Why do I alter nearly every recipe I make? Where does one draw a line between acceptable convenience and thrift? It's hard- one woman chooses to spend her budget on x but not y and her neighbor scoffs because to her x is an unnecessary luxury. Who makes that decision? I have two shelves of cookbooks and recipes. Some are based on convenience foods, canned cream soups and boxed mac'n'cheese. Some come with lists of fresh vegetables and spices and presume that you have a freezer full of homemade stock. Personally I take a middle ground between the extremes. While I do enjoy preparing those fancy meals time means that I can't spend hours prepping vegetables. Frozen pre-peeled and chopped? You betcha. White sauces share kitchen time with cream soups and stock bubbles in my crockpot only two or three times a year.

Last night I altered a recipe designed for my diabetic diet. Take out some spices, substitute juices and type of rice, cooking method and time. Is it still the same recipe I started with? I'd say- vaguely. Very loosely based on the original. Unless stated otherwise all the recipes I post here are such vague interpretations of the original and tailored to my needs and convenience.

The same could be said of housekeeping. One person scrubs daily. One uses the Swiffer system. Another clips coupons and eats lentil soup by the pot to pay for a cleaning service twice a month. It all depends on what works.

Apricot Chicken:

4 chicken breasts (half a 3lb bag of frozen skinless boneless breasts)
1 1/2 cups orange juice
1 cup low-sugar apricot preserves (smuckers makes one)
three or four good shakes of allspice

mix up in gallon-size ziploc bag and sit out to defrost, turning every couple of hours. When defrosted and ready to cook, pour out over cooked rice in the bottom of a 9x13 baking pan. I used leftover rice that had been sitting around for a few days. Or you could use 3-4 cups of a new batch. Whatever works. Cover and bake for about an hour at 350 or until the chicken is done.

Leftover Surprise was on the table for lunch today. I chopped up leftover turkey, tossed it with half a jar of leftover cheesy alfredo sauce, tossed that with a bag of frozen green beans and topped with half a cup of italian breadcrumbs spritzed with two tablespoons of melted butter. Real butter.

I may be watching carbs, but I have to have real butter in some things. This is one of them. It may have been solely a figment of my imagination, but I choose to believe that the real butter made it taste better.

Of course, the Toddler took one look at it and screamed for a poppysicle. Such is the fun of life around a two year old. Every time she goes to church she grazes off her plate, my mom's plate, and my plate to get the maximum treats she can scrounge up. The end result of this being, of course, that she is never really that hungry at lunchtime.

Did everyone have a great thanksgiving? We did. Despite me not being able to really get off the couch, and the rest of the family recovering from one massive cold, we managed to pull off a decent spread. The Toddler enjoyed everything except the cranberry sauce- I think she was expecting a different flavor when she crammed the lump in her mouth, which is why it all came right back out with a complaint. She loved the french vanilla ice cream though, and the cool whip.

Yesterday was Black Friday, a massive event of consumerism that has either surpassed last year or been horribly disappointing, depending upon which network you're reading. I only went out because there was a big computer chair that I needed to get the Boy for Christmas. You can see what happened here. Fortunately I survived little worse for wear, although when I saw my blood pressure numbers I shuddered and once again vowed to take it easy, stay off my feet, and behave.

See how long that lasts? Maybe a day. Maybe less. I'm feeling more worn out than ever. On the other hand I did get the last chair in the store and today I'm spending it in my jammies and fuzzy bathrobe. Thank God you don't have to get dressed up to type on the Net.

Why is it that the manufacturers of car seats find the need to name each pattern of seatcover fabric some ridiculous thing? And then discontinue the pattern every season? Is it really so important? Why can't they just make the things in solid colors or one consistent pattern? I swear; two years ago we got a zooy animal print. We now need to replace the seat and the car seat base. That's fine. I didn't expect to match it. But how in the world can I "almost" match it... with two different choices, both with ridiculous names, and one is so much cheaper because it's a discontinued fabric? I think the only difference is the pattern of palm trees strewn through the thing.

I expect to have several more rants about the changes in baby gear in the past two and a half years. Stay tuned for more insanity brought to you today by the baby industry. Which is beginning to make the Wedding Industry seem sane to me.

One of the biggest things I learned from reading FlyLady is that as long as it gets done, does it matter how? Is a room any less clean for being done in five minute bursts over the 8 hour day instead of being done in a two hour frenzy of cleaning that makes me want to cut corners by the end? Those five minutes are quality segments, not something that starts out quality and ends in slackness. Also there's the concept of being more gentle with yourself in order to get it done. Don't focus on the ten things you didn't get done in a day, look at the stuff you did get done.

My living room is a mess, true. There are dustbunnies under my unmade bed that may have formed a civilization of their own. Yet my sink is clean, the dishes are done, the trash is taken out every night. Laundry is done and put away, not stacked all over the house. This is good.

