A Surprising Kitchen Essential

You know what I keep in my kitchen drawer?

I am perfectly fine with a messy kitchen utensil drawer.

A balloon. Any guesses why? A balloon makes THE absolute best jar opener. Have a stuck jar lid? Grab a balloon, use it to grasp the lid, and turn. Simple, cheap, easy, and works every time! Before I discovered the balloon I would use a rubber band for this--and it worked. But it took a little time to get it wrapped around the lid properly, and you had to have a size that worked. Then one day I couldn't find a rubber band in my junk drawer and spotted a balloon. A balloon works even better!

So go go find a balloon and toss it in your kitchen drawer. I promise it will come in handy. And it will be a great conversation starter when you've got someone helping you out in the kitchen.

Organizing Goals 2012 - #8 Create a Storage Solution for Kitchen Entry/Island

8. Create a Storage Solution for Kitchen Entry/Island: Sometimes I feel that if I solved this one problem area in my home, all my troubles would go away. I'm realistic enough to know that probably isn't true, but I'm really hoping to give it my best shot.  Our kitchen entry becomes a dumping ground for coats, shoes, hats, mittens, gloves, backpacks, purses, and miscellaneous stuff--a LOT of miscellaneous stuff. There are several factors contributing to this mess.

1. This is the door my family uses 99 percent of the time.
2. There is no closet near this door,
3. There is a huge unused counter right next to the door.
4. We have no storage here other than four overused coat hooks and lots of flat surfaces.

I definitely know I want to get a lower set of hooks so my daughters can start hanging up their own coats, snow pants, and backpacks. Not only will that keep them off the floor, I won't have to do it anymore (win-win!). I'm thinking some sort of storage cubbies where the little table is now (it doesn't have to stay) or even under the ledge of the counter would be great. I hope to get to IKEA soon to take a look at a shoe storage unit, beautifully used here. If the divider can be removed from the top shoe drawer, even better. I'd use that one to store backpacks. I also need a better storage for hats and mittens. And finally, I would love a rug by this door, but I haven't had any luck finding one thin enough to be able to open the door.  Even the super thin officey ones don't work. For now I have one leading from the door toward the kitchen, although it's not visible in the photos.

This is definitely one of my biggest challenges for the year. I look forward to getting started!

Ignore the dirty wall. It's leftover from two pictures I tried for years to keep hung. Every time we'd shut the door the pictures would tilt. I tried blue sticky stuff (as you can see), but it only helped a little. Finally I just took them down.

I'm always amazed that little coat rack doesn't fall off the wall.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake*

So last week I made this little robot cake for my daughter. I have a 2-year-old now!

The girl likes robots. 

It's not the greatest cake in the world, but I can't for the life of me remember her first birthday. What kind of mother doesn't remember her child's first birthday? I don't remember where we were, what we did, or what kind of cake we ate. I know I didn't make a special cake, if I made one at all.  Here are the cakes I have made for my oldest daughter over the years:

This cake was pretty, and it was perfect for a spring 1st birthday. I'm not sure, but I think it may be upside down. Big wings go on top? Those marshmallow flower cupcake toppers were impressive and so easy to make!

My daughter was really into fish for her 2nd birthday (and still is!).  I had the fish sugar cookies made but did the cake myself.

For her 3rd birthday, my daughter requested a strawberry cake. What can I say, she has good taste. I do remember I was actually out of town on her birthday, so we celebrated a couple days early.

So I guess what I'm getting at, is that I've tried to make birthdays special, with the exception of that missing first birthday. It's probably out of fear of guilt more than anything, as at this young age they won't remember. We haven't done any big parties yet, aside from family dinners, but if nothing else, a picture of a homemade birthday cake is proof that the day was celebrated, and it was more than just an afterthought. I was the youngest of three, and while we have lots of pictures of my sister's and brother's birthday cakes over the years, I don't think there are many of mine (at all). I guess I'll have to continue to step up my game for the youngest. So at least we'll have the photographic evidence.

*A reference to this lovely little book. It's funny. Especially if you were born 1978 and 1982, I think.

Organizing Goals 2012 - #5 Organize Food and Finances

Each day for the next week or so, I am introducing my storage/organization/cleaning goals, plans, and progress for 2012. The first post in the series can be found here.

5. Organize Food and Finances: There is a reason my daughter once asked me if budget is a bad word. No, we don't have problem overspending in our house. We live well within our means. But constant debit-card purchases (even on necessary expenses) were adding stress in our lives.  Seeing that long banking statement with several purchases a day was like watching money fall out of our pockets.  My husband has long asked me for a household budget with the purpose of figuring out exactly where our money goes. This year I've finally created a budget, and we are working toward a more cash-based system for handling expenses. I think there may be a few kinks to figure out, but progress is being made. We were both amazed when we checked our bank statement and there hadn't been a purchase in 5 days.

