Let's fix the house, buy some vodka and get to writing!

In the haste that was all of last week, I forgot to mention that we finally got our roof fixed. We knew when we bought our house (four years ago) that there was a gap in the roof around the chimney, but it hadn't been an issue until last fall/winter. Rather suddenly, we discovered that rainwater was leaking through this gap. It went down, down, down the chimney, supporting a growth of mold in the attic, damaging the wood framing the fireplace in the living room, ruining some magazines and books, and finally puddling in the basement next to the furnace. Sound like fun, right?

Don't ask me why it took so long to get it fixed -- I delegated the assignment last year when we discovered the leak! Actually, in all fairness, my handsome partner did try to plug the leak earlier this fall, before the rainy season started. And for a couple of weeks we thought it was successful, until one afternoon when my mother heard a drip-drip and saw puddle of water in the living room. (That happened to be the same day the storm drain backed up in the driveway and we ended up with a half-flooded basement. I cursed the heavens that night, loathing their heavy clouds and buckets of rain.)

So finally, finally we got a couple of roofers to come bid on repairing the gappy flashing around chimney. One of them gave us an amazing price and a guarantee on his work, so we scheduled the repair. It's been raining for a week now but... not inside my house! Not anymore! (If you live in the same town as us and need a recommendation for a roofer, please ask.)

I'm very excited to share our other big home improvement project from this week: We put new carpet in the craft room! I wish I had a "before" picture to show you. Just try to imagine, if you can, white and yellow shag carpet. It was in decent condition but man-oh-man was it ugly! There was also something off about the texture. I don't know exactly how to describe it, except to say that it was very coarse. It just didn't feel right when you walked on it.

I've been keeping an eye on a local carpet store to see if they had any remnants in an appropriate size and type for the craft room. There was one remnant, one both perfectly sized and colored for the craft room, hanging around the store but it had a SOLD tag on it. The sale date was last June. A couple of weeks ago, I finally asked one of the salesman about the remnant. "Do people ever forget to come back for these remnants? Do you think the buyer might have changed his mind?" The salesman said he could probably cut me a new piece from the roll for nearly the same price as the remnant. I skeptically allowed him to run the numbers for a piece of carpet and installation; I couldn't believe the price. "That's it? That's all it would cost? And it would be installed?!"

"Yeah, that carpet is on sale. We've had a hard time selling it."

Of course no one else wanted the carpet. It is a flat, ugly brown color designed for a commercial space. But our craft room has rustic orange cabinets and it would match perfectly. The "ugly brown" actually compliments the room beautifully. So I went home to check with Nate, got two thumbs up, and scheduled the installation. Three days later, viola! New carpet! And it was ridiculously inexpensive. I know it's not exactly pretty but doesn't this look, well, kinda nice?...

 

Apparently the break I took last week from doing electrical work was enough time off because I got back at it this week with vigor. I am very pleased to report that all of the light and switch boxes are in place, and there is new wire running to them! Now I need to add a wire from the power source to these fixtures and get everything installed. Maybe I'll be done this coming week? I originally though I would try to connect all four sets of lights (utility, closet, hallway, bathroom) by going from light to light to light, but after a couple of hours of investigation and testing yesterday, I have determined that each switch just needs to have a line straight from the main power source. If you don't speak electrical-ese and that didn't make sense, just know that I have to buy and run a little bit more wire to finish it up.


My daughter got her first little haircut this week. It wasn't really a full cut, just a little trim. Her hair is long in the back (specifically on the crown of her head) and relatively short everywhere else, so it had grown mullet-ish. Not a big deal since she's a toddler, and you maybe wouldn't notice since her hair has a little bit of curl. But after it gets washed, ugh! It's like a little rat-tail going down her back. So on Thursday night at the end of bathtime, after a particularly difficult day and an evening of nothing but fussing toddler, when Nate was gone to youth group, I got out the scissors and whacked off the rat tail.

Is it cute now? Not really. Still kinda funny looking. But at least it's not hideous anymore. :o)

While we're on the subject of firsts, I had a very strange first this week: I bought vodka for the first time. I've been in a handful of liquor stores and even purchased hard liquor a time or two, but this was my first time buying something for myself. (The other purchases were of apple brandy for my MIL to make her amazing apple jam.) I got the vodka thanks to Jennifer Reese's very annoying book, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter. She suggests you buy vanilla beans in bulk from Amazon, a cheap bottle of vodka, and try making your own vanilla extract. Gee, doesn't that sound like fun? Apparently I'm game because I ordered one ingredient and went to the liquor store for the other.

Actually, what really swayed me is that you can make several different kinds (maybe every kind?) of extracts  with vodka and the right ingredients. I purchased hazelnut extract last month and found it to be... well.. wanting is the kindest descriptor I can use. (Disgusting and disappointing are more accurate adjectives.) So I figured if I get the vodka to make vanilla extract, I could try my hand at hazelnut, too. And maybe some orange extract. Doesn't that sound yummy? Too bad it takes a couple of months to distill! You'll have to check back later for a report on my home-made extracts. I have high, high hopes.


I got some good (?) news at work this week: The management team asked me to take over the responsibility for a big, important data analysis project that we do once a year. The person who currently does this project is retiring in March and we are not going to fill his position (due to budget cuts). So they are distributing his workload. This is actually really good news to me. One of the reasons I wanted a promotion (the one I was vying for at the end of 2012) is that I am a little bit tired of my current workload. It has become routine and generally fails to challenge me anymore. I'm sure this big project will seem easy and routine in a couple of years, but for right now, I am really excited to do something new and big and important.


Last but not at all least: You might recall that one of my 2013 goals (#12) is to do some creative writing. I've had a few opportunities in the last couple of weeks to sit down and write; many thanks to my husband for running errands with the kiddo and providing the necessary free time. I drafted an outline for a brand new novel and even started writing the opening scene. I have about 6,400 words under my belt. I am amazed and pleased at how well the project is going! I hope Nate will continue to support me as I work toward my goal. Maybe this time next year I really could be ready to publish? Wouldn't that be a dream come true.

Recipe Recaps, Jan 19-25

Saturday 1/19: Tofu Stroganoff (recipe below)

I've made this recipe at least three times now. The recipe that started it all was Skinny Taste's Skinny Mushroom Stroganoff. The pictures look delicious and the idea is certainly appealing (stroganoff, but without the heaviness? yes please!), but when I sat down to that first plate of food it turns out that the recipe is, well... so skinny that you don't even know it's there. The dish was bland as bland can be.

So I had the brilliant idea to add tofu -- this was the first attempt at Tofu Stroganoff. But unfortunately I wasn't brilliant enough to change anything else about the recipe, except add a little more sour cream. Guess what you get when you add tofu to a bland dish? A bland dish.

Attempt number two at tofu stroganoff, I tried to dramatically switch up the recipe. I used beef broth and extra Worcestershire sauce, and lots more sour cream. It was a little bit better. Kinda. Maybe.

So for my third attempt, I threw out the Skinny Taste recipe. You just can't cheat stroganoff twice (no beef and slimmed-down sauce) and still hope to get something vaguely resembling stroganoff. I studied several regular stroganoff recipes to get a sense of the common ingredients in the sauce. (Key points: Plenty of sour cream and a can of cream of mushroom soup.) Then I cubed a pound of tofu and let it soak in beef broth for a couple of days.

The result? Something much, much closer to real stroganoff. I think the recipe still needs another attempt before I can call it done, but here's what I got, including some things I'm going to try next time:

Ingredients
Egg noodles
Tofu, about 1lb
Beef broth, about 2 cups
Worcestershire sauce, 2 Tb
Beef bullion, 1 tsp
Flour, 2 Tb
Olive oil
An onion, chopped
Mushrooms, about 12oz, sliced
Cream of mushroom soup (condensed), 1 can
Sour cream, 1 cup

Other ingredients: In looking through several recipes online, I saw additional ingredients ideas including mustard (ground, prepared, or dijon), garlic, tarragon, nutmeg, and vodka. I'll experiment with some of these in the future. Let me know if you do, and how it goes.

