Currently... Establishing Priorities & Slowing Down

It’s the second week of January.  And while we're usually thinking about how to do more and more, I've started thinking about how to focus on my priorities and maybe slow down while doing so.  Just a little bit.  For now, I’m getting the week started on this rainy, freezing rain, school two-hour delay (again) being a little more mindful.

Drinking coffee from a bowl instead of a mug. Last week, the kids and I treated ourselves to Max Brenner’s Chocolate Bar. They had s’mores and the 80’s chocolate milkshakes, I had a Mexican Hot Chocolate. It’s spiced up with chili, cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper - plus the obvious fact that it’s also hot, it amps up the spiciness. I like spicy, but I felt like I needed some cake or something to go along with it to balance the spiciness.

Chocolate treats from Max Brenner's Chocolate Bar

Anyway – it was served in a funky little tear-drop shaped bowl, their Hug Mug.  To imagine it – cup your hands together like you’re holding water – that’s the shape of the mug.  It felt so cozy. Since then, I’ve been drinking my coffee at home in a bowl, too. In addition to being warm, another thing I discovered – it makes you slow down. I usually scroll through emails, Twitter and Facebook with coffee mug in one hand. Can’t do that with a bowl. It makes you slow down and not multi-task everything.

My coffee bowl and cranberry cornbread from a recipe I found while decluttering.

Still decluttering.  I’ve made a good dent in my cooking magazines and found some good recipes along the way. Last week I made a delicious cranberry cornbread on the snow day.  And the empty organizing containers are piling up in my office. Empty because I was holding onto so much stuff, when I finally went through it, I realized I didn’t really need all that stuff.  It’s a process, but I'm definitely starting to feel a little lighter.

Planning our menu for the week – starting with the freezer.  Somehow my freezer is packed but each day I’m wondering what we’re going to have for dinner. When I can see some more light in there again, I’ll go shopping again.  Until then, I’ll be defrosting and cooking.  And probably throwing out some food that has been in there way too long.  Cleaning out the freezer is a good way to start out the year. Planning meals is a good way to stick to a a healthy eating plan.

Making time for my workout.  My husband is good with his schedule – everyday he works out. Me? I get the kids off to school then decide – workout or check email and Facebook?  The fit of my jeans is a tattletale on which I generally choose. So, I’m trying to get better at putting my workout – and me – first as a priority. As a sniggling reminder, I get dressed in my workout clothes so that eventually I either will go run and exercise or admit that I did not.  I’ve got my sneakers sitting right next to me as I write.

Making time to read.  I’m squeezing it into my waiting time, as well as allowing myself the downtime to read, rather than completing other stuff or flipping through social media doing nothing. I make sure I’ve got my book in my purse when I leave the house, read a page here and there while waiting. Right now, I’m trying to finish Americanah which I’ve been carrying around for an embarrassing long time, even if it is a long book.

1st book of the new year - finishing up "Americanah"

And of course, I’m still just piddlin’.

Have a good week!

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#DIY Cookbooks: Recipe Binders for Favorite Recipes

Pasta, dessert, soups, seafood. Did I say dessert? I really enjoy cooking – the more ingredients and chopping and mixing the better.  And what goes along with this love of cooking? Cookbooks, magazines, and torn out from anywhere recipes. Over the years of collecting such things, I looked up one day to realize that recipes have taken over a kitchen cabinet, the counter, the desk.

The situation: I have years (okay, over a decade; I’m sharing, don’t judge) of Cooking Light magazines, travel souvenir cookbooks, specific food cookbooks, organizational fundraising cookbooks, those promotional pamphlet-ish cookbooks.

The problem: With too many recipes, I never get around to all of them, or even a majority of them, because there’s no easy way to catalog them.

De-cluttering:

• I’ve tossed the promotional pamphlet-ish cookbooks from food brands and specialty kitchen stores.  Just because.
• I’ve tossed or put in the donation pile the fundraising cookbooks.  I guess there was a fad at some point in which organizations had all of their members and supporters write their favorite recipe and compiled them all into a book to raise money for their programs.  Nice idea, nice fundraising option, but I really don’t need more recipes for tuna casseroles and doctored up box cake recipes.
• I’ve kept the cookbooks that I’ve purchase when traveling because, in addition to yarn, those are my kind of travel souvenirs.  Commander's Kitchen and Emeril's from New Orleans, a waffle cookbook in Dutch from Belgium, Korean cookbooks from a bookstore and coffee shop in Seoul.
• I’ve also kept my other “real” cookbooks, i.e. published and bound cookbooks.  This includes Maya Angelou's cookbook, one all about shrimp & grits, and few from various Junior League chapters (a southern one has the best Kahlua recipe in it.)  The ones I just didn’t like anymore for whatever reason I put in the donation pile.

