pork chops, baked stuffed potatoes, and cake.

Is there a better dinner than this? Seriously? Cause if so I don't know what it is. I'm seriously looking forward to dinner tonight, even though I'm currently dead tired, the living room floor is covered with itty bits of paper from Tiff's pick-pick-picking at everything with words or pictures on it, and it's thursday.

Doesn't that mean that this week is nearly over? That soon we'll have a whole new week to look at? That before we know what's happening, it'll be a whole new month?

No time at all before my little girl is grown up. Like my mom's little girl grew up. Sometimes I wish I could take back all those years and be her little girl again... but I don't want to take back the bad as well as the good. Only go back to the good; take with me the best of the Now. Good times.

I noticed that every so often Grocery Outlet has some pretty sweet deals. It makes shopping there fun, and no so much like I'm trawling the bottom bargain basement deals... This week, for example, I scored 8oz bars of Land O Lakes cheddar for 79cents. That's what, half price? I also picked up some sausages yesterday that I'm making for tonight's dinner. Cross my fingers, I don't know what they'll turn out like since it's a type and brand I've never heard of, but it sounded yummy just from the label.

Garlic, basil, sundried tomato sausages. Hmm. The pack made 8 little 3"-4" segments, and it was 2.49. This won't break the bank. I fried and simmered them up on the stove a little while ago but haven't tasted it yet. From the smell alone I'd say we have a winner. Maybe I should try to eek out a few more pennies from my sugar bowl bank and grab another pack before they're all gone?

A great way to incorporate relaxation breathing into daily life- bubbles. You know you need to take those deep, cleansing breaths. Maybe you're working on increasing lung capacity, or on reclaiming it from the stress that gets you all knotted up inside. It's hard to know when you're doing it right, hard to tell exactly when the breathing is only another way to express your built-up tension.

I blow bubbles almost every day with my two year old. She loves them. Aside from being pretty, they are another way to play with mommy. She has my undivided attention. In the shade, they're cool. In the sun, they're shimmery and beautiful. I blow them inside, sitting on a chair, sitting on the floor, or standing up and moving around. One thing I've discovered with blowing bubbles is that I get the best results by a slow and steady blow- the same sort of exhale that comes with doing the deep breathing properly. I've now got a few times a day in which I stop, step back from everything else going on, and there's nothing to focus on but the smiles on my baby's face and the breathing. And the bubbles.

Talk about the ultimate in multitasking!

Beer and Pizza time again, where does the week go?

A highlight of our day so far:

woke up to the absence of screaming, shrieking, or emergency vehicles. Decided that the house could run without me a while longer. Went back to sleep.

Woke up again. Suspiciously quiet. Ventured out of bed to find a toddler happily watching PBS and husband happily gaming.

After cleaning the kitchen and beginning to tackle the laundry Situation (3 loads clean to put away, 2 loads dirty to wash, an untold amount of stuff that cannot be identified as one or the other due to toddler learning how to pull out her clean clothes and built a nest in them).

Went to the store to get milk, cheese, pepperoni- the key things for a successful Friday Pizza/Beer event. It's been french bread pizzas for weeks now and I'm starting to like it a lot better than the cardboard box delivery stuff. I don't have to look at the remnants of the pizza, it's hot in the toaster by the plate, doesn't take much to make it and best of all it's about a third the price of a standard delivery. Today that's even cheaper: 68 cents a loaf for french bread at walmart (on sale, fresh baked), the cheese is 1.66 a bag (it'll last maybe until tomorrow's breakfast, we're heavy on cheese around here), pepperoni for 2 dollars a bag (it will last two weeks or more) and canned tomatoes (62cents a can) drained and seasoned up with basil that I've grown on the windowsill.

All told this pizza night is 6.26. That's using all the bread, cheese, pepperoni, 2 cans tomatoes. The beer is for the Boy; Amber Bock at 4.97 plus CRV. Just under 12 bucks for the whole night. I think that's a pretty good bargain.

dinner tonight is not fancy; more a method of throwing random leftovers and pantry stuff into a pot and see what happens.

I have a quarter of a picked-over bbq chicken that I got for Sunday lunch. A box of pasta-roni. A can of corn. It smells really good; right now we're letting it set a minute so that the sauce will thicken up.

I'm feeling awfully tired and sluggish today. This promises to be a nice, yummy, dinner.

I am ashamed to admit that I'm not coming up with any ideas this week, and I lost my costco receipt from last week, and so I'm opening up a question to the general public:

What's your favorite Mama-hack? In other words, what one thing enables you to retain the greater part of sanity in your life?

