rachel's continued ramblings

i realized i forgot to post this last week when we had it.  i actually like it a little better than the hash brown one, but both are good.  it’s VERY similar. once again, this is something i’ve made so many times that i just kind of wing it now, although i do have the recipe that kate sent to me after she made it for my family when micah was born. i like to keep the recipe because it has some little ‘britishisms’ throughout, just like kate! ;-) who, by the way, rocks, having called to check up on me the other evening when she saw that the power in our area was out AGAIN!  thanks kate, smooch smooch! but now i’m getting distracted… big surprise. here goes. you will need: 1 lb or so ground beef (or ground turkey) 1 chopped onion a bunch of veggies (kate’s recipe calls for a ‘tin’ of mixed veggies, but i use fresh carrots & celery if i’ve got’em, frozen beans, peas, corn, whatever).  maybe 2-3 cups. 1 can (or tin) of cream of something soup (i...

so i’ve yet to make it to the store, and it’s taken me all morning just to put a week’s worth of meals and a shopping list together, but i think i’m finally done.  we’re out of literally everything, and i hope my $$ holds out this week! wednesday: upside-down pizza casserole; green beans thursday: chicken burritos; salad friday: pizza; green beans saturday: hamburgers; tater tots; carrots sunday: scrambled eggs; bacon; toast monday: roast beef; carrots; baked potatoes tuesday: leftovers i’m using chicken for the burritos leftover from what we had last night (if you read fb, you know about my adventures preparing this chicken), so i don’t need to buy that. i’m also super excited about the roast beef on monday because it means that wednesday of next week is one of everybody’s favorites, french dips!!!  yay! i guess i’ll have to go to the store today if we want to eat tonight, but i feel a little guilty going since both of my younger child...

seriously. everything would be SO much easier if i could just LIVE LIFE! but no, every stupid little thing requires hours and days and months and years of contemplation.  WHY? why me? why can’t just be one of those people who just lives? there are people out there who have kids, put them in whatever diapers are cheapest, clothe them in clothes that are on sale or they think look cute, and send them to the local school when they’re 5.  end of story.  these people also attend whatever church is closest or suits their denominational preference, go to the store when they need food, clean things when they look dirty, etc, etc, etc. doesn’t require a lot of agony. not me. yes, i realize i’m oversimplifying here and a little bit of thought about important matters is not only good, but necessary.  but… that person i just described is the COMPLETE AND TOTAL OPPOSITE OF ME! and i’m therefore going crazy, as usual. why oh why must i live in my head???  i lite...

metaphorically speaking. my children are driving me nuts.  completely batty!  and i don’t mean that they annoy me.  well, sometimes they do, but that’s the least of my concerns.  i’m genuinely concerned about them.  why? they’re horrible! they fight: pinching, hitting, kicking, pushing, etc. etc. they tattle on each other. they don’t listen AT ALL to us. they complain and throw a fit when asked to do something totally reasonable.  it’s awful! i have yet to find some sort of effective discipline measure that will make any sort of improvement.  but this is only the day to day.  this is the least of my concerns. why? because these are just symptoms. these are the little fires that flare up all day long. i feel like i spend my day stomping them out.  one after another, often the exact same fire i just finished stomping out 5 minutes before!  but there’s this raging inferno all around us and as long as that’s burning, there’s nothin...

i think i’ve officially converted to wednesdays.  i was getting a little frustrated with sale items being out when i got to the store on mondays or tuesdays. it’s hard to plan a week’s worth of meals based on what’s on sale and then have some vital part of it not be at the store when you get there.  flying by the seat of my pants doesn’t work so well when it comes to trying to create a meal in my head while at the store with my kids and remember what we need for it and what we have at home and what all the recipe calls for, etc. etc.  so, since the flyers come out on tuesday and the sales start on wednesday, i’m going to try doing my shopping on wednesday.  i only had last week planned through monday, so i really needed to shop yesterday, but micah woke up in the middle of the night with a fever and a bad croupy cough, so i decided to forego it until today, and we were able to scrounge for dinner last night.  most of us had some frozen costco chicken strips with...

around here, there’s an ongoing joke about how crazy people go when the sun comes out!  yes, as i write this, i have no doubt that the lake beaches in the area are filled with half-naked, truant teenagers sunning themselves. if a 70* day in april causes your child to feel the need to don a swimsuit and fill up a kiddie pool… you might be from seattle. yes, that’s a slide in the water. and yes, she’s using it. and no, she hasn’t gotten hypothermia yet, but i’m sure it’s coming.

the pnw experienced a lovely weekend (yes, it is getting to be spring). i’d like to be able to say that we accomplished a ton outside, but not so much.  i started out good on saturday, working on the remaining 1/4 of my garden, but fizzled out and wound up taking a nap all afternoon.  dave, however, washed both cars and cleaned a lot of junk out of the toyota. AND he mowed the lawn.  3 weeks straight now, but it’s getting to the point where it might have to start happening twice a week… at least until july when it quits raining and the grass all turns brown. i’d love to be one of those people who watered and kept the lawn nice and green all summer… but green grass means you have to mow it, and it also seems like a silly waste of water/money.  then again, if i were the type to do that, i’d probably  be the type to rid the grass of all the weeds and moss that has invaded it too. much as i’d like to do that, i’m just not willing to spend the money on nasty chemical...