So to keep on keeping on- I shouldn't be overly worried how I'm going to handle my new baby and new responsibilities. I should be focused just on keeping on. My sink is still going to get cleaned, my dishes put away, the trash taken out. It's such an automagical thing for us that nobody thinks twice about those things. That's the style of housekeeping I want to get to. It's possible. As long as I focus, it's possible.

One more time I'm fighting the fight of the disposable diaper vs cloth. One more time I'm wondering if this is the right solution for us? If ease is worth more than green, if the pennies are pinched to throw away dollars? I don't know. I'm still hashing this one out.

I think the only way to know for sure is to try it. We're going to try, to make the effort, to do what we can to make life a little better for all of us. If we go cloth, more money will be left. If I cannot breastfeed due to similar circumstances of last time, we'll have to buy formula- and the income limits will now price us out of WIC. Maybe not for the specialty stuff if we've got another SGA preemie, but is that something I want to hope for just to avoid the expense of formula? I'd rather tighten the belts a little further to buy it at the store. And just maybe we'll get a bouncing big boy, hm? One that does not need ICU care and time. One that sleeps through the night and changes his own nappies- hah! Delusional, much? And while I'm wandering through the land of make-believe, why not wish for a few golden nesteggs?

Do you know what I need? A Complete Idiot's Guide to Everything. Think about it. Such a volume would be immense. It would cover everything in the universe. There would be simple, easy to follow checklists and instructions for every last little bit of how to run your life or household or how to breathe.

Somehow I don't think it would sell a lot of copies though.

I find myself wishing sometimes for someone to give me that magic checklist. But it wouldn't be my magic checklist unless I was the one to create it. Everyone's life is different and so are their needs. That's what keeps it interesting for the rest of humanity.

Bedrest is cheap. Apart from the boredom, the need to get up just for a minute to do just one more thing that I can't do while laying on my side. So what to do? Dig out again all the serious reading books that I used while suffering my horrid insomnia in the first year of motherhood? Those are great- I could never quite sleep at night, but I could be improving my mind. Which helps, believe it or not. I've been steadily queuing up my library list.

The problem with my reading seems to be that I read too fast and absorb the book rather than "reading" it in the normal fashion. I can knock off a couple books a day if there are no distractions. This is the problem. Other women in this spot could get a stack of paperbacks next to the bed or couch and be set for a few days. A week. Me? An afternoon. With predictable results. I come to the door of the room all whiny that "There's nothing to read". While staring at 7 laden shelving units filled to overflowing with books that I've read cover to cover so many times that I might be able to still quote a few of them.

What are your thoughts about this? Looking for a few good recommendations.

How do I define myself? What are my labels, my tags? Whyever on earth does this matter so much to me? Is it that I'm so insecure- or is it more that the normal validation that everyone needs must currently come from a far more limited source? A two year old, after all, does not provide much in the way of nuance in feedback.

Yet I push on. Thrift in juggling our resources. Repurposing. Squeezing those nickels and dimes- even finding ways to make real money blogging, which I'd still be doing just to let myself feel like a productive member of society. Those five dollars here and there for paid posts on Another Day in Paradise do help out here and there. It's my pin money. I can contribute to this family in ways other than the housewife gig.

But why is it so awfully important that I feel that the housewife thing isn't quite enough as a personal career?

What do you think about gDiapers? They have flushable liner inserts, the standard cloth cover, and they seem very fine. That's the problem for me. They seem fine. But how would it work for us in real life? How many parents get so attached to the thought of cloth diapering, stock up on what they think is going to work (it has great reviews, so why shouldn't it be the best?) and when reality takes a turn from their fantasies throw up their hands and go right to disposables by the case?

Not that there's anything wrong with that either. I am a believer in disposables. Especially for those who can't afford a weekly service or have no access to washing machines on a regular basis. I'm just saying... Reality trumps the imagination in nearly every circumstance. Penny wise and pound foolish wastes a lot of your precious time and energy that could be better spent with your family.

In the kitchen- meatballs!

One of my new favorite pantry staples are frozen meatballs. They're precooked, individually frozen so they don't clump up into one whole ugly mess. I can microwave 4 or 5 for a quick snack with mozarella cheese and a spoon of spaghetti sauce -great for the current gestational-diabetes diet. I can nuke a cup and a half of them and toss into a box of hamburger helper for a quick last minute dinner. I bought a big bag of them for cheap, and they stretched with almost daily use for about 2 weeks. Very easy and delicious.

A science experiment that we're going to try in the next couple of days, involving baking soda and vinegar. Do you remember when you learned what a fun chemical reaction can be had by these two simple things? We're going to rake up an anthill, douse it with the baking soda raked in the dirt, and pour vinegar over the top.

I suspect this will be interesting. And fun. And hey, if yardwork can be combined with fun AND get rid of ants invading my personal space?

I'm all for that as well.