Monday Menus

This could be the back on the wagon edition. We had a little Super Bowl gathering for family today and ate way too much junk. I feel gross! Time to eat right again.

Monday - Sausage/Apple/Sweet Potato bake, peas, beer bread

Tuesday - leftover turkey tenderloin from a menu change this weekend, salad, rice pilaf, pickles

Wednesday - tator tot casserole, applesauce, green beans

Thursday - Swedish Meatballs over pasta, salad

Friday - roast chicken, rice, veggies

Saturday - pizza, veggies

To make will be apple muffins, banana bread and chocolate chip muffins. Our breakfasts will be based around that, but first up in the morning is cereal. I just don't have anything made yet, so there you go, my fall back. Hope everyone had a great weekend. Every Monday we are closer to spring.

*This post is linked to I'm an Organizing Junkie.

Staying Motivated for the Long Haul

Paying off debt takes a lot longer than getting into debt. Once you decide that you want to hit it hard and pay it off as quickly as possible it can be difficult to stay motivated for such a long time. Especially if you have 1 large debt as opposed to a few small debts. With 1 large debt there is nothing to check off as you go. That being said, there are things you can do to stay motivated.

Reward yourself at set intervals. We still owe around $15,000 on our van. It would make sense that maybe every $5000 we pay that we do something small to celebrate. For some people that might not be often enough. You decide and pick something that works for you. Something attainable, but that doesn't happen very frequently. For example, don't reward yourself each month when you make the minimum payment.

Come up with a realistic plan for repayment. Don't make your goals unattainable. It will do you no good to make a huge payment to debt, if by the end of the month you have to either go hungry or use your credit card. Figure out a budget that works. If you want to try to pay more, but are unsure about how the month will go, take that extra and set it aside and try your hardest not to touch it. If you make it to the end of the month without using it all, then send it in with the next payment.

Keep a visual tracker so you can see how you are doing. Make sure it shows where you started and how far you have come. Take pride in every dollar you put towards your debt.

Don't give up if a month goes by and you can't send extra towards your debt. It happens to everyone at some time or another. Something breaks, or someone gets sick, or your paycheck is less, or it is someone's birthday. Life happens and it will get in the way of your debt repayment schedule from time to time. That's frustrating, but don't give up on paying it off early just because you had a bad month. Jump right back in and start fresh the next month. Your hard work will payoff in the end.

*This post is linked to Life As Mom

So, what have I been buying at the store?

I have talked repeatedly about trying to eat healthier and change our diet to a less processed, less artificial and more real foods diet. It has been going well. We are finishing up stuff I already had that I won't be buying again, so it has been a slow transition in some regards. I think this is good. It makes the cooking more from scratch and replacing with organics easier on me and the budget.

I have noticed that organic items go on sale too - not free or almost free like many foods in the traditional American diet, but on sale nonetheless. I have tried to take advantage of these sales. One week I bought 4 bags of organic raspberries for half the cost of non-organic. Another week I got a couple dozen organic, free range eggs for a good price. Another week I got 4 bottles of organic ketchup (no HFCS) for about the same price as Heinz.

Other than that, we are eating a lot more produce. This week for instance I got cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, bananas, pears, apples, oranges, grapefruit, sweet potatoes and carrots. Except for the bananas, everything was from the United States. We have also eaten strawberries, peaches and applesauce that I preserved last summer and fall.

I have made hummus, bagels, muffins and focaccia bread from scratch, as well as almost all meals. Today I got naturally raised boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $2.99 a lb (half price). I also found Vital Wheat Gluten today, so I am hoping to try some loaf bread soon. If I can figure out how to make a good sandwich bread that would be awesome. Currently all the breads I make have such a hard crust you can't cut them and have them still look like bread. The taste is great though.

Anyway, that is how things are going here. The only boxed things I have bought since the beginning of the year is a massive amount of Triscuits and Wheat Thins. 12 boxes will be better than free after the rebate and the other 8 I bought were less than $1 a box. That is a snack food that I can live with coming from a box. So, what changes have other people made? I would love to hear how other people are changing their diets.

I have to say - I really like age 5

5 has been good to us. I have always thought that age 2 was bad, 3 was worse, 4 was even worse and at age 5 things start to get better. Claire has proven that yet again. She is turning into a big girl, not a little kid anymore. She is starting to read some and is loving every minute of school. She gets home around 12:15 and we have lunch together and hang out for a couple of hours before Michael gets home. I love this time with her and I am sure so much one on one time (something we never had while I was homeschooling - which was her whole life) is helping.

