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Life Skills

November 7, 2018

What Being a “Saver” Has Looked Like for Me

RECENT PROJECT

This week’s project was Fudgy Chocolate Brownies from the Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book. First off, I only got this cookbook recently as a late birthday present (thanks, Mom and Dad!). Flipping through it, I love that it has not only the what to do to bake something, but pointers like why the recipe works well and how to perform different techniques. So fun stuff, and I don’t even get paid to say that since I have no connection to Cook’s Illustrated whatsoever.

OK, back to the project–technically, it’s the Fudgy Triple-Chocolate Brownies (under the “Fudgy Chocolate Brownies” heading) that I made. Why? Well, I hadn’t had or made brownies for a while and they just sounded good. I mean, who doesn’t like brownies? So in went the bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened chocolate, and unsweetened cocoa powder (plus some other non-chocolate ingredients) and out came a batch of brownies, as you can see from this top view.

Those three holes at the top are from the cake tester, and not some weird chocolate-burrowing insect. I couldn’t quite determine the fine line between “nice and fudgy” and “overdone”, so I tested a couple times and added on a few minutes of baking. The brownies came out, well, fudgy and chocolaty just like the recipe’s name implies. The use of bittersweet chocolate provides that bit of bite that is both different and enjoyable. Here’s the head-on view after coming out of the oven:

One thing that annoyed me was that my brownie, after cooling, had all these lines and crinkles along the top, rather than being perfectly smooth. The cookbook’s picture certainly hadn’t been that way when I glanced at it, and then I checked again: Between how they cut the brownie and where they focused the camera, their brownie didn’t LOOK like it had the same top features that mine did, but closer inspection revealed that, sure enough, they were there in the picture too. Ego not as deflated as before? Check.

TOPIC FOR TODAY

This post is a little more personal than my previous post about why the wife and I budget, as it’s strictly my viewpoint. As I described in that earlier post, when it comes to Mary and I’s perspectives, I’m definitely more of the “saver” in the marriage while she’s typically the “spender”. That leads some people to ask, “Have you always been that way?”, and “Is it always a good thing?” Well, here come the answers.

October 19, 2018

Hospitality

Hospitality, something I strive to be better at.

My life is truly blessed with incredible woman who have modeled hospitality to me (both my grandmothers and my mom). While their homes might not have been updated with the most modern decor, their homes were a place of welcome, a place of peace and love. As I reflect on their homes, they were welcoming places because of three main areas. First, when people came to visit, their homes were clean. Secondly, when people came to visit, their homes had all the creature comforts needed to make your stay restful. Lastly, when people came to stay, they never left hungry. There was always incredible food to eat.

Recently, we had the opportunity to open our home to my sister and her coworker/friend. Even though my sister has stayed with us before, it had been a while and she was flying in from another state. Her friend coming with her was someone I had never met. I wanted their stay to be wonderful!

As I began to prepare for our guests, I wanted to put the three parts of hospitality into practice: cleanliness, comfort, and delicious food. To help prepare a little more, I wanted to get to know our guests a little better. Hence, a Hospitality Questionnaire was born:

Hospitality Questionnaire

We are so excited you are coming to stay with us. We have just a few questions so we can get to know you more and make your stay with us as comfortable as possible.

What are your favorite types of food or snacks to eat?
Do you have a favorite salad dressing?
Do you have any food allergies or any foods you are trying to avoid?
Do you have anything you like to drink?
Do you have any scents you enjoy, or are there any scents you avoid?
Do you have a pet allergy?
Do you have anything medical you would like to share so we can be prepared? For example, my sister is diabetic, so as a result I always have juice available if her blood sugar crashes. Another example, my son has sensitive skin and we have to be careful of what laundry detergent we use so he doesn’t get hives.
Is there anything you are looking forward to seeing while you are here?
For fun: What is your favorite color? What is your favorite flower?
Is there anything else we can do for you while you are here?

The questionnaire was a big success with our guests. They enjoyed filling it out and knowing we were taking a little extra time to make sure their stay was as comfortable as possible.

Now armed with this information, we were able to prepare a little more for our guests!