Directions
1. Cut the tofu into long, thin slices (like strips of beef). Put in a bowl and cover with beef broth and Worcestershire sauce. Allow to soak for awhile, at least a couple of hours, up to a few days.
2. Remove the tofu from its "marinade" using a slotted spoon and place the tofu on a towel-lined plate. Save the marinade. Allow the tofu to dry for awhile (at least 20 minutes, up to an hour).
3. Mix the bullion and flour. Toss the tofu slices in this dry mix, then cook it in a pan of hot oil until crispy.
4. Remove the tofu from the pan. Add the onion and mushrooms and some of the reserved beef marinade. Cook until softened. Add the tofu back to the pan along with the rest of the marinade. Allow them to simmer for awhile.
5. Start cooking the noodles.
6. When the marinade is nearly all cooked away, add the cream of mushroom and sour cream to the pan. Allow them to heat through, but don't boil.
7. Serve over the noodles. Goes well with a side of veggies, such as a carrots/peas/corn mix.

Note: When I made this recipe last time, I used cubed slices of tofu. They took longer to cook and generally will behave differently than the tofu "strips" I am suggesting. So I haven't tested this recipe with tofu strips -- keep that in mind as you're cooking!

Also, keep in mind that this still isn't quite going to be the same as true beef stroganoff. It's just a valiant attempt to create the dish without the actual... beef.


Sunday 1/20: Lasagna Casserole

Remember two weeks ago, when I made lasagna soup and was disappointed with the result? I took my own suggested changes to the recipe for a test drive this week. The result was almost great. I fumbled it at the end, though: While I was tossing the ingredients together in the casserole dish, just before it goes under the broiler to brown the cheese, my toddler was screaming her head off about... I don't even remember what. But it was very distracting. So I didn't measure the amount of cheese going into the dish, I just threw in several handfuls.

It was at least one handful too many. The resulting dish was something like half cheese, half everything else. I don't mind a good cheese dish and you know the toddler was pleased, but this was just too much cheese for me and Nate. Next time, I will monitor the cheese inputs more closely. Otherwise, though, I think my adaptations make for a nice dish.


Monday 1/21: Slow Cooker Curried Chicken

This recipe comes from my Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook by America's Test Kitchen. I found the recipe online and linked to it above; scroll down the article to the first recipe, Curried Chicken Breasts. I do half of this recipe and have plenty of room in my 4-qt cooker.

The first direction has you microwave some ingredients before throwing them in the slow cooker. This annoys me quite a bit, as I've always felt the best use of a slow cooker is to throw everything in the pot and let it work. But on this recipe, depending on how you feel about onions, you might want to quickly pre-cook the onion. It gets only mildly softer if you just throw it in uncooked, and if you're like my husband and you're not fond of onions, you'll be unhappy.

Also, because I just use regular chicken breasts, I never have any fat floating to the surface of the braising liquid. So when my chicken is all cooked, and I've tossed the raisins in to let them plump, I just mix the yogurt right into the cooker and serve the dish on some rice. Much less fuss.


Tuesday 1/22: Broccoli Cheese Soup (with Quinoa)

This dish is definitely comfort food to me. It comes out of my Quinoa 365 cookbook -- another book that I love/hate -- and it was an instant favorite the first time we made it. I think Nate groans slightly when it crops up on the menu, but just ignore him. I've already adapted the recipe to his taste so that it's more like a chowder. (Nate doesn't like simple soups. He'll eat a diverse, complex soup like beef stew or minestrone, but if there's only a couple of ingredients, I have to thicken it into a chowder or else he gets whiney.)

I always make a double batch of this soup. The ingredient list is short so it's a fast dish, it freezes well, and hey, comfort food! You always need a little extra around. I use more quinoa than it calls for -- 1/3 cup in a single batch, 3/4 cup in a double batch. I do use half and half as it recommends, although I think I use a little less than the suggested amount (1 cup for a single batch, 2 cups for a double). And I definitely also use more shredded cheddar, probably 3 cups for a double batch.

Here's my other cheat on this recipe, which is less easy to copy: When I shop at Costco, I buy their 3lb bag of chopped broccoli. If you've ever purchased this bag, you know that it comes with a lot of giant broccoli pieces. So after the kid goes to bed, I open the bag of broccoli and start chopping. I hack off a lot of the stems and cut the pieces down. I make one small bag of small, toddler-sized broccoli bits; one bag of stems; and one bag of normal-adult-mouth-sized pieces. All three of these bags go in the freezer.

The broccoli stems I save just for this recipe, so I usually have to chop up two of the 3lb bags before I have enough stems (about 5 cups worth). When it calls for broccoli in this recipe, I use the stems. I cook them down until they are very tender, then use my super-awesome Cuisinart hand blender to blend the whole batch of soup into a smooth consistency. Meanwhile I steam 2-3 cups of broccoli florets in a saucepan. After the soup is blended, I add the florets. Viola -- extra broccoli flavor, a great use of broccoli stems, and still some delicious florets to chomp on.


Wednesday 1/23: Tuna Casserole (recipe below)

I must be in some kind of comfort-food mood. This dish is probably my all time most favorite food ever. Ever.

That might disgust you. Trust me, I get it. My first college roommate (and her boyfriend) made a point of letting me know that they really, really didn't like this dish. And if you didn't grow up eating it, if it's not a meal that reminds you of your family and your childhood, if you didn't request it on your birthday for ten years straight, if it's not exactly the same meal that you and your mom and your grandma make... I could you might not love it.

But I do. I really, really do.

I've tried a couple of other variations on this dish over the years. To my taste, nothing quite beats my family's simple recipe. I tried it with celery once. I tried making my own sauce for it once. It just wasn't as good.

To be totally honest, though, I make three very small adaptations from my mother and grandmother: I use whole wheat noodles, and they are rotini. Growing up, it was always egg noodles. I'll still happily eat five servings of it with egg noodles, but I feel like the rotini gives it a fuller feeling, and I prefer the texture of the rotini. My third change is that I include the water from the can of tuna. I feel like this gives it a bit more tuna-y flavor. So, without further delay:

Ingredients
Noodles, 6-8 oz
Tuna, 1 can
Cream of (mushroom or chicken, you choose), 1 can
Milk
Frozen green peas, 1/2 cup (or more or less, to your preference)
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350'F.
2. Cook the noodles according to the package directions.
3. While the noodles are cooking, pour the cream of (mushroom), milk, frozen peas, and tuna (including its water) in a casserole dish. Fill the cream of (mushroom) can halfway with milk and add to the casserole dish. Add salt and pepper to taste. (I don't add salt and I do add a hefty 1/2 tsp of black pepper; I like it peppery.) Mix the ingredients, then put the casserole dish in the oven so they can start heating while the noodles cook.
4. When the noodles are done, drain them and add to the casserole dish. Mix. Put the dish back in the oven. I prefer to cover it with a lid; my grandma leaves the lid off so the noodles on top get brown and crispy. Lid or not, your choice.
5. Cook about 20 minutes, until the dish is heated through.

Note: Because I love this dish, I always make a double batch. I like to put in a heaping 1 cup of peas and use a pound (16oz) of noodles.


Thursday 1/24: Leftovers


Friday 1/25: Chicken and Butternut Squash Soup Minestrone Soup

On Thursday night as I was planning dinners for the week ahead, I realized that my menu would be better balanced if I moved the chicken and butternut squash soup to the week ahead. So don't worry, if it sounds delicious and you're just dying to hear about it, tune in next week.

