Pizza Night – Holy Night

I had this strange itch to go run errands last night. Head down to Edina to the container store and may Crate&Barrel to buy some organizing things. Which we don’t need. Luckily I was able to reach out to my budgetmentor (pronounced “boo-zhay-men-toe”) CR to discuss the strange silly desire to spend money.

First foray into homemade pizza dough that had frozen. It kept expanding in the freezer and then again after we thawed it. And it smelled pretty potent.

After failed attempts to turn two blobs of smelly dough into pizza-shaped circles, we ended up with this [see picture]. But the key of course is the taste and it was pretty durn good.


End of September today. Mostly done with the October goals. Primary among them is to work fully from the budget. No more discretionary, individual charging on the main checking account. Martini’s, lunches out, magazines, etc. – it all comes out of our allowance.

I’m nervous because both of our birthdays hit in October – so each is an opportunity to crash the budget. But the fact is that almost every month will have an “exception-worthy” event (Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years/Easter/etc.), so there’s no time like the present to tame the beast.

My ideas for keeping us on track:
Be super cautious about eating out. We each have one night out for dinner or drinks/appetizers. Have several easy dinners ready for nights where we might feel extra lazy and would be tempted to eat out.
Budget for that night. CC and I each get $XX cash for the night and anything else comes out of allowance.
Add one free/cheap event (museum, cheap movie) to each of our birthdays.
Watch grocery budget to see if we can offset any unexpected splurges.
If we do blow it, move on but recognize what happened.
Stick to budget for each other’s gift(s).

Insofar as you have ideas of how we might succeed – I’m all ears.

Cue ... Leisure!!

Saturday morning I got up hella early to judge a moot court competition. Once I quit feeling sorry for myself, I actually had a wonderful time. It was intellectually engaging and a reminder of what fun I had in high school debate. Haircut day followed. Then photographing the latest production from the theater company I'm on the board of. So at about 7pm, the day's tasks were complete and we were both pooped.

Finally, on Sunday, the payoff.

Yesterday was the first day of purposeful relaxation. We didn’t have anything to do. We woke up at 10:20, 11:30, and then again at 12:30. Lunch and dinner were already prepared.

An overview of the day:
Straightened the house and had lunch while listening to CarTalk.
After lunch, lounged in bed while listening to WaitWaitDon’tTellMe (Mo Rocca was on!).
Wandered over to Loring Park to see the memorial brick donated by friends in honor of our wedding and let little Maggie wander around aimlessly.
Had afternoon drinks at Eli’s and enjoyed the brisk fall air.
CC decided to make brownies, so picked up supplies at Target.
Made dinner.
Watched a documentary called “Seamless” about young fashion designers in 2004.
Watched Doctor Who season finale (it taped months ago, but I wasn’t ready to watch until recently – I hate finales).
Washed dress shirts and pants.
Went to bed.

CC and I kept remarking throughout the day that it all felt a bit … odd. There were projects that could have been done (cleaning up the flowers on the balcony)(hanging more shelves in the bedrooms) but none that were pressing.

I finally bought a strap for my camera and took a bunch of pictures this weekend. Books from the library. Public radio (CC’s a huge fan of SpeakingOfFaith) playing instead of cable. CC made the bread dough for this week’s soup night. And so (hopefully) begins the days of leisure and more purposeful living.

27.8% Fat

I woke up this morning and there was an email from the trainer detailing my weight/fat/lean ratios. You'll recall that I asked very specifically to not know the details yet – and he flaked.

Oh well.

I’ve been sitting around most of the afternoon waiting for a loan deal to come together. Evidently opposing counsel is going to call any moment to negotiate the documents. Which seems odd since this deal “needs” to close today (per the other side).

Sort of a limbo day.

Thank god for Project Runway. I’m very hopeful and eager to see Tim Gunn give Kelsey the smackdown. The Trio is hosting and we’re having seitan meatloaf. I’m a big seitan fan*. Last night CC and I had pasta and pesto with mock-pork/seitan. Actually the can said “Mock Popk” but I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be pork. Very tasty!


