Happy Hanuchristmakwanzivus.
Family and travel. No posts today.
Make the most of the holiday.
Posting rate
For the new year, I am setting a new posting schedule.
I’ve been posting for a month, and started with half a dozen articles. There is a decent base of reading material. Now, I need to be posting at a sustainable level that will allow me time with my family and allow me to pursue some opportunities.
From now on, I will be posting 3 times each week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There will still be other miscellaneous updates, especially regarding my year of 30-Day Projects. The twitter summary on Saturday is automated.
Happy New Year!
Meal Plans
- Image by Getty Images via @daylife
When we don’t have a meal plan, food costs more.
Our regular plan is to build a menu for the week and go to the grocery store on Sunday. This allows planning, instead of scrambling for a a meal after work each night. It also give us a chance to plan for leftovers so we have something to eat for lunch at work.
We work until about 5 every weekday. When we don’t have the meal planned, it’s usually chicken nuggets or hamburger helper for dinner. Not only is that repetitive, but it’s not terribly healthy. It is, however, convenient. If we plan for it, we can get the ingredients ready the night before and know what we are doing when we get home, instead of trying to think about it after a long day of work.
If we don’t plan for leftovers, we tend to make the right amount of food for the family. When this happens, there’s nothing to bring to work the next day, which means I’ll be hungry about lunchtime with nothing I can do about it except buy something. Buying lunch is never cheaper than making it. I can get a sandwich at Subway for $5, but I could make a sandwich just as tasty and filling for less than half of that, using money that is meant to be used for food. All during wrestling season, we make 30-inch sandwiches on meet nights for a cost of about $5, feeding ourselves and at least a couple of others who didn’t have time to make their dinner before the 5:30 meet.
No leftovers also means no Free Soup, which is a wonderful low-maintenance meal that leaves everybody full. Nobody ever gets bored of Free Soup. (Hint: Don’t ever put a piece of fish in the Free Soup, or the flavor will take over the entire meal.)
Unhealthy, repetitive food for dinner. Over-priced, low-to-middle-quality food for lunch.
OR
We plan our meals right and have inexpensive, healthy food that doesn’t get boring for every meal.
It seems to be a no-brainer. Except, I don’t have lunch today because we didn’t plan our meals and used the last of the leftover hamburger helper for dinner last night.
Update: This post has been included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Calendaring Life
I’m incredibly absent-minded. I get involved in something and forget about almost everything else. While that makes me productive at work and helps the time pass, it means I forget to do a lot of things. On the days I am supposed to pick up my son, I have to set reminders so I don’t get wrapped up in a project at work and forget to leave on time.
My solution has been to put everything into Google Calendar. I use 10 different calendars, five of which are mine. I have one for regular scheduling of appointments, one I use to take notes for 30 Day Projects, and one that is copied from the school calendar so I don’t forget late-start days and school vacations. I also use calendars to track the wrestling team’s schedule, family birthdays, and upcoming holidays. I’ve got all of these calendars synced to my phone, I get reminders a week in advance, and I get a daily agenda at 5AM, every day. I don’t forget much anymore.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a new project–a new calendar. I’ve been reviewing seasonal home-maintenance checklists, medical checkup recommendations, car maintenance lists, and more. All of this has been added to a new Google Calendar, the Home and Life Maintenance Calendar.
This calendar is designed to remind its users to do the things we all need to do, from biannual physicals to replacing your furnace filters, checking your tire pressure to cancer self-exams. The seasonal chores happen in the right seasons, and the monthly reminders happen monthly. It is a work-in-progress and I welcome any recommendations for the things I’ve missed.
So, here it is. Use it, set up reminders, smack me for missing something obvious and enjoy.
[google-calendar-events id=”1″ type=”ajax”]
Update: This post has been included in the Festival of Frugality.
Cheap Lo Mein
- Image via Wikipedia
I’ve never been a fan of making Chinese food. It always seems to involve ingredients I don’t stock and several hours of prep work. It’s not usually worth the hassle. Several months ago, I began to notice that, when we went out for Chinese, all of my kids had the same favorite dish: lo mein. It would be nice to be able to have the dish without having to pay restaurant prices, so I did some research and came up with a quick, easy, and cheap recipe for lo mein. It takes 3 dishes and 20 minutes.
Lo mein has 3 components: noodles, sauce, and the rest.
