Yesterday afternoon my husband picked up my oldest son from school and headed straight to South Carolina to spend some time with his parents who are visiting down there.  I was invited but chose to stay home.  I haven’t been sleeping very well and I thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up on some sleep and do some things around the house.

Well, I still had trouble sleeping and still woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep.  So much for that!  But I did get several hours completely uninterrupted which is always helpful.

And now, instead of doing the cleaning I’d planned on, I’m meeting a friend for lunch in Carthage.  Oh well…this is more fun, anyway!

So while the goals I set for myself are not being met I’m still enjoying the blissful peace of the house.  They’ll be home this afternoon and I’m glad…I miss my boys, all 3 of them!

My garden is finally starting to really produce some fruit and veggies for us, so I’m looking for easy ways to use this bounty! Even better if it doesn’t involve cooking inside, as we’ve turned our a/c down to save some money. So here’s some of my favorites!

Probably my favorite is to slice up cucumbers and/or tomatoes and cover them with balsamic vinegar and water. Plain white vinegar works, too, though the flavor isn’t quite as good. Still, white vinegar is an inexpensive substitute. You can adjust the vinegar and water balance to suit your taste…I like it with a lot of vinegar but I realize I’m a freak. Super simple, and it can stay fresh for several days in the fridge. I like to use this as a substitute for tossed salad. Very healthy!

My second favorite does involve some cooking…boil some tri-color rotini or similar pasta, rinse well and allow to cool. Chop up carrots, cukes, tomatoes (I like cherry or grape tomatoes for this, but large ones work, too) and celery. Put them in a large bowl with the rotini, then add some cheddar cheese and Italian dressing to taste. If there’s anything in particular you don’t like, feel free to leave it out. The pasta and dressing and a few veggies are the only musts for this one. I usually leave out the celery and we occasionally leave out the cheese. It still tastes great and it’s also a good substitute for tossed salad. I occasionally serve it as a side and skip the bread. It’s even better the 2nd and 3rd days…I’ve been known to get a huge bowl of it for lunch and have nothing else!

This summer, we’ve discovered the deliciousness of grilled eggplant. My husband slices it into thick, round pieces, then marinates it for a little while in olive oil and seasonings to taste. He throws the slices on the grill while our meat or chicken is cooking. It’s so good with grilled chicken or steak. Even the kids eat it happily as long as we take the skin off their pieces.

We also like to grill ears of corn. Lay out a piece of foil large enough to wrap the entire ear in. Add a pat of butter or margarine, lay the corn on top, roll it as you shake some seasoning salt or other spices to your taste on it, then wrap up tightly and put on the grill while you cook your meat. The foil and corn will be very hot when you take them off, so allow to cool a bit before eating. We cut the corn off the ears for the kids so it cools faster and they can eat it a bit easier, but this isn’t necessary.

And for dessert, I love love love strawberries and whipped cream. Cap and slice the strawberries, add a little sugar and stick in the fridge for the day or overnight. When you’re ready for a sweet treat, dip some out and add a bit of whipped cream…not Cool Whip, but the real thing. I’ve been told this works well for blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries, too. I’m not growing those so I haven’t tried it but it sure sounds yummy. And I don’t feel guilty about letting my kids have fruit and real whipped cream, even with the small amount of added sugar.

None of these are very labor intensive. The pasta salad especially is a big hit with our extended families. I frequently get asked to make it for holiday meals or potluck style dinners. I’m going to be sad when I can’t wander out to the backyard and pick some veggies for dinner every night!

I’m feeling much better these days and I’ve started looking around and seeing all of the stuff that has been neglected while I coped with first trimester sickies and exhaustion.  It’s overwhelming, and I really don’t know how I’ll ever get it cleaned up.  But a friend sent me this, and I had to share it!

Some houses try to hide the fact
That children shelter there,
Ours boasts it quite openly,
The signs are everywhere.

For smears are on the windows,
Little smudges are on the doors
I should apologize, I guess
For toys strew on the floor.

But I sat down with my child
And we played and laughed and read
And if the doorbell doesn’t shine,
His eyes will shine instead.

