Monday, November 29, 2010

Not Dead Yet... And a Favorite Quote

Yet being the operative word.

I have had zero energy for blogging, which you'll observe in my extreme lack of posts for the past while.

Posture Updates? None
Random Cooking Stories? Zilch
Healthier Eating Choices? Nada
Grocery Calculations? Zip
Food Waste Posts? HaHaHa

In short, I'm alive, but I just haven't had the energy to share my life much lately. Also, I got sick over Thanksgiving and have been sleeping a lot.

Perhaps tomorrow I will resume posting about.. something.

Until then, I'll leave you with possibly my favorite quote ever, which I'll probably dissect / massacre at a later date.

"He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." -- Jim Elliot

Monday, November 22, 2010

Day 16

For those of you just joining me, you can find my first post in this series here. Basically, I am on a 1 month journey to perfect better posture!

Well hello there,

I officially am sick of working on my posture. I am sticking it out, but it's really hard. My muscles just don't like it one bit. They would much rather do what they're used to doing--nothing!

I didn't do so good over the weekend, but I did alright. I think I need to put up some post-it notes to remind me to continue to sit / stand up straight during all these different times because otherwise I forget. Also, sitting up straight all through church really hurt! I don't know why though. Maybe I need to start stretching / exercising my back muscles a little bit every night to help with this project...

It's time for a new goal!

Goal 06: Sit up straight while blogging (ha!). (I am currently slouching as I type this)
Goal 6.5: sit up straight from 9am to 10am at work (expanding on goal 2.5).

Let's review my other goals so far:

Goal 01: Sit up straight while eating breakfast.
Goal 02: Stand up straight while brushing my hair and teeth.
Goal 2.5: Sit / Stand up straight at work from 9:00am to 9:30am.
Goal 03: Sit up straight during lunch.
Goal 04: Sit up straight during dinner.
Goal 05: Stand up straight while cooking dinner / doing chores.
Goal 5.5: Sit / stand up straight during church / chapel.

So, that's that. My muscles are so not happy with this project. I'm half done, I can do this.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Day 13

A new goal today!

For those of you just joining me, you can find my first post in this series here. Basically, I am on a 1 month journey to perfect better posture!

Goal 05: Stand up straight while cooking dinner / doing chores.
Goal 5.5: Sit / stand up straight during church / chapel.

Let's review my other goals so far:

Goal 01: Sit up straight while eating breakfast.
Goal 02: Stand up straight while brushing my hair and teeth.
Goal 2.5: Sit / Stand up straight at work from 9:00am to 9:30am.
Goal 03: Sit up straight during lunch.
Goal 04: Sit up straight during dinner.

Icing on the Cake
So far I've been doing well, one thing I am sometimes forgetting is to square my shoulders. Even though I stand / sit upright without hunching over, sometimes I still slump my shoulders. I'm not recording this as a goal, per say, but it would be nice if I could remember this a bit more often. It might get added to my official goals at a different date, so we'll see.

Food Waste Friday and a Recipe

My Food Waste

This week I haven't wasted anything! I've been so excited about my food waste lately. I've been really keeping it under control. Food waste shouldn't be a problem coming up soon because I'll be trying to eat as cheaply as possible to make up for already blowing my November grocery budget.


Red Beans and Rice
Last night we had one of my favorite dishes of all time: Red beans and brown rice. I make it with bacon, lots and lots of onions, Frank's Red Hot, and Worcestershire Sauce, with a little bit of brown sugar thrown in. Delicious! The original recipe I found online (sorry I can't remember where) had about 5 different kinds of meat which I thought was a bit excessive. So I kept my favorite, lol. It's just such an awesome blend of sweet and spicy with a bit of a vinegar tang.

Here's what you need:
About a cup plus a little bit extra of dried red beans, soaked
2 med / small onions or 1 big onion.. or 2 big onions.. I like lots of onion!
1/2-3/4 diced raw bacon. It's easier to chop if frozen, and it cooks into this wonderful soft bacon-ey awesomeness when chopped before being cooked.
um, 1/4 cup Frank's Red Hot, 2-3 TBSP of Worcestershire Sauce, and 1-2 TBSP of brown sugar.

How to Make:
Cook the red beans, keeping the liquid as well.
Cook the rice
cook bacon while you chop onions, add onions.
cook until tender but not super tender
add red beans and liquid (helps with the awesome sauce)
add seasonings

How to Eat:
Serve over some of that awesome rice you just made!!!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Day 12

Today I did pretty well with my goals. I've been doing really well at work for the most part. I've been having a little bit of trouble sitting up straight during dinner though. I am tired! at the end of the day so it's hard for me.

But I've been doing pretty well--and I really can't believe I'm almost halfway there.

Don't forget to tune in tomorrow for my next posture goal.