To begin, I reflected back on the three parts of hospitality. The first one was cleanliness. Now once upon a time, when I was not a mom, this was not too hard of a task to accomplish. I would set aside some time before guests arrive and put in a little effort, and voila, a clean house. Now fast forward to today, mom of two wonderful little boys age 1 and 4. Let’s just say it takes a lot of extra work, and humor to clean up after the little humans. Ten minutes later it might be just as messy as when you started. I believe my guests understood this, and I did put in a good effort, but let’s just say it was far from perfect.

Next, onto making our guests comfortable. I began by making sure they had a comfortable place to sleep. I made sure our guests had comfortable bedding, and they each had their own space to be able to relax. I also made sure they each had a nice towel and washcloth. Additionally, we went above and beyond to add some comfort to our home for our guests. One of the things we do is to have a basket in our guest bathroom we stock with toiletry items. We make sure our guests know the basket is just for them. Another thing we like to do for our guests is leave a little gift for them when they arrive. Waiting on their pillow when they arrive, we either leave a little chocolate or coffee sample from a local place. This time we also left some flowers by their bedsides.

Another way we made sure our guests were comfortable was showing them around. Our guests arrived late at night, but I still was able to give them a quick walk through the house. I was able to show them where things were like lights and how to open child safety gates. I also was able to show them around the kitchen. I had water bottles for them in the fridge and a cabinet stocked with snacks.

This brings me to my last unit of hospitality, food. Before our guests arrived I was able to make a menu based on foods we enjoy as a family, and foods they might enjoy from the Hospitality Questionnaire. I was also able to have any snacks or drinks they might want or need. We even planned a couple of meals out, so they could experience our favorite local restaurants. No one left hungry!

My sister and her friend had a great stay! We were able to offer a great place for them to stay which was clean, comfortable, and full of delicious food. This whole process of reflection and communicating with our guests using the Hospitality Questionnaire was very helpful. Please feel free to use this Hospitality Questionnaire. I hope that it comes in handy for you as well!

Do you have any special tips or tricks you do for your guests? I would love to hear!

September 19, 2018

Vegan with a Side of Bacon

Vegan Blueberry Pancakes and Bacon, Allergy Friendly

Food allergy: I have seen the word many times. As a teacher, I have been very diligent in protecting my students that have food allergies. I have had to learn how to use an Epi-pen and how to scour ingredient labels of any shared food brought into the classroom. I thought I understood it, the fear of a parent with a child who has a food allergy. I just didn’t think it was going to be me…

A few years ago, I decided to give our (then) 7-month-old a piece of pasta with cheese sauce on it. He took it, ate part of it, and spit it out. When we were done eating, I took him upstairs to a bath. In the bathtub he started getting hives on his face. I scooped him up and ran him downstairs. Thankfully I had children’s Benadryl; after getting hold of the doctor and finding out what the right dosage was, I gave him some right away. After that he vomited. My husband was not at home and I was starting to get a little scared. I kept monitoring him though and his breathing was not labored. The hives went away and he was better. Wanting to address this quickly, we soon went to an allergist, where a skin prick test resulted in big hives on his back showing he was indeed allergic to dairy and eggs.

As I was still breastfeeding at the time, I decided to not eat dairy or eggs as well to see if that would help with allergies and with eczema (it did, a bit, on both fronts). Not eating eggs and dairy sounds like an easy thing, but it is very challenging—they are in everything. This was the start of finding a new way to feed my family.

Fast forward to my son being 2 years old and attending a daycare two days a week so I could substitute teach. Finding a school we trusted to take care of him and his food allergy was hard. Through personal recommendations, we found an in-home daycare school. It was hard enough letting him go in the first place, but the fear of not being there to monitor him during snacks and mealtimes made it even harder. Something that seems so minimal to one child like a cheese fish cracker could cause my son to break out in hives. I could not be there with him or tell the sweet child trying to share, “no thank you.” His teachers, thankfully, were wonderful in keeping his allergies in mind and ensuring he didn’t eat anything that would be bad for him.