Rest assured, I'll be back to update this soon. It's been a week; payday came and went and while we acheived our #1 goal of no overdraft we paid all the bills and ended up with maybe a fifth of the pay left. Which is nice, but OY! Sticker shock, much?

The good part is that my netflix rental finally arrived; it wasn't available any closer than MA- which is literally an entire country away from us. There are not many states further away from central CA than MA. I really hope this disc is everything I hoped it would be. Kinda eccentric. I have a knack for picking eccentric and outre things. At that, I'm being charitable. It's probably more accurate to say that I have a knack for being wierd and picking the wierdest shit that noone I know has ever heard of.

The Apple Report:

Tiff loved it. I'm eating the rest of it poured over homemade bread. It's safe to say that this is a huge winner over here.

Melt 1 Tbsp butter in frying pan. Brown 1 apple- cut into chunks/wedges/bits. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

Eat.

Simple, quick, tastes good. With the added bonus over store-bought that I actually know to the last bit what is in this. Makes me feel better as a mom.

Coming soon: the panfried apple report

Stay tuned for the toddler rating. Yummy? Hide in Mommy's hair because maybe Mommy won't notice? It could go either way today.

New Fav Summer Supper!

tuna salad, over tomatos (the canned diced tomatos, drained) with a side of mahatma saffron rice.

It felt right, and the fryup the other night didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped -I blame many factors, including the part where the rice I used hadn't been fully cooked and turned up with a crunchy center. And so I was still craving rice.

Now? I'm so stocking up on saffron rice this week. I adore it, even though I probably shouldn't cause it's more expensive than regular long-grain white rice. The taste is only part of it. The biggest love comes from having the whole spice packet included and I just have to add water and simmer.

Simple Leftover Fryup

I've got a cup and a half of frozen mixed vegetables that are thawing. Maybe two cups of rice. A couple of porkchops. I'm going to cut the pork into strips and stirfry, then add the other stuff and fry some more. Then I'm going to smother it in alfredo sauce, since I feel like alfredo and don't have stirfry sauce in the house.

I've got a couple of rolls as well, and I could turn them into garlic toast while the rest of it is cooking. Sounds yummy. Added benefit? It's going to clean out my fridge.

Ooooh, just remembered I have two eggs left. Beat them and toss them into the fryup? Maybe. Anything goes tonight.


Shopping Alert: I am going to do my every-other month stockup at costco this week. When the list has been prepared, I'll share. This is the major pantry stockup; during which I purchase everything bulk that I like to have on hand all the time. The stockup is what enables me to go 6 weeks living paycheck to paycheck with hardly any slush in the budget for things like bread, soup, "extra" items.

I'm still finding new ways to use clothespins. Who would have thought that I'd like them this much? Granted, I only like the clippy type of pin; the straight wood peg does nothing for me. I like using them to clip the tops of bags, both frozen veggies and cereal- forget lusting after those special plastic bag clips. Why spend more for them when you can keep a bucket of clothespins under the sink?

This week so far I've used them to hang my elastic dish covers, fasten the silicone baking sheets to the dishwasher rack for drying, keep the toddler out of cereal bags, clip a dishtowel around her neck as a makeshift bib, hold my hair out of the sink while I was doing dishes, and a few other things that I can't remember right now.

I never got into using bibs for this child. They seem to be so one-purpose. When the meal's over I still had to go and find a clean wipe to tidy her hands and face, then deal with all the cleanup and remember to get the bib to the laundry basket. And then the bibs started to get too small. They were always too big or too small, she plays with them and sometimes it was impossible to get her to sit still enough that I didn't run the risk of choking her while applying the bib... but clothespins? I can fit a whole dishtowel over her front, there's always a dry bit that I can use to wipe hands and face before de-bibing her, and I get to keep my one bucket of dishtowels for multitasking in the kitchen. Winner!

Plus, clipping the towel to one side takes one hand and minimal child-shuffling to go quickly to mealtime.

I've been looking over all the stuff I've learned about tea tree oil and it's uses over the past year and thought I'd share some of it with you. It has proven to be the best cleaning agent I know of, meeting my personal criteria of effectiveness, price, and safety. With every other cleaner I've tried I was worried about rinsing afterwards, because I didn't want the residue of it to come in contact with my food or my daughter's internal organs (she's mostly over her habit of plastering an open mouth and tongue to every surface she encounters, but the knowledge of what she must be ingesting makes me cringe even now.) The tough and tender spray, I don't worry. I don't have to run her highchair tray through the dishwasher anymore, which never fit right in the dishwasher without it being the only thing in there. This saves the time, money, and both of those are in short supply around here.

