Crock Pot-- Do Your Thing!!!

So this week has been a bit crazy.  We had our end of the year celebration with our Girl Scout troop, it's the last week of school, we had a yard sale last weekend (the remains of which are still filling up our house,) and I had a migraine going on for 3 days.  Today was awards day at M's school, and so I took the morning off to go and see her and go to her class party.  The result was that instead of my normal 8-5 shift, I am currently working a 3-10 shift while everyone else is watching TV and enjoying dinner.

For some reason, it didn't exactly occur to me that we needed a gift for her teacher until late last week, at which point I panicked and e-mailed someone that was in my Brownie Girl Scout troop (20 some-odd years ago) begging for ideas.  She is a super-crafty, super-cool mom type and saved my butt.  Even though I procrastinated about actually using her idea until this week.  She had done a project at her kids' preschool where they used fingerprints to make critters on notecards.  She explained that the kids did fingerprints and one of her (adult) friends drew in the little faces and such.  I am quite certain that her cards looked NOTHING like my cards, because M does not like to play by the rules.  She marches to her own drumbeat so to speak.  At any rate, after a quick trip to Micheal's, we started working out the notecards.  We practiced on a sheet of paper first, and I wrote the title of each piece of art, as well as a dedication from the artist to the teacher on the back of each card.  I feel like they turned out really well-- I hope her teacher likes them!

But as a result of all the craziness and my literal inability to be in the kitchen cooking tonight, I scrambled around the kitchen and literally threw things in the crockpot.  This happens once in a while, but tonight M declared it "wonderful." Ha.  What a little gourmet she is.  If only she knew.

It would be helpful if I had been to the grocery store lately, but alas my trips have been centered around buying items for school and for Girl Scouts, so my scrambling for ingredients came up with an odd combination. 

It was well-liked enough that although I probably won't blog about it again, I probably won't feel guilty next time the situation arises at 6 am.  By the same token, I am only including the recipe to show how a crockpot can turn a bunch of nothing into something good.


"Crock Pot-- Do Your Thing" Ingredients:
1 lb. goat stew meat
1/2 bag frozen spinach
1 bag frozen fordhook lima beans
1 bag Grape Tomato Sauce


Throw it into the crockpot.  Turn on low.  Cook for 6 1/2 hours.  Serve over plain rice. Declare yourself a genius. 

Essential Cleaning Products

In the same vein as the grocery list, I guess I have a list of essential cleaning products.  But it's really much shorter.

My Essentials:

• Dr. Bronner's (unscented)
• White Vinegar
• Baking Soda
• Basic H2
• tea tree oil
• lemon juice
• washing soda
• oxiclean 
• Murphy's Oil

My Like-to-Haves:

• Dawn
• Cascade
• Tide

You see, my like-to-haves are all brand namers.  And really, I can coupon those to death and get them most of the time.  But the first list are all pretty environmentally friendly, and can do ALL THE WORK OF THE 2ND LIST.  If you are trying to save money, keep in mind-- you can make your own cleaners, and elbow grease is cheap.

Another great hint for saving money on cleaning supplies.. buy products that are concentrated.  For example, I've been using the same bottle of Murphy's Oil Wood Soap for 3 years.  Has its power diminished? Nope..  Do I use it a lot? You betcha.  And the Basic H2? 1 of the small bottles can clean everything from your driveway to your dishes.  I've been on the same bottle for a year, and am only halfway through.  Baking Soda? I bought a 5 lb bag from Sam's Club in January of 2009 that I use for both cleaning and cooking (careful not to redip and contaminate, naturally) for about $7.



So what are your go-to cleaning products? Earth-friendly or otherwise?

Easy Pork Tacos

Yes, I know I have mentioned time and time again that my husband doesn't eat pork.  That doesn't mean, however, that we never have dinner guests that do.  Which is why I bought ground pork at a deal a while back and stuck it in the freezer.

Over the weekend, my aforementioned cousin and her fiance, as well as her younger brother (my youngest cousin) came over for dinner and I made Mexican.  I had them over for dinner the same day I had a yard sale (which is why I have no pictures of the food) and had to make something easy.  Seemed like a good time for that ground pork.