To all the parents of kids with food allergies out there, I am starting to get it. You are such amazing advocates for your child. Hugs and high-fives to all of you. You have to be diligent when shopping for food as you look through ingredients, or like us make so many things from scratch. You have to check with every person you let your child be left with that they understand the allergy. Do they know how to use an Epi-pen? At restaurants, you have to ask the waiter or waitress a lot of questions to ensure food is not going to contain allergens. You end up with certain places that you go to eat, because trying a new place and finding new, safe food is challenging. I have been so thankful for friends who remember that our son has an allergy and get or make special vegan cupcakes for a birthday party. Have you had to carry special food with you when you go out to make sure they have something they can eat (like taken a special cookie to a party so they would be able to have a special treat like the other kids)? I have watched too as my son at times feels left out, simply with the phrase, “Sorry you can’t have that” and watches as other kids enjoy eating something. It is difficult.

Fortunately, and very recently, our oldest has outgrown these allergies. I hope he remembers what it was like to have food allergies, not to make him sad but so that he always think of others and makes sure they are not left out. Allergies create a food lifestyle that is not by choice, but necessity.

While we no longer have the urgency of these allergies to worry about anymore, we still continue to eat many of the same things we did with the allergies. We have enjoyed a lot of new foods and ways of eating. Choosing items that indicated “vegan” on the packaging assured us that they did not contain dairy or eggs. We really aren’t following the vegan approach to food, though, as we never gave up meat—making us vegan with a side of bacon.

The blog posts that follow will be about recipes I have used and liked and how we eat, and have eaten, dairy and egg free. Stay tuned for those posts, and I’d love to hear your stories as well!

P.S. I want to let all the amazing vegans out there know I understand your eating philosophy and I know that eating meat of any kind is not part of the vegan lifestyle. I am grateful for the carefully selected foods labeled as “vegan” because, without them, it would have been much harder to find foods safe for my family. Thank you for your pursuit of eating healthy.

Pictured below: Vegan Blueberry Pancakes, one of our family favorites. The recipe is available at http://veganyumminess.com/vegan-blueberry-pancakes/

August 29, 2018

Why We Budget

RECENT PROJECT
After doing a lot of breads, I realized, “You know what, I should actually get to baking some other things.” It is with that, then, that I tried my hand at some chocolate-dipped cookies; to be specific, this recipe from Food Network. I quickly learned that, if you act like an engineer and just blast out several exact “1/2-by-3-inch strips”, you kind of get a tiny little cookie. Thus the mixture of two-in-one cookies, narrow cookies, and kind-of-OK cookies shown below (pre-dipping).

OK, so lesson one was learned: Take a couple extra seconds to create nice, thick cookies. Lesson two followed quickly when I realized I don’t do the most even dipping in the world on cookies, as you can see in the image at the top of this post. Still, even with the inconsistencies and imperfections, these were quick to make and tasty to eat–and some of them did turn out alright.

Now, you can leave these cookies undipped and they’ll taste alright, but they really are way better when you dip them in chocolate. Hey, that’s like finances: They’re alright without a budget, but it’s way better when you do a budget. What a timely parallel given that today’s post is about why we budget.

TOPIC FOR TODAY
The word “budget” is a funny thing. For some people, me included, it’s a happy word: It’s exciting to think of looking at your spending, seeing where your money is going, and then figure out where you can cut back in the future. For others, and my wife originally fell into this category, it’s more of a “Really? Do we have to?” response.

To be completely honest, the reason we had a budget initially was because I had one set up and I led the way in making it part of our activities as a couple, too. Given the choice, Mary probably would have thrown the budget out the window within the first year of our marriage and been completely fine with it. For that first year and even into the second, there was that bit of tension every time we sat down, pulled up the spreadsheet, and started going through where she and I were spending money–and, in some cases, overspending money.

Given the tension, why did we do it? And why should anyone and everyone do it? It’s simple, really: You need to know where your money is going so that you’re not wasting it on useless things, which then lets you save more for your future goals. This is something that, at least for Americans, we’re not doing such a bang-up job of. This article from 2017, for example, indicates that 57% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts, with 39% having nothing at all. I would hazard to guess that many of those people don’t have budgets in place.