As for the minestrone soup, what can I say? It was a classic vegetable soup. This recipe is another one from my Quiona 365 cookbook. The ingredients in the link above generically suggest using "a cheese" and "greens." The original recipe calls for Parmesan cheese and spinach. I probably used 1 onion, 3 carrots, 3 medium yukon potatoes, 1 large zucchini, and 3 cups chicken stock. I also threw all of the cheese in at one, rather than reserving some to dole out over individual portions.


BONUS: Chocolate Macaroons

Have you ever made French macaroons? Have you ever eaten one? I know squat about these finicky cookies, except that Kimmy's Bakshop has some beautiful pictures of them and Kimmy curses the heavens (or whatever) whenever she tries to make them.

So just for fun, and maybe because I'm crazy, and maybe because I had some extra eggs in the house, I thought I'd try them out. The ingredients list is super short and the directions sound pretty easy. How bad could they be? (And what are they anyway?)

The cookies that came out of the oven were, well... I don't know. They are mostly made of powdered sugar and egg whites, so they were a real hit with Nate. Neither of us have a clue what they are supposed to taste like, so that helps. But I do know what they are supposed to look like, and I didn't even come close.

Ironically, Kimmy made a batch of macaroons just a couple of days after my disaster. Her cookies look beautiful and sound delicious (orange-flavored sugar, om nom nom). Apparently they were hollow, and thus not successful...?

Since my experience, I came across an excellent series of blogs about macaroons written by someone who makes them three times a day for her job. There is an article all about the do's of macronage, and an article on the don'ts, and her recipe. So once I get familiar with her dos and don'ts, I'm going to try again!

But probably not for a couple of weeks.


- - - - -

Whew! That's a wrap for the week. I'll see you next week for recaps of pesto, QBC, pupusas, veggie broth, brioche rolls, and more!

Recipe Recaps for Jan 12-18

I screwed up dinners this week. Without looking at the menu list, I wandered into the kitchen on Saturday afternoon (1/12) and pulled out the "whole wheat pockets" recipe. I mixed bread dough and then washed and peeled potatoes. I worked away. Nate played with our daughter. I ruined the bread and had to start a new batch, fed the toddler some leftovers for her dinner, and cursed my negligent cooking style. Towards the end of the chaos, I actually looked at the menu list.

"Are you kidding me? %#&@!* #^$% @!^*!!! I wasn't supposed to be making Pockets, not until Friday!" I was supposed to make Swedish meatballs! So not only had I slaved on the wrong day and screwed up the meal, I'd also messed up my beautiful weekly food balance. I had to shuffle everything around.

Okay, not everything. Just a few days. Still, sometimes... it's like my brain is on ice somewhere and I'm walking around clueless.


Sat 1/12: Whole Wheat Pockets

As I mentioned, I ruined the dough. This is not an uncommon occurrence with me and dough. I love it but I'm impatient and not always careful, so I'll do something silly like drop the yeast in too-hot water, thus killing it, but not knowing until later when the bread fails to rise. (I always use instant yeast, again because I'm impatient. I hate waiting for regular yeast to activate. Plus, it seems to me that most regular yeasts have a slightly bitter twinge to them, especially Red Star, and I don't like it. Saf Instant Yeast, available at WinCo and online, is ever so slightly sweet, which is perfect for most of the yeast-using recipes in my collection.)

My other dough-mistake, the one that got me this time: Oh, I'll just turn the oven on for a second to make it a little bit warmer and help the bread rise. I nearly always get distracted or just plain forget about it, and ten minutes later there's a browned, smoking towel and dead bread in my oven. I suppose if I just heated my house to some reasonable temperature then the bread would rise in decent time, and I wouldn't have to heat the oven. But alas, the house lives in the 62-65 temperature range during the winter; I've become one of those put-on-pants-and-a-sweater-before-you-touch-the-thermostat kinds-of people. Yeah...sorry.

But let's get back to the whole wheat pockets, hmm?

As I said, I killed the bread. Buh-bye first batch of dough, hello starting over. My bad. I also decided not to bake the sweet potatoes since it was going to take so long. I steamed them instead. Saved time (which it turns out I didn't need to save, but hey, next time I might) and it saves from having to heat the whole oven to cook the potatoes. I also found that the lentils needed to cook for a longer than the directions indicated, unless you like slightly hardened, chewy lentils.

The "pockets" themselves were great in some ways, but not perfect. The size was wonderful. An 8-9 inch circle folded over is pretty big. Imagine a pie plate, now fold it in half. Totally enough for an average adult. (Nate needed to eat two, but he has the appetite of a horse.) The kale, lentil, and sweet potato filling in the pockets was tasty and well balanced. It was reasonably filling. But it was a tad on the bland side. Nate tried topping one with cheese but it didn't do a whole lot to improve things.

I think the next time we make these, I am going to experiment with some different fillings. Maybe use the dough recipe and make "calzones." Maybe try a pot-pie-like filling. I dunno. Or maybe just add a few more flavors into the kale/lentil/potato mix, see if I can't make it a tad bit more exciting.


Sun 1/13: Swedish Meatballs

I loved using my stand mixer to do most of the work on this recipe. In retrospect, though, I'm not sure why I didn't just ignore the directions and mix the last ingredient -- the ground beef -- with the mixer. I don't think it would have made much difference.

Be that as it may, things started out pretty well. The meatballs mixed up in a snap. Then things went slightly south. You see, I don't like handling raw meat. Not any kind of it, not ever. It's probably 60% of the reason that I fantasize about becoming a vegetarian. So I didn't want to roll meatballs by hand. Thankfully I have a pair of cookie scoops. One holds 1.5 tablespoons, the other holds 2 teaspoons. (I got them after Christmas from Bed, Bath and Beyond using one of BB&B's fabulous coupons.) Does 1.5 Tb sound big to you? It doesn't seem especially large to me. So I used it to scoop out meatballs and plop them into the hot oil in the skillet. They cooked, I turned them. Turned them more. They weren't perfectly round so it was a bit hard to roll them around...

Given my relatively recent episode of food poisoning, I've also become a bit neurotic about cooking meats to the proper temperature. So I checked the meatballs, checked them again, checked them again. Pretty soon they were blackened balls of meat on the outside yet still a revolting 140'F on the inside. There was no way they were going to get up another 20'F without being completely charred.

I dumped the first batch, got out the 2 teaspoon scoop, and started scooping. Meanwhile I also had to get some veggies going and pull together the ingredients for the sauce.

My biggest complaint about this recipe is that it makes a huge batch of meatballs, which take a long time to cook, and then you still have to make the sauce at the end. In other words, the cooking takes a long time. I recommend getting out two skillets and having two batches of meatballs cooking, and/or using a saucepan to make the sauce at the same time.

Or, if you're looking to make a "traditional" three-piece meal: Put rice on to cook. Cook the first batch of meatballs. Get the second batch started, then put some veggies on to cook. Start a third batch of balls and then start making the sauce. At this point all four burners will all be in use (rice, veggies, meatballs, and sauce). It's one of those tricky balancing acts to do this all at once, but it will get a complete meal on the table in half the time.

I was not very impressed with the sauce in this recipe. Nate thought it was plain. I didn't really even like it. I know that cream of mushroom is on the fatty side, but it would be pretty tasty with this dish. You could make your own cream of mushroom. Or maybe you have another preferred cream sauce? If so, try it, or try the cream of mushroom; I don't vote for the sauce as suggested by the recipe.


Mon 1/14: Spring Rolls, sorta... and Falafels

The theme of this week's cooking, by the way, is "Recipes that kicked my ars." First the whole wheat pockets, then the meatballs on Sunday. I was still in good spirits until Monday evening, by which time I had also been abused by spring rolls, falafels, and chocolate-swirl brioche dough (see the very end of this post for info about the bricohe). When Nate got home from work and saw that both sides of the sink were piled very high with dirty dishes, he remarked that we need a bigger kitchen if I'm going to continue my cooking adventures. He's not wrong. But I promised that Monday's mess -- which was larger but still on par with the messes from Saturday and Sunday -- was an anomaly. He quietly raised an eyebrow as he set out extra towels to dry the mass of dishes.