For when at times I’m forced to choose
The one job or the other,
I’d like to cook and clean and scrub,
But first I’ll be a mother.

Author Unknown

When I have to pick and choose which activities I can manage on any given day, the house always comes last.  My kids are so much more fun, anyway!

And now I’m off to clean my master bathroom from top to bottom.  Bathrooms are my least favorite chore, but I’m going to start with the smallest rooms and work my way up.  At least one room a day until I get this house back into presentable shape!  Of course today is Friday and I’ll probably lose steam this weekend, but it’s a start.  With any luck, I won’t be embarrassed for people to see this place by the end of next week.  And I’m thinking about picking back up with the Weekly Challenge.  You may have noticed that it stopped right around the time I found out I was pregnant.  OOPS!  Needless to say, I need that motivator.

Our savings is starting to dwindle, so it was time to figure out where we can save some money in our monthly budget.  We’ve already stopped going out to eat for the most part and are making weekly meal plans which helps us avoid the “what do you want for dinner?” trap that usually ends in us going out.  Since we’re upgrading our super cheap, bare bones cell phone plan to add a lot more minutes as well as data, we thought we might drop our land line.  So I called Windstream this morning to figure out how much that would save us.

Unfortunately, not enough.  If we drop our phone service, our Dish network bill goes up by $5/month, plus our DSL goes up by $20/month.  There goes that savings!  Ugh…it’s so frustrating!  And we HAVE to add minutes to our cell plan…our bill last month was more than double it’s normal rate because my husband is using his cell exclusively for business calls.  So if I can pay double the bill we have now and either pay an insane amount for overage or pay a bit less than double and get 1500 minutes + unlimited data, then it only makes good sense to do that.  We’ll eventually be billing it to the business, but since there’s no income there yet it does present a minor obstacle.

I did drop some of our phone services, as well as dropping our Dish plan down a notch.  I wonder how long it will take before people start to notice the missing channels and I get complained at?  (Yes, I know that’s terrible grammar.  Deal.)  It will save us $30/month.  Which really isn’t much when your income is zero, but it’s a start.  Our electric is currently on an equal pay plan, so I can’t do much better with that, and we’re already pretty conservative with the water use.  I guess if the income doesn’t start in a month or 2 we’ll have to get really crazy…maybe drop Dish completely (I think I might die if we did this!) and eat the expenses involved with dropping our land line.  We wouldn’t save a ton, but it would save us a bit anyway.  We had really gotten spoiled with the good income and when it suddenly disappears, it hurts.

I’ve been feeling so bad lately that we’ve been going out to eat most nights.  And sometimes lunch as well.  With our financial situation being what it is, this HAS to stop.  So, today I sat down to make a list of meals that I’d like to have and looked up recipes.  I’m making my grocery list and expect that the 5 meals I’ve chosen will feed us for the week.  With school starting next week for my *kindergartener* (Gack!  How do I have a kindergartener???) it’s going to be crazy.  We’ve got Open House on Monday where we meet our teacher, t-ball practice on Tuesday, and Parent’s Night on Thursday, so we need to have some easy leftovers those nights.

We decided on these meals:

Buffalo Chicken — This is something I’ve been craving, and even cutting it in half should leave us plenty of leftovers!

Red Beans & Rice — My husband and I love Cajun food, and we’ve done this one many times before but it’s been a while.  Our 2 year old has been loving beans lately and he’s always been a rice lover, so we thought we’d pull this one out and see if he liked it.

Chicken Enchiladas — I was reading a book last night and the character made chicken enchiladas and that was all it took to make me wish I had some.  This is a new recipe, so we’ll see how it tastes!

Lasagna — Again with the book reading making a craving.  I love lasagna but haven’t found *the* recipe yet.  I’m taking a shot with this one.

Southwestern Polenta Casserole — A tried and true recipe at our house.  My husband created this one and it is SO yummy!  Sort of a Southwestern lasagna, but with polenta rather than noodles or tortillas.

I don’t know what we’ll make when, but I’ll try to recap how the new things turned out.  I’m really hoping that I can add a couple of new things to my (somewhat limited) repertoire!