The new budget has led me to organize my food purchases and menu planning.  Before all this, I had a general idea of what we had on hand and what we tend to eat, and I would make a very general list, forgetting things, including things we didn't need, etc. Then my husband would make the trip to Aldi to stock our pantry and would end up buying 36 cans of soup (the kind my daughters refuse to eat), of which I might eat two in the next four months. You get the idea.

First, I looked for an app that included the following:
1. pantry inventory--I need to know what we already have on hand before I know what we need to buy.
2. long-term menu planning--I need to know what I plan to cook so I know what I need to buy for our 4-month supply.
3. shopping list--My husband tends to make the Aldi shopping trip, so it's important that I can provide him with a very detailed shopping list--I learned that yesterday when he interpreted an arrow I drew as a 5 and came home with 5 containers of sour cream. He also called to confirm that we needed 40 cans of black beans. No, that was actually a 4 with another number crossed out.

Unfortunately, I haven't found the magic app yet.  But I did find a pretty amazing 3 Month Food Supply spreadsheet from Food Storage Made Easy.* The spreadsheet includes a column for ingredients on the left, and spanning the table to the right at the top of the page are meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for 30 days. The girls have included a "Have on hand" column, where you can enter the number of each ingredient you have on hand. You then fill out your meals for the month, and under each meal you mark the number of each ingredient needed. The beauty of this spreadsheet is that it will then give you a 3 month total, as well as the number you need to buy (figuring what you have on hand) to make that 3 month total.

Clearly start-up is time-consuming. I first did a food inventory, which with my daughter's "help" took me about 45 minutes. Then, I planned my meals for the month. This was surprisingly easy. I picked a homemade soup for one day each week, and I had a day for leftovers, which left me with only 5 days to fill each week.  Next, I started filling in the ingredients. I first copied and pasted the Common Food Items list found on another page of the spreadsheet. I did it that way so the ingredients would be organized by category and in alphabetical order. Then I added and removed items based on my food inventory. And finally, I went meal by meal marking the number of items needed to prepare each meal.

So I now have a 3-month shopping list.  This is great, But unfortunately I need a 4-month list. So I still need to tweak the spreadsheet. For the trip yesterday, I wrote out the list and added a month's worth of ingredients to each 3-month total.  It did feel pretty great to have my husband come home from Aldi knowing he got things we will actually use (aside from the 5 containers of sour cream). I am still trying  to figure out the best way to keep the food inventory updated.

I love it when a working toward a goal has some unexpected benefit. I've been meal planning for a couple of weeks already, and let me just shout it out: I LOVE IT! Never would I have imagined that having a meal plan would be so...freeing? You know that gnawing in the back of your mind every day that starts at about 4:00 when you realize you have no idea what to make for dinner, and then you start to ask yourself why you have to be the one to figure this crap out every day.  And then you start to resent the fact that you have to cook anything at all.  And then you say Screw it! and order a pizza? No? I guess it's just me.

Things are totally different now. I actually look forward to checking the menu plan throughout the week.

Oooh, fajitas! Great idea.

Yum, I can't wait for Friday when we have that roast.

Better thaw out that ham today.

It feels like 50% of the burden of cooking has been lifted.  Knowing what we're having and being confident that I actually have the ingredients on hand to make the food is a huge relief.  And I'm being more creative with my meals rather than falling back on my last-minute standby dishes. I also like that I feel free to switch meals around within the week to better fit our schedule. 

I still have some figuring to do with our food budget.  Between the three annual Aldi trips and the fact that we order a quarter of beef a couple times a year, figuring out a monthly total gets complicated. But, I am working on it. So that is progress toward my goal.

Do you meal plan? How detailed do you get? Do you use a food inventory? Do you use technology to meal plan?

*Wow, I did not realize that there is a whole food storage culture out there. Who knew? I am not part of the food storage culture. I am just lazy and like to spend a little time as possible grocery shopping.  In addition to Aldi, we stock perishables from the local grocery store throughout the month and buy meat from a local butcher.

Organizing Goals 2012 - #3 Organize Spices

Each day for the next week or so, I am introducing my storage/organization/cleaning goals, plans, and progress for 2012. The first post in the series can be found here.