I didn't actually make spring rolls on Monday, but I don't know what else to call them. They probably fall more into the egg roll category. I'm not even going to link you to the spring roll recipe because it's not remotely what I made. Last week, when I was planning the menu, I thought, "Egg roll wrappers could totally work for spring rolls, if I can't find the right kind of wrappers." I couldn't find the right wrappers, so I got more egg roll wrappers.

But I was wrong. I don't even want to go into all of the details. What I actually did was fried tofu, roll it up with thinly sliced carrots in an egg roll wrapper, and then fried them. They were good. In retrospect, I should have added green peas, too... and maybe some scrambled egg. 

I've been wanting to make falafels for a couple of weeks. For whatever reason, I decided Monday was a good night for them. The recipe is huge; even with my 11-cup food processor, I had to chop the ingredients in two batches. Once again I used my awesome new cookie scoop. Once again, they weren't perfect balls and it was hard to rotate them around and fry them. They were tasty, though not quite as good as you'd get from a restaurant. Probably because I use less salt in my cooking and it was my very first attempt at falafels. Also, I've looked at several different falafel recipes since making these, and I think there are better recipes available.


Tue 1/15: Skillet Saltimbocca Chicken Spaghetti

In my house, this dish is comfort food. We've made this recipe a handful of times. And by we, I think I actually mean Nate; I think this was my first time making this recipe all on my own. I've helped Nate and he's done it all on his own, but I don't think I had attempted it without him. Probably because I usually beg him to make it for me. There's nothing quite like eating a dish of comfort food and not lifting a finger to help!

Unfortunately, this recipe comes from my Pasta Revolution cookbook (I'll save my love-hate rant about America's Test Kitchen for another post). I couldn't find the exact replica online. The recipe includes thinly sliced chicken, proscuitto cooked up crisp (like bacon), a wine-and-broth sauce, spaghetti noodles, and sage. I'd be happy to photocopy the recipe for you, just ask. I'll post my version sometime, after I've had another chance to keep tweaking.

The thing is, the original recipe leaves you with a little bit too much (and runny) sauce. The proportions of ingredients don't quite match what I get from the store. And it calls for fresh sage, which can be spendy out of season; dried sage works just as well. Stay tuned for my perfected version of this dish.


Wed 1/16: Leftovers


Thur 1/17: Hot and Spicy Peanut Chicken (slow cooker) Sesame Noodles with Shredded Chicken

As I mentioned earlier, my house is pretty cold. So if I need to defrost anything (meat) for dinner, I have to get it out early in the morning. Or preferably the night before.

I was in trouble on Friday when I realized it was 10am and I hadn't pulled the chicken out of the freezer yet. There was no way it could be defrosted, into the slow cooker, and cooked in time for dinner that night. I also didn't really feel like having hot and spicy peanut chicken (the planned menu item). I still got out some chicken, but without a new recipe in mind.

A couple of hours passed and I decided to throw just the chicken in the slow cooker. It would be cooked and ready to shred by dinner time. I have a dozen recipes that call for shredded chicken. One such recipe, a relatively quick and easy dish, is sesame noodles with shredded chicken. (Also from my ATC Pasta Revolution cookbook.)

The recipe goes a little something like this: When the chicken is done cooking and ready to shred, put some Chinese noodles (1lb) or just spaghetti noodles (12oz) on to cook. (I use whole wheat spaghetti because it's what we have on hand.)

In a blender or food processor, mix the following ingredients:
1/4 cup peanut butter (or 3Tb peanuts and 1Tb olive oil)
3Tb seasame seeds
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp ground ginger
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 Tb rice vinegar
2 Tb brown sugar
1 tsp hot sauce of choice (I used 1/2 tsp Asian chile sauce)

You can add more peanuts or peanut butter if you want it to be more peanut-y. Blend the ingredients until smooth. Then add some water, 1 Tb at a time, to thin the sauce. Keep adding and mixing until the sauce is the consistency of heavy cream. (You need approximately 4 Tb of water, but this can vary.)

I got tired of measuring things after I put in the ginger, so I just kinda eyeballed the rest of the ingredients into the food processor. You can mix up the amounts depending on your preference; Nate loves soy sauce so he wouldn't mind if I had used even more soy sauce rather than water to thin the sauce. I don't like soy sauce, so I didn't do that.

Arrange noodles on a plate. Shred chicken and throw some on top. Pour on the sauce. The original recipe also calls for grated carrots, chopped scallions, and sesame seeds on top of the sauce. I added some chopped carrots this week. I've used scallions and sesame seeds previously -- they are good but not essential.


Fri 1/18: Stromboli

I don't know anything at all about Stromboli. When I said I was going to make this dish, my mom made some comment about ice-scraping machines. I shrugged. All I know is that I saw a picture of Stromboli on Pinterest and thought, "THAT LOOKS DELICIOUS."

It is.

The weeks when I actually make bread for the family, I always make whole wheat challah (here's my favorite challah recipe). The Stromboli recipe tells you to buy frozen bread dough. It's not hard to make bread dough, but it does take a little bit more time. Do what you have to do -- I'm not judging.

My standby challah recipe calls for 8 cups of flour and yields three modest-size loaves. I felt like it would be a bit too much dough if I used all of it for the Stromboli, so I decided to use two-thirds for the Stromboli and make one little loaf with the rest. After I actually rolled out the dough, I was less sure of myself. And when I baked the Stromboli and the bread cracked open on the outside, I was sure I should have used the whole batch of dough. BUT when I actually ate it, oh no, the ratio was fine. In fact, I would argue that there needed to be more of the stuffing in the roll of dough; my bread-to-other-food ratio was overly balanced in favor of bread.

Ha. I just looked at the recipe again. It calls for two pounds of dough, one pound for each Stromboli. I just happened to have weighed the dough when I was dividing it into thirds, and each loaf was 4-5 ounces over a pound. So there you go.

Here are my suggested adaptations; I will try these next time I make Stromboli: Generously spread the egg-spices mix on the inside of each loaf. Use at little more ground beef (maybe 1.5 lbs?) and make sure to break it down into small pieces. Possibly cook the beef in some of the seasonings. Use more cheese, maybe even as much as double the cheese. Use a big onion. Maybe even use two onions. Nate hates onions so we tend to skimp, but there was not a trace of onion flavor in this recipe. I could only find pepperoni in 4.5 to 6 oz size packs; there was plenty of pepperoni. Turkey pepperoni works fine.


BONUS: Chocolate Swirl Bricohe

Amazing. If you want to put some joy in your mouth, make this and then eat it fast. My experience was a bit painful but totally worth the frustration.

The problem here is that my yeast was bad. Or maybe not totally bad, but getting old and losing its oomph. I dutifully mixed the two sticks of butter, nine eggs, five cups of flour and other ingredients with my stand mixer. I put the dough safely in a corner of the kitchen. Two hours later, it hadn't risen. Not an inch. I wasn't about to waste all the butter and especially the eggs, so I rolled it out, kneaded in two more teaspoons of yeast, and set it aside again. At this point I thought the lack of rise was because I dropped the yeast in too-hot water and killed it.

But another hour later and it still hadn't budged. I contacted Kimmy's Bakeshop for help. Helpful as ever, they did some research and recommended I add more yeast. I kinda hadn't told them about the first attempt to add more yeast.

It was then that I decided the old yeast was, well, too old. I threw it out -- there was less than 1/2 cup left in the freezer, and it was I-don't-know how old. I got a fresh bag of yeast. It opened with a satisfying suck of air that let me know it was ready for use. Two more teaspoons kneaded into the dough, then left alone, and viola -- risen!