The laundry detergents I switched to: to start with, I don't need bleach anymore. Last's week's stain on the Boy's Whites is undetectable to him, although I didn't do anything special in the laundry this time. Not even pretreating. I just used the detergent and the melaleuca equivalent to Clorox 2 and presto! Clean, sparkling Whites. Cheaper too.

The personal care products? Shampoo that lets me wash my hair three times a week instead of every day this month to get rid of the flakiness and general ick that hot weather creates? Shampoo that doubles as an effective body wash on those days when I'm covered in outside dust, bug crap, and the kind of dirt only a small human can instill on it's mother? No more scrubbing of my skin trying to get all that off with three or four applications of heavy soap and a stiff brush. And it smells good. Acne treatment that works in a cream I can apply post-shower? Since I have to use it over most of my torso this is a majorly good thing for me.

Read some of the product literature, and the oil is a natural germicide/anti-bacterial. With the happy note of not killing the skin of the person using the product, just the invisible nasties that it's meant to kill. Talked to my grandmother, who has the dry and cracked skin of her years and medical conditions; it's working better than the uber-expensive stuff her doctor tried to prescribe. Talked to my mother, who has allergies and gets sick from breathing the fumes coming off normal cleaners in a ventilated environment- she doesn't get sick with this.

I guess I'm sold. No. I Know I'm sold. I'm going to keep on with this stuff. Better, cheaper, and safer.

I just got around to cleaning up a little of the house- I don't tend to count the normal chore roster as "cleaning up". Dishes, laundry, toy picking up; those are all necessary things that get done every day come hell or high water. Vacuuming happens as toddler and time permit. I've been particularly peeved at myself for the past two weeks because while I'm able to come up with ideas and plans for getting beyond the daily chores and into spring cleaning stuff I can't seem to get the time or energy to do these things. Today, I've done it.

Whether or not this has to do with the part about my caffeine intake has now regained the level it was at before I lost all that time and energy... let's not go there, okay? Let's focus on the positive. I'm reclaiming my living room. I'm reclaiming the kitchen table. One of these not-too-far off days I'm going to rediscover that there really is a kitchen counter underneath the piles of stuff and assorted trash that's built up. Why do we save all these bits of paper that come into the house? Why do we save oodles of things that we'll never use again, never see again, never need for any reason at all? It's not that much harder to put it in the trashcan than it is to put it on the counter. Is there hope that I can be retrained? Is there the possibility of *gasp* a picture perfect house in my future?

Note: I have a two year old. I'm not looking at an issue of Beautiful Homes here. I'd settle for something lived in but extraneous-clutter free.

French Bread Pizza

First, make a batch of bread to the recipe I posted down a bit. When you get to the shaping part, divide the dough into two pieces. Roll it out with your hands like two playdough ropes, then set it on your greased cookie sheet and let rise the second time until roughly double. Bake at 350 until done -somewhere between 45-60 minutes.

The doneness test that I was taught is as follows. Use your fingers to lightly tap the top of the loaf. It should sound hollowy. If it sounds like you're tapping a brick, it's not done. If it feels like you're tapping the table top (remember, folks, the table top has a lot of air underneath it thus creating that nifty hollow sound) then it's done. My mother used her fingertips. I'm always a little afraid of burning my hands in the process, so I reach in the oven with either the flat side of a knife or a wooden spoon.

Options: brush the tops of the loaves with garlic butter before baking. Sprinkle the tops with a little bit of Mrs Dash. Or shredded cheese. Or if you feel ambitious, do all three!

So you've got your french bread. When it's cooled off, split the loaves, spoon some sauce over them and top with cheese, toppings, whatever, and then back in the oven until it's all melty and toasty and wonderful.

Of course you can substitute store-bought bread. I recommend using the day old stuff, on the reduced shelf. Since it's stale it will soak up the sauce and toppings better. As far as what sauce to use... I don't bother buying pizza sauce anymore. I use spaghetti sauce from a can. The store brand that's in an unattractive can may not be all gourmet, but it's a very decent basic sauce. I can add my own basil, other herbs, meat, to suit the tastes of my family at any given time. Plus, it's almost always the cheapest brand on the shelf! I win again!

Hawaii Pork and Pineapple, modified from the WW cookbook I referenced earlier in the week.

4 boneless pork chops, cut into 1" chunks.
1 can chunk pineapple, no sugar added, drained
1 can water chesnuts, drained

Stirfry the pork cubes until they start browning up. Add the pineapple and water chesnuts, and continue to cook until the pork is done and the veggies are browning. Serve over steamed rice or alongside of wild rice pilaf. I almost always go for the serve over bit, because our family is fond of the meal-in-a-bowl concept. Less dishes, easier to balance on lap while eating in front of computer or tv.