Denise Resting

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  • Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    This week I…

    • Food prepped, like every week. This week I cooked a big batch of steel-cut oats, Spanish garbanzo beans with spinach, sautéed garlic kale, roasted cauliflower and roasted sweet potatoes. Last night I also cooked a big batch of lentil and mushroom stew, mixed it with mashed potatoes, baked it in a casserole dish and then cut into individual servings to freeze for B. I like to have a few things in the freezer that I can pull out to give him for lunch.

    Last night we ate some baked potatoes loaded with ranch dressing and buffalo tofu, with some garlic kale on the side, and we have leftovers to eat the same thing tonight. Tomorrow my husband will cook collard greens, cornbread and a big pot of beans and we’ll eat that through the weekend.

    • Saved money at a birthday party by not drinking. I’ve been avoiding booze for most of the year, primarily in an effort to lose a few pounds, but it’s saving a few dollars here-and-there as well. Last Saturday a good friend had a birthday party at a drag brunch, which was quite expensive on its own – $72 for entrance, which included food and one drink (which I donated to the birthday boy), and another $20 for tipping the queens, but if I’d been drinking I likely would have spent another $30. I did still tip the staff as if I’d been buying drinks, because it’s a dick move to take up somebody’s table all day, barely spending anything but keeping them from having any other customers, and then tip a standard percentage on your minuscule tab.
    • Took B to a free rescue farm Sunday morning, although we did pay the $5 donation to get a bucket of food to feed the animals. As B had zero interest in feeding the animals, we may skip that part next time. He had fun with the goats, but mostly he wanted to sit in the playhouse and declare that it was his house and not ours.
    • Took B to gymnastics open play on a day when admission cost just $2 and two cans of food for the local food bank, rather than the usual $10. Even with a punch card it works out to be $7 per visit, so two dollars and two cans of beans is definitely cheaper. However, that comes at the cost of it being very crowded, and he had a few collisions with older kids sprinting all over the place while their parents were who-the-fuck-knows-where. That, combined with it not really being at a good time of day for us anyway, means we probably won’t be in a hurry to go back. Which is kind of a bummer, because he’s finally reaching an age where he can play intentionally with a lot of the equipment and he loves going.
    • Stretched some protein powder by only using half-servings. I have mixed feelings about protein powder, because I prefer to keep my food as minimally-processed as possible. And I’m of the opinion that most people are getting PLENTY of protein, and that if we went out of our way to get fiber the same way we go out of our way to get protein we’d all be much healthier. But I’m trying to stay in a calorie deficit right now, and in the hopes of preserving muscle mass I’ve decided to add a little chocolate protein powder to my oatmeal instead of the cocoa powder I’d been adding. So I bought a bag of Costco-brand chocolate protein powder (using a shop-card balance), and I’ve been weighing out half-sized servings because I don’t feel like I need to add 25 grams of protein to my oats. All that is to say the bag will last me twice as long. And a fun little anecdote – there’s been a lot of press about protein powders containing high levels of heavy metals, but I saw a Reddit comment from a guy who works in a lab and tested the Kirkland brand protein powder himself, and he claims the levels were all well within acceptable ranges. But whatever levels of heavy metals might be there, I’m only getting half of those at a time, too.
    • Waited to buy ice cream until it went on sale. We usually buy store-brand ice cream, which we find just as delightful as any other. But I happened to notice Tillamook’s German chocolate cake flavor while grocery shopping last weekend, a flavor I hadn’t seen before, and I’ve always loved German chocolate cake. It was always my grandpa’s favorite kind of cake, and my mom made it every year for his birthday. I decided to wait until it went on sale to buy it, and lo and behold, it went on sale this week. I grabbed some yesterday when I did our mid-week fruit run. Calorie deficit or no calorie deficit, I’m going to fit some ice cream in.

  • Monday Gratitude

    Monday Gratitude

    Things I’m grateful for going into this week:

    1. Starting the week with my food already prepped. Yesterday my husband took B out for about an hour and a half, and I used that time to furiously cook. It makes the whole week feel better.