Ingredients:
1 lb. ground pork
1 fresh jalapeno
1/2 large onion, chopped
3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
3 tbsp. ancho chile powder


I thawed out my pork about halfway, but I don't really even think you have to do that.  I placed the onions and garlic on the bottom of the pan so that the flavor would seep up into the meat.  I then placed the meat, and on top I put the whole jalapeno and the chili powder.  Turned it on low, cooked about 6 hours.  I stirred it once or twice during the day to be sure the chili powder got mixed in well. When you stir, be careful not to break open the jalapeno.  The idea is to infuse the meat with the flavor, not to make it need-a-fire-engine hot.

The result?  A flavorful pork that was excellent in tacos.  Both of the kids were able to eat it, and the adults were able to add spice enough to suit their taste for hot.

Getting Crafty

We are winding up our year with out Girl Scout troop, and I thought it would be nice if the girls gave my co-leader a present. For some reason, the idea of making a "Daisy" out of their handprints on a t-shirt popped in my head. Now I do have to try and do everything cheaply, so I used some Walgreens Register Rewards to buy the t-shirt, and dropped over to Hobby Lobby for the paints. (If you are unaware of the Register Rewards deal, go on over to Southern Savers, a blog I follow, and she has great explanations of how it all works.)

I got together with each of the girls and had them do their handprints in a Daisy (-ish) design.  Thanks to their helpful moms, I was able to get all 7 over 3 days.

Anyways, here's our finished product.  And she should LOVE it!

My Must-Haves

My oldest cousin is getting married, and I've been thinking of what she needs to know.  Oh, I don't mean stuff like the birds and the bees or knowing about how to do laundry, or even how to cook.  She's a very smart girl, and out of college and on her way to medical school.  She has those sorts of things covered.  She knows quite well to take care of herself.  But I did start thinking about what it's like to set up your own household.

When you get married, or buy your first home, often you have a shower, or a housewarming party.  People give you a crockpot, a coffee pot, and a soup pot.  They give you knives & spoons, a cutting board.  But there's so much more that you need.  You need a broom.  Something to clean your toilet.  Something to clean off the stove.  You see?  I once knew a lady who always gave a gift certificate to a grocery store as a wedding gift.  That way, the new couple, if they didn't already have their own home together, could purchase the essentials: salt, pepper, oil, flour, and so on.  And so I started thinking about what MY essentials are.  Because what every person needs as their essential grocery items are not the same.  It depends on what you eat, and what you cook.  And even if you cook.  It depends on how you clean, if you believe you need chemicals to get things truly clean, or if you want to make your own environmentally friendly cleaners.  And mostly, it also depends on your budget and how many ways you can squeeze it.

So here's my list of essentials, the things I must have in my pantry/fridge/freezer grocery-wise.  Some of these items may seem expensive, but I have a strategy for buying each on the cheap.  Some other day I'll talk about cleaning products.  These aren't in particular order:

• garlic (preferably fresh, minced, and powder)
• onion (preferably fresh and frozen chopped)
• worchestershire (especially since becoming gluten-free, soy sauce doesn't cut it.)
• coconut milk
• coconut oil
• olive oil
• hot peppers (preferably a variety of powdered, dried and fresh)
• chicken
• lamb
• bison
• eggs
• frozen spinach
• sea salt
• dried beans (particularly black beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans)
• peanut butter
• variety of herbs & spices
• celery
• carrots
• vinegar (preferably a variety, but at minimum apple cider and white)
• tomatoes or tomato sauce (we try to stick with fresh and/or homemade sauce because of issues with BPA in canned tomatoes)
• mushrooms 
• fruit, a variety
• coffee
• tea, a LARGE variety ( we have an actual tea cabinet for this purpose)

• rice
• potatoes
• ginger, both fresh and powdered

Now there are a wide variety of other things that we love and buy, but if we have all of this "in stock," we can make a huge variety of meals.  Another absolute essential to me is a good set of containers that can go in the freezer and a set of labels.  I buy my labels in the office section at the dollar store.  One pack lasts forever.  All leftovers that don't get eaten quickly get frozen for lunches to take to work or for nights when noone wants to cook.

So what are the grocery items that are YOUR essentials?

Anniversary Dinner

The 19th marked our 3rd wedding anniversary.  This year we decided a date night IN would be the best way to celebrate.  We sent the kids to spend the night with my parents (thanks mom & dad) and had a date night in.

