Distracted to Tears :: Freezer Meals

Perhaps it's a consequence of waking up 7 times last night.  Perhaps it's the rain and the overcast skies.  Perhaps it's the weight of the growing To Do list.  Perhaps it's the uncertainty that hangs in the air, similar to the smell of smoke that we can't seem to get rid of after using our fireplace last week.

Whatever it's cause, I'm 100% distracted.  Edgy.  And I don't like it.

I know that I need to get my math on for a meeting tomorrow.  I know there's things to prep and freezer meals to make and laundry to do.  I know my dog needs to be walked.  I know all of this.

Yet all I want to do is go back to bed, snuggle up under my flannel sheets, cry a little bit, and sleep the afternoon away.  That's normal, right?  Normal or not, I refuse to do it.  I've got stuff to do, dangit, and I'm going to do.  I won't feel better until I get some of that To Do list whittled down, and that's just the way of it. (Type-A personality, anyone?)

So as a start, I've printed out papers that I need to edit.  See?  That way, I can close up this machine and work on paper and not be distracted by all of the more-fun-and-less-demanding things the interwebs have to offer.

I've also compiled here a list of meals I plan to make & freeze.  So for the remainder of the afternoon, rather than crying into my pillow, I'm going to make a shopping list, shower (that's sure to lift the spirits, right?), shop, eat lunch, and do some cooking & freezing.  Then I'll nap, if I still want to.  Then I'll edit the papers and then hit the hay.  It's not flashy, and it's fairly routine; but hey, it's a Monday.  And if anything gets done today and there are no tears by this evening, I'm putting it in the win category.

(An Ambitious and Probably Unrealistic) List of Meals To Make & Freeze:

• Crock Pot (CP) Fajitas
• CP Honey Garlic Chicken
• Meatballs
• CP Garlic Pesto Chicken
• Taco Meat
• Individual Stromboli
• Waffles
• Scones
• Chicken Pot Pie
• Lasagna

Also, any freezer-meal-making people out there?  Any suggestions?  I've never done this before, but thanks to an over-inflated sense of capability, I'm sure I can do it.  But just in case, any suggestions?  (BTW - we're blaming that attitude on my mom's relentless encouragement.  Thanks, Mom!)

<3 M.

Homesteading Here I Come!

I love the idea of homesteading.  Living off of the land.  Being self-sufficient.  Owning chickens.  All of it.  In my homesteader dreams, there's always a warm breeze blowing through my hair as I crest the hill on our 140-acre property, on my way to the barn to check on the cows.  I gaze out over the fields, including the "back 40", see our horses frolicking and the corn growing high... It's lovely.

I felt like that the other day.  I swear, even though I was inside, the wind blew through my hair.  Wanna know why?  First, you have to promise not to judge.  I know people think I'm odd and different for these dreams that invariably involve me making life more difficult than it needs to be.  So promise.  Pinky promise.  

Okay.  I'll tell you.  I felt like Laura Ingalls, because I MADE BUTTER.  I did.  In my kitchen.  In less than 15 minutes.  It was, how can I put this without sounding cheesy (which I also believe I can make but that's a story for a different day), life-changing.

Want to know how I did it?  There was no blood, no sweat, and the only tears were tears of joy.  I got a Ninja for Christmas, and it is making all the difference!  It's so super cool!  I used the smallest container that it comes with, but next time I would use the middle-sized, just because the cream expands.  So here's what I did.  First, the ingredients:

• 2 Cups Heavy Whipping Cream
• 1/2 t Salt

New Favorite Hobby

I've got a new hobby, y'all.  And, like most of my hobbies, it might make me seem a bit more like a grandma.  And maybe it's weird to be so good at being a grandma before I'm even a mom.  But whatevs.  I'm 82% sure that this is going to be my favorite hobby of the year.  At least the week.  Either way.

Wanna know what it is?

I love...

MAKING PASTA!

8 days ago, my MIL got me the extruder attachment for my KitchenAid.  Today, I made pasta.  Today, my life was changed.

When I Grow Up

I said recently that I didn't know why I was doing that thing I do.  You know, school, school, and more school.  Something else I know, is that the easy part of decision making is deciding what's wrong, or what isn't a good idea.  The hard part comes in when we try and come up with alternatives.

TCoTFW: I actually proposed a research project focusing on the different types of cognitive reasoning and how to produce the most understanding in students with all the different types of questions.  It was all good until I decided that teaching high school is not for me.  In no small part due to the fact that high school should be a compound word, in my opinion.

So, since I'm slightly less than thrilled about this current course of action (no doubt brought to the limelight by the fact that I'm entering yet another semester, and people keep asking, "How many years left?" and "What are you going to do when you're done?" and I don't have answers to either question.  "Quite a few." and "Who knows" are my answers right now.) I decided to entertain some alternatives.

Oh Crap!

That is what I thought last night when I checked my Gmail (who out there still uses hotmail?  AOL?  I need to know) and discovered that I had a message from Groupon that reminded me that I need to use my coupon.  Groupon is a service that sends you daily opportunities to purchase non-essentials at a reduced (usually 50%) price.

And not only did it say "Hey there, neighbor, remember to use your coupon before it expires!  Okay have a nice day bye!", it also told me the time limit I had in which to redeem my coupon which I bought a good, oh, 5 months ago.  3 days, ladies & gentlemen, 3 days.  One Two Three.  Not tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow's tomorrow.

Now, if I had purchased a coupon for, say, 50% off of Sushi (which I would never do but it was today's deal for the Gvegas area), I would just have to schedule to go to dinner tomorrow night or something.  No biggie.  But NOooooOoo.  Why buy something easy like that when you can purchase a coupon that requires a lot of your own work put into it?

No, my coupon was for blurb, a site that offers downloadable software which a person can use to make their own book.  Sounds loverly.  And I believe it is.  You can make all sorts of books.  Picture books, story books, illustrated books, and even, as I chose to do, cookbooks.  Which is great, except its hard to make a cookbook.  When I read the email, I had only about 14 recipes and 8 pictures in my supposed-to-be, originally-dreamed-it-to-be 86 page book with 100+ recipes, and pictures of each one.

Needless to say, my expectations of myself have dropped considerably.  As I sit now, with 2 days and 137 minutes to go until deadline, I've got the breakfast, appetizer, bread, and chicken sections done.  There are hardly any pictures, and I don't see very many cropping up in the near future.  I've spent about 3 1/2 hours on this so far tonight.  I think I'm going to take a break for now, and tomorrow hopefully knock out the beef, swine, fish, and pasta sections.  That should about wrap it up, since I've cut the desserts entirely.

I know, me and no desserts.  You might think I've gone mad, when in actuality, there are just too many, and they deserve their own book.  So when I get a hankering for some self-inflicted torture, I'll buy another groupon coupon, and make a dessert book.

Having only myself to blame, 

TFW