If you love food, you don't have to sacrifice yummy flavor to be frugal and save money. Just follow these simple hints.
*Don't let leftovers linger.
To save time, definitely cook extra for leftovers.
EXCEPTION: Don't make leftovers of something that does not warm up well. Just make a single serving for each family member of meat that is not in a sauce that would keep it moist, for example.
But make sure that you eat leftovers only once, preferably the next day. Otherwise, your family will get bored and start complaining that they hate leftovers.
TIP: Write a reminder in your planner when you cook a large meal to "freeze leftovers" the next day.
*Recreate leftovers as frozen dinners (or lunches).
TIP: Freeze as individual servings.
I rarely freeze leftovers in one big ziploc bag. Instead, I make several individual servings. Grab one to throw in your lunchbox. Grab three for a quick dinner. Grab one or two as a side item to go with a grilled meat. The smaller servings defrost easily in a microwave or on the stove.
Leftovers are way tastier than most frozen meals, generally cheaper, and quick to heat up. By doing individual servings, each person can choose their favorite meal to heat up on leftovers night!
*Use fruits, veggies, and meats before the natural deadline.
FYI: Natural deadline = rotting food. Avoid that!
TIP: Write a note to eat the foods tomorrow in your planner.
TIP: Use as side dishes or snacks.
*Freeze fruits and veggies during the peak season, when they are cheapest and freshest. TIP: Prepare them for cooking first.
Strawberries are cut into blender sized chunks. Jalapenos are pre-chopped for salsa or sliced for omelets. Some peppers are diced, while others are sliced.
*Mix and match leftovers with fresh foods.
I make a mean enchilada casserole. It's fine leftover, but adding a side of freshly cooked saffron rice makes my family forget that it is leftover.
*Use expensive condiments.
If I am serving an apple, my kids are not impressed. But slice an apple and drizzle a bit of honey and cinnamon? Dessert.
Some cheese that won't be good soon? Use some very aged balsamic vinegar. It doesn't take much to make any cheese pop with flavor.
You saw that instead of plain white rice, we often go for saffron rice.
Expensive condiments go on the side, but there is nothing like them for cheaply (because you don't use much) upgrading food.
This post is way off topic from my normal posts. I do that sometimes, on Tuesdays, but frankly am doing so on a Tuesday just by coincidence. The Supreme Court happened to hear arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges today. I read the arguments and listened to the transcripts, and I might have geeked out a bit.
For my regular readers, kindly ignore me while I let my nerdy inner lawyer shine through. We'll be back to regularly scheduled planner and productivity action tomorrow!
(As a lawyer, I need to say that this is mere opinion and should NOT be taken as legal advice.)
Without further ado, my take on the arguments, which can be heard and read here.
(Now, just to be clear, this is a blogger post and not a scholarly post. I'll try to be accurate and entertaining. You try to be open-minded and enjoy. Deal?)
Odds Before Oral Argument (according to me): 45/35/20
(45% chance of gay marriage being allowed outright; 35% chance of gay marriage not being a right, but states having to recognize other states' marriages; 20% chance of gay marriage not being recognized in any state other than those where it is currently legal.
These odds are created based on my knowledge of the justices and the law. I was top of my class in Constitutional Law and won a National Moot Court award in Constitutional Law, so this is my thing. On the other hand, I've been out of law school for years and have two kids, so grain of salt, people!)
*Mary L. Bonauto, the counsel for the plaintiff, is one of those amazingly smart, never flustered women that make the rest of us proud and filled with a sense of failure, all at once. The other lawyers were not memorable.
Odds (Revised): 50/30/20
Kick butt arguments make writing a ruling easy! Judges like easy.
*Chief Justice Roberts (expected to vote against same-sex marriage, but a potential swing vote) participated actively and asked intelligent questions.
Odds (Revised): 55/30/15
Roberts is listening to reason and wants to appear smart. He is smart. His ruling might go against his conservative nature.
*Justice Kennedy (the expected swing vote that will determine the outcome) made a point to compare the time period between Brown (finding separate schools based on race in violation of the 14th Amendment) and Loving (allowing interracial marriage) and between Lawrence (striking down anti-sodomy laws) and the present case.
Odds: unchanged.
Kennedy was going to say this anyway!
*Justice Ginsburg compared the institutional change to allow gay marriage to the end of the old subordinate relationship between husbands and wives.
Odds: unchanged
Justice Ginsburg is a smarty pants. She made exactly the same argument that I made weeks ago.
*Justice Alito is very excited by polygamous relationships and their implications. And he makes a decent joke about polygamous lawyers.
Odds: unchanged
Is anyone actually surprised at that? No.
*Chief Justice Roberts says, "...closing of debate can close minds...."
