The only way I feel better is to be in the shower with the water running breathing in the moist air, otherwise I’m miserable exhausted and achy. and no I don’t have swine flu instead I have I’m stuck in Arizona weather allergies.  Anyway.

I’m not much of a cook unless I’m following a recipe.  I can follow a recipe really well though, baking, whatever so long as the recipe is good I can follow it.  There are a few exceptions.  I make really good scrambled eggs, a mean cheese crisp, and I am a rockstar at soups.  Or at least I think I am haha.. they’re yummo anyway.

So with that I give you my soup I had to make for myself to make me feel better since no one else will make me soup or buy me some on their way home from work.. and yes that is a dig at my husband who forgot to get me the albondigas I asked for!  Turned out ok.. I got up all achy and all and make myself soup and also made dinner for everyone and had extras to freeze for the week.  So whine though I may have oh well I ended up with some great soup.  I was actually wanting a calabacitas sort of soup so it has the main ingredients.. green chile, tomatoes, zucchini, onions, corn.

So maybe this will be dubbed “Calabacitas soup”

Ingredients:

chicken broth or bouillion or both whatever you have

zucchini - I used 2 that I sliced kind of thick so even if you cook too long it will still have a nice bite to it and won’t dissolve into the broth

2 tomatoes - rough chopped

half an onion - diced

frozen corn - cuz it’s what I had.

2 small cans of diced cooked green chile

cooked chicken - rough chopped - this was from earlier in the week when hubby grilled a few extra chicken breasts while making burgers .. really good make ahead jump start

fideo

some butter just cuz it looked like it was needed… I dunno I just do it ha

various spices: pepper, oregano, cilantro, lil’ thyme, parsley, minced garlic

added lime juice at the end and lemon when I ran out of limes

Ok so here’s what I did and it’s absolutely not exact.. if I was trying to follow this recipe I may say what the bleep this is not exact.. sorry, but that’s how I make soup.  I just look at what I have and start cooking!  While it may seem odd that I cook just a little at a time then dump it into the big pot, please keep in mind I’m chopping at the same time so I chop up some things throw it in the pan let it cook up while I chop some more things and am dumping chopping alternating the whole time.

In big pot heated up some water not too much maybe a 1/4 of the pot, bouillion, and spices on high

In frying pan add a little oil and  chicken to get it nice and browned up with some pepper then dumped it in the pot.

Then took the onions, zucchini, corn, and green chile with just a teeny bit of oil and cooked that up a bit, not much just mostly to get a lil’ color on the onions and halfway through I added some butter and heat all up and dump in the pot.

Then I added a lil oil and a good amount of fideo..probably the size of one of the small bags you get in the mexican section of the grocery store.. maybe one and a half. ok maybe 2 I don’t know I was using a huge bag so I just dumped it in.

very important with the fideo is to keep it moving constantly or it will burn.. you could cook it on low and slowly do it, but I don’t have time for that so I just keep moving it.  You want to brown it nicely you’ll be able to tell as it will change color.. not really turning brown necessarily just changes color ok.  Then dump it in the pot.  This is an important step.  If you don’t brown it right when you add it to the pot it will get big and soak up too much liquid and get mushy and gross.  Don’t skip this step with the fideo unless you don’t care about mushy soup blech.
Then I did it with the tomatoes and dumped it in the pot

everything should be boiling.. cover and simmer just till fideo is done, you don’t want everything all mushy, taste it how is it? I usually add more pepper and sometimes more bouillion too to preference.

Ok so once all done I tasted it and it was missing something so in my individual bowl I added lime juice and just a smidge of sea salt.  Perfect and yumm

Recipe clear as mud? I kept remembering ingredients as I was writing it out lol oh well such as life in the future I can look back at this and I’ll know what I mean and I can make it again cuz it was de.lic.ous.!

oh and why did this make into a budget category?  because I used what I had, didn’t spend money on takeout, and still had leftovers for lunch this week.

