Tuesday Thoughts

It is Tuesday, right?  Life has been fluctuating between the extremes of frenetic and down- time, lately.  Heavy on the frenetic side.  I tend to prefer more of the predictable middle ground area, but at least there has been some down-time to keep me sane, although it has not been enough for me to keep all the plates in the air spinning at once... some have come crashing down and I've just swept the mess to the side, so to speak.

I just looked up the word frenetic to make sure I was using it properly.  I was.  It is a combination of frenzied and frantic, just like it sounds.

I made some paleo BBQ sauce tonight and poured the whole thing down the garbage disposal.  It was just awful, even after I added honey and molasses.  I won't link to the recipe, because I don't want to badmouth anyone's work.  I'm sure it is a really good recipe because it earned rave reviews from everyone else, not a single negative review.  I must have done something wrong.  So we mixed some homemade ketchup (that I keep on hand for the kids) and some mustard and ate that as sauce on our brisket, instead.

These Bible word clouds are cool.

It is several years old, but I just want to say that I like the movie Remember Me.  A lot.  I think I watched it initially because Robert was in it, but I ended up liking it for way more reasons than that.  You have to be in the mood for something emotional in order to appreciate it.

I am fighting the afternoon sugar addiction again.  I seriously cannot have any of it around or I am a goner.  Most of it revolves around chocolate.  I am doing well with meals, but have had few 100% paleo days since Easter due to those dang snacks.  I think I'm gonna have to re-commit to 100%, all or nothing.

My favorite (only) restaurant paleo meal during our 30 day challenge was a salad from Chipotle.  Lettuce, chicken (they gave me extra when I said no to beans), tomato salsa, and guacamole.  That's it.  And it was so good.  Just fyi, in case you care :)

Goodnight!

Amish Friendship Bread Flop

Everyone I know loves Amish friendship bread. I do, too – when other people make it. It seems like every time I make it, something goes wrong and it doesn’t turn out right. I don’t know why.

This last time, I got some starter from my neighbor, Tami. She is health conscious and had added some whole wheat flour to it, which I was excited about. (Something I would have done, too!)

I followed all the directions correctly, but when it came to take out the “starter” and place it into bags to give away to friends, I did one bag too few. Which means I had one cup extra of the liquid mix in my own mix when I made my bread. No wonder it turned out moist and heavy!

I just thought it was because of the whole wheat and didn’t realize my mistake until like 3 days after I made the bread.

Baking Bread vs Wal-Mart Bread

I wish I liked to bake my own bread. I want to like to bake my own bread. I’ve tried to like to bake my own bread. But I just don’t.

I have attempted a handful of highly rated recipes. One turned out good. But I’m lazy and it was too much work for me to do it every week. Or too much time, I should say. And my husband has not been crazy about the results of any of my attempts.

So, I buy my 100% whole wheat bread at Wal-Mart. For $1.48 a loaf. And that works for me.

3 things I say to justify it:

We eat sandwiches everyday for lunch. We don’t usually eat bread at any other time. From what I’ve read, many people that bake their own bread still buy their sandwich bread.

I don’t have a bread maker or a spot for it.

For whole wheat bread, I don’t think I could make it for much cheaper.

What I still feel guilty about:

The store bought bread has sugar or high fructose corn syrup in it and supporting Wal-Mart (not a huge fan).

To hear more about what DOESN'T work for people, visit Rocks in my Dryer!

Down the Drain

If I were to host a blog carnival or meme (which I’m not) it would have to be on revealing or flaunting stupid mistakes, ’cause I do plenty of them.

I tend to be somewhat absentminded sometimes. That itself guarantees stupid mistakes are to follow. Like this, for example…

Thursday night I decided to be nice and make my husband something more interesting to take for lunch the next day than PB&J. So in all my resourcefulness/frugalness I was pretty pleased with myself to notice we had everything to make chicken fried rice, which I have made before and he likes. Leftover cooked rice (just the right amount), a cooked chicken breast in the fridge, a partial bag of frozen mixed veggies, soy sauce, sesame salad dressing, oil, and eggs.

So I stayed up late (yes, cooking after 9 pm is late for me) to whip up some freshly fried, white girl style chicken fried rice. I put it in the glass storage container and set it (lid off) on the counter to cool. Then I cleaned up the kitchen and headed to the other room.

Hmm… next morning, the chicken fried rice was still where I left it. I totally had forgotten to put it in the fridge before I went to bed. Now, usually I’m not a freak about eating leftovers, but I couldn’t feed it to my husband after it had been sitting out for 9 hours no matter how well it could be heated up! So down the garbage disposal it went…boo-hoo, what a waste. It was an entire 12 inch skillet’s worth. I hate wasting food. All my efforts literally down the drain. (Here’s where I should say I took it to compost, but really… yet another example of I’m just not there yet. Actually, I don’t even know if my husband would let me have a compost pile/bin/heap/whatever.)

Needless to say… my husband got PB&J. But at least he didn’t complain. He's usually ok with simple.