Progress feels great!

I don't claim to be very financially savvy, but I know that in order to raise your chin above the filth you have to live on less money than you make, and that when you owe people money they own a part of you.

A couple of months ago my good Mr. Dub said to me, "I'll never be able to retire, will I?" and that hit me like a ton of bricks. I think I do pretty well managing our budget and I feel like I'm learning more all the time, but time passes like a speeding train and with our kids currently in the "high rent districts" of teenager-hood and young-adult-dom and not a lot of decades left until retirement age there is clearly a lot of improvement that is needed. One of the blogs I read talks a lot about living on what has seemed to me a drastically low percentage of your income in order to retire early and enjoy what he terms "financial independence" but is actually a way of life in which you can do whatever you want including quit your 9-5 job so long as you keep a tight grip on your spending. So I have thought a lot about how low I can go in regards to spending Mr. Dub's hard-earned salary so that he does not have to work at his job one more day than he absolutely wants to.

This week we paid off one of our three loans (which include our mortgage, a car loan, and a home equity loan). The home equity loan is paid off three years early, and it looks like, barring an unseen and very costly emergency, we are set to pay off the car in a couple of months which will be nearly four years early. That will leave us starting the new year 2013 owing money only on our mortgage and freeing up a lot of my good Mr. Dub's salary to put toward our own financial independence.

I think with our new president elected to another term it is even more important to have your financial house in order and plenty of food and money safely tucked away for that proverbial rainy day.

Sorting

About a month ago I went away for two days and while I was gone there was a leak under the kitchen sink. The mopping up of which precipitated a powdered cleanser spill. Consequently everything came out of the cabinet and without me here to supervise the putting back of it all I haven't been able to see/reach/get to the cleaners I use on a daily basis.

So today I pulled it all out and vacuumed, wiped down, did a bit of de-cluttering, and reorganized. Which turned into a whole morning spent doing the very same thing to all my lower kitchen cabinets and my extra pantry shelf cabinet. I did some serious decision-making in my baking pan cabinet and chose to keep only the things that I use more than once a year. I hope this means that it will be easier to get things in and out of this cabinet now that there's more room. I've seen racks that are meant to hold baking pans in a straight instead of tipping vertical position but I wonder if they are more trouble than they are worth, or if there are ones that cost a bit more but are more efficient and sturdy? I may check into that, because I can't deal with fiddly and troublesome in the kitchen even if it looks cute while it's not being used.

While I was down on the floor with a bucket of hot water and some rags I decided to wipe out the inside of the oven as well. I read a tip online months and months ago that you can clean up sticky, baked-on messes in the oven with baking soda and water. Which may be true for some people but not for me. I was left with an even bigger mess and gave up on it and have lived with the slowly browning baking soda crust in the oven ever since. It did come up pretty easily today with plain old hot water so maybe the tip I read is meant to take a long time to work. The oven looks pretty good now and I'm not wheezing and choking from overpowering oven cleaner fumes so that's good and as they say, all's well that ends well.

(I also heard a tip for cleaning the oven racks which I am trying right now and will report on later. I heard that if you put your oven racks in a big trash bag with some ammonia and seal it up and let it sit for a few hours, that the fumes from the ammonia will clean the racks and the baked on orange-brown flecks on the racks will wipe right off. We'll see.)

Also de-cluttered and reorganized is the kids' bathroom closet. I try to keep things in there that visitors might need but I think there is still quite a bit more of that than we will need in a year or so, and not enough of the things that the little boy who lives here will need in the next year.

So I have started a box of items that will live in my coat closet that are up for grabs. Stuff that is still good (like dishes and baking sheets) or brand new (like cleaning products, candles, and men's body wash which my Little Friend with his sensitive skin will never use). Whenever my friends or family visit they can look through the box and pick what they like and take it home.

You know, my own Grammy used to have a box like that. There really is a circle of life.

Bierocks

(Sorry about the blurry pic)

Somebody I used to know a long time ago taught me how to make these. They are awesome. You kind of have to know how to cook from scratch to make them, because how well they turn out depends on how well you are able to judge what you're doing. There are official recipes out there with ingredient amounts and cooking times and so forth but to me this is the kind of food you learn how to make by watching your grandmother or some other family member do it.

Bierock

• Make a batch of regular white bread dough. Use whatever recipe you normally use for plain white bread. (You could use frozen bread dough but I've never done that and am not familiar with it but for sure let it thaw completely.) Let the dough have its first rising.