* Each time I say “seitan” it makes me think back to Dana Carvey’s churchlady

Glorious relaxation (and CSI Miami)!

Glorious relaxation!

CC was stuck late at work last night, but it was still a great night. I bummed around and straightened the house a bit (which wasn’t too messy thanks to two dinner parties last week) and made the last batch of bread. The dough’s been in the fridge for about two weeks – which is the max time recommended by the book – but it seems to have worked out. It had an almost fermented smell, but tasted good (and neither of us got sick).

Dinner was hella-easy – leftover parsnip puree and turkey meatloaf we made a few weeks ago. Tonight’s pasta & pesto – and garlic toast using the rest of last night’s bread.

Read a bit more of James Beard last night. I know how to make a berry fool!

I’m in the midst of our open-enrollment period at work. My least favorite part is worrying about additional life insurance. Our rule has always been that if either of us dies, the insurance proceeds should pay off the condo – figuring that either of us could live pretty well on any salary if housing is basically free. This year I’m upping the numbers to also allow us to pay off our individual credit card debts and most student loans. So morbid.

Contemplating a reassessment of the 1970s...

Friends from law school were over on Saturday night. We used the pressure cooker to prepare almost the entire meal – and it was far less stressful than usual. I made the ricotta cheesecake the night before, pureed parsnips Saturday morning, and then we pressure cooked the brisket. Sautéed hominy and green beans rounded out the menu.

The hominy recipe was from a 1974 cookbook by James Beard. I’m sort of obsessed with it. It’s like a little window into “gourmet” cooking of that time. Many of the recipes are not weird sounding, but there’s a short piece on sardines that has piqued my interests…
And it’s gotten me to thinkin’ about the whole 1970s style and lifestyle. In many ways, the 70s are the decade I feel the least kinship with. And seeing this book and several articles lately makes me realize I probably misjudged. We shall see.

Busy day at work.

The Great Fitness Challenge

Yesterday was the beginning of my workplace's periodic fitness/weight-loss challenge. I'm hoping the additional support of our personal trainer and the possibility of winning the pot might finally motivate some lasting weight loss. CC and I have been eating so much better lately, but it hasn't seemed to impact our weights.

The trainer (not sure yet what his nickname will be) was very nice – and then he pulled out the calipers. Of course it makes more sense to track fat/lean tissue percentages in addition to overall weight loss, but I’ve never actually been analyzed with the fat pinchers. So I politely told him that he could feel free to not share the results until I asked for them. Hopefully in 10 pounds I feel confident enough to face the music.

So I walked to work this morning.

Success with Tmobile!

Karen at Tmobile listened to my story and took care of the extra phone number! It was only $13 per month, but at the same time, I figured that's $80 between now and next March. They let me cancel that number now, and our other numbers will be up in March (I have a new scheme for that...).

I had a brief chat with Karen's supervisor to let him know what a great job she did, checking the dates of my calls, verifying that they didn't clarify that all three numbers would be impacted, etc.

FYI - when you get a positive outcome from a customer service agent - or even if you didn't, but feel like they actually did their best for you - make sure you chat with a supervisor. Most call centers review people with random samples - whenever someone had written/e-mailed/talked to a supervisor, that customer service agent often gets a small reward/recognition. Sorry for the unsolicited advice, but I spent two years as a customer service person.

Silence

The calls from CC’s credit cards have stopped, thankfully. For some reason, one of his cards was utterly relentless – calling 4+ times a day. Happens to be today’s on-the-verge bank according to the news – karma.

Today I’m pissed at Tmobile.
Last March when I was laid off, I called to cancel our third phone line – it had been my blackberry number at the old firm. Of course I had to speak with a “retention specialist” who blah blah blahed until I agreed to keep the number ‘just in case’. And then I changed our plan.
Yesterday when I tried to cancel that number – which hasn’t been used at all since March – they told me the third number was also under the contract.