    2. That my kid no longer seems disastrously tired in the evening when he doesn’t nap. A couple weeks ago I included in my gratitude post that he was back to napping every day, and then he immediately stopped napping again. With a kid, all you can count on is that you can’t count on anything. Anyway, previously when he didn’t nap he was a mess by bedtime. Now he seems fine. So I guess whatever he decides to do each day is fine with me.

    3. Spring flowers. It has still been frigid and often wet, but spring flowers give me hope that better weather is around the corner.

    4. A few recent opportunities to hang out with grown-ups. Last Thursday, after a preschool meeting, I hung out with some of the moms until midnight. MIDNIGHT. I died the next day and I’m dead now, but it was fun. Then on Saturday my ghost went to a drag brunch for a friend’s birthday.

    5. In a few short weeks we’ll be traveling to San Diego. This morning when the boy, the dog and I went for a walk it was 35 degrees and my fingers were so cold they hurt by the time we got back. It will be April in two days. THIS IS NOT OKAY. It’s really got me looking forward to our upcoming vacation.

  • Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    This past weekend we had a relatively low-cost birthday party for my son, who turned three! Actually we had two parties – Saturday afternoon we invited some families with kids over to play at a playground near our house, and Saturday evening we had some old family friends over for dinner. Here’s what we did to make it relatively low-cost (and low waste):

    • First, the location. A playground is free, and we’re lucky to live near this particular playground because it’s somewhat hidden and always empty. We had the place to ourselves, so it almost felt like we rented a place.
    • We made the food ourselves. It’s a lot cheaper to buy, for example, blocks of cheese and slice them than it is to buy a party tray. Same goes for fruit and veggies, and of course cake. We prepped our own big fruit bowl, vegetable tray and cheese tray. We also made French onion dip, a chocolate bundt cake and vanilla cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting. We bought hummus and big bags of pretzel thins and pita chips. All the food for this party came from Costco and was paid for using our shop card balance. For the grown-up party later, my husband cooked corned beef with potatoes, carrots and potatoes – all on sale at Safeway for St. Patrick’s Day – and I made a triple chocolate mousse cake. We did candles and singing with that cake.
    • Bought a two-pack of good-quality folding tables from Costco using our shop card balance. We like to entertain, so the tables will be used often and I hope they last decades.
    • Found second-hand tablecloths. The bird tablecloth is actually a shower curtain I found on my no-buy group.
    • Used upcycled cloth napkins.
    • Instead of using disposable cutlery I found a big bag of forks at Good Will for like $1.99, and these will be our party forks forever.
    • I got all these flamingo plates second-hand and we used them – and will continue to use them – instead of paper plates. This definitely cost more up front, but I assume will pay off down the road, plus it’s way more fun and results in less stuff being thrown away.
    • Nothing we brought was landfill, so to keep things out of the playground trash cans we set out containers under the table for compost, dishes, cloth napkins and cans. Not specifically thrifty, but Earth-friendly.
    • We bought second-hand toys for his presents. He’s still only three and is happy to receive basically anything, so we got this big box of miscellaneous Duplo pieces from OfferUp and a few of his recent favorite library books from Thriftbooks. The few specific new things we wanted for him we put on a list for any family members who asked, so he got a few new toys too.
    • We used up the leftover party food throughout the week. We sautéed the leftover bell peppers and used the leftover cheese to make quesadillas for dinner for two nights. The fruit got used up as snacks, and I’m working my way through the snap peas. The pretzel thins and pita chips are stored in airtight bags for later, and I’m going to freeze the leftover hummus in small cubes to use as sandwich spread.

    And a few things not birthday-related:

    • We used up the punchcard we bought two years ago for the gymnastics play hour. We have also now aged out of the best weekly time slot, so I won’t be buying another.
    • I decorated our downstairs bathroom wall with mostly thrifted or free things. The only thing not thrifted or free is the print of the naked lady, which we bought years ago at a local gallery. Her frame, though, was thrifted.
    • We had to replace our dishwasher, which is not thirfty. While we were researching replacement options, we saw this one on a good sale price. We weren’t ready to commit, so we missed that sale, but when we decided this was the one we wanted it was on a sale that wasn’t quite as good, so we waited until we saw the lower price come back. It only took one extra week, and it saved us $50. We also went with a “dumb” dishwasher, which is cheaper and there’s less that can go wrong. We don’t need the features.
    • I had a bunch of bananas that needed to be used up or tossed out, so I used them all to make a big batch of freezer pancakes for B. The pancakes I make – made just of bananas, oats, eggs, water and any add-ins – are great to pack with us when we’re out all day and want to bring food with real nutritional value. I made half with blueberries and the other half with cocoa powder and sprinkles. It used up the bananas and gave us something we needed.
    • I food-prepped, like always. I have some stuff to use up for my lunches, but I made a big batch of oatmeal, roasted broccoli, roasted carrots, sautéed green beans and instant pot collard greens to get us through the week.
  • Monday Gratitude