For those of you just joining me, you can find my first post in this series here. Basically, I am on a 1 month journey to perfect better posture!

Day 11

I did awesome today.

I completed every one of my posture goals.

Cause I'm cool like that.

Except now it's super late and tomorrow's going to be exhausting and.... yeah.

PS, today I am feeling overwhelmed with the task of eating healthily. It seems like it will never be good enough or healthy enough or frugal enough.

For example, I use way too much white sugar. Argh. I'm trying but it's hard.

Does anyone have a good recipe for hot chocolate mix that doesn't use white sugar? Would maple syrup work? Currently I use 1:2 cocoa to sugar with a bit of cinnamon for something new. That's probably my highest intake of white sugar currently...

tired.....

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Day 7--Wait, it's Day 10 Already?

So you remember my lofty month goal to improve my posture? I've been doing well, except at remembering to post! Yikes, seriously, my memory this week.

For those of you just joining me, you can find my first post in this series here. Basically, I am on a 1 month journey to perfect better posture!

So, we're gonna' pretend that I'm introducing Day 7's goal on day 7, because... I haven't posted in forever, but we're gonna call it day 10 (because it actually is day 10, lol. Ok? Ok.

Day 7, Goal 03
Sit up Straight during Lunch. -- I've actually sort of been doing this! No perfect, but ok.

So, I'm supposed to be posting another goal today, as it is Day 10... So here's my Day 10 goal.

Day 10, Goal 04
Sit up Straight during Dinner. -- I've sort of been attempting to kind of do this, lol.

As far as my other goals, I've been doing well! Let's review:

Goal 01: Sit up straight while eating breakfast.
Goal 02: Stand up straight while brushing my hair and teeth.
Goal 2.5: Sit / Stand up straight at work from 9:00am to 9:30am.

Um.. Goal 1 -- owned it. Goal 2 -- um, did pretty well. I forgot to brush my teeth once I think (sad). Goal 2.5 -- Did I really say that? I don't think I would have impromptu added an extra goal on my plate because that's just ridic--oh, I really said that? hrmph. I did ok. I vaguely remembered at 9 to sit up straight, which I did for a few minutes? Do I get at least a few points?

Ok, overall, I've been doing rather well. I've been remembering during the work day to at least try periodically throughout the day and I have felt better overall so I am still definitely excited.

Grocery Fail and Mint.com

Haha. I epically failed at grocery budgeting this month. Worse than my last post said. Yikes.

I apparently clean forgot a whole week of groceries. Yup. I've been pretty preoccupied with work so I guess I forgot that I went grocery shopping!

My grocery total is actually $290. Ouch. And I'm only halfway through the month.

This solidifies my determination to eat as cheaply (while still healthily) as possible for the rest of the week. I know I will still have to spend about $20 for the food I am supposed to bring to Thanksgiving at my parents' place. And, let's be realistic, I'll have to buy milk and eggs and probably beans and rice. Speaking of beans! That will be what we are eating for the rest of this month, lol.

So, I sucked. but, my food waste is still really low to none each week, so I know I'm not buying too much food, necessarily, but that I just need to actually (sigh) start (sigh) couponing and put more beans into our diet or something. I know we've made a lot of changes at once so I knew our budget was going to go up, I just need to re-learn how to shop. Maybe prices are better at the farmer's markets...

Which leads me to my next point: Mint.com

This nifty little site is a (free) site that lets you put all your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, etc, into one place where you can easily see aggregate data about your finances. It pulls in your statements from your checking (and other) accounts and tries to automatically categorize them for you. Some of them were very wrongly categorized, but overall it did pretty well. Also, it has separate categories for "coffee shop," "fast food," and "restaurants" which isn't applicable to us, so we deleted them and are just using one category for "eating out." Some people might want a "coffee shop" category to track how much that morning latte (or whatever) is costing them.

Setting up this site tonight is what let me see the error of my grocery-budgeting ways... and how epically I failed, lol. We haven't put our student loans or anything into it, just our checking account with attached savings. but, it's a really cool site. It lets you pick how much you want to budget for each category (you can make your own custom ones). Eg, our gas budget is $200 a month because DH has a 15-60 minutes drive to work depending on traffic, plus we have an older car ('93 Buick Century, holla!). So now, instead of having to meticulously track our spending in an excel sheet (which er, um.. I mean... of course I always stay on top of that. Yikes). This does all of that for me.

So, even though we're over on our grocery budget, we've spent less than half of our gas budget this month and the month is half over. And I can see this at a glance. Sweet. Out of our $75 eat out / entertainment budget, we've spent $57.


You can also set a monthly category to roll over each month. So, for us, we each have a "fun money" budget of $20 (this is to stave off the insanity that is trying to watch our pennies). If we want to save up for a larger fun purchase, this will let us keep track of it easily.

