What I've been up to while Sam is at school

Last night I made chili, which I've written about before, so I'm finally not writing a food post!

So, a few posts ago, I mentioned that I was considering taking a break from social media. The impetus for this was something that happened last weekend where I commented on a post before I was really awake and pissed someone off who I truly respect. I basically misquoted her and she laid the smack down promptly. I apologized immediately, but it bothered me all weekend, to the point that I couldn't calm myself down and relax at night. Rather than, you know, talking to another human being about it, I just spent even more time on the internet, looking at stupid slideshows and buzzfeed lists to try to distract myself until I got over my embarrassment/shame. Not a particularly healthy way to deal.

Which is why I'm considering taking a little time off from the internet, to consider my consumption of and interaction with online culture. I might do it on a weekend when I have the best chance of actually doing something constructive with the freed-up time. The silver lining is that while browsing said buzzfeed lists, I found this, which lead me to this. Clean your house in 20 minutes a day for 30 days? Sign me up.

I set up reminders in my calendar and started with the very next morning, which happened to be the 15th. (Rather than start at the beginning of the list, I decided to match days of the month to numbers on the list, so I can just keep doing it as time goes on.) So far, in 20 minute chunks, I've swept and tidied my living room and dining room; steam cleaned my bathroom floor, emptied all the bathroom trash and thrown out all of Sam's bath toys that had gotten mildewy; sanitized all door knobs, switch plates, phones, remote controls, keyboards and mice, and most of the video game handhelds; and yesterday I de-cluttered and swept the landing of our split-entry, cleaned out the van, and swept the front steps. Over the next four days I expect virtually my whole house to become clean enough for company to drop in out of the blue. (Day 20. Surface clean living room and kitchen, 21. Surface clean bathrooms, 22. Surface clean bedrooms, 23. Sweep and vacuum all floors in the house.) The 20 minute time limit ensures that I don't burn myself out cleaning half my day, and I still have time while Sam's away to do some reading and writing, take a shower if I need to, and get some dinner prep going.

In the past, I'd tried to do FlyLady, but it just didn't work for me. It's heavily e-mail based, and I just don't use e-mail during my day-to-day to keep track of tasks. The one big thing FlyLady did for me was point me toward Cozi--my Cozi homepage is actually FlyLady themed since that's how I found it. All of my menu planning, shopping/to-do listing, and chore scheduling, well, really all of my scheduling is done in the Cozi app or the website now. Last fall and winter I kept up with some of the main themes of what the FlyLady group was up to, especially the monthly habits. This month's habit is a before bed routine, which has been easy for me to forget or just not do because I'm tired.

Tonight I'm making zucchini pasta, but this weekend I'll be making roasted vegetables with sausage and hopefully chicken with mushrooms, if I get to it. I'm going to try to limit my online time to writing drafts here, and keeping track of things in Cozi, from the moment I wake up Saturday until the moment I wake up Monday. Wish me luck.

Teriyaki Pork Lo Mein

As promised, I made a meal that contained a noodle packet. It was one of those of 10/$10 deals where you also get a rotisserie chicken for 99¢. Well, at least it was the first time I made it. It's been so long since I first made this recipe that it's no longer the one on the back of the bag when you buy it, so I had to look it up online. If they ever discontinue the noodle packet, I may have to learn how to make lo mein from scratch.

Basically the whole recipe is the standard noodle packet with the addition of some sliced pork loin, a red bell pepper, and some garlic.

As far as pre-prep, I just very thinly sliced the bell pepper, about 1/4"x1", a little bigger than matchstick sized pieces. I thawed the boneless pork loin chips in the fridge, but they were still a little too frozen in the afternoon for me to want to pre-slice them.

Pretty pepper

When I eventually cut the pork chops into bits, I decided to make small cubes instead of longer slices. It would be delicious either way, and longer, thinner slices work better with chopsticks in my opinion.