    Monday Gratitude

    I’m posting this on a Tuesday because our son turned three on Saturday and my husband took yesterday off to make it a three-day weekend. So basically, today is my Monday this week.

    Things I’m grateful for going into this week (mostly birthday-related!):

    1. For our neighborhood playground. It’s not actually private but it’s not visible from the street, so nobody knows it’s here and it’s always empty. It was the perfect location for a birthday party.

    2. That the weather cooperated for our party. It’s been terribly cold, wet and windy here for weeks but the day of our party was sunny and in the high 50s. We got really lucky.

    3. That we were healthy for the party. We’ve had really bad luck with illnesses whenever we make big plans, most recently our failed Friendsgiving in December when B came down with hand/foot/mouth. I was pretty nervous as this one approached, because half the kids in our co-op have been sick. We made it, though!

    4. That we have a new dishwasher. Our old one has been acting up for months, and last week we scheduled the installation of a new one. The old one broke completely over the weekend, which added some difficulty to our celebrations. But how fortunate that we had already purchased a new one, and weren’t stuck without a working dishwasher for long.

    5. That we have a few slow weeks coming up. This past week felt really hectic getting ready for the party. In four weeks we’re going out of town, which will be fun but will also feel a bit hectic. Between now and then, though, we can take it a little easier.

  • Thrifty Thursday Roundup

    Thrifty Thursday Roundup

    This week I…

    Roasted cauliflower and beer-braised cabbage with cannellini beans
    • Ate home-cooked food. This isn’t unusual, but it’s the thriftiest way to eat so it gets to be here every week. I cooked beer-braised cabbage with cannellini beans for my entree, and also cooked roasted cauliflower, roasted broccoli and instant pot collard greens to have plenty of vegetables around. For breakfasts I made a big pot of steel cut oats. I made some tofu, rice and veggie burrito bowls to freeze for my kid to eat when we need something. And finally, I made this cheesy cauliflower pie sans crust (just didn’t want to deal with it tbh) for St. Patrick’s Day and it was really good. Last night my husband made a big pot of lentil soup that we’ll eat for the next couple days.
    Crustless cheesy cauliflower pie
    I like to store cooked oats in a 9×13 dish so it firms up almost into bars I can cut. Makes portioning easy.
    • I got a $20 haircut. I explained my recent haircut woes in this week’s Monday Gratitude post, but basically I’ve had a long string of bad haircuts and this one finally turned out how I wanted it to. And bonus, it was only $20! Anywhere else in the neighborhood costs at least $70.
    • I bought this backpack for $4.21 (regularly $80) using a combination of my REI rewards, an REI coupon and a $20 REI gift card I got for giving blood.
    • I took my son to the gymnastics open gym using a punch card I bought two years ago. We went a lot when he was still napping twice (it’s free for under 12 months and a fun place for a crawling baby to explore), but when he dropped to one nap we realized all their open gyms were during his new nap time. Seriously, they’re ALL between the hours of noon and 2pm. This has felt like a huge oversight on their part, since the open gyms are specifically for babies and toddlers. This year they opened a new time slot for kids under three from 9-10am and we’ve been going almost every week. We now have just one punch left, and just one more week before he turns three.
    • I took him to the Museum of Flight (we’re members) Sunday morning so my husband could do a little cooking in peace. I didn’t take any pictures, so this is a photo from a playground, which is also a frugal destination.
    Not pictured: a 10lb bag of brown basmati rice
    • We bought big bags of lentils, oats and rice at the chef store. I don’t remember how much this cost, but it’s much cheaper per pound than the regular grocery store. For us, the chef store is what people seem to think Costco is – the most cost-effective place to buy bulk food. We do shop for some things at Costco, but I find they primarily sell large packages of convenience/pre-cooked foods and that’s just not how we eat.
  • Two Very Different White Bean and Kale Soup Recipes

    Two Very Different White Bean and Kale Soup Recipes

    We eat soup pretty much every week from October through May. Here are the two I cook the most, both white bean and kale soups but very different from each other. I often food prep these and eat them through the week as well.