3. Organize Spices: I store my spices and baking supplies in a tall storage cupboard next to my refrigerator. Like most of my cupboards, I'm not using the bottom shelves. My youngest would empty it out for me daily if I did.  So everything has been stuffed onto the top five shelves.  Considering I can't actually reach the top shelf, that leaves me with four working shelves. My spices are out of control. I've been slowly stocking up on them over the last year, and unfortunately because they are a jumbled mess, I've bought several duplicates, compounding the storage problem.  I ordered these spice clips (found via Pinterest) a couple of weeks ago.  Like the good online shopper I am, I scoured the Internet and found the best deal after figuring in tax and shipping.  Unfortunately the company I ordered from has them on back order.  I'm hoping they will finally arrive by the end of the month.  I love the idea behind this product. I've found most cupboard door storage solutions are often so deep they take of half of your actual shelf space. These are versatile and appear to use minimal shelf space. I can't wait to get started on this project! Here is what my baking cupboard looks like today.

Here are the "top" two shelves from a distance. Anyone want a year's worth of Food Network Magazines?
(Why yes, we did paint the outside of our cabinets white and got lazy and did not paint the insides.)

Let's take a closer look at that second shelf. This is what I see when I'm trying to find something.

And here are the "bottom" two shelves from a distance. Don't laugh at the five jars of peanut butter, laugh at my husband. He read an article about rising peanut prices and made a point to stock up. Yes, the rising cost of peanuts would be a big deal in our house.

Need some cumin, you say? Hmm...

Stinky, Dirty Dishcloths Be Gone!

Disclaimer: If you're not at all interested in the resolving the stinky, dirty dishcloth problem or have no idea what I'm talking about, feel free to stop reading here. Visit me another time, though.  I won't always be talking about dishcloths. OK, now that we have that out of the way...

I used to have a problem with dirty dishcloths sitting in the bottom of my sink getting wetter and nastier because I refused to use those gross things again and I hardly wanted to pick them up to even throw them into the washer. I'd inevitably just get a clean one out and leave the old one in the bottom of the sink. But you can only do that so many times before you have an even grosser pile of dishcloths in your sink. Of course, they didn't start out in the bottom of the sink.  I would attempt to wring them out after using them and lay them neatly on the side of the sink or on the faucet to dry out, only to have them slip, fall, or crawl back into the the sink. My husband, on the other hand, just throws them sopping wet into the sink.  Yuck.  It makes me shudder just to think about it.  I get the same feeling when I have to clean food out of the sink drain catch.

Sometime last year I found a gadget that has actually helped.  (Is it still a gadget if there are no moving parts?) The full name is the Umbra Chariot Stainless-Steel Dishcloth Stand and Scrubby Holder Combo, which is a mouthful considering it's just a dishcloth holder.  I bought it in hopes that my husband would see that the dishcloth, indeed, had a home and would put it there.  No such luck, but at least I now have a place to put it.

This is what it looks like empty:

And this is what it looks like when your dishcloth is staying clean and drying out:

This thing really does work. My dishcloths are no longer draped on my faucet getting in the way, falling into the bottom of the sink, or getting wet as I use the faucet. I no longer get that funky dishcloth smell.  I can go a little longer before washing them, and I no longer find my dishcloths repulsive. I think I even wash them more frequently because I not disgusted to pick them up.   

I bought my dishcloth stand in a little home accessories and kitchen gadget shop in my town. I encourage you to check out the little shops in your own town if you're considering buying one.  Or if you cringe at the thought of dragging your kids to said cute little shops (I'm speaking from experience), they are available from Amazon. 

Early Garden Harvest Pasta

Last night, after spending a little time in my garden, I had a typical first harvest--a lot of odds and ends but nothing substantial of any one thing: 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, a handful of green beans, exactly 3 pea pods worth of peas, and 1 zucchini.  I decided to throw it all together into a yummy pasta.

While the pasta cooked, I microwaved some bacon and sauteed the green beans. I threw in some onion flakes (sad) because I was all out of onions.  Then I added the zucchini to cook for a few minutes.  Once the pasta was cooked and drained, I threw in the cooked veggies and bacon, adding some chopped cucumber, chopped tomatoes, minced garlic, parmesan cheese, and olive oil. I stirred everything together and added a little salt. You can eat it right away, although I prefer to refrigerate it overnight and serve the next day.  It's better the second day when everything is cool and crisp and fresh and the flavors have mixed together.  I do wish I'd had some onion and maybe a green pepper, but my peppers plants are pitiful this year.   

In full disclosure, despite the abundance of noodles, my daughters were not big fans of this meal.  My three-year-old said she likes "soft" green beans (i.e. canned). She did appreciate the bacon, however.  Don't we all?  Personally, I loved it.  I ate it up and had seconds. It's a great light, fresh, cool meal for a hot summer night.