So this afternoon I’m going to call again and start working my way up the chain. I’ll make it very clear that if they don’t let me cancel that third number, that they’ll lose the entire account next March.

We’ll see…

The Trio’s coming over tomorrow night for Project Runway, so this week it’s Wednesday Soup Night. The second foray into making bread. Yellow split pea soup – I don’t think I’m going to triple the recipe this time since we’re sort of drowning in carrot soup.

Tuesday Blah-Blah-Blah's

First payment under the debt repayment program goes out today. I’m thrilled and relieved.

I woke up dizzy yesterday so I stayed home from work and spent the day in bed. Sort of refreshing. Scary too. Scary because of the Lehman Brothers meltdown and scary because I loved just laying there, doing nothing.

A bit more cooking last night. Prepped a potato curry for this evening’s dinner – we’re having friends over to celebrate their wedding.

Work’s a bit slow, which is nice. Although I find that when I’m not under a certain amount of time pressure, I just sit here and read the news. And look for additional news sources. And research energy efficiency.

I need a bigger pot!

The debut of Thursday Soup Night was a smashing success. Turns out that our current soup/pasta pot is not quite big enough to triple the soup recipe – I found this out after I’d sautéed the onions and added the five pounds of cut up carrots. I didn’t fret – and made a slightly concentrated carrot soup, then added more water when it was done and blended.

The immersion blender was a HUGE timesaver – so much easier than trying to transfer so much soup in batches to the blender.

The first loaf of bread was also nice. A bit of a learning curve again. You take out some dough, lightly flour, shape into a ball and then let rest for 45 minutes. Unfortunately, I hadn’t laid down enough corn meal on the tray I was using to slide the loaf into the oven. When everything had properly risen and pre-heated – I couldn’t get the loaf off the tray. So in one swift, but inelegant, move I picked up the dough and plopped it onto the baking stone.

CC was very pleased when he got home. He agreed that the bread bore an unfortunate resemblance to a cow pie – but the taste was wonderful!

Leftover soup – three dinners and two lunches for CC and me.

Four Loaves

Made the easy bread dough last night. I used the KitchenAid this time and it was a snap! (last time I tried the food processor – and it overflowed) It’s just a basic white bread – but the book has several other recipes (including dessert dough and whole sandwich bread) that all use the same really easy method. It’s one of those refrigerated wet-dough systems where you don’t knead anything – just mix, let sit in the fridge, and then cut some off and bake!
Here’s info on the book (Minnesota authors):
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/12149761.html?elr=KArks5PhDcU9PhDcU9PhDcUU

In October I’m going to try to transition us to all homemade bread. Since we’ve been taking lunches to work, we’ve been plowing through loaves. Each of which are almost four dollars – and chock full of processing agents.

Last night we also made a vegan black-eyed peas and mushroom curry that we’ll take to our friend’s wedding reception/potluck (and one dinner serving for our deep freeze) and a creamy lentil/chickpea/great northern/butter bean curry (I was cleaning out the pantry) that froze into four dinners plus lunch today for for CC and me.

And finally, I pulled apart cheese slices from Costco and wrapped weekly portions in wax paper for freezing. There’s no way we’d get through two pounds of cheddar, two pounds of Swiss, and two pounds of American cheese food product before it all molded – so now it’s conveniently subdivided and chilled. We'll see how it all that cheese thaws, but it's just for lunch sandwiches, so I'm not to worried.

So the grand total:
18 dinners in the freezer;
14 weeks worth of cheese for lunches;
Not bad for two nights’ work!

Dinner at our best friends tonight and then tomorrow begins the great soup adventure!

Should the deep freezer get a name?

A night off

Instead of making a triple batch of creamy black lentils, we took last night off. It was nice.

Although by “night off” I should clarify that we ran three loads with the dishwasher (since the drain was working again), transferred Sunday night’s curry to the freezer, and cooked a bag of black-eyed peas.