Here's the meat starting to cook

Cooked through and set aside

Tossed in soy sauce

Stir-frying

Added the garlic, noodle packet, and water

Noodles mostly cooked

Added the pork back in

Tada

I called Dan and had him pick up some egg rolls and cream cheese wontons from our local restaurant because I hadn't bought any frozen ones, and I didn't want to run the oven anyway. That added a few extra dollars to what would have otherwise been a very inexpensive meal.

A couple of little prep notes I didn't include above: I love using the same container I plan to serve the main dish in, when I need to set aside fully cooked meat. I did the same with the fajitas the other night, but I didn't end up taking a picture of the serving dish in the end. It saves a dish and warms the serving dish so that your food stays hotter longer. 

Also, slotted spoons in various sizes and materials are a god-send for these sort of "remove meat from pan for a minute, but don't remove the oil from the pan when you do it" sort of recipes. I have a very nice metal one that I use for serving certain foods, once they are out of the nonstick pans. I have a nice wide plastic one and a more ladle-shaped plastic one that I like to use to move food out of the nonstick pans into other containers. I used the ladle one to put the pork back in the pan without bringing too much of the soy sauce with it, to reduce the overall sodium content. If I were feeling lazy, I might just have dumped the whole container back in the pan, but it's nice to have an easy way to not do that.

This morning I started some crock pot chili, which I've written about before here, so tomorrow's post may be less about food and more about life. Sam and I are starting to get into a groove with our school routine, and he is actually going to bed at a more reasonable hour (9:30 pm, which, trust me, is early for him), and I've been making use of my mornings alone.

Garlic lime chicken fajitas

Last night was fajitas night. All summer more or less I've alternated tacos and fajitas on Tuesday nights, as we are fans of tortillas filled with delicious things. Even Sam will eat a quesadilla, or he'll just bring me the bag of tortillas and say "Dee ahh?" By which he means, give me a tortilla and I will eat it plain as though it were a large cookie.

In the past I've used store bought seasoning packets, but one time I decided to go halfway from scratch by getting one of those recipe cards with pre-measured spices that McCormick makes. By the way, I think that's a genius marketing idea. Rather than hesitating to buy a whole container of a spice you're not sure you'll ever use again, you can try the recipe once and then buy more spices if it's a hit. Or you can just keep buying the cards, but I suspect there is a significant markup.

Looks yummy!

To start, I sliced up my onion and green pepper. Here are some pictures of that.

Onion in half

Sliced thinly lengthwise and then crosswise just the once

Top chopped off the pepper, seeds removed, and membranes pinched away as much as possible

Sliced down the membranes to make them easier to remove

Cleaned up one segment

Long thin slices

Then I mixed my marinade. Here are all the spices and liquids that went into that.

Yes, it's kind of a lot of stuff. 

Which means it's a good thing I can save by buying in bulk some of the time.

One thing I changed per our tastes was that I halved the amounts of citrus juices and added tap water to replace the missing liquid. (2 tbsp lime juice + 2 tbsp orange juice + 1/4 cup water, instead of 1/4 cup lime + 1/4 cup orange.) As-is it was a little too citrusy for Dan.

The prepared marinade!

Then I put everything in the fridge until it was time to cook. About half an hour before I expected Dan to come home, I defrosted three boneless skinless chicken breasts in the microwave. Just as it dinged that they were defrosted, I heard the garage door open. (He'd called, but my phone was charging upstairs, and I was downstairs at the time watching Guess With Jess with Sam, so I didn't hear it.) So he walked in to me cutting up chicken, which was preferable to not having started anything at all, I suppose. The recipe calls for a 30 minute marinade, but I set a timer for 20 minutes instead this time.

Thinly sliced chicken in a freezer bag

1/4 cup of marinade reserved, the rest in the baggy with the chicken

I do prefer to marinate in a plastic bag, especially with meat. You can really squish it around and get everything coated without making a big mess, which I always seem to do when I try to marinate meat in a bowl, using a spoon to distribute the marinade.

