New Year's Resolutions

I find New Year's Resolutions to be trite and contrived most of the time, yet I make them every year! I can't help myself. Anyway, here are my resolutions for the upcoming year:

• Lose 10 pounds. This is a biggie for me. I know I won't feel comfortable in my own body until I drop the excess weight. Ten pounds would make me happy.

• Go to church more often. Hubby and I rarely go... it just doesn't seem to happen Sunday mornings. But I'm going to make it a serious priority in our lives.

• Make more "mom" friends. My kids need a bigger social network, so I'm going to try to expand it.

• Rebuild our food storage. We really dipped into it during the past month, plus I never had a huge stockpile to begin with. I feel a sense of urgency to stock food, so I am going to make a committed effort to do so.

• Develop some skills. As in... useful skills.

• Kick my habits. Too much wine, too little sleep, too many potatoes in my diet... all of that needs cleaned up.

• Stick to a budget. Hubby and I are, fortunately, starting the new year in the black (with the exception of our mortgage). Just barely. Our savings got completely depleted over Christmas, and I really want to build it back up. In addition, living with in our means is not only sensible, it also helps reduce stress.

Merry Christmas

Jesus is the reason for the season!

Just thought I'd share a few of my family's favorite Christmas tradition. Some are old, some are newer.

• Every holiday season I watch my two favorite Christmas movies: Die Hard and Love Actually.

• On Christmas Eve, my family goes to church. Then we come home for a light seafood supper. Dad gets shrimp and crab balls, my SIL makes soup, and I have some type of side dish. We exchange gifts with my family at this time.

• On Christmas morning, the kids open their presents. Then we dig into our traditional (from generations in my family) Christmas breakfast of oyster stew, pork tenderloin and sweet rolls. Yum!

• Christmas dinner is spent with Hubby's family, either at my MIL's house or at mine. It's the basic traditional meal: turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc. Sometimes MIL makes a lasagna. Not sure why that's a tradition, though, since no one in the family is Italian.

• Christmas night is spent with some old family friends. (Meaning they've been friends of my family for a long time, not that they're geriatric!) It's a light supper of sandwiches, chips, fruit salad, cheese, crackers, etc.

Ok. So yeah... it's all about the food and fellowship for me. Christmas is ALWAYS a super busy day for me, but it's worth every busy minute.

Merry Christmas!

End of Food Storage Month

So a month of feeding my family food storage (minus essentials like milk and bread) is over. Here's what I've learned:

• My family has a month's worth of food in storage, assuming we have a way to keep all of our frozen stuff cold (either electricity or winter weather).

• My family relies heavily on convenience foods. (This is more a reflection of my poor housekeeping skills.) Frozen pizza, frozen french fries, etc. were the first foods we went through.

• I need to up my storage when it comes to spices/herbs/condiments. We ran out of pepper, parsley (I use it in almost everything), and worcestershire sauce.

• We need more chickens for winter month production. They really slow down their laying once the days get shorter. We got four eggs per day during the summer, but now we're only getting 1-2.

• We need to try root cellaring potatoes. We ran out of them pretty quickly, and they're a staple around here. Next year I'm going to grow them in the garden and attempt to root cellar the surplus.

All in all, it was pretty painless. It might have been a lot different if we hadn't had freezer stock to use. In that case, we would have been relying on canned meats and canned veggies, both of which aren't commonly eaten in my household.

The Contents of My Freezer

Since I've been trying to feed my family from the food only in my house, I thought it might be worthy to note the foods in my freezer. Hubby and I pretty much grab something from the freezer almost every day to prepare our meals.

• Roasting Chickens
• Ground Beef
• Beef Roasts
• Hamburger Patties
• Hotdogs
• Fish of various types
• Bread
• Hamburger and Hotdog Rolls
• Dinner Rolls
• Cheeses of various types
• Butter
• Frozen Vegetables (peas, green beans, mixed veggies, stir-fry veggies, corn, broccoli, etc.)
• Homemade Tomato Sauces (pizza and spaghetti)
• Chicken Stock

Typically my freezer also contains a variety of convenience foods: frozen pizzas, some frozen dinners, frozen pre-made appetizer foods (for impromptu guests), frozen pie crust. I also usually have some frozen leftovers (like half a lasagna or a small casserole). But most of that is gone by now.

Quick Update

Due to a death in the family, I haven't been blogging. Things are just too chaotic right now.

But I did want to post a quick update about our food storage month, since I'm only 11 days or so from completion. (Although we'll probably continue this past Christmas.)

So far, I haven't noticed a difference in our diet at all! Granted, I have continued to purchase milk and bread. And this isn't a realistic trial if, say, there was no electricity. We've been eating from things in the freezer (meat, breads, cheeses, butter, fish, etc.) with regularity, but not in the all-at-one-time fashion that would occur if the power was out for an extended period of time.

Breakfast tends to be easy: eggs, toast, maybe some fried potatoes. We've also had pancakes, as well as quick foods like cereal and milk.

Lunches are easy, too: chicken salad sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, maybe soup. Sometimes we eat our dinner leftovers for lunch. And, twice a week, my dad takes me and the kids out to lunch. Hubby typically takes dinner leftovers to work for his lunch.

Dinners are pretty much our standards: roast chicken, chicken and dumplings, steamers (aka sloppy joes), hot dogs, burgers, tacos, chicken potpie. We have been eating a bit more chicken than usual, mostly because that's what's in the freezer.

I should note that my kids are very young. The little one is still nursing, although she eats solids, too. The elder one has the appetite of a bird. She goes through phases, but typically she isn't much of an eater. Hubby and I have (I'd guess) average appetites. He's a 6-foot, 180 lb man, and I'm a 5-foot, 112 lb woman. Our calorie intake pretty much maintains our weights.

I have tapped and exhausted a few of our more convenient freezer foods, like frozen pizzas and frozen french fries. But it's no great sacrifice to live without them.

I still have plenty of the basics - like flour, sugar, crisco, Bisquick, spices, herbs, canned goods - left. I will need to restock when we get some cash in the bank, but we have an ample supply to make it through the holidays.

Frankly, it's a relief to know that I at least had a month's worth of food in the house.