By the way, if you're like me and hate frying bacon on the stove and don't like heating up your whole house to bake it in the oven, this is a great alternative! It's the only way I cook bacon. In fact, I specially requested it for Christmas several years ago. My parents have one too. (Not an advertisement, I just really like it!!)

Got Brown Bananas?

We don't seem to have overripe bananas very often.  It may have something to do with the preschooler and toddler.  They've never met a banana they didn't like.  Therefore, despite buying a bunch of bananas once or twice a week, we still never have extras.  On the rare occasion that we do, this is my go-to recipe. 

Grandma Schmidt's Banana Bread recipe was included in a collection of recipes my friend Bethany gave each of her bridesmaids as a thank-you gift.  Of course she did them all cute on colored note cards held together by a removable clasp.  This was a crafty, thoughtful, and inexpensive gift that would be suitable for several occasions.

The ingredients:

Notice my husband bought Country Crock sticks instead of butter the last time he went to the grocery store.  I'm not complaining; I didn't have to go to the store with the two little ones in tow.

Grandma Schmidt's Banana Bread
1/2 c. butter or oleo
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
3 large very ripe bananas, mashed
1 c. chopped nuts (optional)

Cream butter and sugar.  Beat in eggs, one at a time.  Beat in mashed bananas.  Mix in combined dry ingredients and add nuts.  Pour in greased and floured 9x5x3 in. loaf pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes.

At three, my daughter likes to "help" out in the kitchen.  I put her to work mashing the bananas.  Isn't that apron adorable?  I got it at our town's Crazy Daze this week.  It was $8.  It was clearly handmade. Totally cute and a great deal!

I baked it a little too long today. Next time I'll make sure to stick on the shorter side of the bake time.  I love this recipe because it's simple, easy to quickly throw together, and includes ingredients I almost always have on hand. Also, it's delicious, and my girls always love banana bread for a snack.

The Perfect Iced Tea Concentrate: The Rule of Three

It's summer!  It's warm out.  It's sunny.  We're lazing the days away by the pool.  OK, maybe not.  It's cloudy, cool, and rainy here today, and I've been working at my computer nonstop for weeks.  But technically it IS summer.
To me summer means iced tea.  My mom is a big tea drinker.  She likes her tea black and straight, only occasionally (and regrettably in my opinion) reverting to her Southern roots and adding in sugar.  I remember back to my childhood getting regular phone calls from her during the day, asking me to get a jug of tea started and outside in the sun so it would be ready when my parents got home from work.  It's not uncommon for my mom to comment on the quality of iced tea she's had when talking over her day.  And yes, a meal can be a total disappointment when the tea is bad.

She's been a big fan of the tea at the cafe in her local Barnes & Noble.  I hear repeatedly how good it is.  Despite being across town, I know for a fact she eats lunch there regularly, and I'm fairly certain it's only because she loves their iced tea.  She does that.  She chooses a restaurant based on the quality of their tea.

If my mother were to pass down to me one recipe, one creation that completely encompasses who she is as my mother, it would be the recipe for good iced tea.  When I was back home visiting my parents a few weeks ago, my mom excitedly told me she had perfected the "recipe" for good iced tea.  (She had made an earlier attempt during my last visit home but had missed the mark.  She didn't quite have the flavors and proportions figured out.)  She described the process, and I tasted the new tea.  It was good.  Really, really good.  She told me the secret: the rule of three.  She learned the process carefully watching her friends at the B&N cafe and taking mental notes.

If you like plain, black iced tea, I highly recommend the recipe below. It's not fancy.  It doesn't call for tea leaves.  You can use your microwave. I suspect you could play around with the tea varieties if you're so inclined, add some lemon, make it a hard iced tea, or even (blech!) add some sugar.  It's not sun tea, but on a cloudy day like today, I'm just fine with that.  It's a concentrate, so you can save some room in your refrigerator.  But most importantly, it's a delicious, refreshing, and guilt-free summer drink!

Perfect Iced-Tea Concentrate
1 quart jar full of water, microwaved (or "nuked" if you're my mother) until very hot. 
Add 2 bags Earl Gray and one bag black tea. 

Steep until really strong (2-3 hours), ignoring the dirty patio table.

Remove tea bags and refrigerate.

When you're ready to drink, remember the rule of three: Fill your glass 1/3 with concentrate, 1/3 water, and 1/3 ice.  Mom says if you want to get fancy you can use a shaker to shake it.

Enjoy! And if it's really good iced tea, it might just make you feel like this!