It has to sit in the fridge overnight after the first rise. I had to go to work the next day. So it ended up in the fridge for almost a full day before I got it out and finished making the bread. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough chocolate on hand! I could have sworn there was a whole unopened box in the back of the baking cupboard. I was also low on dark chocolate chips. I used everything available, but I probably only had 6-7 ounces. It was done baking right at bedtime, so I had to leave it to cool and try it the next morning...

And it was heaven! We've been eating it all week. My only complaints are these: The outside of my loaves browned really fast, so I took them out of the oven too early. The very middle wasn't totally cooked. For me and my oven, it needs to have foil over the top for a good portion of the cooking time. (Or maybe I need to get some non-glass bread pans???) And it definitely needed the full contingent of chocolate. The bread is best if eaten within a couple of days, so plan to give some away or have some people over or just eat a lot of it. I might try making a half-size batch next time; bread this rich and delicious can be sliced thin and slowly nommed.

Survived a Busy Week

Whew.

I'm the chair of a 10-person work group that meets once a quarter. The meeting lasts about three hours. I'm responsible for running these meetings and creating the agenda. And I don't just mean that I whip out a handy Word template and fill in the agenda items, I mean that I literally decide how we're going to fill those three hours, then spend at least 100 hours over the course of three months gathering the information for the agenda items. It's a lotta lotta work. It's about a third of what I do for my job.

This work group met on Tuesday (1/15). So if you've talked to me any time in the last couple of weeks and I've been distracted or weird or maybe even rude... I am very, very sorry! I get pretty focused on this meeting, and pretty busy getting things together, and a little bit stressed out about it. It can make me a flimsy nutcase.

As if that wasn't enough for my brain, I'm also helping out with a special project for the next couple of months at work, and it has a very dramatic ebb-and-flow to the work. This last week happened to be a big kickoff week for the project; I missed one of the team meetings and only had time for about 10% of the work I was assigned. (No really, the project leader had to re-assign 90% of my work because I didn't have time, not this week.)

Thankfully the new project is going to be very calm for a couple of weeks, and the next quarterly meeting isn't until April. So my brain can quietly grow back into one whole unit, and my sanity levels can decrease to normal. Yay.

Turning now to house projects, I totally deserve a pat on the back: I finished wiring the lights in the utility room!!!

I know it doesn't look like much. Electrical work always seems and sounds so easy. What you don't know is that I had to drill a hole through every. single. one. of those ceiling joists so that I could run the wire from switch to light to light to light to switch. It was something like ten holes. That's 10 holes, each circle an inch in diameter, cut through a two-inch beam of old, hardened wood. I can only do a couple at a time before my arm and/or shoulder is tired from holding the drill and boring through the wood.

Then I had to run the wires and cut them to size; that's pretty easy. I had to figure out how to hang the lights; these ones are made to attach to the drywall in the ceiling. (Someday the ceiling will be finished with drywall, but not for awhile yet.) So I had to rig up a temporary frame for each light. Again, not hard, but takes some time. The real mental challenge of this project was figuring out how to run the wires. I can follow a wiring diagram, if it's available. It's not hard to connect this black wire to that red wire, bundle all of the white wires together, etc. Just follow the picture and all will be fine. Problem is, I couldn't find any lighting diagrams that showed three lights and two switches. Eventually I just took one of the two-light-and-two-switch diagrams, studied it for a good 30 minutes, and then drew my own diagram for my 3-2 combo.

I really don't have a clue how it all works or what it's doing down there, but all of the lights work, the switches work, and nothing pops or cracks or sizzles or sparks. I know I used the right type of wiring. So even though I can't explain the how of it all, I'm going to count this as a win.

After that, I decided to give myself the week off. It was Monday night and I didn't want to do any more electrical work for the rest of the week. I told myself I could spend some doing a craft project, maybe even some of the sewing projects that have piled up. Or I could just relax and watch some movies, go to bed early. Bake a cake. Whatever I wanted, you know?  That was my brilliant plan. Here's how my week actually went:

The next night, Tuesday night (note that this is the day I had my big quarterly meeting), I spent an hour cleaning up the utility room (put the tools away; threw away all the wood chips, wiring scraps, old bits of electrical whatnot; and swept thoroughly), then I spent a half hour staring at the two Burleys in the garage, trying to make a decision. (I still haven't made a decision.) I went to bed at my usual time, exhausted.

Wednesday night, I put away groceries from Costco then wrote a letter to my daughter for her 19-month birthday. She was having a hard time getting to sleep, so I went in and rocked her for awhile.

Thursday night the fun continued! I pulled all of the carpet and padding out my craft room; Nate followed after and took out the staples. I planned the dinner menu for the week ahead and made a grocery list.

Friday was a day off for me. My daughter was so excited to spend the day with me that she woke up at 3am and stayed up until she got to cuddle in mom and dad's bed. She got up for the day at 5:30am. Lucky me, I needed to mix a large batch of bread dough. Then we went grocery shopping; I was so tired and absent-minded that I left two of my reusable grocery bags at the checkout line and forgot my receipt. We got home with just enough time to put away the cold groceries, then it was back in the car and to the doctor's office for Darling Girl's belated 18-month checkup. She got three shots; I got a stack of paperwork from the pediatrician. When naptime came, I went down too. Slept for about two hours; toddler stayed down for three. Meanwhile Nate came home and left again, off to an overnight snow campout for the scouts. After bedtime, I cleaned the office, balanced the checkbook, and made a checklist for Saturday.

Gee, how could there be more to do? My daughter made sure I was up at 5:30 this morning (as if waking up every two hours last night, certain that someone had come to kill me in my sleep, wasn't enough). We mopped the kitchen floor and ran through four loads of laundry before heading out to visit Nana and Poppi. They have a new puppy, Hazel. Darling and the puppy were just starting to hit it off when it was time to go home (we had errands to run and I was starving). I wanted to run to the hardware store but Toddler declared that it wasn't going to happen. Home we went, lunch we ate, a nap she took. I put away those four loads of laundry then tried to get some sleep, too. Nate appeared right at the end of naptime and off we finally went to the hardware store. (Guess what I got? More supplies to continue the electrical work in the basement!)

Just now, I finished eating a pair of cookies, re-balancing the checkbook, downloading the week's pictures from my camera, and writing this blog post.


Whew.

Recipe Recap, Jan 5-11

As promised, here is my menu list and recipe review for the last week. I don't think I will be doing this every week; I just happened to have a little bit of time to work on this today. If I'm inventing a new recipe, or excessively tweaking one, I'll do my best to post the completed recipe after I get the kinks worked out.

We plan our menu on a weekly basis, starting with Saturday night's dinner and going through Friday. This works the best for our schedule, as we are forced to get up every Saturday morning (the toddler just doesn't understand the "weekend" concept). So what better way to start the day than going out together and buying groceries? It works for us and we enjoy it.

And so, without further ado...


Sat 1/5: Baked Tofu Penne Bolognese

This is my own recipe, and it's definitely still in progress. I made the bolognese sauce from a Kimmy's Bake Shop recipe. The tofu I dried, coated in corn starch, and fried in oil to make it crunchy. I didn't throw the tofu in until after the sauce had simmered for a couple of hours. I'm not ready to share my recipe yet, not until I've had another chance or two to work it out. Obviously it's not going to be as tasty as the original recipe -- that ground beef really is essential -- but I firmly believe I can bring it up a few notches.


Sun 1/6: Korean Pork Medallions and Spicy Asian Slaw

This was very tasty and pretty easy to make. I cut down the amount of Asian chile sauce because I knew it was going to be too spicy for my taste. I was also surprised that the meal was so filling; after it was assembled on the plate I kept thinking it would need some rice to round it out and fill the belly. But nope, it was great just as is! Rice -- preferably jasmine -- would be tasty, but it was great even without the carbs.