After 20 minutes, I pulled it out and cooked it in my big skillet.

Starting to cook

Cooked through and set aside

Once the chicken was all the way cooked through, it was time to pull it out while I cooked the onion and bell pepper in the remaining marinade. Once they in turn were finished, I put the chicken back in and cooked until it was all hot and steamy. 

Onion and pepper starting to cook

Just about finished

Confession time: I just about burned it all at this point. I was trying to get a quesadilla cooked for Sam (pro-tip from Dan: use a pizza cutter to slice up a quesadilla), get the table set including toppings, and warm up cheese sauces for Dan and myself. Somewhere in here Sam politely asked for a glass of milk, so of course I had to drop everything and get it for him. :) The nice part is that the onion and pepper are a little bit tastier if they caramelize a little in the pan. So it all worked out. Dan said that this was the best batch of fajitas I've made yet, so WIN.

Finished product, drenched in dairy products the way I like it

I can't really even begin to estimate the cost of this particular meal, as I had most of the ingredients on hand already, aside from the onion and pepper. I would guess that it's more expensive than spaghetti but much less expensive than a roast, especially if you get the chicken, tortillas, and veggies on sale. It still feeds both of us for less than you'd pay for one person to order fajitas from a restaurant.

Tonight will be only slightly more homemade than hamburger helper, but it's one of our favorites and it uses some fresh ingredients, so I'll still write about it. Teriyaki pork lo mein using a Knorr noodle packet, and the recipe on the back.

Fancy Homemade Macaroni and Cheese

Last night was another recipe I haven't made that many times, but it's one that I'd been meaning to try again. Out of the Frying Pan was a collaboration between a blogger (before that was even a word) I read in the early 2000s and two of her friends/colleagues. It's been abandoned and revamped a couple of times, so who knows how much longer it'll be available online. It happens to house a few of my favorite recipes, so I popped the favorites and the "maybes" into Cozi, and got started working them into our family meal plan.

So this is one of them. It's not just fancy; I would say that depending on your kids' tastes it might be kid-unfriendly due to the scallions and white wine. You could always omit those, but I do feel like the scallions give it a more interesting flavor than your basic blue-box.

Modifications/choices: I used half a package of Italian 5 cheese blend and half a package of mild cheddar. I didn't have as much ham on hand as I thought, at least not thawed, so I used one 2 oz package of Buddig sliced deli ham and diced it into small bits. I did use the scallions and some Italian-style bread crumbs.

I cooked the noodles, made the cheese sauce, and assembled it until the step where you plop it in the oven. Then I placed the casserole dish in the fridge while Sam and I went to Music Together. Then I baked it when we got back. It took about 25 minutes or longer to get hot all the way through, but it turned out just as well, I think, as it would have if I'd baked it right away.

Unfortunately because I was trying to cram in prep time between the park and our class, and because I just didn't remember, I didn't take any pictures last night. I did, however, take a picture of some leftovers I had for lunch today.

Not sure on the verdict for this recipe. I like it a lot, but Dan wasn't feeling too well (and was 'pasta'ed out) so he didn't give me a firm yes or no. Sam wasn't at all interested, but he's not that big a mac and cheese fan anyway.

Tonight is Garlic Lime Fajitas. Hopefully I'll get more pictures of the process there. I've made this particular recipe three or four times (with no seasoning packet!) so it should be good.

Slow Cooker Chicken Stroganoff

Yesterday morning, I chopped up four boneless skinless chicken breasts and plopped them in a crock pot with a packet of dry Italian dressing mix and two tablespoons of butter. I let it cook on low for about 5 and a half hours, then added a brick of Neufchâtel cheese and a can of condensed cream of chicken soup, stirred that up, and let it get all hot and melty. Meanwhile I boiled a pot of water and cooked some wide egg noodles to go with it. And that's all there is to this recipe.