I gave my hubby a couple of choices, and he choice gyros (Yay!), and opted to stop and pick up the movie Avatar for us to watch.  We weren't really sure if it was kid-appropriate, so it was a great time to see it.  We also went ahead and watched the last two episodes of Desperate Housewives, to which we are both totally addicted.  (Don't let him fool you.)  I don't know what I was expecting, but Avatar was awesome.  If you are into sci-fi, anthropology, love, or special effects, it covers all of those bases.  My husband has good taste in movies.


As for the gyros, I did have to work that day, so I consulted Stephanie over at her blog for the recipe.  It was fantastic!  A definite keeper.  We each had 6 or 7 gyros.  Yes, I said 6 or 7. If the kids are at home, we'll have to use 2 lbs of meat.

We did make a couple of adjustments: I double the garlic in the tzaziki.  I also mixed the garlic and onions into the meat (because I can't follow directions) and used all lamb, no turkey.  It was to die for!  Once again, Stephanie rocks!  Oh, and we followed her suggestion to use corn tortillas to make them gluten-free.  We had standard (gluten-filled) beer for accompaniment, however, so perhaps we didn't do as well as we thought.

A note on that:  my husband's lower back has hurt him for two days.  I think we've both decided if we feel we must have a beer, that Redbridge, made by Budweiser and that IS gluten-free is the way to go.  We feel much better, less bloated, etc. etc.  Besides, what's the point in working this hard on the food and then drinking pretty much straight gluten?

A composting we go, a composting we go, high-ho the dairy oh....

I've mentioned before that we had a garden both last year and this year.  We also compost, as a way to fertilize our garden without using chemical fertilizer.  This also helps us reduce the amount of trash we are actually sending  out to the landfill.  If you think about it, it makes absolutely NO sense to put food scraps.. eggshells and peels and the like into a plastic bag that will takes hundreds or thousands of years to decompose, when the food scraps themselves will decompose in a matter of months.  But I digress.

Composting is an art form that I apparently do not understand and my husband does.  (There are many things that go this way...) But we do try to keep it relatively simple, as our daughter has to be able to do it, and our son will once he's bigger and cleaning up after himself more.  We keep a bucket in our kitchen (ours is a joint compound bucket from when we tiled at the other house.) Into the bucket we throw:

• fruit peels
• vegetable ends (celery stalks, bases of carrots, etc.)
• coffee grounds
• egg shells
• cooked grains (rice, quinoa, etc.)

And a few other things.  After some trial and error, and a bit of research, we determined no meat. My hubby wanted to include meat for a while to attempt to reduce our actual waste trash to zero, but after a month of feeling like I was dying from the smell I vetoed that.  When the bucket gets full, we take it out and toss it in our compost bin.  Now a friend of ours has a fancy compost bin that hangs out above the ground and has a crank to turn it, but that sucker sells for about $300 or so.   Yeah, right.  Our compost bin is a large plastic trash bin with holes drilled in the bottom to let the "juices" flow out.  (Why is so much that I write about so gross??)  Apparently this bin has to be "stirred" and/or rolled fairly often to help break down the food.  It also needs to sit in most full sun most of the time.

Here is what I have learned about composting myself:
1.) Your actual trash bin never smells. (Unless you forget and leave decomposing fish heads in it....but that's for another story.)
2.) Even if you don't include meat, your inside bin will start to smell from time to time, even when you keep a lid on it.  This is especially true in the hot summer.  Clean it regularly.  To clean, take it outside, empty it, and then rinse it out with the water hose.  Scrub with an enviro-safe cleaner (I like Shaklee's Basic H2).  Leave it out in full sun for about 3 hours.  The smell will be gone.
3.) Do not get lazy about emptying it.  If you do, the lid won't stay on properly, and the thing will smell.
4.) Often your visitors will simply not understand composting.  Explain as best you can, then relax.  It's not worth fighting about.
5.) Do enforce composting on your kid's friends.  It exposes them to (probably) something new and makes them think.
6.) Assign the person in your family who can smell the least or has been whining the most to deal with the large compost bin out back.

Can you compost if you have an apartment or a place with no yard? Yes, absolutely.  But you will be doing it on a much smaller scale, and you'll want to have something with a much tighter lid that a compound joint bucket.

I really need to do something about the bucket.  It's quite ugly.....