Mon 1/7: Veggie chowder

This recipe was delicious, warm, and filling. But I made some augmentations and I can't quite recall everything I changed. I'm sure I used at least two carrots and two stalks of celery. I don't think I had quite two cups worth of broccoli available. And I might have used one more potato than it calls for. I do know that the potatoes were quite a bit more cooked than they should have been, but it was nice because they got kinda mashed and helped thicken up the soup.

I added the broccoli much sooner than called for so that it would have time to soften. I also used about 1.5 cups of half and half instead of using the called-for milk and water; this added some richness without making it too thick or creamy.


Tue 1/8: Lasagna Soup

Somehow I managed to download and print this recipe from two different sources without realizing it was the same set of ingredients. The instructions were slightly different on each recipe; I read carefully through both set of directions and definitely had a favorite.

Turns out, though, that I'm not especially fond of the recipe. It really is soup. It's soup with lasagna ingredients. I guess I was hoping for, I don't know, the taste of lasagna without all of the lengthy assembly. I also tried using some ramekins to serve the food. A traditional ramekin holds about 4oz of food, which is a good size for the toddler. I laughed when I was dishing out the soup and realized just how small 4oz is. So I pulled out our 14oz and 16oz mini casserole dishes for Nate and I; they were our "grownup" portions of dinner.

I am going to try making this again, but I'm going to do it very differently, aiming for something less soup-like. I will omit the ricotta and reduce the chicken broth down to four cups (not six). I'll use one can of diced tomatoes and one can of slightly pureed Italian stewed tomatoes. I will mix the cheese-topping into the meal a little bit more; as is, with it just piled on top, it formed a thick and difficult-to-penetrate layer of cheese. Annoying.

The above picture of this dish is one my own.


Wed 1/9: Yum Bowls

There's a chain of restaurants in my old college town that started popping up about the time I graduated and we moved on. I never went to one of them. I never had a Yum Bowl, had never even heard of it, until my SIL introduced us to them a couple of years ago. And then I promptly forgot all about them.

I'm not sure what made me remember that they exist, but Yum Bowls just suddenly came to mind about two weeks ago when I was planning dinners. How could I have forgotten such a simple, tasty meal? They work in the winter, if you serve them when the rice is still hot, or in the summer -- just let the rice cool a bit. As luck would have it, I mentioned this menu item to a friend last weekend and she said we could even get Yum Sauce at a local grocery. Score!

But you might be wondering, "What the heck is a Yum Bowl and what is Yum Sauce?" The meal is a bowl of rice with whatever toppings suit your fancy; we prefer black beans, corn, tomato, avocado, and cheddar cheese. Shredded chicken is good too, if it's available. Other toppings you could add or swap: olives, scrambled eggs, cilantro, sour cream, salsa, zucchini, etc. The sauce is, uhm... hard to describe. I found a copycat recipe that I'm going to try the next time we make Yum Bowls; it says that there's garbanzo and soy beans, almonds, oil, lemon juice, curry, and some other stuff in the sauce. That combo sounds about right to me   :o)  Whatever it is, the sauce is good, the bowls are good. I highly recommend this dish, especially if you're looking for a quick dish. Bonus: You can customize the contents for each member of the family with almost no hassle!


Thur 1/10: Leftovers


Fri 1/11: Chicken Taquitos

This recipe annoyed me from the get-go. I knew just by looking at it that there was not going to be enough food to properly stuff the taquitos. I added about half again as much of all of the ingredients and yet there were still plenty of wrappers left, so I mixed up even more. Clearly I should have doubled it from the start.

It's also important to note that you want to thoroughly spray the taquitos before they go in the oven, as the oil is what will make them bake up crispy on the outside. Definitely turn them over halfway through cooking.

I liked them in the end, the taquitos were tasty. It's just that the amounts in the recipe need some tweaking.


On the menu for 1/12-18: Swedish meatballs, spring rolls, saltimbocca, stromboli, and more!

Party hats out, now put them away

Get out your party hat, a small celebration is due: I finished rewiring the outlets in the downstairs hallway! I've been doing electrical work in the basement off-and-on for a few months now; the eventual outcome is that we'll have new wiring to the outlets in the main hallway and also the wiring and lights on the west side of the basement. In the course of the project, I've been sidetracked by the chicken coop, getting sick, the holidays, and more. It has been very slow, and it's not all done.

BUT the outlets in the main hallway are done! I re-wired and replaced three existing outlets, removed one outlet, and added three new outlets. <<Score!>> It was an incredibly tricky operation because I had to run wiring alongside a lot of current wiring, and work around the air ducts in the ceiling, and even go through a pair of studs on a blind corner. Nate was very helpful and drilled a half dozen holes for me.

Now I've moved on to the lighting, which is significantly trickier because of the switches. I am putting three new "can" (sometimes also called "bucket") lights in the utility room, a track light in one part of the hallway, and a pair of wall scones (lights) in the other part of the hallway. Independently, I think I could figure out how to wire each of these lights, but I'm not sure how to wire them all onto the same circuit, each to its own dedicated switch or pair of switches. It's going to be a learning experience! I expect to have one set of lights done next week, and if I keep up my current pace all of the lights should be done in a couple of weeks. Yay!


Now that we've celebrated the electrical accomplishments, put away your party hat. There's bad news, too: I didn't get a promotion.

Remember all that time I spent preparing and interviewing and agonizing? It's all over, and was all for naught. At least, that's how it feels right now. They offered the position to someone else. I'm disappointed, of course, but I'm also a little bit relieved. The new job would have been a mixed bag, with some blessings and some challenges. One of the advantages of my current position is that it is very low-key and flexible, so I can pretty much drop what I'm doing at any time if an emergency comes up.

When I shared the unfortunate news with Nate, he expressed some frustrations with his work situation, too. We both feel it's time to start doing something else with our lives. I don't really know exactly what that means or what it will look like, but we both feel a little bit stuck, like we're in a rut. For me, part of the change is going to be doing more creative writing and publishing some of my work. Nate supports my dream and will help me work towards it.


In fact, to that end, you could actually get out your party hat again! This morning, after showers and breakfast, Nate and the toddler went out to visit my PILs and I got to spend a couple of hours doing some creative writing. At first it was slow; I spent some time just laying on the floor and trying to get my brain in the right place. (The creative parts of the brain become more active when you lay down. I'm not kidding, that's totally a real thing and you can look it up!) When the mental juices were finally flowing, I sat down at my computer and started typing. And typing and typing.

By the time my family came home, I had seven pages and whopping 2,500 words written on the outline of a new story. It was every scene I'd developed during the last month, when I've been silently plotting and scheming during my showers, bike rides, and other rare moments alone. In fact, I hadn't even finished all of my thoughts when the family got back. I had to ask for five more minutes so I could put down the final two paragraphs.

Oh man, I can't even begin to describe how good it felt to do all of that writing. It gave me a high for most of the day. All I've wanted to do is just sit down and write more. More, more, more. Add details to the scenes, add the little snippets of dialog floating in my head, add background details. I haven't been this excited about a writing project in a long time. Let's hope I can continue to find time for it and keep up my momentum!


While your party hat is still on, let's celebrate a couple of Nate's accomplishments from the last couple of weeks. Last weekend, he finished building a little folding table a chair for our daughter to use in the kitchen. The table folds down from one of the cabinets; we came up with the table design ourselves, customizing it to fit the space. I got the chair "bluepring" plans from an awesome DIY furniture maker, Ana White.

I'm going to tangent for a moment and gush about Ana: If you haven't heard of her, you should check out her website. She has hundreds of free furniture plans on her site for chairs, bed frames, dressers, shelves, garden boxes, stools, benches, desks, tables, doll houses... anything and everything. It's amazing. And her plans are all very simple, very clear, with lots of step-by-step pictures. From what I've seen, they are really do-able even with very minimal tools. (Amy, if you're reading this post, I'm thinking specifically about you -- you'd love her site!) I want to make so, so many of the things on Ana's site. Hopefully someday, after some of these other major house projects are done, I will have a little more time for some fun furniture building.

