Testimonial

A few years ago, I attended a neighboring ward's Relief Society's Enrichment Activity where they discussed freezer meals. This lady blocked out one day a month for shopping preparations and clean up and produced 30+ meals for the month. She calculated the time for that day vs the time she used to take daily for dinner prep and realized she was saving herself an amazing amount of time. Also, she realized that her monetary commitment to food each month dropped drastically as well. I had dabbled around with the idea, but never really put it to use. One draw back for me was the amount of casseroles that were in her set of recipes. Don't get me wrong, I can eat me some cream of junk concoction loaded with cheese and fat any old time, but not night after night.

I have made may be 10 dinners at a given time to freeze and I always pre-cut my meat and separate them into individual baggies for each intended dinner, but that was the extent of my attempts. For some reason, I had the drive to try out her little experiment Saturday night. I started with the chicken dishes and popped out 6 meals (well, the main dish portion of the dinner at least) I guess I also should mention that there were 3 recipes that I made double batches. I then made 3 lasagnas. Since I was on such a roll I figured I would prep some more dinners. In the 3 hours I worked, I prepared 23 dinners and cleaned my kitchen and felt pretty proud of myself. I reveled in the fact that I still had the freedom to cook whatever sponanteous dish I am in the mood for or could rely on a back up as needed. I removed that annoying "What's for dinner" question and have saved hours of prep time.

In the end, I was left with the feeling of remorse for not trying this earlier and the drive to do this again and again. I can't wait to add to my repertoire so feel free to leave your tried and true freezer meals in the comment portion.

Enlarged Bonzai

When i was a little kid, I remember listening to this tape of inspirational songs while we drove in the car. Since we drove in the car frequently, we heard this tape a lot. One song made the profound point "Don't let the magic pass you by". Unfortunately, I do that way too often. The magic I regret today is not taking more opportunity to learn at college. I had so many venues to explore and I didn't. I should have taken some botany classes so I wouldn't be at such a loss with my yard.

Well, better late then never and although I have to start from ground zero, I am not afraid to try. Annoyed by the clump of plants smothering each other in a back corner of my yard, I decided to take action, pruning action. I first practiced with shapes and angles of cutting. Then I got to the heart of the matter and unveiled a potentially lovely honeysuckle tree.

I felt slightly bad for killing a living plant that actually also had its beautiful points. For example, it frequently bloomed these delicate purple flowers and stayed the same light shade of green all year round. It also doubled as cover up of those unsightly cable boxes. It had grown too wild and it was either the Texas Sage or the Honeysuckle. I chose the latter because of the cute little humming birds that seem to adore the yellow flowers. With a little grooming and proper neighboring plants, I hope to have that area be a restful oasis in the back. We'll see. I'll have to banish the fire ants first.