#31 Dr. Zhivago

I started out this goal with 10 of these movies already watched. Here is the first one towards my goal. I've had Dr. Zhivago from Netflix since March. Yup, you read that right...March. I'm officially one of THOSE Netflixers. In my defense, I thought I lost it for a while. I take that back, I thought the kids lost it for a while. Just prior to succumbing and sending an email to Netflix to let them know so I could pay for it, I had the man look around one last time. He found it! I have no idea where he found it, but he did. I'm thrilled. I finally watched it over the past 2 days. It was a looong movie [read: over 3 hours and the dvd was double sided]. It took 2 days worth of naps, but it was watched. It was good. Not the best, but good. I didn't like it becuase like so many of the movies of today, there was infidelity involved. I don't do well with that being glamorized. Ticks me off. Maybe I'm too close to the issue - not in my own marriage, but those that I love. I'm glad I watched it though. Made me glad I'm living in a country where we aren't fighting a war on our own turf. The death and destruction were so sad.

Anyway...whoever the next Netflixer waiting on Dr. Zhivago is, you can rest easy, it will be to you soon.

Already failed 3 goals

But that's ok. I've realized that I set my goals a little too high in regards to having too many "x times a month" items. So, I haven't made bread every month, I haven't cooked 2 vegetarian meals a month and I haven't blogged on all my blogs once a month either. So, I'll be depositing money into the kids college savings accounts shortly.

You know what though. I was a little bummed at first, but I have 2 kids I'm chasing around as well as trying to maintain a household and a life! I'm not worried about it. I'm not going to give up on those goals completely. I may adjust them though. Maybe 1 vegetarian meal a month and I'll still try to blog once a month, but the bread thing I just don't have time for right now. I will try to get my life organized a bit more and then work on getting the bread baking added back in.

So there we have it.

#15 Make Baby Food

I think I can safely say I have accomplished this goal. My youngest is now almost 10 months old and I can count on one hand (and I don't even need all the fingers) the number of times she has had food out of a jar. We started off with sweet potatoes, and now we pretty much give her anything (including steak and chicken). A good friend let us borrow her portable food grinder and we LOVE it! We can just grind small portions for her. We tend to use it multiple times daily.

For bulk baby food making, I found that I prefer a hand blender to the tabletop blender. We then put the food in ice cube trays. Once frozen, they would get placed in a gallon size ziploc labeled with the item and expiration date (usually 2-3 months).

This was SO easy and I highly recommend this to anyone with babies. Not only does it save a ton of money (a huge factor), but you can also control what your baby eats. Most of time time I use organic produce for the kids, so that I can be a little more cautious. I really enjoyed putting my heart into this. It really didn't take took much time and surprisingly I really enjoyed it. If we decide to have more children in the future, you can bet that I will do this again.

#1 Learn to Sew

I am SEW excited! Haha, get it? Sew? Yeah, I'm a dork, but I'm okay with that. One of my fabulous friends taught me. Actually it's more like she gave me the basics and enabled me to learn myself. I still haven't finished my first project (a quilt from Bend the Rules Sewing), but I did finish my second project. Yeah, I'm a little backwards, huh? I started - and finished - a drawstring a-line skirt from Sew What! Skirts. I found this wonderful fabric by Amy Butler at my favorite local fabric shop (lfs).

Apparently drafting your own pattern isn't very common among newbs to the sewing world, but that's just what I did for this skirt. Ok, so it wasn't perfect. I was off by a few inches and had to rip seams, cut and re-sew. I made sure to make the changes on my pattern as well so that when I make another one I won't have to re-do everything. I also didn't do the piping right, but now that I know how to do it I'll do better next time. The perfectionist in me wants to rip it out and do it right this time, but I have decided to leave it for the time being. When I see it I remember all the lessons I learned in my new craft.

Some of my lessons learned:

• When drafting a pattern, you don't have to add extra inches to your pattern "just in case" - they have done that for you. It will only result in ripping and stitching again.
• It is important to wash the fabric first....and iron it! It's not just something they recommend, it really does make a difference.
• When attaching piping, do not, I repeat, do NOT cut the piping before you are almost finished sewing! You may (and likely) have not pinned it perfectly and you will be short and have to rip it out, buy more piping and start all over again.
• I really like the almost instant gratification sewing offers. With knitting it takes a while before you can really see a big result, unless of course it's a quicky, and I like immediate results.