Sunday

It’s no fun being sneezy-sinus-headachey.. added on to insomnia and you would think I must have been miserable today, but nope I endured on through and had a fabu mommy day.. with an outing, a trip to Costco, and dinner with friends.

I had a nice time with the kiddos.  For the most part everyone was really well behaved, especially considering that where we went was seriously lacking in air conditioning.  I will never understand why some people are in denial of the heat here in Arizona.  It’s freaking hot people ugh.  That just reminded me of something.. why are we spending millions on shade structures for the light rail?  I mean if you’re going to spend money there how about solar powered air conditioners or fans?  Something that actually makes sense?  What a stupid way to spend money when teachers who already have over-crowded classrooms are being layed off left and right around here.  Pfft the economy go figure.  What a waste of $!

Anyway back to our day.   We stopped by costco and I stocked up on a few essentials while on our way to dinner with my hubby’s friends.  Canned peach slices which everyone loves and an awesome deal might I add, bag of pinto beans super important for our budget and one of the only things my daughter will actually eat, a $7 dress for my daughter that is so pretty and exactly her colors.  I think I’ll return the dress I bought her last time there that she hasn’t worn yet.  It was an Easter-y one and required an iron to wear and the new one is definitely wash and wear wrinkle free which speaks straight to my heart - No Ironing yay! oh and best part of the trip?  The strawberry and blueberry cream pie from costco which was the hit of the party.  Everyone loved it and wanted to know where we got it.  The party was great, the food so delicious, and a lot of nice chit chat. A great night.

Monday

Today I went and did laps at the pool and oh my how out of shape am I!  I remember being a little kid and swimming around lap after lap no problem. Now I huff and puff and my heart is beating like crazy when I make it to the end of the pool.  Ok I don’t think I looked quite as pathetic as I’m making it sound, and I felt really good afterward. I did eleven laps or twenty two if you count each direction and ha ha it sounds better that way! After laps my husband and I were talking about maybe going out to eat.  We used to go out to eat on a whim all the time just about every day, but we’re trying really hard to stick to a budget and pay off our debt.  Anyway he really wanted Pizza Hut and I was voting for Sweet Tomatoes and neither one of us wanted what the other did so we started talking about what we had to eat at home.  I am very proud to say this is what we did:

We grabbed hamburger patties (the sirloin ones from costco yumm) and frozen chicken (bashas sale this week!) that I defrosted a bit.  Hubby does the grill so he grilled both hamburgers and chicken and I cut up two huge potatoes into wedges and tossed them with olive oil and seasonings… I tried out a few different ones.  We have this organic no salt seasoning from costco and I doused part of the potatoes with that, then did garlic, parsley, pepper and salt and paprika.. I have no clue which ones I ended up eating, since they all ended up dunked in ketchup, but either way ooh they were good.  Even the baby loved them and I was quite guilt free feeding him olive oil baked potato wedges! Much better than say McDonald’s fries aka cardboard fries gross.  Then I tossed a bunch of sweet potatoes with olive oil and put them on the oven rack with a pan underneath to catch any drippings.  Used the oven for double duty.. lots of fries and nice baked sweet potatoes for later.

Here’s what we were able to enjoy:

Hamburgers on whole wheat bread - no buns we were out, with tomatoes that my husband! sliced wow, pickles, sliced cheese of everyone’s choice, mustard, mayo, ketchup.

Oven fries with ketchup
and for dessert: Baked sweet potatoes with a little brown sugar, butter, and a sprinkling of tiny marshmallows

and once everyone was in bed asleep with nice full tummies what did I get, but a lovely dvr’d episode of Medium with my favorite Arizonan Allison Dubois!  Trippy episode today for certain, although I’m watching it while I type so who knows what will happen now.  I totally knew they weren’t watching who was going into that house!

oh crap I just finished the Medium episode.. thoroughly chicken feeling for every sound I now hear in the house and super bummed that it was a To Be Continued episode.  Ack! I can’t wait to see the next episode.  Well now that I’m ready to go to sleep, my baby is waking up.  My lack of sleep continues.  Gotta go baby is calling for me.. who can say no to Mamma Mamma from a lil’ guy?