What about that decade’s worth of Cooking Light? Its online, they have a website, I can search for any recipe I want. I probably threw out the whole lot, right? Nope.  I went through the magazines and pulled out the recipes I’ve either tried at some point or really anticipate making in the near future.  And I realized something while going through about 100 magazines: there are a lot of repeats and variations of the repeats. I guess that’s not too surprising – how many ways can you really make baked chicken, baked tilapia, or pasta, shrimp, and lemon?  So I didn’t keep every version of chicken alfredo or baked broccoli casserole.  Or the annual update on making the perfect tomato sauce (hint, starting with canned tomatoes are acceptable.)

I slipped all those torn out recipes into plastic sleeves and ordered them in a couple 3-ring binders.  The plastic sleeves are important so that the pages don’t get torn as I flip through or messed up when I cook.  The cover is simple - printout of a fun food reminder and scrapbook paper.

Use plastic sheet protectors and a 3-ring binder to collect favorite recipes.

One binder is divided like a regular cookbook – meats, side dishes, breads, breakfast, etc.  One binder is all desserts which I'll divide into cookies, cakes, pies, frozen sweets, and other stuff.

Collect reminders, lists, and recipes in one binder for the holidays.

I also have a holiday book which includes recipes that I only make during the holidays (cranberry sauce, sweet potato pies, etc.), as well as other holiday to-do reminders, and Christmas card lists.  The cover art? A pre-school art project made by one of my kids (another great way to preserve and use those art projects.) 

How’s it working? I’ve already used a newly re-discovered recipe to make biscotti for my recent cookie exchange.

Now, if I could only find a simpler way to wash and put away all those dishes.

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Currently... Decluttering Everything. Clothes. Books. Stuff

By now, you've probably seen, Material World, a photography collection of people around the world with their earthly possessions, published years ago by Peter Menzel.  To see some of the photos from countries other than the U.S., we realize the embarrassment of riches that we have.

I've been thinking about those photos lately, as I've been feeling quite crowded and cluttered in my own house.  I don't even feel justified in buying one other thing because - where would I put it?  I'm not saying that I'm going to get rid of everything, dwindling our belongings down to a blanket and a water bucket, but I could get rid of a lot and still have plenty.  So I'm trying to slim down a significant bit before the end of the year. Yes, this is my December, end of the year, push.

Some of the stuff is actually useful, if I could just remember I had it or had an efficient way to get to it. Some stuff is useless, to anybody.  Some can be repurposed and reused, in ways I mentioned in a previous post about reusing old clothes, or donated for various purposes.  I'm sorting through it all, one thing at a time, to figure that out.

So what have I got? On the top of the list:

• Toys. I'm always sure that we are going to find that 1 missing puzzle piece and the rest of the games cards. And I keep picking up those little battleship pegs.  It's a process, but I'm admitting that none of that is going to happen, so it's time to let it go.  (Are you going to be singing Frozen all day now?)
• Socks. All those 1-socks, particularly the ones that don't even fit anybody anymore.  I'm losing hope that the matches will ever resurface. But I do let my kids, the youngest especially, wear mis-matching socks of the same style.  Do you know that you an actually buy mis-matched packs of socks? What brilliant mom (I'm sure it was a mom tired of matching socks) came up with this marketing genius? I wish it was me. Then I'd be writing this post from a sunny beach somewhere.
• Magazines.  I don't really read digital magazines, so that's not my replacement. I just need to admit that I'm actually not going back to that Real Simple article from June of 2010.  It was enjoyable then, it kept me occupied at the pool, now it's time to fill the recycling bin to make some new paper bags or newspapers or something.

Also - cookbooks, kids' clothes, sweaters, books to start.  I'll get into more details as I work through the piles, so come on back for all that.

What have you got that's piling up in your house that you need to get rid of?

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Let the Kids Cook - Rugelach

How many times have you read this suggestion as a great way to spend time and bond with your kids:  cook together.

How many times does it turn from a great idea to an argument over who gets to measure the sugar, split milk, dough all over the kitchen, and you looking for the wine (and not because it's called for in the recipe)?