While your dough is rising do the following:

• Prepare according to package directions a box of beef-flavored Rice-A-Roni or something similar and equivalent. I think the rice is not typically traditional for bierock and if you decide not to use it you could either increase the amount of meat, cabbage, veggies, or just make fewer bierocks. 
• Brown and jab into crumbles a package of breakfast-style sausage (like Jimmy Dean's or Owens) and a lb. of ground beef. I do this with them both together in the same pan. It's all getting mixed up anyway.
• Finely shred and then chop some cabbage. When you're done the cabbage bits should be about the same size as grains of rice and you'll want a few cups, about as much as you have rice and sausage. Other recipes have longer/larger shreds but I don't want to have to deal with big pieces of cabbage coming out of my bierock when I take a bite.
• Finely chop some vegetables: onion, something to add color/flavor/texture like a green and/or red bell pepper or a shredded carrot, and depending on how spicy your sausage is, you might like some minced garlic.
• You don't need seasonings because the sausage is very flavorful and boxed rice mixes are typically salty enough to season the cabbage and other vegetables too. If you use plain white rice you could add some salt and pepper and maybe some beef bouillon granules to its cooking liquid. 

Combine all of your cabbage, rice, meat, and vegetables into a giant bowl. I do this while the meat and rice are still very hot to let the cabbage and other vegetables have just a little bit of cooking from the heat because except for the relatively short baking time this is the only cooking your veggies will get. You'll want them chopped up pretty finely for that reason. Set it all aside and let it cool a bit.

Punch down your bread dough a bit and let it rest for a few minutes to relax it. Cut it into chunks a bit smaller than a tennis ball or baseball. I usually get 24-30 and try (but never really succeed) to get them all about the same size. It doesn't matter if they're not perfect. Roll out one of the chunks on a floured surface into a circle about 6-8 inches in diameter and place 1/4 cup or so filling into the center. Fold the dough over and pinch/crimp/seal the edges very well. (Your bierock will look like a calzone or an empanada. That's the idea here. In fact you could say that a bierock is a German style calzone or empanada or turnover.) Place it on a lightly greased baking sheet and keep making until your baking sheet is filled - I usually get 6 on a sheet. You could let them raise a bit more but making them one at a time like this they usually rise a little and I bake them off immediately and get busy with the next pan. Bake for 18-22 minutes (it depends on the size of your bierocks and how puffy they got while you were working) in a 375 degree oven. Cool on a wire rack. I store leftovers wrapped in foil and placed in a big ziploc bag in the refrigerator or freezer.

This recipe is not hard to make. It is time consuming and there are a lot of steps and then afterwards the mess in the kitchen is huge - flour all over the kitchen counters, bits of chopped cabbage everywhere including on the floor, every big bowl and cooking pot and baking sheet you own get dirty, etc. That's part of the reason why I think that only experienced cooks would make something like this. If you are used to no more effort than sliding a frozen lasagna into the oven or putting cans and bags of pre-prepared food into the crockpot then this is going to be quite overwhelming for you.

But if you can get past that the recipe makes a lot of food and they are delicious and easy to reheat for lunch or dinner for the next few days.

Emergency prep

I made some fire starters yesterday for the good low price of FREE. I would use them in the event that I don't have utilities during a disaster (like a hurricane) but still wanted to eat cooked food or if I needed heat. I would definitely only start a fire outside, not in the house. When we made these in Relief Society a couple of months ago we lit one as a test and it burned for 15 or 20 minutes, and left a small greasy wax stain on the concrete sidewalk. (I should check sometime when I'm at church if it's still there or it has worn/washed away.) Because of the stain I wouldn't want to burn one in my family room fireplace.

I used:

• a cardboard egg carton
• sawdust
• dryer lint
• an old candle

That's it.

It took me a while to eat a dozen eggs, and save up enough dryer lint. I got the bag of sawdust from a friend with a woodworker husband. The unscented candle is from a wedding I helped with about a year ago. I shaved a big pile of candle wax (which turned out to be way easier than I thought it would be - I used an old serrated steak knife) and melted it in an empty tin can in a small pot of simmering water, put a spoonful of sawdust in the bottom of each egg cup, stuffed as much dryer lint into each cup as I could, then poured the melted wax over everything. I let them set until completely cool and hard and will store them in a drawer in my storage room. I will make more eventually but need to eat a few more eggs before I'll have another egg carton to use.

To use them, you cut or tear one of the cups away from the carton and light the paper with a match. The paper and lint are very combustible and the wax and sawdust keep the whole thing burning for a good while.

Into the abyss

So... I've been sick. Remember a couple weeks ago when I said I was sort of sick? Yeah, well, it got worse.

I ended up in the doctor's office and she gave me some antibiotics for a sinus infection and bronchitis and some antiviral cream for an ugly sore on my nose.

(Lately the skin on my nose gets very upset when I have to blow more than a couple of times. It responds to lots of blowing by getting all oozy and hurty and infected. I need to find a better way to deal with nose-blowing.)

