thing.  Even with brown sugar and butter, it is a low calorie/high energy food.  I will be sure to stock up on this when I make my next grocery run.

On Monday I cooked a 10lb ham.  It was the smallest ham I could find in the store, and cost me about $14.  We have been eating off of it ALL WEEK.  On Wednesday, I found a phenomenal recipe for ham and cabbage soup.  It was better than corned beef and cabbage…everyone loved it.  I still have a TON of ham, so today I also made chef salads for me and my husband.

The kids really enjoy having food in the house too.  Last week I made pork carnitas in my crock pot…the next night my son used the left-overs and made an awesome pulled pork BBQ sandwich.

I am already starting my grocery list for next month, and watching the weekly circulars that come in the mail so I don’t miss any important sales.

I am so rockin’ the food budget…heeheehee.

Homemade Dog Food.

A few years ago, my good friend, Jen Sale showed me how she made homemade dog food.  I was impressed, and went home to give it a shot.  At first it seemed like it would take a lot of my time, but actually I cook it right alongside our regular meals in batches that last 4 or 5 days.  Its not expensive, and I think it has to be much healthier for the dog than a straight diet of dry kibble or canned crap. (By the way, I have fed my dog Pedigree and it gave him the worst gas…UGH!)

So, what I do on my grocery runs is look for deals on chicken.  Many times Stater Bros. has some kind of special on whole chickens or cut up fryers…chicken is chicken, dogs don’t care how its packaged.  When I find a great deal, I buy a lot and freeze it for future batches.

I feed my dogs twice a day, and do throw a little dry kibble on top of the chicken meal I made for them…they gobble it up.

Easy peasy…Boil chicken until fully cooked with some carrots and green beans, take the chicken out of the broth and let it cool so you can de-bone it in half an hour or so. (Burning fingers is not fun). NEVER NEVER put onions in your dog food.  My doggie has gotten very sick from accidentally eating onion.  I add carrots and green beans because I know they are safe.  While your chicken is cooling add some brown rice to your boiling broth, its usually done within 20 – 30 minutes.  Remove the meat from the bones and add it back into your broth.  Voila!  Dog food!  

I re-purpose plastic Parmesan cheese tubs to store the homemade dog food, and if I happen to make a lot, then I put some of it in the freezer for later use.  Another hint is to let the food cool to nearly room temperature before putting it in the refrigerator or freezer.  If it cools too quickly then there is a chance of contaminating your dog food with botulism.

Have a great day!

Lettuce Leaf Tacos

I am always looking for creative ways to eat the foods we love and still stay within the low carb parameters.  We have been “low carbing it” for about 3 weeks now and really enjoying it. When the weekend rolls around and things get hectic, however, its really hard to stick with it.  I’m thinking low carb for 5 days a week is still better than nothing.

Years ago I did the Atkins thing for 6 months and lost 13 pounds…it was awesome, but hard to stick with it because a) I had no imagination and b) because my kids were small and were always wanting spaghetti, pizza, and tacos.  Now that they are older they have broadened their horizons and frankly they are enjoying eating veggies instead of starches as much as we are.

So…here is an idea I came up with because my boys still love taco night…I present to you…The Lettuce Leaf Taco.

The ingredients are simple:

Meat of your choice with mexican seasoning (in this example I made carnitas, but I have also used pollo, and I’m sure ground beef would work too)

Chopped spinach

Guacamole

Shredded cheese

Salsa

Romaine Lettuce leaves

It is amazingly filling, and kinda fun to eat…just stack your ingredients onto the lettuce leaf and pick them up like a regular taco. RAD!

To make my carnitas, I chopped up 2 onions, cubed a whole pork roast and simmered it in chicken broth and water for 2 – 3 hours.  Half way in between I also added a few tablespoons of salsa…you can add heat to it by using any of your favorite hot sauce, jalapenos or ground red pepper.

 

You will have to keep chopping up the meat with a metal spoon or spatula to get it to fall apart as you get to the stage where it is cooked thoroughly…usually after 1 hour of cooking.  If the water and chicken broth boil down before your carnitas are done cooking you can always add more.  I usually start with enough liquid to cover the meat, and add another cup or two…just keep an eye on it so your meat does not dry out or burn to the bottom of the pot.

I am open to any low carb recipes you’d like to share!