Good Thing Friday (78)
August 14, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I just found $12 owed to PiC looking through the Unclaimed Property site! I was able to put in the claim for him electronically so a bit of typing and his claim is all set. We’ll see if they cough it up in 7-10 days.
2. We’ve been trying to buy local as much as we can, which often means paying a mark up, but we think it’s important to support local businesses. Mostly that means local restaurants but this weekend it meant the local bike shops. Unfortunately, PiC couldn’t get the shop to pick up their phones to find out if they had parts in stock and showing up at the shop that said it was open online revealed that it was not. They wasted a precious hour on an unsuccessful errand so we had to go to the local chain instead. Not that I think the small bike shops here are suffering. The sales in the bike industry around here have skyrocketed with COVID, and he’s reported seeing children’s bikes listed for as much as $800!! Who does that?? But there are quite affluent people in some of the areas surrounding us, so I suppose they’d be willing to pay that kind of money? I guess? I don’t know. The point is he was about to get a couple sets of tires and tubes for JB’s bike for $50. And plus the money we paid for the bike is still less than half the cost of a new one. Even if we’d started with a new bike, I suspect their aggressive riding would have landed us in the bike shop getting new tires sooner or later even if we started with new ones.
3. I went on an organizing fest on Sunday to corral all my jewelry and hair and makeup things into a semblance of order and though I’m grouchy that I ordered the containers literally a couple hours too late and had the price go up by $2 per unit, I’m not letting the $6 “surcharge” over what I had mentally budgeted take away from my triumph of untangling and sorting all those pieces. Most of it is cheap costume jewelry, but most of that has held up well enough that I should wear them more regularly.
Challenges this week: I wiped myself out on the weekend inadvertently. We went on an extra long walk on Saturday and my ensuing fatigue was DEEP. I could hardly summon the will to exist.
4. For the first time in five months, I went to Trader Joe’s with the family. We were lucky, there was no line to get in. We had our hands misted on the way in, stayed well away from others, we were all masked, I got to pick up a new GF item (Norwegian crackers!) to try out. I haven’t missed people very much since they only exacerbate my ever-dominant fatigue, but I have missed the opportunity to see foods on shelves and stimulate the menu brain.
5. I needed to tackle another area of my organizing and I got it done over the weekend. I gathered up my scattered, though reasonably small, costume jewelry collection and hair accessories into these neat crafts storage boxes. The neatness makes me really happy, as does regaining some of our limited counterspace in the bathroom. I really appreciate these small bouts of organizing energy because the end result, even if I spend money to get there, is so satisfying and the neater surroundings helps soothe my otherwise stressed soul.
6. My brain is currently obsessed with make ahead meals. I’ve got some experience putting up lamb stew and chicken stew, I’d like to expand my repertoire to include enchiladas and chili. Enchiladas I can manage just fine but I had to experiment with the chili. I think I’m going to work on a few more batches before I am ready to freeze ahead.
I’m looking for more easy to make, freezer friendly all in one meals to make ahead so we can have at least a week of pre-made meals set aside for the hard days.
I’m hoping for a sale on Pyrex soon. After thinking about it for days, I decided the most environmentally friendly and flexible long term answer to freezing foods ahead of time is glass with lids. I don’t want to do disposable baking pans nor do I want to freeze in foil because that’s apparently imparted a funny taste to some of my frozen foods.
I just made a big batch of lunches- cubed chicken breast cooked with biryani paste and a little toor dal in the instant pot, then cauliflower ‘rice’ and peas thrown in when it cools.
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Ooh thanks for sharing! We love Indian food, we can add a few of those to our repertoire.
I like the oxo glass containers because they are borosilicate glass, unlike new Pyrex, so less chance of it shattering into a million pieces due to thermal shock (Google it for details). The oxo lids can be difficult to snap on though and oxo doesn’t sell spare lids.
I love Oxo but good to know the lids can be tough to open. That’s an important detail for me.
That thing about Pyrex shattering absolutely always freaks me out, but they do replace the lids, and my hands can handle their lids so I might have to stick with them on a sale.
I make everything I can ahead but I have kind of a tone deaf palate. It sounds like you may be a lot pickier than me! The only thing that really doesn’t work frozen is pot roast potatoes. I like chili, flemish beef stew, minestrone, spaghetti (I do not use a lot of pasta and my sauce is made from scratch and super chunky), jollof rice, jerk pork with rice and beans, curried vegetables (sometimes with chicken or paneer), lentil soup… pyrex with lids are the bomb but eventually the lids do crack.
I think I may be the most picky in terms of taste because my family will generally eat anything I make without much objection but I will keep poking and prodding recipes until I’m happy with them.
But that’s just a preference. My true limitation is dietary restrictions which affect my health.
We haven’t had good luck with the Pyrex lids either but they will replace them!
I love it when I can cook double batches & freeze half. Thai peanut chicken is one of our family favorites! I can message you our recipe if you like. Chicken teriyaki stir-fry or fried rice both freeze well. And I don’t normally make chicken soup in summertime, but I’m planning to freeze some soon so we have it on hand just in case… ya know.
I would LOVE your recipes if you have time to share them, they sound yummy! You can email me at revanche@agaishanlife.com if that’s best for you. Thank you for offering!
And yeah, I know … :/