Food Waste Friday

We had some old ravioli and some angel hair with garlic butter sauce that needed to be thrown out. The angel hair was something found in the BACK of the fridge. I really should clean that out every week. This will probably be a much bigger blog entry.

I'm sorry that this entry is late today. I had to take my son to the doctor early this morning for a follow-up from the ER/Hospital stay.  He's still on his breathing treatments every 6 hours and he's now on an antibiotic because she wasn't happy with how his ear was looking. She is also looking for a pediatric allergist to start running tests on him for allergies. She said that since he's been to the doctor/ER 3 times since Christmas for such severe asthma attacks, she wants to find the underlying causes. And that it's protocol to see if there is a pattern, rather than just a single random occurrence.  So with that, it's been a rather busy day. And with him being only 16 months old, on a stronger than usual dose of albuterol, he's quite hyper the rest of the day. So I'm constantly keeping him from killing something because he has more energy than even HE can expend.

I found out yesterday morning that my uncle passed away. My Mom has now lost 2 of her 4 brothers. She's handling it better than I thought, but I'm afraid that will all fall down like a house of cards in a hurricane tomorrow at his wake. I also have a baby shower to attend this weekend. And at any other time, it wouldn't be such a big deal, and I could go to both the shower and the wake. They are actually back to back and in the same small town. However, I refuse to take my son to a funeral just yet, and I can't very well take him to a baby shower while he's this sick. So, I am going to have to beg out of both tomorrow. His father is going to come home as early as possible on Sunday, catch a nap, and get up early enough so I can go to my uncle's funeral. Then when I'm home, go back to sleep. Which I know I'm laying out my plans to everyone. It's just really been heavy on my mind. My uncle was a very sick man. He had had his first heart attack at age 30. He is 54. He would have been 55 come July. His kidneys have been failing him because his heart is so weak, it cannot push the blood through his glomerulus in order to form urine. So output must equal input. If it doesn't, it means that all those toxins are still in the blood. So, needless to say, he was very sick. So this wasn't a surprise. But it still has me thinking about our genetics and our choices in life and how that can affect our outcomes. And this is scary. My uncle wasn't a big man. He ate relatively healthy, he was always active until he had such a hard time breathing (again, weak heart beat means not as much oxygen getting to the cells, causes issues with respiration). And since I have an endocrine issue I get my sugar, thyroid and lipid profiles done every year. I have a poor diet, I don't exercise like I should, and my levels are still perfect. Doesn't mean that I CAN'T have a heart attack tomorrow, however overall, I'm a relatively healthy person. And his dying and his struggles in the last 25 years of his life are making me take issue with my own choices and my own lifestyle. Look for some changes coming soon. Because that very well could be me in 20 years. And honestly, my little boy needs his Mommy a little longer than that.

Food Waste Friday/Menu

We had some food waste this week as well. Booooo! There was a couple of wasted onions that I didn't get to in time. Also, there was some wasted Spanish Tortilla that I made for my Spanish class. It was interesting. I think there are things I could have done better with it. So I'll have to try it again soon. We also had a couple of bread tragedies here in the land of Tracy. We had the tail end of an Italian loaf go wrong, and we had a few slices of sandwich bread go bad. The sandwich bread was really annoying because it was still well within its expiration date. But oh well. C'est la vive. Sra. J, if you could tell me how to say that in Spanish, I'd use it instead because I really don't know French. I'm working on the now waste. Gotta get back on the no waste Friday!

Now onward to the menu!

Due to some unforeseen events this past week, 2 meals will have to be moved to this week instead.

So, without further ado, here's the menu

Breakfasts will be cereal, muffins, oatmeal, etc.

Lunches will be leftovers, sandwiches, etc.

Suppers are as follows:

Saturday
*Spaghetti
*Salad
*Garlic Bread

Sunday
*BBQ Ribs (carried over from last week)
*Mashed Potatoes
*Green beans

Monday
*Fish fillets
*Baked fries

Tuesday
*complete meal in a bag (Carried over from last week)

Wednesday
*Pizza day!

Thursday
*Fried Chicken
*Mac-n-cheese
*Mixed squash

Friday *New Recipe Night*
*Creamy lasagna casserole (Taste of home cookbook)

Food Waste Friday/Menu...

As a means of keeping myself accountable for the wasted food in the house, I followed The Frugal Girl's lead. So every week will be a post about how much food was wasted for the week.


Well, this week was not a triumphant week in the land of Tracy. We did have some waste. :( We had about a third of an italian loaf go to waste, a quarter of a sandwich loaf go to waste, and way too much ground beef, that I'd rather not talk about. It makes me WAY too sad to think on it. The italian loaf, I just couldn't figure out what ELSE to do with it. The sandwich loaf bums me because we were about to have some pb &j's when I figured out that the mold monster had gotten it before I could finish it off. So lunch was delayed while I was scrambling about trying to figure what else to have. And again, the ground beef I don't want to discuss...