so mary asked about this, and since it’s a family favorite, i thought i’d post it.  there was, at one time, a recipe for this casserole, but i’ve made it so many times it’s kind of evolved (as these things tend to do).  so i’ll give you the recipe according to me… and if you like specifics and measuring things, then bummer for you!  so this is what i do: take a 9x13 pyrex dish and line the bottom w/ frozen hash brown patties.  i can usually fit about 7.  (you could also use a bag of the shredded kind, but it’s not as good.) add about 2 cups or so of veggies.  carrots, green beans, peas, celery – whatever you’ve got. (corn is not so good in this recipe, so i don’t recommend it.) you should pre-cook the veggies so they aren’t crunchy – or i guess you could use canned, but i think they’re gross so i use frozen, with the exception of the carrots and celery which are fresh. add a bunch of chopped, cooked chicken – whatever you’ve got leftover or ...

just got back from the store.  i did really good this week. $64.71! which is great because i didn’t do so well last week. my total last week was .22 over budget and i had to dig a quarter out of my purse.  this also didn’t include our easter dinner, which my parents provided most of, but i still had to get some things for dessert. so on sunday i had to borrow $20 from this week’s grocery money for that.  at any rate, i knew in my planning that i was going to need a cheap week so i planned a couple meals out of the freezer, and another casserole that can use some leftover chicken from last week. so here goes: tuesday: beef stew; sourdough wednesday: hash brown casserole thursday: white chicken chili; sourdough friday: pizza; green beans saturday: hamburgers; carrot sticks; chips sunday: breakfast burritos; hash browns monday: leftovers i have to make a costco run this week too, but not for many food items, mostly diapers, wipes and pull-u...

so there it is… my first knitted sock is done.  no, it’s not good, but it’s done and it fits my foot.  what else can i ask for?  well, maybe it’s mate. i’ll start that tomorrow.

yesterday, the last day of spring break (well, weekday, at least) and shane had had enough of not doing anything expensive interesting. so we packed a lunch and went to the zoo. it was a little cold and rainy when we left, but by the time we got there, the rain had stopped and it turned out to be relatively warmish.    layla was determined to see some fish. i guess we should have gone to the aquarium, but we did manage to find her a few fish. i think her favorite was the super huge reticulated python that actually moved while we were watching.  well, the top 3 feet or so of it moved. the remaining 5 or 6 feet of it stayed coiled up where it was.  we probably spent the bulk of our time in the “zoomazium” which is a fabulous indoor playground type area.  there’s a huge tree that layla and shane spent time doing laps through.  you climb up the inside (think mcdonalds playland climbing structure) and then slide down a big twisty slide.  there wa...

so i have been struggling lately with what i have come to assume is a facet of my own personal human nature.  essentially, i’ve come to realize that i’m lazy and selfish. harsh, huh? well, may as well call a spade a spade. (why we say that, i have no idea.) i am lazy and selfish with the way i want to spend my time, and it seems like everything else in my life is affected by that – because really, what else do we have in this life but time? how we use that limited time we are given is the true testament of what our lives were made of. so here is a sampling of the many areas of my life that are affected by this lazy and selfish nature and some things i’ve come up with. housework:   i’ll start here because, as the sub-text of my blog title would indicate, i consider myself to be ‘domestically challenged’. by definition, i consider this to be my lack of training (and therefore, ability) in the profession of homemaking. for one thing, my mother worked a good share of my...

had this done yesterday, AND the shopping, but didn’t manage to post it.  too busy being outside. tuesday: shrimp; peas & carrots; sourdough wednesday: pork chops; couscous; green beans thursday: chicken; baked potatoes; broccoli friday: pizza; green beans saturday: hamburgers; carrot sticks; chips sunday: easter monday: leftovers

it was a fabulous weekend here in the northwest. temps reaching the 70's, sun, the constant buzz of lawnmowers making their first passes of the season. this includes ours. on friday, we acquired sophie, for a weekend visit. for those of you who don’t know, sophie is the black lab ‘puppy’ i got when i was 20. she’s lived mostly with my parents due to college, housing arrangements which didn’t allow pets, and times when she and i both lived with them. so she’s, more or less, their dog, although technically mine. so she’s here for a little visit – hair and all. (i’m a bit overly-sensitive to the little black hairs everywhere at this point and my floors have never been cleaner. she cleans up all the crumbs, and i sweep and vacuum obsessively to get up the hair before the tumbleweeds form!) saturday was spent outdoors (of course). i’ve been working to clear the garden and have about 2/3 done right now.  so layla and i did the first planting – sugar snap peas. i also worked on tediou...

yesterday we had a bit of a wind storm.  i knew nothing about it, of course, since i never watch the news unless someone mentions that it might snow. but just before lunch, this storm blew in.  now i live out here in the sticks and there are LOTS of BIG trees.  i mean BIG!  i consider it a very fortunate thing that we moved here AFTER the big storm back in ‘06. i figure that any tree that was going to come down, did then. anyway, as i was fixing lunch for the kids, i heard a weird thump, followed by another thump.  i had noticed that it was kinda windy, so i told the kids i’d be right back and went out to check things out.  just out my front door, i see this: this HUGE tree branch was stuck in my front yard!  and just for some perspective, when dave came home and went to pull it out and hack it apart, it was about a foot taller than him as he was standing next to it. when he pulled it out, i’d say it was 9 or 10 inches that had been stuck in the g...