    Southwestern White Bean and Kale Soup

    Serves 8. Adapted from this recipe.

    Ingredients:

    • 2 15oz cans corn, drained
    • 2 tbsp olive oil
    • 1 yellow onion, chopped
    • 3 cloves garlic, diced
    • 2 tbsp tomato paste
    • 1 tbsp chili powder
    • 1 tsp ground cumin
    • 1 tsp ground coriander
    • 1 tsp smoked paprika
    • 2 7oz cans mild diced green chiles with liquid
    • 2 15oz cans cannellini beans, drained
    • 6 cups veggie broth (I use Better than Bouillon No Chicken concentrate and water)
    • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
    • 1 large bunch kale, chopped and stems removed (about 6-8 cups)
    • Juice from half a lime
    • Salt and fresh pepper

    1. Broil the corn until starting to brown, and set aside. I don’t add oil for this step.

    2. In a large stock pot, sauté the onion in olive oil for 7 minutes or until soft. Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute or until fragrant. Add tomato paste and spices and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently. Add green chiles and their liquid and cook 1 minute.

    2. Add corn, cannellini beans and broth and bring to a boil.

    3. Add kale, cover, reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes.

    4. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro, lime juice and fresh pepper. Using an immersion blender, puree about half of the soup. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.

    Tuscan White Bean Soup

    Serves 8. Adapted from this recipe. The original recipe says this takes 30 minutes, but that’s only true if all the vegetables are already chopped. I like to prepare all my vegetables before starting.

    • 2 tbsp olive oil
    • 2 medium onions, chopped
    • 4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
    • 4 ribs celery, chopped
    • 8 cloves garlic, minced
    • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
    • 6 cups veggie broth (I use I use Better than Bouillon No Chicken concentrate and water)
    • 4 15oz cans cannellini beans, with their liquid
    • 1 tbsp chopped dried rosemary (I like to use a mortar and pestle)
    • 1 large bunch kale, chopped and stems removed (about 6-8 cups)
    • 4 bay leaves
    • 1 3-4 inch parmesan rind (optional)
    • Salt and fresh black pepper
    • Juice from half a lemon
    • Fresh-grated parmesan for serving (optional)

    1. In a large stock pot, sauté the onions, carrots and celery in olive oil until soft, about 7-10 minutes. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about one minute.

    2. Add veggie broth, beans with their liquid, rosemary, parmesan rind and bay leaves. Increase heat to high, bring to a boil, add kale, reduce heat to low, cover and cook 15 minutes.

    3. Turn off heat, remove the bay leaves and parmesan rind, and add lemon juice. With an immersion blender, blend about half the soup. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.

  • Monday Gratitude

    Monday Gratitude

    1. That our absurd mid-March snowstorm was short-lived. On Friday it began snowing around 1am and snowed for nearly 24 hours, even though absolutely nobody forecasted significant snow and everyone continued to say “no accumulation” throughout the day. We probably got about three inches of snow, which I know isn’t much by some standards, but for a completely unexpected snow in mid-March, it sure felt like a lot. It doesn’t snow much in Seattle, and this was our first (and hopefully only) snow of the year. Patches of snow stuck around throughout the day Saturday, but it was all gone by Sunday morning. And because it’s March and was never actually that cold, the roads were never icy. I just hope it hasn’t completely killed off all the spring flowers that were near to blooming.

    2. That my son got a chance to play in snow this year. We usually get one real snow each year, although it’s not uncommon to get none. Given that it’s March, I didn’t think we were going to see any this year. I may be dying for Spring weather here, but it was still fun to see him get excited about snow at this age. He still won’t stop saying “remember when the doggy was covered in snow” (she had a few snowflakes on her back after our walk).