So I have spent a lot of time at home alone in the last couple of weeks. I have been:

• Taking naps. 
• Washing my hands.
• Disinfecting things.
• Contemplating the universe.
• Perusing facebook.
• Wishing that I got beautiful and tragic when I get sick instead of drippy and crusty and ugly.
• Thinking about my wish to do a "no-spend" month and deciding that it best wait until after Christmas.
• Looking around at all the things I have to work on and do and create already in my possession.
• Sorting through some of my craft supplies.
• Deciding that I don't have to wait for an official no-spend month to stop spending on craft/project materials.
• Getting busy on finishing up some unfinished projects.

I started the project which you get a glimpse of in the photo a few years ago. Bernat (the yarn company) had a "crochet along" project on their blog wherein you (or I, actually) and anyone else who wanted to join in online would check in every week for a clue (the pattern) for that week and make it. The end result would be an afghan but you wouldn't know what it looked like until you had created all the squares and saw the last clue which was going to be the directions on how to put it all together. I dutifully made all the squares each week, learning how to do new crochet stitches and how to block crocheted items, but still growing more and more worried that I wouldn't like my end result, and sure enough - when I saw the final week's instructions and how the finished project was supposed to look I was sad and unhappy and not impressed at all. So I put the whole thing  away and felt bad and guilty for wasting money on the yarn, and disappointed about all the time and anticipation and hope and dreams for a project I would never love. And I never finished it.

I got it all out and looked at it again while I was sick. I put aside my least favorite squares. I took the squares that I like and lined them up into an afghan configuration. I left it there on the floor for a while while I went to do something else and then came back to get my "first impression". I did this a few times before I came up with something I truly liked. It turned out that to get an afghan that was a good size I needed to crochet a few more squares of the patterns that I liked the most so I did that. And now I am connecting them all together to create an afghan that I will be satisfied with. I found an awesome way to do that that is less time consuming and more attractive (to me, at least) here, since sewing it together (for any knitted or crocheted project) is my least favorite part of yarn projects.

I think it will be pretty. I think it will be a gift. I'm not sure who will get it. I get a lot of gift-giving anxiety when I give something handmade because not everyone likes stuff like that and I don't want other people to have to watch their own homes become cluttered up with crap I made because they can't get rid of it because I made it. At the same time, my own house is already filled up with crap I made so it has to go somewhere. I have considered that I could stop making the crap, but I do enjoy doing crafts and it fills my time. It keeps me both off the streets and away from the slothfulness and consumerism generated by daytime TV, you know?

Speaking of filling my time, I did a real job this week. Where I got dressed up in a skirt and some real shoes which were not flip flops and went and talked to complete strangers for hours and hours, and will be paid by a real company for doing this. I was filling in for a friend of mine whose job this is while she was on vacation, and may never have or take the opportunity to do it again. But it was interesting and boring at the same time, just like a lot of my own "work", and I learned that while I don't totally suck at it I don't really want to do it all the time either. I am infinitely grateful that I don't have to, and also grateful that I know I can do it if I need to.

Food waste

Although I continue to have some food waste, it is better than it was before I was keeping track. I find myself actively thinking about it and planning accordingly while I'm gazing in to the refrigerator.

Wasted last week:

• one serving size heap of a long grain/wild rice concoction we didn't love when I served it for dinner
• 1/4 cup leftover green beans
• 1/3 bottle Caesar salad dressing
• 2 slices of stale homemade whole wheat bread

Last week's successes:

• baked the last of the sugar pie pumpkins that I bought a couple weeks ago to can. I had filled up the pressure canner before I got to this last pumpkin and didn't want to run another batch. I've baked this pumpkin and will puree it in the food processor and freeze for a pie to be baked later this month.
• used up a bit of bottled lemon juice from the fridge and some poppy seeds that I've had in my pantry for years in these muffins. The texture of these muffins was really great, although the lemon flavor wasn't quite obvious enough for me. I will make these again when I have a fresh lemon on hand and will add some lemon zest to the batter in addition to the juice.
• baked some pumpkin/chocolate chip cookies out of the one jar of pumpkin that didn't seal when I canned pumpkin.

On the menu for this week:

• Apple pie with pie dough from the freezer and apples from the crisper bin.
• Bierocks with filling from the freezer.
• Tacos with ground beef and cheese from the freezer, tortillas from the pantry, and lettuce and tomato from the veggie bin. I am about to lose the lettuce if it doesn't get eaten soon!
• Chicken enchiladas using up the rest of the corn tortillas in the pantry. Also enchilada sauce and bottled chicken from the pantry, and cheese from the freezer. I will freeze half of the enchiladas for dinner another week. I will serve the enchiladas with some tex-mex style rice made with rice, dehydrated onions, and homemade tomatillo salsa from the pantry, and some fresh cilantro paste from the fridge.

Empty space

One of the things I love about our home's main living area is that there is empty space available to look at. Not a lot, but enough. When I look through/under/between the chairs and tables I can see corners, walls, carpet, baseboards, etc.

It's restful.

I love keeping my bathroom counter cleared off too. For the same reason.