A little bit Martha

Each evening is a mad dash to get dinner on the table by 6.   I have been churning out average meal after average meal night after night. Mind you, I am a good cook. Since I was in such a hurry  I would forget to season the dishes that well or I would take things out of the oven prematurely. I know, all bad moves.

On Saturday I sat down with my cookbooks and went through and wrote down a bunch of recipes that I want to make because I usually will see a recipe some place and forget to make it and end up preparing something boring.

Then I picked three recipes from that list to make this week. I only picked three because I knew they would have leftovers. I wrote out my shopping list like I usually do to include things for the recipes, but I made sure to include EVERY ingredient for each recipe. I have found that if I say I will go back later in the week for an ingredient or two, I don't end up making that dish and resort to grilled cheese.

One of my recipes was a Vegetarian Minestrone. I bought some extra BPA free storage containers and made the soup on Sunday night after Miss S was in bed. I doubled the batch and put both containers in the freezer. Last night we ate the soup for dinner and we still have some for another weeknight in a the freezer.

Besides the soup I have made a good meal each night this week because I have had all of my ingredients ready to go. On Monday night I made Paula Deen's "Quick Pot Pie". Instead of cooking chicken and cutting them up, I ended up using two packages of Foster Farm's Chicken Breast Strips which made things that much quicker, and that chicken really is tasty, take it from me, someone who usually doesn't like chicken, unless it is fried.

So now the plan is that on each Sunday night I will cook one meal but double the batch and freeze one for a later time and eat the other that week. I know all of this is not rocket science. And I know probably majority of people are already doing this. It has just taken me awhile to realize that I don't like bland food.

Mom of the Fricking Year

Since Miss S started walking a solid year ago, I must of acquired about 500 gray hairs. However, I hi-lite my hair so you would never know. She is a wild girl. We have had our share of falls, scrapes, scratches, nose dives, face plants, etc. Good thing she is so tough or else we would of have had endless days of tears. However, since she is so tough, it is sometimes hard to distinguish when she really does hurt herself. Case in point Sunday.

I was fixing dinner (pulled pork sandwiches to be exact) when I heard her run full speed into the living and fall. Hard. So hard that she immediately started screaming but then wound up so hard that she let out no noise for a couple seconds then started wailing again. I asked her where her "boo boo" was but she couldn't tell me. She calmed down in a few minutes and acted like nothing happened. About an hour later in the bath a red line started appearing over the bridge of her nose indicating that it was the thing that took the brunt of her fall. I also noticed a little swelling. I immediately began to worry because I broke my nose in junior high and since then have a bump on it. Here she had a perfect nose and I didn't want her nose to be funky like mine. I know, such a shallow thought.

Hubbs assured me she was fine and that the doctor wouldn't be able to do anything anyways. Fast forward the next day and it was more blue. Yesterday it was really blue. Today it is better. However, taking her out in public is pretty embarrassing. People eye us up suspiciously. But I am used to that, she always has something on her. Come to think of it, this post seems very familiar. Seems like I just wrote a similar one a couple months back when she busted her lip open (which did leave a scar). I tell ya, just when I thought she was mellowing down, she starts falling again!

I definitely do not feel like the Mom of the Year.

Five Things

Okay, I am stealing this from Just Jiff and participating in the Five Things You Don't Know About Me. Because, I need some blog fodder as well, nothing is that exciting these days.

1) My thumbs are double jointed. I bust out this skill when I meet new people hoping to impress them but basically it typically just grosses them out.

2) I'm 5'4 and a half! This makes shopping for pants difficult. I am just about a half inch too tall for regular length pants, talls are too long so I have to get them hemmed or short length are just too short to wear with flats. Lately I have wearing more skirts and dresses.

3) I have recently discovered 6pm.com. A great online shopping site to score name brands way cheaper. And when I say "name brands" I mean good name brands. I have found my designer jeans there for 50% off. No joke. They have really cute and cheap shoes too.

4) Growing up we didn't have a lot of money, so I wore hand-me-downs from the really rich girl across the street. I think doing that until I was in high school and got a job at the GAP, made me now obsessed with always looking my best. You don't need to spend a crap load, your just need to be smart at the way you put outfits together. My motto at work is, "don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want". You never know when you have to have an impromptu meeting and those worn out jeans with the stretched out turtleneck, will definitely be something that people might be focusing on.

5) Lately I have been eating frozen pineapple chunks every night for dessert. I discovered this healthy treat at the beginning of summer. Between the three different grocery stores I shop at, Trader Joe's has the best kind. The chunks are smaller and the bag they are packaged in I believe prevents freezer burn. When I go shopping there, I load up on it. I will buy at least three bags at a time and will eat half a bag in one sitting.