She rarely has tantrums, helps out tremendously, is happy 95% of the time and is so silly she keeps us laughing. She is always dancing and singing. She makes up a song about anything and everything. Yesterday the entire time she was in the bathroom getting ready for school she sang a song about her toothbrush. Last week it was the shoe rack. She strikes a pose at the end of just about every sentence. She has made lots of friends at school and it has been fun to let her have playdates after school. We are reading through the Laura Ingalls Wilder series this year and she is listening. In the past she wouldn't sit through a book, much less a chapter book.

The past 5 years have been rough at times with Claire as she is our most strong-willed and stubborn child, but she is growing up and out of those rough phases. I am loving it. She is a joy to be around and I am so proud of her. I am soaking up every minute I can before she goes to school all day next year. Somehow I think she is too.

* I can't download any pictures to my laptop and the desktop is broken. I had to get this one from Snapfish. That is the reason for the lack of photos lately.

The reason why I can and freeze produce...

... can be summed up in 3 words. January and February. This time of year there is very little good and affordable fresh produce at the grocery store. At least produce that my family will readily eat. So we have switched over to the frozen berries I have and the canned peaches and pears I put up in the summer.

When I was working so hard to put all these foods up this summer and fall I did have some people question me. They questioned why I was still buying fresh produce if I had all of that food in the freezer and pantry. It is because of winter in Ohio. We try to eat locally grown produce as much as possible. In the summer local means Ohio to me. Come winter time I try to stick to produce grown in the US. It gets hard. Apples, oranges and pears are the extent of the fruits we have in the store. My kids are tired of them by December.

So in between the apples, oranges and pears (which haven't dropped below $1.49 a pound here, anyone else?) we are enjoying strawberries, blueberries, peaches and frozen grapes. Yum! It was worth the work and I am glad we didn't eat all those foods up in September.

*This post is linked to Real Food Wednesdays at Cheeseslave.

Monday Menus

Here is what we will be eating this week.

Monday - hamburgers, sweet potato fries, applelsauce

Tuesday - spaghetti, salad

Wednesday - pizza, green beans

Thursday - chicken casserole, salad, cranberry sauce

Friday - baked potatoes, corn muffins, carrots

Saturday - chicken noodle soup, focaccia bread

Weekend links

Emma and I were up at 4:45 for a gymnastics meet, but since she placed 1st in her floor exercise and 3rd overall, I would say it was worth it. After 5 straight days of not being able to sleep and then today, I might not recover for awhile though. I have been doing lots of interesting blog reading lately and wanted to share some goodies I have found.

At Kitchen Stewardship Katie has a great article about How to Feed Your Man Real Food. As I work to change our diet and eating habits, I might need some of these tricks. Especially if I try to take away Kevin's licorice.

Jenny at The Zepf Life just paid off her van! Way to go Jenny, I hope to be able to post the same in a year or so.

Autumn at Penny Pinchin Momma inspires me every day to eat a little better. In the past year or so they have switched to cooking almost everything from scratch and eating organic. She even made her own cheese last week. And this year they have vowed to not eat out at all. Wow, I don't think I could do that LOL.

Getting Freedom from Debt has a whole new look and I loved her Tank cake tutorial. My army loving son would go crazy if he saw this. I see a future birthday cake here.

Reducing your Sugar Consumption

I have been trying to pay attention to how many grams of sugar are in items we eat lately. I have found some interesting information. Some yogurts, just because they say "low fat" doesn't mean they have less sugar. In fact many times they have more. Even the "fat free" stuff. Sugar isn't fat - BUT it will turn into fat if you don't work it off.

Today at BJs I was planning on buying some of the Horizon's Organic individual milk containers for Luke to take to school for lunches. The convenience factor was getting to me I guess, but I came to my senses when I looked at the sugar content. In one 6 oz thing of chocolate milk there were 27 grams of sugar. I couldn't believe it. Could they have put more sugar in that thing of milk? Apparently yes, because when I looked at the other option (Vanilla) there were 29 gams of sugar in it. Oh my word, his teachers would not be happy with me, nor his dentist if I did that. I can pour milk into a thermos myself thank you, without the added sugar.

Paying attention to the amount of sugar in things has really helped us make better choices and reduce our sugar consumption. Something else though, is that when I cook from scratch I have been reducing the amount of sugar I add to recipes. So far no one has noticed. Pancakes that will be drenched in syrup? I just quit adding the sugar completely. Banana bread that calls for 1 cup? So far I have cut it to 2/3's of a cup and will do more next time I make it. Reducing our sugar consumption in this way is saving us money and our health. I am on a mission with our health these days and it feels good.

*This post is linked to Life As Mom.