I'm really excited. Did I mention it's free? Did I mention it's awesome?

Ok, so, working in Technology, I can't write about this without including:

I don't want anyone to think I'm insulting them, but I have to say this. Don't. Be. Dumb. Ok seriously, your bank info is seriously critical. So be careful. Choose a super strong password (Eg, NOT "password" or your kid's soccer team name). Don't log in at the library and then forget to log out (although I think this site's timeout is ten minutes, still...). Ok, sorry, had to say it. I'm good now.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Groceries -- Yikes

Well, I've totally blown my budget for this month. I knew I was going to with Thanksgiving and all, but still.

Here are the numbers:
Aldi = $31.51
Walmart = $39.98
Whole Foods = 64.98

Sub Total = 136.47
Total from Last Week = $92.32

Monthly Total so Far = $228.79

Can I keep under budget? Ha! I don't think so. I am going to try another lean week next week, since we'll be celebrating Thanksgiving with our families, I don't have to make a whole meal, just a casserole and a cheese ball. Maybe I can swipe some leftovers, too. :) I think soup will also be on the menu for the rest of the month.

And here are my excuses...
For starters, at church this weekend they passed out baskets for their donation program to give families in need a real thanksgiving meal with a list of what to buy. So I spent $28.97 on that. I've still got to buy milk and eggs for it, so it should total around $32.

I also stocked up on flour, cocoa, white sugar, brown sugar, and food dye for the impending holiday baking. And... I wasn't organized or motivated enough to hunt for deals or coupons. So, on stocking up I spent $46.93. While that isn't a ridiculous amount to spend on stocking up, still... my grocery budget says "Ouch." To make up for it, I hooked up our printer today so now I don't have an excuse not to be printing coupons from online. Hurray.

And then, our normal groceries for this week came to $56.07. Partially because I really wanted to try some ginger root and partially because I bought bacon (I can't help it, lol). And I bought a jar of turmeric because I've been wanting some to experiment with.

So, what can we learn from all this?
I say to myself: STICK TO THE LIST. And, DON'T BE LAZY. I should have found a flour sale before just buying 3 bags of flour at regular price. I should have skipped both the ginger and turmeric because I don't really need it. I could have gone without the food dye because, again, you don't need food dye. It makes things more fun, but man, was it expensive! (I bought food dye that is made from vegetables and not red #40 or yellow #5 so it came to $16.99 just for a basic red, yellow, blue kit, but I think it will last me a while so..).

Friday, November 12, 2010

Day 6

Why am I counting days and what are these random goals? Click here to find out!

Today's posture goals are the same as yesterday:

Goal 01: Sit up straight while eating breakfast.

Goal 02: Stand up straight while brushing my hair and teeth.

Goal 2.5: Sit / Stand up straight at work from 9:00am to 9:30am.

So far I am doing well. I am so glad I decided to take control of my posture!

Food Waste Friday

My Food Waste

This week I haven't wasted anything yet. I'm pretty impressed with myself. I finished off some bread and other random things. I really need to use up my spaghetti sauce and the rest of 2 leftover casseroles or I will have a lot of food waste to report next week. Ick.

Wish me luck.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Day 5

Why am I counting days and what are these random goals? Click here to find out!

Today I am continuing my first 2 goals.

Goal 01: Sit up straight while eating breakfast. I did this!

Goal 02: Stand up straight while brushing my hair and teeth. I did this!

Goal 2.5: Sit / Stand up straight at work from 9:00am to 9:30am. I sort of did this. I wound up not doing it at the time frame, but exerting a more conscious effort to sit up more at work.


And, now I've just got to write my food waste post and schedule it for tomorrow and then it's off to bed for me. I just finally got caught up on a week's worth of reading the blogs I follow so maybe tomorrow I can catch up on real life. haha. It was nice to have a mental break tonight after this bear of a week.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Day 4

Why am I counting days and what are these random goals? Click here to find out!

Today is day 4 and you know what that means: A new posture goal!

Goal 2 is to stand up straight while I brush my hair and teeth every day. This goal is two-fold because, for whatever reason, I've fallen out of the habit of brushing my teeth everyday. Today that stops. Also, instead of hunching over the sink while I brush or standing on one foot (don't ask), I'm going to focus on correct posture while I do these things.

That was going to be my only goal for today, but since I'm doing so well, and because I've already started standing up straight while brushing my hair, I'm going to add to it this new goal: Sit up straight at work in between 9am and 9:30am. A half an hour at work seems like an age, however, so while I am excited this is going well, I don't want to add too much at once and fall on my face. So we are still taking it slow.

I accomplished Goal 1 today, so let's see if I can do the same with Goal 2!

