Living Simpler

More than a little funny how different my weekend looked from that last post...

Friday at 4-freakin'-PM, the .com offered OT. To borrow a phrase from The Bloggess, douche canoes! It's no longer becoming a case of me not being able to say no, though...the plain truth is that we barely make ends meet with my normal checks, and every little bit helps. There's the move to save for, Les's birthday coming up, I still haven't bought sneakers...there's always room for more dough. So I snatched up 4 hours and elected to go home that night, grab dinner, and then run back to the office to get it over with....thinking that way I'd still have a full weekend.

So naturally Murphy made Saturday fly by...I'm trying to remember what I accomplished, if anything. I jumped into the dining room just long enough to make it unmanageable and then abandoned it; it's still a disaster area that I'll rearrange several times this week to make it manageable and keep paring down. I puttered a bit. I took a seriously nice nap. Don't mind really, because the sun barely made an appearance that day, lots of rain, in fact. Can't complain, we always need it. Tropical state, my arse, it's forest fire season here (dear spring breakers, please stop throwing your lit butts into our national forests, and I won't have to test out my knife-throwing skills on your tires...).

Sunday, got up, puttered. Husby was awake so he made French toast, because I wasn't sure we had enough milk for pancakes. I took advantage of his awake state to discuss the week's meals with him and made the grocery list. Hopped out to do the shopping...which was fun, because I was following the list carefully and indulging in more organic labels and no junk. Yes, I bought milk too, organic even. Quite proud of myself.

Got back home, put everything away, chilled for a bit, then got cooking. Made banana muffins, chicken pot pie, and chocolate chip cookies, all from Eating Well recipes. The muffins and cookies were great; I want to tweak the chicken pot pie some. I've made incarnations of that for years, using store-bought pie crust, Heinz gravy, Veg-All, and chicken...it's delicious, but there's a lotta "middle aisle" stuff in the mix, if you know what I mean. Since I'm getting us away from so much processed food, I used frozen veggies instead of canned and made the sauce using broth and sour cream. Eventually I intend to make my own broth, sour cream, and pie crusts, but this was a nice start. Husby liked it, said it tasted fresher.

The irony of "living simpler" is that it actually means, "spend a little more money and work your arse off,  but know you're doing better for yourself and the planet as a result." My back still aches today from all the walking and kitchen standing I did, but I feel prepared for the week and really confident that we're starting to eat better. My baking included more whole grains, less sugar. When I measure the convenience of buying garbage in a box against the satisfaction of home cooking, it's no contest, backaches and all. And it blows my mind how few people in our culture get that.

Image from here.