Forgot to take any pictures, but Dan liked it so much he agreed to take a portion to work to reheat for lunch. Win!

Also, I am debating doing a short social media fast, maybe 48 hours of not popping onto Facebook or Twitter, or reading any of my blogs on feedly. Just to get some perspective on my time-wasting and online behavior. I haven't committed fully either way, just something I'm considering. If I do, I'll continue to post here and push links to my Facebook timeline, but I won't be engaging in comments there.

Tonight is Fancy Homemade Mac and Cheese, which I am so looking forward to. I hadn't intended to have two pasta nights in a row, but that's what happens when I shuffle meals around toward the end of the week/weekend.

Cop out! Frozen pizza FTL*

So, those who are on my Facebook already know that yesterday, Sam was my little Houdini. I got almost no time to do any cooking or cleaning, because every time I turned around he was just gone. Out the door, down the steps, through the yard, into the driveway, and very nearly into the street. I spent a good third of my day (probably more, actually) just standing around outside making him not run into traffic. Each time I tried to, you know, fold some laundry or use the bathroom, I'd suddenly stop hearing him playing inside and run, panicked, outside to find him in the middle of our driveway. Last night we made a few adjustments to our doors and deck, and hopefully I won't have such a crazy day again any time soon.

But that meant that I'd done nothing to start dinner prior to Dan getting home, and since my lovely chicken/broccoli/rice meal takes some time to cook, between marinating the meat and cooking the rice, we decided to put it off for another day. Which meant: frozen pizza to the rescue! It was finally cool enough outside that I thought we could stand to run the oven for half an hour and just open up all the windows to cool the house down afterward.

Here's to not breaking down and spending $15 on delivery pizza that cost $3 from the grocery store, because even convenience food is cheaper and healthier when you make it yourself at home.

*For my mom and anyone else who doesn't know what FTL means: "For the lose", the opposite of "For the win".

Spaghetti Puttanesca

This is one that I made once or twice for Dan and myself either when we were dating or early in our marriage. I am pretty sure I haven't made it in at least 3 or 4 years. Dan really enjoys black olives, and it's definitely got that savory/salty thing going on without the need for herbs or meat. I'd never used capers in anything before this, and to be honest, I haven't used them in anything else.

So here's the recipe. It's not really very complicated. I find that any recipe that requires me to begin by sauteing garlic and onion in a skillet makes the house smell delicious, and me happy. Because I'm using mostly canned/jarred veggies aside from the onion, there's very little pre-prep for me to do, which makes this almost as easy as plopping a jar of marinara in a saucepan. Not quite as easy, because you still have to measure a few things. I also tend to use about 1/2 a small jar of sliced olives, so I don't have to do anything with those either. This recipe is also ideal for using jarred minced garlic. If I were very ambitious, I'd can tomatoes in glass jars in the summer, to avoid some of the scary chemicals that canned tomatoes in metal cans tend to absorb, since I also use canned diced tomatoes when I make chili. That's not something that I've managed to do so far, though. Aside from the non-fresh ingredients, I find this recipe to be reasonably healthy, maybe a teensy bit high in sodium, but otherwise pretty low in fat and calories and high in nutrients with satisfying flavors. I use a good quality extra virgin olive oil for the "good fats". You could use whole grain or low carb pasta if you're worried about starchy pasta, or simply eat it with less pasta and more sauce.

Here are a few obligatory pictures of it cooking and the finished product.

Garlic and onion cooking

Added tomatoes, olives, capers, and wine

Cooked down and saucy

On a plate

Tonight I'll make one of my favorite Asian chicken dishes, Stir-Fried Chicken with Broccoli, yet another Digs recipe. Next week I'll have a little more variety as far as recipe sources. To be fair, most of the "old favorite" recipes I make are from my single/couple with no kids days, so Digs was attractive from the perspective that most recipes are scaled down for just one or two people. As time passes, I am becoming more attracted to the easily reheatable recipes for four or more, that can become leftover lunches.