Odds: 50/35/15
That statement is a sign that he might accept the state recognition of other states' legal marriages argument.
*Justice Scalia said, "I'm concerned about the wisdom of the Court imposing through the Constitution...a requirement of action which is unpalatable to many of our citizens for religious reasons."
Odds: unchanged
Isn't that what the Supreme Court is supposed to do? If something was palatable, it would already be law! Somebody can't handle the flavor of something, or it would not be illegal.
*Justice Scalia cannot conceive of a situation in which gay marriage can be a right that does not cause a minister to HAVE to marry two men to each other.
Odds: unchanged
Really, Justice? No possible answer to that? Wow. However did you graduate law school? Also, the smart petitioners' attorney was quick to point out, and I agree, that the First Amendment clearly allows a clergyperson to not officiate a marriage that he or she does not want to officiate.
*While Justice Scalia is still pretending (one can hope) stupidity, Justice Kagan schools him on First Amendment rights.
Odds: unchanged
I enjoyed page 26 of the transcript. You, too, can watch Scalia get schooled.
*During a brief break, someone shouted "BURN IN HELL."
Odds: unchanged
This commentary is not noted on the official transcript, but clearly heard on the audio. It's the reason you should never just read a dry transcript!
*Justice Alito asks about siblings getting married.
Odds: unchanged
Alito is so much fun!
*On page 35 of the transcipt, Justice Scalia says something.
Odds: unchanged
It doesn't matter what he said. What does matter is what I wrote in the margins of the transcript: "wherein Scalia is an [word redacted for sensitive eyes, but it was an important body part in the Lawrence case]."
*Justice Kagan made fun of the poor attorney who was tasked with defending the state of Michigan's gay marriage ban on page 48 of the transcript.
Odds: unchanged
I kind of felt sorry for him! He seemed out of his league.
*The defense attorney argued that marriage is about keeping a couple bound to a child and not about a commitment between two adults.
Odds: 55/30/15
Seriously, there are some decent legal arguments for opposite sex only marriages. I don't think, from a legal perspective, that they are winning arguments, but they are reasonable.
This is not it. I wonder if Michigan is trying to lose the argument?
*Justice Breyer said some liberal stuff.
Odds: 55/25/20
No one was shocked. But someone in the middle might make him pay. I'm talking about you, Justice Kennedy.
*The defense attorney spent a lot of time arguing with liberal judges instead of addressing the concerns of the moderates.
Odds: 60/30/10
That is a bad strategy, and the opposite of the strategy of the plaintiff's attorney. It's a waste of time. The liberals and conservatives have already decided!
*The defense attorney missed a chance to argue that the bond between a child and a mother and a child and a father is different.
Odds: 60/30/10
The odds don't go down for him, as he has already lost his argument. But when discussing old court cases on pages 67 - 69, he should have pointed out that children need something different from people in different gender roles, and that the LGBTQ community is an excellent example of the importance of gender and gender identity.
*Justice Ginsburg reminded us that in 1982, the court ended Louisiana's Head and Master rule, where there was a dominant male and a subordinate female.
Odds: unchanged
As a native Louisianian, I am not proud of us. Also, this means my mom married my dad under that law. I'm trying to imagine her face if Daddy told her what to do! He'd be in trouble, state-sanctioned or not!
*There is a typo on p. 81 of the transcript. Justice Kagan says something that is attributed to someone else.
Odds: unchanged
I probably have typos in this post, as speed was a factor. Email me or message me privately, please. No one else needs to know!
FINAL ODDS: 60/30/10
I think, at least in terms of oral argument, that it was a clear win for the plaintiffs in favor of same sex marriage. But we shall see!
I know that I need to make weight loss a priority, but I keep having setbacks that make it seem impossible.
The setbacks are real.
I have a couple of medical conditions that, when they flare, make me retain water and make me a temporarily picky eater. They also chain me to the house and zap any energy that I have away. The good news is that, between flares, I am fine.
Well, mostly fine. I've been struggling with a couple of broken teeth. One required an extraction and a cap next to it. The other is a work in progress. For most people, it's an annoyance. But for me, my health issues flare up, so I've had a vicious infection and some other problems.
My husband is working long hours right now, so I am mostly single parenting right now. (So far, he has worked for 21 days straight, with 10 to 11 hour days.)
I have asthma and a bad hip, and when both act up - ouch.
I've gone to the gym some, but working out outdoors is virtually impossible since it has rained for WEEKS. (South Louisiana gets afternoon storms, but this has been constant and unusual.)
I run out of time and grab chicken tenders on the road. I get too hungry and get a candy bar when grocery shopping. I eat cookies because they are quick and convenient.
But the setbacks are no excuse.
There is a trick to losing weight and I should be ashamed of myself for not doing it:
MAKE A PLAN.