Now onto the menu for next week. I repeat I absolutely LOVE this new habit of mine. We're fine tuning it. We've realized that breakfast and lunches are pretty much the same all week and are always on the fly/leftovers, etc. But this DOES make supper making so much easier when you know exactly what you're having, so you can make it. PLUS it makes grocery shopping faster and easier. No more going down EACH isle trying to find stuff to eat. YAY! Anyways! ONWARD yon menu!!!

Breakfasts will be the usual cereal, toast, eggs, pancakes. Lunches are leftovers and sandwiches.

Saturday
*Fried Pork Chops
*Baked Sweet Potatoes
*corn

Sunday
*Complete meal in a bag (need to get it out of the freezer)

Monday
*Ribs (bbq/glazed)
*Mashed potatoes
*Green beans

Tuesday
*Grilled burgers and hotdogs
*fries

Wednesday
*Pizza Night!!!

Thursday
*Steak
*Baked potato
*Salad

Friday (new recipe night)
*Roasted Italian Chicken w/ veggies (Meals with a Mission Cook Book)

Saturday
*Spaghetti
*Garlic bread

Food Fridays!

Food Friday! Happy days are here again! As you know Fridays are the days that we look in our fridges and in our fruit baskets and bread bins and onion/potato bins and check to see if we have food a'wastin that needs to be tossed out. This really happens on Thursday for me as my local trash pickup is on Friday. So my city trash bin is at the curb awaiting the city boys arrival. And drum roll please...... No waste this week. :D HURRAY! HURRAY! Too good to be true! :D YAY! My food waste has gone down tremendously since I started making a weekly menu. My grocery bill has gone way down as well! I seem to have more groceries than ever, yet by this time every week, it's getting low. Good thing though. Out of all the changes I've made recently, this one is the simplest, most effective, and already most relied upon habit. I love it, love it, love it!

I think I'm going to combine things on Friday. Food waste as well as my menu for next week. So that way if there is any particular recipes that you want, you can let me know and by Wednesday I can post the recipe on "Wednesday's Hearth". Sound good to you? Sounds good to me!

Anyways, here we go for our menu for the next week. We'll go from Saturday-Friday and I'll give you an idea of every day. Also, if you wanted to check out a good menu planner, to make it simple and sweet go to Econobusters It's an E-book that has printable menu templates and a grocery list as well as recipe cards. Plus she has some menus in the end. I've tried a few and they're pretty good. :)

Ok, on to the Menu!
Since we have such a surplus of cereal in this house, breakfast will be cereal! Yay go Cereal!

Lunches will be a mixture of leftovers, pb&j's, sandwiches, soups, salads, etc. Mostly just for things that are laying around. Chicken nuggets for Lil Mr. V. that sort of thing.

Suppers

Saturday
*Beef Stew

Sunday
*BBQ Ribs
*Mac-n-cheese
*Broccoli

Monday
*Leftovers or
*Sandwiches

Tuesday
*Pizza

Wednesday
*Grilled Pork Chops and Brats
*Baked Beans
*Mashed Potatoes

Thursday
*Baked Chicken
*Au Gratin Potatoes
*Green Beans

Friday
*Burger Tortilla Casserole (new recipe)
*Spanish Rice


So do you guys keep a weekly planned menu? Do you cook whatever you're in the mood for? What is new that you guys have recently made? Willing to swap recipes?

Food Waste Friday

This week we had a little food waste. I had made some homemade chicken gravy. I have learned that it doesn't hold up well in the fridge. So it was chucked. As well as some sour cream that the remnants went bad before we had our fajitas last night. Thursdays are the leftover day. And we had plenty of bells cut up, so I made chicken fajitas to use them up. For my first bunch of fajitas, I did rather well I think. I have a goal of spending 75$/week for groceries, and so far we're sticking to that rather well. Now this does NOT factor in how much Mr. V spends. Because he buys those energy drinks sometimes and he will buy something for his lunch if he doesn't feel like eating what I've sent with him. So, as far as the grocery bill goes, we're in budget.

As for sewing news....I got a really pretty burgundy outer cloth shower curtain and some interesting striped sturdy cloth for a whole $1.99. I think I'm going to make my modified Tiny Happy Bag out of that. I want more organization in my bags. I hate carrying a purse and a diaper bag and etc etc. I feel like a bellhop. So I'm going to create 2 pockets in this bag, one for a couple of diapers and some wipes and maybe a sippy cup and small toy. And the other pocket will have pockets to hold my spare car door key and my wallet and a cell phone. And I'll have a loop with a small carabiner to hook my keys. There will be a few things loose in the bottom, but nothing like otherwise.