Anyway, back to Nate... We made one augmentation to the chair design, which is that we shortened the legs by three inches. The chair is a "kid" chair and our daughter is just barely a toddler, so it would have been too tall for her. The amazing and totally unplanned thing about the chair and the table is that the fold up snugly together. Do you see the picture, how neatly the chair fits between the table legs when the table is folded? WE DID NOT PLAN THAT! We didn't even measure, didn't think about how the chair would be stored when the table was folded; we did not plan it, and yet the chair is exactly, I mean exactly, the same width as the gap between the table legs. Truly amazing.

Obviously the chair isn't "finished" yet. I'm actually not sure how to finish it. At first I thought I would just paint it. But then Nate bought some decent wood to make the chair, so I could actually stain it. Either way I think I will sew a little pad for the seat, just to do something cute and colorful and soft for my kids' tushy. Do you have any thoughts on the chair -- paint or stain? What color? I'm terrible at figuring out these kinds of things.


Nate's other big accomplishment from this week is that he took the GRE on Friday. That's the Graduate Requirements Exam, the test you have to take if you want to go to graduate school. Nate has been saying for probably six years now that he'd like to go back to school and get a Master's degree. I don't know if it's actually ever going to happen, but I'm very proud of him for the months of intense studying and having the courage to take the test. It was very hard for him, but he did it. Yay Nate!


I feel like there's something I'm forgetting to blog about, but since I can't think of what it might be, I'm just going to share some cute pictures of the kiddo...

A very color-coordinated breakfast:

One of many accidentally captured, totally random and hilarious facial expressions:

Jaunty little hat:

 On New Year's Day, on a swing for the first time:

Her true feelings about this experience (it was icy cold and dad was pushing waaaaay too fast):

Diaper head, teehee (I swear she did this on her own):

Random breakfast shot (she loves honey yogurt):

She folds her arms and has been for a little while now; you have to say "Please fold your arms" or "We're going to say a prayer now" and she will do it; she's especially good about it at mealtimes:

Possibly she was saying "uh-oh" or just "Ohhhhhoooooo" but either way, cute (and also, I LOVE these boots):

Ring In the New: 13 Goals for 2013

Thirteen goals for 2013: Doesn't that just have a nice ring to it? I think so.

On the surface, I bet 13 goals sounds a bit ambitious. A key part of setting S.M.A.R.T. goals is that they are A - Achievable; a long list of goals doesn't really seem achievable. But don't you worry! Some of my goals are to keep doing things that I am already doing, and some of them are to improve what/how I already do something. That makes the whole list a bit less intimidating, I think.

As I said last year, I like to share this goals publicly because I think it helps me be accountable. Plus it means I have to write them all down, including doing some planning on how I'm going to achieve them. You might or might not be interested in knowing my goals. You probably don't care to hear all of my lengthy thoughts. Nevertheless, without further ado, here are my 13 for '13...


Goal 1: Become a more positive, less judgmental person.
Time Frame: All year long; every day; every hour, minute, and second.
Difficulty Level: ««« Moderate

Motivation Factor(s): Happier and healthier me, happier family, better relationships with everyone

Does this goal sound familiar? It was our family goal last year. My personal motto in 2012 was,
Think Positive : Be Positive
Since I completely failed at this goal last year (see my 2012 Goals Recap post), I am giving it another go. My biggest weakness is heckling other drivers when I'm in the car. You know, those "bad drivers" who cut you off or go too fast or don't put on their turn signal until the last second or go too slow or change lanes suddenly or follow too close or make an illegal left turn or start slowing down weeks before they have to turn their car or... you see what I mean? Pretty much everything every other driver does is wrong, and I'm constantly throwing out negative comments at them. I think if I can at least learn to shut my mouth and mind when I'm in the car, I will be in a much better place next year. I think it will also go a long way to helping me control and cut off the other negative and judgmental thoughts that pop up in other circumstances.

It is really wonderful that Nate is working on this goal with me. It helps a lot to have someone who checks me when I start spewing the negative stuff; nice to have a constant reminder of my goal. I think I'd also like to plaster this motto up in our house, on a wall somewhere. So I'm going to take a look around and figure out where it would be most effectively displayed (maybe even in a few places?) and come up with some diverse ways to display the motto. I will check in with you, dear readers, after I spend more time on this.


Goal 2: Study the scriptures every day for at least 15 minutes.
Time Frame: All year, once a day, every day
Difficulty Level: «« Relatively Easy

Motivation Factor(s): Establish a lifelong habit, learn more, happier me

I am currently reading through the Doctrine and Covenants. I want to spend the first quarter (through about the end of March) on the D&C. Then I'd like to read the Book of Mormon again; I'm estimating six months to read cover-to-cover. I'd like to finish the year, ushering in the holiday season, with the New Testament.

The key this year is quality reading time really studying the scriptures. I had voluminous reading goals for last year (BoM, NT, and BoM again) so I felt like I had to read as many pages as I could during my 10-15 minute stretch each day. I still want to cover a lot of ground this year, but the focus is going to be on quality time. If I can't get through D&C, BoM, and NT this year but I am having educational, insightful study sessions, then I will consider it a success.

I also want to make sure I spent at least 15 minutes reading/studying (up from last year's 10-15 minutes).

Goals 3 & 4: Blog once a week.  Write recipe recaps.
Time Frame: All year, once a week, probably on Friday or Saturday
Difficulty Level: «« Relatively Easy

Motivation Factor(s): Take an account of our lives, share our story with our wonderful families and friends, practice writing; share good recipes and hopefully help/improve other people's lives

I did a great job blogging in 2012; I was very successful with my goal and I want to continue it in 2013. So the pattern will likely continue just as it has, with posts about once a week, usually written on Saturday night. I will have a couple of extra posts, and probably miss a few posts. That's okay.

I also want to expand on my blogging goal, but before I can explain how, I have to explain why: I've started to do a lot of cooking. By that I mean to say, I'm cooking dinner just about every night now. And it's not just pasta-and-sauce recipes; we're talking many layered lasagnas, tofu and veggie curries, minestrone soup, etc. Not incredibly fancy, but a solid step up from basic cooking. Thursdays are always leftover night, so six nights out of the week I'm cooking up a storm. Anywhere from 3-6 of the recipes are brand new; I'm constantly trying new things right now. It is such fun.

As I cook, I discover what works and what doesn't. Was the sauce thick enough? How was the flavor of the chicken? Could I have saved time on the process? I do my best to make notes on the recipes themselves. But I thought it would be nice to share these successes and failures more broadly. Most of us are generally on the lookout for great recipes, things that can become staples in the meal rotation, right? And what is more helpful than a tested recipe from a good friend with some detailed notes? So I'd like to start sharing my menu list and feedback as part of the weekly blog post. Maybe it won't be a very detailed post, but at the least I'd like to share a list of what we cooked, links to the recipe, and quick notes. It's going to take up some time, but I believe I can work it in.


Goal 5: Turn my 2012 blog posts into a book
Time Frame: Sometime this year, whenever I have time (pref by July 1)
Difficulty Level: ««« Moderate

Motivation Factor(s): A beautifully bound book of all our stories and events from the last year, including bright pictures and funny anecdotes; easy shared with others; would make a great gift to our parents

I'm sure I'm stealing this idea from one of my SIL's sisters, but I can't remember who. Thanks to whichever Arnold gave me the idea!

There are many websites that allow you to create and publish your own book, such as Blurb and Lulu. (Or Blog2Print -- I need to look into this option.) Even Costco has some kind of service, although I haven't looked into it. Personally, I've used Blurb a few times and it is reasonably easy to work with. If memory serves, it can even "ping" my blog and pull in all of the posts on its own! Then I just have to do a painful amount of formatting to get it set up and add a zillion pictures (all those ones I took last year, the ones which probably only I have ever seen and are now just hanging out on my computer).