Stocking the Pantry

Every few months we make a trip to Aldi to stock our pantry.  When I say "stock" I mean "STOCK."  Those who know my husband will understand.  He has emergency preparedness anxiety.  We can't be too prepared.  He would love to have enough food stocked to last us a year.  We had two overflowing carts at Aldi today, and his exact words were "We didn't really get that much." 

Here's some pictures of what we brought home.  There was actually more than this.  Excuse the few other things in these pictures, but we got home right at lunch time, so I cooked us a quick meal before I put things away.

Here's the pantry before.  Not bad.

Here's the pantry after.  .

Here's the overflow that will be stored in our basement until we're ready to use it.  And we do use it.

You're probably thinking 1) we're crazy or 2) we're awesome.  After the first couple of trips to Aldi I thought we were crazy.  But after doing this a few times, I've grown to appreciate the fact that I can make fewer trips to the store.  I HATE grocery shopping.  And if I can make fewer trips or even shorter trips, I'm game.  We have the space, so why not?  By the way, people, Aldi is cheap.  Way cheap.  And great for pantry items.  You can't get everything there, but it is worth a special trip if you've got the room to stock up.  Just remember to bring a quarter for you cart. 

Think I'm exaggerating my husband's preparedness anxiety?  Check out the first-aid corner of our bathroom cabinet.

Told you.

Sibling Rivalry

Apparently my little project has inspired my sister. She's kept her countertops clean for amost a week now. That's impressive in her house, trust me. Here's proof:

So feel free to stop by her house anytime to check her counters. Just don't look at the rest of the house. Oh, Snap!

The Beginning: Or How I Saved My Countertops and Marriage (Week 1)

SOURCE:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/djbrady/ / CC BY 2.0

OK, so I've finally made the leap into blog world. It was only a matter of time. Recently I've been a little obsessed with with my blogger dashboard. And perhaps guilt has crept in a little. I mean, other people are entertaining me on a daily basis. Isn't it selfish to read multiple blogs every day and not actually blog myself? Yes, I have guilt issues. I've been thinking about blogging for a while now. I've mentally composed countless blog posts. Revised and edited them into my Facebook status. But something has finally pushed me over the edge. I've started a project. And as everyone (OK, maybe not everyone) knows, a project = a blog.

What is this project, you ask! Drumroll, please....It's housekeeping. Whoop hoodoo! No, seriously. That's it. What is blog-worthy about housekeeping? Not much. But in my house, it's a miracle. And miracles are blog-worthy. Get it? This all started 6 days ago. I cleaned my kitchen. Well, technically I cleaned off the countertops in my kitchen. I even got rid of all those piles of paper and random electronic devices.  Why would anyone need three memory cards, a cellphone battery, and some sort of microchip device on my kitchen counter at all times?  After said cleaning, I mentioned to my husband that (I'll use exact wording here, in case you want to try it on your significant other) "I'm really going to try to focus on keeping the counters clean. I mean every time I get something out, I'm going to put it away; anytime I spill something, it will get wiped up; anytime I dirty a dish, it will go in the dishwasher." And he said "OK." But something happened that I hadn't expected. I'd wished for it and prayed for it for YEARS. Somehow, for some reason, my husband heard all of this this as "We're really going to try to focus on keeping the counters clean. Every time we get something out, we're going to put it away, anytime we spill something, we're going to wipe it up. Anytime we dirty a dish, we'll put it in the dishwasher. Six days later, our counters are still spotless.  And I've spent less time and energy cleaning them than I've ever spent in my life.

So we now have a new standard in this house...for the kitchen countertops. And it didn't take nagging, whining, a 5-minute nightly cleanup (which inevitably turns into 40 minutes), or anything. It just took a conscious effort and about 10 seconds here and there. I love my clean countertops. They're beautiful! I realize most of you out there are saying, "Duh!" This is common sense. And you're right. But it's been lacking in this household for 8 years.

My goal is to implement this strategy throughout the rest of the house. Slowly. Next up is our bedroom. The plan works like this:

1. purge

2. sort

3. assess

4. organize

5. clean

6. don't screw it up!

In my mind this is so incredibly brilliant. I envision a continually clean house with seemingly little effort. A general lack of extra junk.  And energy I've previously spent picking up, putting away, etc. will be spent on deeper cleaning (like vacuuming and dusting)--chores that were mostly saved for company before. I'm planning on getting a room done every week or two until the entire house is finished. It won't be easy. I can only hope my husband doesn't give up along the way. And with a two-year-old, a three-month-old, and two big dogs, I've got my hands full. But I have very high hopes!