March 26 2020

Comfort Food

Note: The world is topsy-turvey right now, so please forgive me if I post off schedule, I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances.

Tonight, I decided we could all use some good old-fashioned comfort food and Hubby and Adult Son agreed. So, I got out all the things I would need to make Dried Beef Gravy. Hubby’s family called it chipped beef gravy and made it slightly different, but basically the same idea.

So this meal requires 2 small or 1 large jar of Armour Brand Dried Beef. First you need to put a full stick of butter with the wax paper wrapper removed (obviously), into a 4 quart saucepan on medium high heat to melt. Then you need to cut the beef into 1/2 inch squares like the pile on the right in the photo below. The second jar, on the left, has not been cut yet. I learned tonight that it is much faster to use a large knife to cut the meat and toast for this meal that the kitchen scissors I have been using for years. Not sure I will ever go back to cutting with shears unless I have young helpers or something.

Once all the meat is cut up, the butter should be melted, but not scorched, so dump in the beef and stir it to coat it with the butter. Next put in a couple of heaping tablespoons of flour to thicken the gravy. If you get enough flour in and stir it well it will have soaked up all the butter and look like the photo below.

Next you add the milk and stir constantly so the flour doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot. If you feel anything sticking to the bottom, just gently scrap it up and stir better from now on. Try to stir so you are testing the bottom for any stuck bits and scraping them up as you stir.

I don’t add all the milk at the beginning because I want to get it to thicken up then slowly add more and let it get thick again so you don’t add too much. I usually add some fresh ground pepper when about half the milk is in. Unfortunately, my Kuhn Rikon Ratchet Pepper Grinder failed me and the guts fell into the pot, so I fished them out and kept stirring. This is how we ended up with whole peppercorn medley in our meal, but it turned out fine, just wouldn’t recommend adding whole peppercorns and grinder parts if you can help it. See how pretty and thick it is in the photo above? In the photo below, you can see the peppercorns.

While all this stirring and thickening is going on pop some bread in the toaster. We usually allow 2 to 4 slices per person depending on how much comfort they need. When the toast is cool enough to touch, cut or tear it into bite-sized pieces, two pieces per bowl, as shown below.

Once you get the gravy thickened and just about to a full boil, still heating on medium-high heat the entire time, you c an turn the burner off and give it a few final stirs. Get a ladle out and spoon the gravy over the toast in each bowl and add more pepper to taste. We don’t usually salt this because the beef is usually plenty salty.

Serve warm and enjoy. This would work equally well over biscuits, but toast is our favorite.

It is nutritious? Well, it covers three of the four basic food groups and it would be a good way to get milk into your kids if they aren’t big milk drinkers, but if your kids are so picky that they don’t already love milk, they are likely too picky to try new foods anyway, so just enjoy this yourself, you deserve some comfort food. This is a relatively inexpensive meal to make and likely was the invention of some poor mom who didn’t have many choices to work with to fill her family’s bellies.

In case you are wondering, we found all the parts and Hubby is trying to put the little green pepper grinder that we absolutely LOVE back together.

So, what is your comfort food of choice? Care to share in the comments below? Feel free to leave a recipe, I have a feeling we are going to be doing a lot of home cooking the next few months.

Category: Money Saving, Recipes | Comments Off on Comfort Food
February 27 2020

What am I listening to?

Some of you are possibly wondering what is all that talking you hear coming from my car when I pull into the parking lot at work. Well, sometimes it is an audio book, but lately it has more likely been a podcast. If you are asking yourself what a podcast is and why you would want to listen to it, you’ve come to the right place. I will do my best to explain just that.

A podcast is like a radio show that is recorded and can be listened to on your computer or smart phone at YOUR convenience. If you find one you want to listen to on your computer, chances are there is a way to listen already built into your browser, so bookmark the site and keep track of which episodes you have already listened to and have at it.

If you want to listed without being tied to your computer, never fear! There IS an app or twelve for that. You DO have a smart phone, right? If not, what rock have you been hiding under? Go back to the last paragraph and see how to listen on a computer.

So, if you are reading this, you most probably have a smart phone, and are at least willing to give listening to podcasts a try.