Noodles
I use spaghetti noodles. I leave them a bit al dente, because they will spend some time in the hot lo mein sauce, which will cook them a bit more. 1 box of noodles is enough for two meals for my family of 5.
Sauce
- Chicken broth, 4 cups
- Rice wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons
- Sesame oil, 2 tablespoons
- Red pepper flakes to taste, about 1 teaspoon
- Soy sauce, 1/4 cup
- Sugar, 1 teaspoon
Mix it all in a bowl, then wisk until the sugar is dissolved. Nuke until hot. I do this while the wok is heating up and the noodles are cooking, so the pepper flavor has a better chance to blend with the liquid.
The Rest
- Sesame oil
- Minced garlic
- 1 Onion, cut to whatever size you like
- Protein, chopped
- Vegetables, chopped
- Ginger powder, to taste
Chop everything first. When you start cooking, you will be busy cooking, not prepping.
Get the pan hot. Splash in some oil, then toss in the meat when the oil is hot. I usually use chicken, but any meat you like–or even no meat at all–will work.
When the meat is almost completely cooked, add the onions and ginger. Stir constantly.
When the onions are barely translucent, start adding the vegetables, in the order they will take to cook. You can use any vegetable you want. Broccoli, carrots, and peas work well. Whenever the grocery store has a sale on stir-fry vegetable packs, we stock up for about $2/bag. Just defrost ’em before you start cooking, so it’s possible to chop them up, and they work great. Otherwise, any vegetables you have on hand will work. Add them, and stir constantly.
At some point, toss in a spoonful of minced garlic. When depends on how much garlic you want to taste. The earlier you add it, the tamer the flavor.
When it’s all cooked, spoon in some lo mein sauce and toss to coat. Remove from heat.
Serve
Spoon the rest of the sauce over the noodles and toss. You will have extra sauce, so don’t add it all at once. You want the noodles coated, not floating.
Combine the noodles with the stir-fry and serve.
If you buy the noodles, vegetables, and meat on sale, this meal costs about $10 to make. Like I said, that’s two complete meals for 5 people, 3 of whom have adult appetites. The rice wine vinegar and sesame oil aren’t cheap, but you don’t use much, so the cost per meal is negligible.
Friends and Acquaintances
“Friends help you move. Good friends help you move bodies.”
-unknown
Some people have dozens of friends. I’m not that guy.
I have 6.
Everybody in the world can be divided into 4 categories.
- Strangers. A xenophobe’s nightmare. These are the people you don’t know, whether they are passing you on the sidewalk, or newborns on the opposite side of the world.
- Acquaintances. These are the people you’ve met, mostly in passing. They tend not to have much effect on your life. You may pass a friendly bus ride in conversation, but it’s nothing that sticks. A waitress, the clerk at the store, a friend’s latest date; these are the people you interact with for just a moment and rarely think about further.
- Friendlies. Most people call these folks friends. I don’t. I’m friendly with them, hence the name, but it’s not true friendship. Often, they are either my wife’s friends, or my friends’ wives. Sometimes, they are a friend of a friend that I only see at parties, or a coworker that I get along with, but never see outside of work. We’re friendly, but not obliged. I may help with some things, but it’s not necessarily a priority. I’ll go to a funeral, but probably won’t help plan it.
- Friends. To me, calling someone a friend is a big deal. I’m willing to do a lot for my friends. They are able to command large amounts of my time, and ask any number of favors. If needed, I’ll open my home or help demolish their’s. Loyalty, honesty, trust, respect, and companionship are all a part of my definition of a friend. If a friend needs help, I’ll come running. In return, I expect the same.
Family tends to fall into the same analogous categories.
It sounds cold, but I hesitate to let people graduate into the final category. My wife used to try to “set me up” with people that she thought I’d like to be friends with, thinking I was sad to have so few friends. It took years for her to realize that I was happy. It’s a matter of quality over quantity. Most of the friends I have, I’ve had for 10 years or more. I’ve known each of them for at least 5 years, not that time is a requirement.
Moving people into the “friends” category is a lot like dating. You get along, so you invite the potential friends out for a drink, one on one. You feel them out to see if they are compatible. You meet their families, share some food, build some history. If it all works out, eventually, you consider them a true friend, even if you couldn’t mark the date of the transition.
You wouldn’t marry everyone you date, so why would turn everyone you basically get along with into a friend?
Do you have a lot of friends? What marks friendship for you?