That's why I'm not going to tell you to cook with your kids. I'm going to tell you to let the kids cook by themselves.

Kids need the experience of being in the kitchen and learning to cook. My mother had me scrambling eggs and making spaghetti since I was a kid. (Although I think I was a teenager before I was allowed the privilege of cooking the rice for dinner.)  Just like they need to learn to clean their room, fold their laundry and budget their money, kids need to learn how to feed themselves.  I get my little folks in the kitchen because as much as I love them, I really do want them one day to be independent beings who can boil water and make themselves some toast. I'm kinda proud that they can do a little bit more than that already.

At BookExpo America, I found HandStand Kids Cookbook Company. Each one of the colorful, easy-to-read cookbooks contains international recipes from Italy, Mexico, or China, and the Baking Around the World book includes recipes from various countries. And since my kids, like their mother, love anything baked, we tried out a sample of this last book.

Each recipe in the cookbooks has illustrations showing the ingredients and tools that are needed and is  marked by a 1-4 cupcake key to indicate how much involvement is needed from the parent.  My clan, ranging in age from 8 to 14 years old chose the recipe for Raspberry Rugelach (a 3-cupcake recipe).

My oldest lead the project and my youngest could read along and participate with everyone else.  And since they are their mother's children, they made their own substitutions in the recipe to their own taste and what we had on hand (see the note on the filling.) I sat back and let them try it out themselves. And by the time my coffee had brewed, there was a delicious plate of hot rugelach ready for tasting.

The filling: strawberry jelly, chopped Hershey bar as substitute for chocolate chips

Roll out the dough and cut in wedges using a pizza cutter.

Add filling and roll up each wedge.

Wash with eggs.

Enjoy!

Try these out at your house and then check their website at www.handstandkids.com for more information on how to order your own.  When you order by Sept. 1, be sure to use the special coupon code for 20% off, especially for Just Piddlin’ readers: HSK20.

Organizing and Cooking

As a busy mom, there are many days that I loathe hearing the words, "what's for dinner?"  But, not because I don't like cooking.  In fact, one of the few household chores that I like is cooking.  The rest - laundry, dusting, mopping - I do because that's what grown people are supposed to do.  But I enjoy cooking, especially when I have the time to slice and dice and saute.  And if I am working from a new recipe, even better.  When I don't have time, I feel bored returning to the same meals over and over.  This boredom is colliding with my effort to de-clutter.

I read an article the other day by a de-cluttering expert that says you only need 2 cookbooks.  I don't know how many I have, but I think the count may start with "2", including a couple in another language (anyone know what "eierdooier" is for my "pecannotenwafels"?)  I'm not trying to cull my cookbook collection to 2 - that would not really be a collection, anymore, would it?

My cookbooks, although numerous, are in pretty good order.  I have them neatly on the shelves, tabbed with my favorite recipes, the tried and true go-to recipes marked by the spill marks on the pages.  It is my piles of cooking magazines and torn out recipes that are a little bit out of control.

"What's for dinner?"  The answer is somewhere in this pile.

To start putting this stack of "one day I'm gonna cook this" pages into a usable format, I sorted them out into categories, you know, like a cookbook.  Meats, Veggies, Desserts (baked and frozen - because I like making ice cream), Soups, Breakfast, Breads/Baking (not desserts), Pasta. I kept or discarded the recipes based on a few simple criteria:

• is it something I'm really, actually going to make?  Although, I like the idea of making fresh, yeast breads, I really don't have the patience to wait for yeast to rise - out went all those recipes.
• is it something the husband and kids are really going to eat?
• are the ingredients easily purchased at the local grocery store?  If I have to go to any specialty market, it's never going to get made - out went those recipes.
• do I have a recipe I already like for this food?  I have several cookie and dessert cookbooks, so I didn't keep any basic pies or cakes or cookies like sugar cookies, vanilla pound cake

Torn-out recipes sorted into food categories, ready to try out.

The keepers, I put in a vertical file folder.  I plan on pulling recipes each week and trying them out.  After I cook them, I'll keep the ones I really like.  If I'm in a particularly organized mood, I might even type them up.  (If you look real close in the photo, you might note a few scribbled on a piece of paper.  These are recipes I jotted down while watching TV or talking to someone.  I'm telling you, I get recipes from everywhere.)  The keepers will go into plastic sleeves and I'll add them to a binder of recipes I've already collected.  I'm thinking I might make separate binders for different categories, because already my existing one is almost full.

I'll keep you posted on the good ones (you know I will!)