    3. That I finally walked into a hair salon and walked out with a haircut I love. Last summer I decided to cut my long hair short, and I had a very clear idea of how I wanted it to turn out. I showed photos. I explained that I was looking for a lot of layers, including some very short layers about the same length as the bangs I was also getting. But for whatever reason, every stylist I’ve tried has been really hesitant to actually cut short layers. I’ve invariably wound up with triangle hair.

    I’ve tried multiple salons and stylists in the neighborhood and never liked the result, and the cut I got in January was particularly disappointing. We have a salon in the neighborhood that costs next to nothing for a cut because the ladies there are REALLY fast, and a lot of people take their kids there for cuts because it’s so cheap and because, at least with young kids, quicker is better. This salon was actually the one that first cut my hair in the summer, and I went home with the aforementioned triangle. I wound up going back – something I’ve never done – and asking for it to be changed. After it was changed I felt like I had a Ronald McDonald ball of hair, but it was better than the triangle, so when we got my kid a haircut there this past weekend I decided to get mine cut too. And miracle of miracles, it turned out exactly like I wanted. I’m so happy with it.

    4. That my son has consistently been napping again. In October we took the front of his crib off because he’d started trying to climb out of it, and with that newfound freedom he decided he was never napping again. We kept putting him in his room for nap-time, but he would just play for an hour, and then each evening was a struggle because he was overtired. About a month ago he inexplicably started napping again, and now naps nearly every day. It has become something we can count on and schedule around again, and that has been nice. It’s also nice that he’s getting enough sleep again. Evenings are still a struggle, but now for other reasons. 🙃

    5. For this line from Pema Chodron about settling into uncertainty, which I’ve found myself reflecting on a lot: “what we call uncertainty is actually the open quality of any given moment.”

  • Thrifty Thursday Roundup

    Thrifty Thursday Roundup

    This week I…

    • Bought all this (74 cans!) for $30.

    I’ve never done a Safeway pickup order – I don’t trust other people to pick out my groceries – but there were a couple huge digital coupons for placing your first online order, so I figured cans were a safe bet and went for it. I received a few cans of the wrong tomatoes, but everything else was correct. I took the wrong tomato cans back to the store and exchanged them for the right ones and somehow got $2 cash back in the process. Beans and tomatoes were on sale to begin with, and I also redeemed $20 in grocery rewards, so my total savings on all these cans was ✨$83.48✨ (or 85.48 if I include the two dollars I got back exchanging the tomatoes).

    • More cans. I checked the Safeway clearance shelf and found some diced green chiles, which I use in one of my favorite recipes.
    • I froze leftover tomato paste in tablespoon-sized cubes.

    I opened a can of tomato paste and only needed a little bit, so I used my tablespoon cookie scoop to freeze the rest. Once frozen I transferred them to a Stasher bag to keep in the freezer. No more mostly-full cans of tomato paste growing fuzz in the refrigerator in this house!

    • I took B to the aquarium. We have a membership and brought our own snacks for the outing, so it cost us nothing but our train fare. A fun way to spend a rainy day.
    • I took B to the Burke museum (twice!). It’s been disgustingly wet and rainy, so we’ve been visiting a lot of our indoor favorites. Again, we have a membership and brought our own snacks. Although one of the two days my husband came along and we went out to lunch too. 🙂
    • I saved over $80 on a trike stroller. I thought it would be a good transitional item as we move into the wants-to-walk-but-only-for-a-few-minutes age, and I also thought it would help us prolong the life of our main stroller, which is starting to fall apart on account of we’ve put literally thousands of miles on it. Most of the trike/stroller combos I’ve seen really suffer on the trike side or the stroller side or both, but extensive research led me to believe this one was pretty good. The jury’s still out on whether or not that’s true, but I found it on a site that sells returns, floor models, etc., at a big discount. I’ve bought from this site before and I love them for helping unite things that are still perfectly good with people who want them. The cherry on top is that we didn’t technically pay for it at all – a generous family member sent us a check for B’s upcoming birthday, knowing we’d use it for this stroller.
    • I bought this four-pack of holiday hand soaps at Costco for $3.97. I don’t know what they cost leading up to the holidays, but I’m guessing significantly more. Soap is soap, you know?
  • Monday Gratitude

    Monday Gratitude

    1. I got some time yesterday to do my food prep. I have some extra soup to use up this week, so I didn’t have to do quite as much – just some oatmeal, roasted broccoli and sautéed garlicy kale. It makes going into the week feel much more peaceful when my food is ready.