But already we’re seeing the food bank build up. Today’s lunch is Sunday’s curry (yellow split peas smothered in eggplant) and there are three dinner portions in the freezer. Two huge dinner portions of CC’s spicy onion curry (that will be beautiful with chicken or tofu). Eight servings of pesto.
So that’s nearly two weeks of dinners and all we’d have to do is heat water!

The show continues tonight. I’m making a full batch of bread (4 1lb loaves) (for the premier of Thursday Soup Night and Tuesday Soup Lunch). We’re making black-eyed peas and mushroom curry tonight to take to a wedding potluck on Friday. And we’re also making another triple batch of split pea/chickpea curry that will be our dinner tonight and hopefully a few meals to come.

Lots of cooking!

Saturday morning I finished the September menu. A bit more exhausting than just a weekly menu – but not proportionately more. We loaded up on dried beans and other staples at SuperTarget and other basics at Costco.

Yesterday CC and I started the day at the Farmer’s Market – we found the remaining items on the grocery list, including a ton of basil ($1 per bunch) and a huge bucket of carrots for $4 (they were the ugly carrots).

Now that the deep freeze is installed – it’s time to cook much fabulous food!
So we cooked. We took a break for a tasty beverage and then headed back up to cook again. Unfortunately the sink was plugged and water had backed up into the kitchen. Drano, drano, and more drano last night appear to have fixed the problem for now. And to ensure it doesn’t return, we’re going to use the garbage disposal less and also institute some green home remedies I found online.
But we kept cooking. Two different curries, each recipe tripled. And I made eight two-person servings of pesto. And then we froze everything!

Tonight we’re shopping for a stock pot. We’ve got an 8 quart pot, but that won’t be enough for soup when I triple the recipe. That folly begins this coming Thursday when I make carrot-ginger soup!

All in all – I’m very encouraged. Monthly shopping for staples – and then smaller, precise shopping for fresh vegetables each week.

Two asides:
I’m making pizza dough next weekend. We’ve been fond of Boboli’s – but I noticed that even at SuperTarget they were $4.20 each!
The soup folly requires much much chicken stock. We thought it would be cheaper to buy the larger cartons of stock, rather than 6 cans – but I decided we should do the math. Turns out that 6 cans of stock was slightly more than $1 cheaper than the cartons. Ugh!

Freezer – freezer! I can’t wait to stock the freezer!

The deep freezer is scheduled to arrive today – and I can’t wait! So many nights it feels like we get home, clean and cook, and then we’re too tired to do anything else. To tired to sit and read a book, or work out, or go to a museum, or to a movie at the $3 theater… and weekends lately have felt the same way.
Since I’ve already been keeping the menu planner and planning sometimes two weeks out, I figure that with just a bit more administrative oversight I’ll be able to save us from having to do intensive cooking most weeknights!
Here’s an article I found inspiring:
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/06/15/a-beginners-guide-to-once-a-month-cooking/

My birthday’s just over a month away and I realize I’ve gotten so much older this last year. Taxed by wedding drama(s), getting laid off, thinking we’d be forced into bankruptcy, taking another pay cut for a new job. Then this summer realizing (finally) that we have no option but to adjust our financial behavior. And having spent the last two months working on the budget and systems, making to-do lists, etc. – I’m really worn out. Maybe I’ll be able to take some time off in September and just do nothing, or go to free museums, the library...

The new financial plan started on September 1. CC and I still need to establish accounts for our allowances and we need to gather funds scattered in several accounts to consolidate into an emergency fund.
Strict budget adherence started September 1 – so we’re no longer using the debit card willy-nilly – but we’ve cheated the last two nights, stopping by our neighborhood watering hole for nightcaps – and not allocating them to our allowance money. But we had dinner at home and both took lunches to work.

And the paperwork is in for the debt reduction plan. First payment is on 9/16. It feels sort of freeing to think that one piece of the overall plan is in place. CC’s been getting tons of calls from one of his credit cards – I know it’s been stressing him out – so it will great to have those stop.


A final aside, I'm really tired of helicopters (one hovered over our building last night for over an hour). It will be so nice when the Republicans shove off and my fair city will no longer feel like a police state.