I can't wait to get started on my next project. Oh, and yeah, I suppose I should finish my quilt too, huh?

#18 Dish 4/101

I baked apples for the first time. I've always wanted to, but never have. I even bought an apple corer a year and a half ago, just so I could make them. Let's just say it sat in its drawer for a L-O-N-G time. It had seen use before this, but was the first time it was used for what I originally purchased it for. I made them for dessert the night my friend Becca brought the Mexican Pizza (see below) for dinner. It's rather sad, but I did use a recipe. I wasn't exactly sure how to do it. Now that I do, the ideas are running rampant! I don't think I'll ever use a recipe for these again. I may even experiment with pears.

Baked Apples from Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

4 Apples, cored
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 c raisins
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/3 c apple juice

In a small bowl, mix brown sugar, raisins, cinnamon and nutmeg. Place cored apples in baking dish, fill with mixture; pour juice in dish around apples and bake at 350* for 45 minutes.

I halved the recipe since it was just the two of us. I'm going to improvise next time though and who knows what I'll come up with. I was just happy I finally made them and they were SO good. And healthy too!

#13 and #18 - Vegetarian meals and 101 dishes

I got a recipe from a friend for a Mexican Pizza, that also happens to be vegetarian! It was YUMMY! She brought it over for dinner one night while the man was deployed and I just HAD to make it. Let me just say, he loved it even more than I did. We had a lot of fun eating it for our in-home lunch date and we each came up with different ways to change it. We will definitely be having this again. So, I'm going to count this for both 13 and 18. I really need to get to work harder on the 101 dishes though. I'm sure I will get a lot of them done around holidays or parties we have. I like to experiment on my friends.

Loaded Mexican Pizza by Mary Barker of Knoxville, TN
(from Light & Tasty, Feb/March 2008) given to me by Becca

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 med red onion, chopped
1 small sweet yellow pepper, chopped
3 tsp chili powder
3/4 tsp ground cumin
3 med tomatoes, chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 10 oz. prebaked thin italian bread shell crust
2 c chopped fresh spinach
2 Tbsp minced fresh cilantro
Hot pepper to taste
1/2 c shredded reduce-fat cheddar cheese
1/2 c pepper jack cheese

In a small bowl, mash black beans; stir in the onion, yellow pepper, chili powder and cumin. In another bowl, combine the tomatoes, jalapeño and garlic.

Place the crust on an ungreased 12 in pizza pan; spread with bean mixture. Top with tomato mixture and spinach. Sprinkle with cilantro, hot pepper sauce and cheeses.

Bake at 400* for 12-15 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

How I adapted it:

Instead of mashing the black beans with a fork, I pureed them slightly with my immersion blender. I used a medium yellow onion that I had leftover from my produce co-op. I used a red pepper since the yellow pepper was $5 for ONE (yikes). I also didn't have quite the right amount of tomatoes (less) but we couldn't tell and we don't know how it could have held much more on the crust. I hate cilantro, so I used a little parsley instead. We also used the Boboli premade crust, and that isn't thin, but I prefer thick crust.

Other options we came up with:

Refried beans instead of black beans
Saute the onions, so they aren't quite so potent.
Use pearl onions, sliced into rings.
Use 2 jalapeños.
Change up the cheeses.
If we don't want vegetarian, top it with fajita style chicken or steak.

#68 Recycling Center in Garage

We finally set this up last weekend. We went to Walmart and got three large Rubbermaid storage boxes and have them set up right below the entry into the garage. Paper, plastic and aluminum/tin. I would have done two more, to separate aluminum and tin and one for "other" items (i.e. batteries, electronics) but decided that 1. the recycling center has employees to separate these and I've seen them out there doing it and they seem to enjoy it, so I'll let them separate my aluminum and tin (won't make them do everything b/c I get an odd satisfaction out of it too - strange, I know), and 2. when we have other items I will just take them when I have something to take down. We won't have too many batteries to take down since we now use rechargeable ones.

With the containers we chose, we can easily slide them into the back of the car to take down and place in their respective bins. YAY! Oh, and my cardboard boxes (in good shape and large enough) will go to my produce co-op for distributing food.

We have started working on #98 too and the man mentioned just the other day that he is shocked by how little he has to run the garbage down now. Instead of going through a garbage bag every day or two, we are going through one every 3-4 days, sometimes longer.