This could get done any time this year, and it will be a gradual process. But ideally I'd like to get it done before the summer, when yard work and gardening will require a lot of attention. I would also prefer to keep the final cost under $25. (I haven't checked printing fees in awhile so I don't know if that's still reasonable; sometimes there's a sale or coupon and I can get a good deal.)


Goal 6: Continue biking to work
Time Frame: All year, every week, 2-3 days a week
Difficulty Level: « Easy

Motivation Factor(s): Happier, healthier me; fresh air; stronger body; excuse to eat junk food once in awhile; gives me exercise while I'm commuting; save money

I'm a big fan of exercise, but I'm not very good about it on my own. I don't like to run or to swim, and don't have any physical hobbies or do any sports like soccer or skiing or tennis. The one exception is bicycling -- I love to cycle! I can't quite put it into words, but there's something about the fresh air in my lungs, the freedom to ride where I please, the sense of fulfillment from propelling myself along... these things bring me joy.

Driving myself to work is a silly, unnecessary expense and it rarely happens. (Maybe once a month, if I have a meeting or need to pick something up.) All of the parking options are expensive, and who wants to burn cash just to have a car sitting around all day just for a short home-office-home trip? Plus, it's important to get some exercise in a few times a week. So why not save some money and use my commute time to get in my exercise? Yes, it takes longer to get to and from work on the bike, but I don't have to find other time to exercise. Biking is a win-win.

Is it always easy? Heck no. There are plenty of challenges, like cold weather, rain, the physical exertion necessary to tow a kid-carrying trailer. Sometimes I step outside and I don't want to put in all the effort it takes to bike. But by the time I get to the end of my trip, I always feel pleased and satisfied with my efforts. It is very rewarding.

All of that is a lot of words to just say: I like biking, it's how I get to work; I'm going to keep it up this year. There will be challenges, but I'm confident that I will face them and overcome.


Goal: Better night routine, specifically...
     7. Dessert after dinner, not after 8pm
     8. Technology off at 9pm; lights out by 9:30
     9. Blitz journal (daily recap) every day
Time Frame: All year, 365 days, every night, no exceptions
Difficulty Level: «  Easy

Motivation Factor(s): More sleep. Happier me.

I'm pretty good about getting to bed at a decent hour. This wasn't always the case, but now that I have a daughter who pretty much insists on getting up before 6am every single day of my life, it's a requirement. I'm a person who needs sleep. A full night of sleep. Preferably extra sleep. If it doesn't happen, I turn into a crazy beastly version of myself, fully grumpy, very emotional, and impossible to please. A real monster. I don't mean to be this way, it's just something about the way my hormones do (or don't) regulate correctly relative to my levels of sleep. In addition to my mood, it also affects my eating habits and my skin, and my overall productivity levels.

So really, for my sake and everyone around me, I need to get enough sleep. Abs as long as my kid chooses to wake up early, this means notching up my efforts, improving the habits I established last year.

Ideally, I would like a night routine that looks something like this: Technology off at 9pm and get ready for bed (jammies, wash face, etc.). Read scriptures with Nate at about 9:15, then do a "blitz" journal writing (five minutes). Pray. Lights out by 9:30.

Because I want to get more sleep, I really want to say lights out at 9:15. But I just don't think that's possible. So I'll start here with these goals, improving upon last year by really truly turning off the technology by 9pm, and then also adding a quick journal session and consistently reading with Nate. Totally do-able.


Goals 10 and 11: Grow a Garden, Do Some Canning
Time Frame: A few Saturdays in the summer and fall
Difficulty Level: ««« Moderate

Motivation Factor(s): Healthy and organic food (most tomatoes) readily available for significantly less cost than store-purchased goods;  learn how to do something new; be more self-sufficient and sustainable; wow the neighbors with my hippie prowess (ha, ha)

My mother in law is BIG on canning. Last summer she even built a whole special "canning kitchen" just to enjoy her craft. I think that's spectacular, but it's very intimidating. I'm not planning to put up 100 gallons of juice or hundreds of jars of food each season, not now or ever. Plus there's the whole food safety factor. In doing some canning research last summer one of the blogs I read said this: "Botulism will kill you and it will kill your whole family." Yowza. That's almost enough to scare you away from canning for life!

Thankfully, tomatoes are fairly resistant to botulism because of their acidity. They are also a food that I use in abundance -- paste, sauce, diced and stewed -- and they are fairly easy to grow where we live. So if I get some starts in the greenhouse early, get the plants to grow healthy and strong, and gather up right tools, I think I reasonably expect to do a little bit of canning. This is a Saturday activity because it requires time and attention, so I will set aside at least two Saturdays in the summer-fall season to do canning. I want to try my hand at canning at least one Saturday each month, but even that might be too much. I'll just promise two for now, but do more if time allows.

Right now, in preparation for the canning season, I'm gathering supplies. I have a jar lifter and some jars. I will buy a set of jars each month to build up my supply. I also need to get a water bath. I will need to find and study recipes for the different types of tomatoes (sauce and diced, especially).


Goal 12: Do Some Creative Writing
Time Frame: This year...?
Difficulty Level: «««« Hard

Motivation Factor(s): Get back in the habit, build it into my routine, pursue my dreams; eventually, maybe publish something and make some money

I originally set this goal as to both write and self-publish something by the end of the year. Now that I've had time to think about it, I'm reaching beyond my grasp. My writing skills are rusty. My focus for now should be dusting them off and getting back into the groove. Publishing creates its own list of challenges and headaches, so I dropped that component.

I need to work out the details on this goal; I haven't finished formulating my idea. I think I want to work on a new project this year, write a new story. I want to get some writing time in every week, and I think setting a word-count goal will help. I want to set a reasonable goal for myself and I don't know what that looks like yet, so a bit more time and thought will go into this. I will report back later, ideally by February.


Goals 13: (Break a bad habit)
Time Frame: All year, without fail
Difficulty Level: ««««« Very Hard

Motivation Factor(s): Break a bad habit, be happier, don't worry about it anymore

Sorry to be vague, but this is one of those things I'm not going to explain in detail. We all have bad habits, some worse or more embarrassing than others, and we don't always like to talk about our shortcomings. Suffice it to say that I have just such a habit and I'm determined to overcome in 2013!



For all of these goals, I will check in here on the blog in this delightful public forum at least once a quarter. But I will also check in, especially to post successes, as things happen. I already owe you more detailed plans displaying our family motto and for doing my creative writing. And I need to develop a plan for canning.



Now, I won't subject you to all of the lengthy analysis and explanation, but here in brief summary is the list of goals Nate and I made as a family for 2013:

1. Speak and think more positively; avoid negativity. (Family motto, Think Positive : Be Positive)
2. Hold Family Home Evening (FHE) once a week, on Monday night (we already do this and have been doing it for ages; so really the goal is just to keep it up!)
3. Attend the temple at least once per quarter (four times this year)
4. Finish the electrical work in the basement (primarily my responsibility)
5. Finish the upstairs bathroom (primarily Nate's responsibility)
6. Add insulation in the attic

There are a lot of other things Nate and I hope and plan to accomplish this year, but we decided not to make them our goals. We'll just put them on a to-do list and see how it goes. These include getting the roof and chimney repaired (that's a priority right now), finishing our entryway, building a new "pantry shelf" in the kitchen, hanging some drywall in the basement, several small landscaping projects, expanding our garden area and growing lots of food, and finishing the chicken coop (painting it). We might or might not also replace some windows this year, depending on our financial situation. Lucky you, I'll share all of these projects as they get underway and/or finished.

For now, I think that's quite enough from me!