* Plan grocery shopping. Buy more of the good foods (for me, chicken breasts, sunflower seeds, fruits, and veggies) and less of the bad foods (cookies, empty calories). Eat first, before shopping, so you don't get hungry during the trip.
*Plan meals.
Write down dinner plans, keeping in mind the rhythm of the day.
On days when I substitute teach, I make something quick, like a salad or something from my freezer. On at-home days, I might make a stew or chicken with roasted veggies.
For breakfast and lunch, have routine items that are quick to make and easy to carry with you. I prefer a bowl of grits, an egg, or a fruit for breakfast. I usually plan leftovers for lunch, but when I don't have any, I make a salad.
*Plan to snack. Snacks go on the daily prep list.
I've started bringing a water bottle and a fruit everywhere that I go. I also keep sunflower seeds in my car.
You will snack. Plan for it, and you won't pull through the drive-through.
*Plan exercise.
Write it down in your planner.
Make a date with a friend.
Attend a regular class.
Have a back-up plan for rainy, hot, and cold days.
For someone who plans so well, I've really been struggling with this. It's time to make a plan.
On a regular basis (like every single day), I get lazy. I'll do my planning, but not follow through. I'll write half of a word and believe, foolishly, that I will remember what I meant later. I use tags to move around reminders so that I don't have to rewrite routine tasks.
And, sometime, I rip out a planner page and move it somewhere else.
No bothering with rings for me. Nope. Just rip out quickly and move to someplace else.
It works because the quick rip leaves tiny tears between the left edge of the paper and the hole punch holes. Those tears allow you to press the page securely into your planner.
It occurred to me that such a trick could be used for good instead of evil.
If you make a temporary list (say, a task list for a big meeting coming up or an errands list for a certain day), there is no need to go through the trouble of opening the planner to the dashboard to get blank paper, writing on the paper, undoing the rings, and moving the paper to the area where you need it (like project pages or in the weekly spread).
Instead, if you rip the paper out quickly, you can then press it gently into the rings anywhere in your planner.
For example, tomorrow I substitute teach. It will be a light teaching schedule with many breaks, but I won't have proper wi-fi access. I will need something to do during the breaks.
In addition to my usual daily docket page, I plan to make a temporary task list of things that need doing, but can be done at the school and without wi-fi (such as calling for a doctor's appointment, entering my receipts into my accounting app, and revising a document in Word). That list will be placed next to my daily docket in my weekly spread.
I want to keep the list, so I can continue it when I next substitute teach, but it will move to another week by then.
Of course, I COULD just open the rings and move the paper. But this technique has so many advantages over opening the rings:
* Tearing out the page forces me to complete the list BEFORE the little slits next to the hole punches wear out and allow the paper to fall out of my planner.
* The torn pages remind me that this list is temporary.
* Having torn pages makes it easy for me, psychologically, to toss the list once complete. (You know you have the same problems with hoarding planner pages!)
* I get to be lazy!
NOTE: I do NOT recommend this hack for permanent pages. Only use on temporary pages, as the effectiveness wears out and pages will fall out of your planner if you move them too often.
Be sure to comment below if you have other ideas for ways to use this hack. Of course, comments on my hoarder tendencies and how you share them are also encouraged.
Grocery shopping for a family of four takes me, on average, about two hours. Wandering through the store is a major portion of that time.
People kept telling me to use a map of the store. But I still had to look at the map and determine where each item was located. And the map included so much irrelevant stuff!
I did something simpler. Step 1: Mark down aisle numbers as you shop.
I brought my grocery list to the store (simply jotted in my planner) and as I picked up an item, I wrote down the aisle number. Step 2: Make a simple table in Word or Excel of the aisles with your old, marked up grocery list. TIP: Divide it into dry and cold food.
Step 3: Insert the items that you bought into the proper spot.
Oil is on Aisle 5, for example.
Now, when I make my grocery list, I can refer to this list.
Step 4: Set up your new grocery list (either in your planner or on a printout of this custom map) by aisle.
TIP: Write aisle number next to grocery on list, using spacing to leave room to add items.
2 - bread 2 - hot dog buns ? - raisins
11 - snacks
12 - chicken breasts
15 - eggs
Step 5: Each week, add any items that are not already on the list.
I buy some things only every now and then or monthly, but when I find them in the store, I make a note to add them to my running grocery list.
In the example above, I did that with raisins.
There is no reason to spend oodles of time shopping. A simple custom-made map of the store will be worth the time investment.
Today, grocery shopping took less than an hour!
Bonus points if you noticed that my first "COLD" food is "Hot Food." (I sometimes grab rotisserie chicken or something in the hot food area near produce.)
As an added bonus, this list makes a great reminder of what you might need at the store.