I know there are many different apps for listening to podcasts, but I only know about the one I use, Stitcher. This is a free app and I like it because it allows me to save a few episodes to my phone while I am at home with access to WiFi and then listen to them while I am driving to and from work without using up cellular data. So to get the app on your phone, or computer just visit the website linked above or click on the picture below and then click Get The App and choose the platform you want to listen on. You can easily search for podcasts by topic or name.

When you find something that sounds good, save the podcast to a playlist such as favorites by clicking the blue + (see example below)

Then you will see various playlist choices or be able to create new ones. For now, just put the ones you want to try in favorites and give them a listen. This is one I didn’t know existed and now I want to try it out.

When I try a podcast, I like to start back at the very beginning and listen to all the episodes in order. I usually listen to an episode or two and if I decide I want to listen to the entire podcast, I usually create a tracker in my bullet journal because I like to track my progress on things. The first one I started listening to and tracking was Success Insider in 2017.

 

The in 2018, I began listening to the InvestED: The Rule #1 Investing Podcast by Phil and Danielle Town. I was late finding this podcast and had a lot of episodes to catch up on so I have tracked it across three years of bullet journals so far and because I have finally caught up with the back episodes, the grid is much smaller in this year’s BuJo:

Note, you can also watch this podcast: InvestED: The Rule #1 Podcast

As you can see I only got through the first 90 episodes in 2018, so I made a note and started the new grid from there.

This year, I guessed how many spaces to allow on the grid based on the fact that the podcast is a weekly show, then added a few just in case.I then discovered the Retire Inspired podcast that was later rebranded to The Chris Hogan Show. You can see above that I was close to caught up at the beginning of this year so it too has a smaller grid.

Note, you can also watch this podcast: The Chris Hogan Show

Knowing I was pretty well caught up with InvestED and The Chris Hogan Show, I added a new one this year based on Danielle Town’s suggestion. She recommended HerMoney with Jean Chatzky and I am only about 30 episodes into it right now, and loving it. Jean is constantly interviewing various authors and podcasters on the show so I am adding a lot of books to my want to read someday list on GoodReads. Here is my grid for HerMoney. You can visit Jean Chatzky’s Website to learn more about her and the show.

As you can see there are many episodes to listen to. I wrote out what was in the list including some called Bonus Mailbag where she answers listener questions. I figure if I catch up then I will need to add another grid on a new page in this year’s BuJo. No big deal, that is the beauty of bullet journaling.

If you like Mike Rowe, you may want to give his podcast, The Way I Heard It, a try. His are fun to listen to and usually only 10 minutes or less.

So, now that you know what I listen to, please share your favorite podcasts in the comments so we can all give them a listen.

Category: Bullet Journal, Goals, Money Saving, Review | Comments Off on What am I listening to?
November 14 2019

Recipe: Sweet & Sour Pork (or Chicken)

My hubby has been requesting this meal every time I ask what have you been hungry for at menu planning time each weekend for the longest time. So finally, we got the things we needed and made it. A double batch and it tasted so good we ate most of it the first night. I don’t make it often because of all the slicing and dicing it requires. I wish I could claim it was my own recipe but it is just one I found on the side of a can of pineapple decades ago and just had to try. It became a keeper after the first time we made it. It was more fun to make this time because for once, I didn’t have to cut everything up myself. In fact, Hubby was super helpful and peeled all the carrots in the bag, cut up the pork and handled the garlic. I highly recommend finding a helpful partner to cook with.

Here is what it looked like in the pot after we had already taken some out.

I decided to dish it up in these pretty Corelle bowls so I could take a photo to share with all of you.

Dole Sweet & Sour Pork or Chicken
(From the back of a can of Dole Brand Pineapple Chunks)
1 lb. Chicken or Pork
1 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil
1 medium Onion
1 clove Garlic, pressed
2 Carrots, sliced
1 medium Green Pepper, seeded, chunked or diced
1 (15oz.) can Pineapple Chunks, undrained
¼ cup White Vinegar
3 Tbsp. Brown Sugar
3 Tbsp. Catsup
3 Tbsp. Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp. Cornstarch
1 tsp. Ground Ginger

Cut meat into ½ inch pieces. Brown in oil. Reduce heat to low, add onion and garlic. Cover, cook 10 minutes. Add carrots and green pepper. Combine remaining ingredients. Stir into skillet. Cover, simmer 10 minutes longer. Serve over rice. (Serves 4) This recipe can easily be doubled. This is a big hit with those who love Chinese food.