How are you doing with your goals? What are you striving towards? Have you decided to join me in my fight for better posture?

PS. The reason I didn't post how I did on my goals for this project yesterday is because I have a cascade of projects due at work on this Friday and have been busting my butt to get them all done. I wouldn't even be posting now except that I had already written this post over the weekend.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Day 2

So far I am doing great (heh, yay positive self-talk) at this whole posture thing.

Yesterday I was sitting up straight on and off all day and today I started off the day right by continuing to sit up straight while I ate breakfast.

Day 2, Goal 1 = Accomplished.

For those of you just joining me, you can find my first post in this series here.

And, just like yesterday, sitting up straight makes my back feel noticeably better just by starting out the day with a little bit of extra effort to maintain good posture.

Come back tomorrow to check on me and my goals, or on Wednesday to see my next posture goal.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Day 1

Today marks the first day of my new Self Improvement Project (SIP)

Plan for Improving my Posture.

My first goal I actually just accomplished: Sit up straight while eating breakfast.

I can tell you, My back feels so much than it usually does in the morning. Usually by the time I finish breakfast, my back still hasn't recovered from sleep-induced stiffness and I trudge off to the shower hoping it will help. My back still hurts some, but it doesn't feel as bad as normal.

I will be sitting up straight while I eat breakfast for 2 more days before adding another goal, so stop by on November 10th to see my next goal!

Even though I've completed my goal for today, I am still sitting up straight while I type this. I'm sure it won't last to lunchtime, but here's to a great start for this SIP!

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Another Self-Improvement Project

I've decided that I should be constantly working on improving myself. Personally, I think everyone should strive to grow and learn throughout their life. That's my opinion though, so please don't feel like I'm going to beat you over the head with it. That being said, I still think it's a good idea. ;)

There are lots of ways to improve yourself. It could be you've decided that you need to stop using certain words or that you need to cut out that extra chocolate bar at work. It could be that you want to add a positive habit such as brushing your teeth twice a day instead of only once. I decided to do my first self-improvement project over the summer (before the blog) and had positive results.

Sooo, starting tomorrow, I am beginning my next self-improvement project.

Here is my Plan for Improving my Posture (PIP for short).

Background
Coming from a family of computer nerds with terrible posture, it was only natural for me to absorb their bad habits. We always slouched at the computer, we slouched at the dinner table, we slouched when we watched tv, we walked with our shoulder curled forward a bit instead of straight. None of us have good posture. So, when I say I have bad posture, don't think Igor, but that's not too far off.

I want to change not only because I will look and feel better about myself, but because it's just better for my physical health to have good posture. I have pretty regular back pain associated with my bad posture along with trouble sleeping sometimes and extreme discomfort sitting still for long periods of time. I don't just want to change, I need to change.

Plan
Starting tomorrow, I will set a small goal for myself regarding my posture. Every 3 days, I will add a new goal on top of the one(s) I am already doing. By the end of 31 days, I am hoping to have terrific posture (or at least something better than my current rank of "abysmal").

Every time I add a new goal, I will write a short post about what the goal is, and I how I am doing on my previous goals.

Feel free to join me in this project and share your story along side mine. Or, comment about a time when you did a self-improvement project: what you picked and how it went.

Stay tuned tomorrow to find out what PIP Step 1 is!

Food Waste Friday

My Food Waste
This week I didn't waste anything!

I'm very excited. I've been really trying to crack down on cooking appropriate amounts of food and I think it worked this week!

Huzzah.

(PS, I realize it's Saturday and not Friday, anymore, but I just didn't have time to post yesterday.)

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Granola

I made granola this past weekend and I keep meaning to post about it, but haven't had time! Too busy cooking. :)

First off, I made cinnamon apple granola, the recipe for which I got here.

Secondly, it tastes fantastic.

Thirdly, buy your own pre-dried apples! Drying them in the oven takes ages.

And finally, how much did it cost me?

$2.41 -- Almonds -- 2/3 used = $1.61
$7.99 -- Maple Syrup -- 1/4 = $2.00
$4.77 -- Honey Crisp Apples -- 1/3 = $1.59
$1.79 -- Puffed Rice cereal -- 1/3 = $0.60
$1.69 -- Sunflower Seeds -- 1/6 = $0.28
$1.29 -- whole rolled oats -- 5/6 = $1.08
$1.69 -- Apple Sauce -- 13/100 = $0.22
$0.20 -- Various spices
$1.00 -- Electricity

So, my grand total was $8.58.

I got about a quart of awesome granola. that's pretty cheap compared to buying pre-made stuff. Plus, I got to control sugar, fat, etc. I got to make it my own with stuff I like.

I've never made granola and it was lots of fun. I bet it would be a fun project with kids because it's fairly easy and the results are delicious!