For my wife and I, the goals part of budgeting was certainly the primary item that kept us going. It was also what helped us understand each other better. As we went through items and realized areas that we could improve on, there were also areas that I realized were important to her: A nice coffee from a coffee shop once a week, or having a little room to replace older clothes a couple times a year. Those are things that seem superfluous to me but, knowing they matter to her, it makes me want to work our budget so that she can have them. Similarly, she was able to see how happy it was making me to pay off debt and to push for an increased savings rate–which helped her begin enjoying the thought of being debt-free as well.

There you have why we budget: A common goal of eliminating debt, increasing savings, and getting the chance to enjoy some small pleasures in life. I’ll do another post about how we budget because that can provide insight for what works for you versus what really does not work for you. The “how” of budgeting is not nearly as important as making sure you just go and do it!

March 12, 2018

A New Post and A New Approach

Well, OK, how to admit this–I haven’t been particularly motivated to write any more posts. It’s not that I don’t have lots more to say, or that I don’t want to say it, but that I feel like I should be able to briefly summarize the large topics of my life into a few paragraphs, type that up, and call it a day. But that would be stupid, and completely waste this blog, so I’m going to try something just as crazy as I am.

Starting with this post, I’m going to share something that I’m working on or have done: It may be cooking, baking, building something, or just assembling something with the kiddo. That’s my hook for me to keep writing. Then, I’ll communicate my topic, which is what perhaps someone would desire to read once they’ve reached the end of the Internet and gone, “I wonder if I missed something–oh, look, a blog.”

RECENT PROJECT

This week’s project was baking snickerdoodles. Yes, of course, thousands upon thousands of people have done it before me, but I haven’t done it myself, so why not try it? The recipe I used was Allrecipes.com’s “Mrs. Sigg’s Snickerdoodles”. How were the cookies? Both the Wife and her friend who was over enjoyed them, and my son called them “delicious”, so I’d say that’s a thumbs up. It’s still weird to me that you pull the snickerdoodles out when the center is a bit moist, because I certainly don’t want to underbake something, but who am I to argue with the results.

TOPIC FOR TODAY

So what do you think about when you’re baking snickerdoodles? What grand plans of the universe might be revealed amidst cream of tartar, cinnamon, and sugar? I discovered the phone screen I was using automatically locked on me way more than I thought it would while reading the recipe. As for revelations, they were small-scale, but one that I had was this: I’m really locked into my daily lists of things to do.

I don’t even remember what book or article it was I was reading a long time ago that had a summary that went something like this: “People who write down their activities for the day get more done.” OK, I thought, this works for me. I love making lists, checking things off, and proving how amazing an amount of things I can get done in one day. With this in mind, I got a notebook, started writing a list (numbered, of course) of all the things I should do each day, and it worked–I was getting lots done, including the small things that might normally slip my mind. Years have gone by where I’ve done this, and I’ve filled up multiple notebooks with my tasks for each day.

Here’s what leads to the problem, though: 99.9% of the time I’ve listed out my tasks, they have been things like:

Take out the trash
Fold the laundry
Clean up the table
Caulk the windows

And on and on, specific activities meant to take care of the basic needs of life. It’s awesome if they’re all things I can get done within a half hour of getting home. Yet most often the tasks are things that I only get completely done shortly before I go to bed, or <gasp!> I don’t even sometimes get done at all. This leaves little to no time for quality time with my son or my wife, and there’s never really time for friends or events outside of this. The really bad thing is that I feel guilty when I don’t get the things I’ve listed done, which makes me stress out, which makes me a terrible person to be around.

Wait a minute–these task lists were supposed to let me get more things done, so that I could have more time for the good stuff that fills me and my family up with happiness. Did I miss something? Where did I go wrong?

If you’re someone who likes everything wrapped up neatly, here’s where you’re going to be disappointed: I don’t know what’s going wrong with using lists. A lot of the things I write are things that really need done. Do I need to just trim off a couple things and acknowledge that I can’t get them done? Or do I need to add the happy tasks to my list too? I’m going to try one or both of these things, and I’ll share how it works in a future post. For now, I’ve got some weatherstripping to do . . . oh, and vacuuming . . . the cat litter needs changed again? Dang it . . .