    2. Mangos have been on sale recently. For the last few weeks Safeway has had good prices on mangos, and eating them makes me happy. They are, I believe, my favorite fruit. I think sometimes about which fruits I’d choose if I could only have five for the rest of my life, and I think I’ve settled on mangos, bananas, apples (cosmic crisp, specifically), red grapes and strawberries (frozen when fresh aren’t in season). The last one is tough, though – sometimes I lean toward a different berry. I love raspberries in my oatmeal, blueberries are so versatile, and there’s little better than the fresh blackberries that grow all over my neighborhood in the summer. Anyway, it’s important to have answers prepared for questions like that. You never know when you’ll need them.

    Also, on the subject of fruit – before having a child, I always thought green grapes were the superior grape. However, having a toddler requires some flexibility with fruit and to my surprise, red grapes have emerged as the clear winner.

    3. Our memberships to fun places to take B on rainy days. We are members at the aquarium, the Burke Museum and the Museum of Flight, which all offer a lot of indoor play space. We usually request these memberships for Christmas and birthdays in lieu of gifts. Our Burke membership also gets us into several other local museums, which we haven’t explored much but may soon because it’s supposed to rain all week.

    🥲

    4. Longer days. Enough daylight for one parent to take B to a playground while the other gets dinner ready is really a life-changing difference this time each year.

    5. A healthy stretch of days. It feels risky to even acknowledge this out loud, but our house has been illness-free for about six weeks and with a toddler that feels miraculous. I know our luck will run out at some point, but sometimes when the back-to-back illnesses hit I look back and realize we weren’t sick for a while and wish I’d been aware and appreciative while we were in that healthy stretch. So, I’m aware right now that we’ve been healthy and I’m grateful. It’s wonderful to not be sick.

  • Monday Gratitude

    Monday Gratitude

    Here are a few things I’m grateful for going into this week:

    1. That I feel fairly rested. Some weekends I feel like I spend my time chasing something I’ll never catch, and then I start my week feeling physically exhausted and also disappointed that I didn’t do better, which always feels like a moving target anyway. This past weekend, though, felt both energizing and restful and for that I’m grateful.

    2. For a nice meeting with my writing group friends. Over the summer I roped a couple of my old grad school classmates into creating a writing group with me where we create a new prompt each month (ish) and we each write a short story based on that prompt. It’s always a lot of fun reading the stories and seeing how different (or sometimes similar!) they turned out. We hadn’t met since November because of the holidays, and it was fun getting back together and chatting.

    3. We do yoga in the mornings now. Some rainy day last week I was trying to figure out how to keep my kid occupied indoors and I decided to try doing yoga together. I got out a mat for him and a mat for myself, put a 15-minute yoga video on the TV and he stomped gleefully on his mat the whole time. He now expects yoga every morning. He isn’t as participatory now, one week in – usually he hangs out on his mat for a minute or two before moving on to something else – but it still means I get to do yoga and that’s something I had not otherwise been able to fit into my day regularly.

    More rainy-day activities

    4. My husband took the kid out a couple times yesterday so I could get my food prep done for the week. They went to the Museum of Flight in the morning and a brewery with a play area in the afternoon, and that got me about 3.5 solo hours for cooking. They had fun, and having all the food I need for the kid and I ready before Monday makes going into the week feel much more relaxed.

    5. We had a great time at a party on Saturday night. We received the invitation just the night before from some down-the-street neighbors with a kid the same age as ours. As a person prone to social anxiety, a last-minute invitation typically makes me assume I’m not actually wanted there. But this party – a family-friendly Lunar New Year dumpling party hosted by some neighbors who have always seemed very nice – sounded too good for my anxiety to get in the way of. Their house was PACKED, but full of friendly faces and great food. We ran into several people we already knew and chatted with lots of new people. We’ve been struggling with doing this whole parenting thing alone, and are always hoping we’ll start forming relationships with other parents near us. Was this party a stepping stone to get us there? Who knows, but it was fun nonetheless.