I had a packet of microwavable rice in the closet, so in just 90 seconds I had cooked rice that I stirred right into the pot. If you decide to try this recipe, please let me know what you think in the comments below. I would personally like to thank Dole for providing this recipe all those years ago, it has been a great addition to our lives.

Category: Money Saving, Recipes | Comments Off on Recipe: Sweet & Sour Pork (or Chicken)
October 31 2019

Getting Into Hot Water

How to get the hot water back on when you have a tankless hot water heater. To be fair I am mostly writing this post so that I can remember how to do this the next time it happens, especially if Hubby isn’t there to help me “fix” it. Note, we are not plumbers or professionals, so try this at your own risk.

The last couple of times the water wouldn’t get hot, Hubby just ran downstairs and did exactly what I did in the brief video shown above. That worked a couple of times but it wasn’t the right way to solve the problem, and we both knew it. It worked until it didn’t and then we had to do it right.

 

This is the top of the water heater and you have to take the screws out of the two spots on the top of the water heater. See the left pipe sticking out of the top? Well, that is where the trouble comes in.

 

Now this is the the bottom, and there are two more screws down there that need to be removed. We didn’t unplug it first, and nothing bad happened.

 

So, this is the inside after the cover is removed. See that white thing just under the left pipe we talked about earlier? Well you need to take out the screw next to it, yes, there on the right. Take the screw out then pay attention to how it comes out so you can put it back together in a few minutes. There is a screen filter on this thing and it is likely covered with spider webs and debris. Clear it off and consider rinsing and drying it before you put it all back together.

For convenience, the cover has a lip on top so it kind of hangs in place while you put the screws back in. Put all the screws back in, the one on the inside is the obvious screw to put back in first. Then all you have to do is push the reset button like I did in the video above. That’s it. It is that easy. So now the next time it happens, I will know what to do.

Category: Confidence, Depth Year, Money Saving, Reclaiming Our Home | 1 Comment on Getting Into Hot Water
September 19 2019

Menu Planning

One of the important things I do to help us keep our budget under control is to plan what we will be eating for dinner each week. If you find you are having trouble thinking of new and interesting ideas, keep track of what you eat for a while to help inspire your menu planning. Don’t have a recipe? Search online.

Now you can write your menu on a chalkboard or dry erase board, back of an old envelope or whatever works for you. A few years ago, while walking through the local Staples store, I spied this lovely little tool, and decided to get it. It now has a place of prominence on the front of my refrigerator. I try to plan out the meals for the following week over the weekend.

I usually stsart my menu planning by looking at our Google calendar to see which nights we have something happening. To be honest, once I finish the menu, I usually take a photo with my phone so I have it handy for ready reference in case I can’t remember what I was planning for dinner that night while I’m at work. The meals are all up for grabs on any given night but sometimes the meals that take longer to make are scheduled on nights when we will have more time, so moving them around doesn’t always work well.

The example above was obviously a time when I was counting calories. It is probably one of the early ones, because I can tell by how neat and thin the writing is, that it was written with the marker that came with the board, and that went dry a few years ago.

This was obviously not a great photo, but works for what we need anyway. Sometimes, I get colorful like the week shown below.

The one below is for the current week. I remembered I had taken the photo and hadn’t added it yet, so consider it a bonus. If you want more specifics, feel free to email me or leave a comment below.

The most important thing about planning meals in advance is it helps you to make a grocery list. We all know when you shop with a list and try to stick to it, you can save money. Not only will you be eating healthier, you won’t be eating out unless it was planned ahead of time. This can also save money. Lately I have been taking inventory of what we have on hand and challenging myself to use everything up and buy as little as we can from the grocery each week. Sometimes this can backfire because you run out of everything and then you have a huge stock up week when the budget is completely blown, but in theory you saved more than enough in the weeks leading up to then to cover the budget deficit for the week.

So, do you plan your menu each week? If not, how do you know what to get at the grocery. Do you have any tips or tricks to share with us? Please give us at least one money saving idea or menu planning tip in the comments below.

You can find more interesting ideas on saving time (and possibly money) in this post from last fall, Finding Time to Write NaNoWriMo.

 

 

 

Category: Depth Year, Goals, Money Saving, Planning | Comments Off on Menu Planning