Got our baby back to sleep.  Just wanted to add that in the end we didn’t miss going out to eat at all.  Score one for watching our expenses.

So we have a lot of goals…  One of which is to get out of debt and kind of at the same time we’re looking maybe to buy a house.  While I realize they don’t go hand in hand we think maybe it’s the time to move.  We’ve been in our home long enough to want and need something bigger.  We’ve been watching Suze Orman and kind of following the Dave Ramsay website and methods.  We’ve tried over the years to talk about money/budgeting, etc and really haven’t gotten any where so this has made the best headway for us.  We each have an account for our paychecks and the bills are split up so we each are responsible for certain bills, savings, and have some freedom as far as if we want to buy something special, etc.  I’m waiting for a new card to come in so I can avoid using the cash method, but I’m torn as well. Sometimes when I have just cash it’s much easier to say no to making a purchase.  I had another outfit at costco the other day and because I didn’t have enough cash I put it back.  At the same time when I have cash and spend it all of a sudden it’s gone and I’m left wondering where it went exactly.  It’s kind of funny actually, but scary at the same time.  I do have the receipts which I’m actually paying attention to now considering I used to not even look at them and throw them away. Yup you heard that right, I know bad bad bad.  I’m getting better now I promise.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll have a date with my receipts and figure out where are that cash went!  I think this week I’ll do the cash again, but not take as much out and know that if I really need to I can use my debit card, but try not to.

Ok so want to know what happens when I’m in charge of our grocery budget, eating out, and entertainment?  Well we don’t do much entertainment now!  I cut out our trips to the movies every week and eating out is no longer an option either.  We’re both packing our lunches and I make sure the kids have snacks or half a sandwich for something to eat in the car instead of stopping somewhere on the way.  While I think we do have enough to maybe eat out every once in a while or grab a movie, I haven’t gotten accustomed to being in charge yet and I don’t know how much we can afford or not.  We looked at what we spent on groceries last month and I made a goal to cut that down by over $100.. last month we did go a little crazy so I knew that was reasonable.  Anyway I think what I’ll do is wait until the end of this month and whatever didn’t get used this month I’ll portion some of it to use towards next month’s eating out and entertainment while still allowing some for savings and debt payoff.

I’m kind of afraid to run out of grocery money, so I’ve been cooking dinner almost every night.  Tonight was the best because hubby and I worked as a team and that made it fun.  He even put away the leftovers!  Amazing.  I’ve tried to adopt this way of thinking to meals around here:  “Just Make Something”.  Simple yet very effective for me.  I am not a great cook and a lot of times I get frozen thinking well is it healthy, etc. and then end up not making anything so I’m focusing on just making something it’s ok so long as we all eat and no one is hungry.   Sandwiches and chips for dinner?  That’s ok I buy good lunchmeat, real sliced cheese not the fake crap,whole grain bread, with organic(sometimes) tomatoes and lots of apple slices on the side.  So there ya go be inspired and just feed your family, Just Make Something!  and I’ll remind myself to do that tomorrow too

I have so much on my mind these days. It’s very cathartic to write it out and seeing as all of my friends live in Egypt–comparatively anyway I need to get out all the thoughts in my brain! Ugh I’m blathering which I do quite often.. I deleted my old blog because well I feel like I went through a huge change with the birth of my last child and the me that was then is different. The blog was an outdated version of me. So here I am out with the old, in with the new. Which includes my background, but I can’t remember my password to change it out so that will come.

I watch way too much tv. I’m well aware of it.. but I enjoy it so oh well. Favorites? Medium, Terminator, and The Unit. I can’t wait to watch them. What you say what about Desperate Housewives or Grey’s Anatomy? Well they’re awesome, but those are the shows I watch with my husband and they are off limits on the dvr until we can watch them together.

I started this post last night and am just writing a bit more this morning. We have a very cute dog. Cute yes indeedy, but also utterly loud and this morning anyway annoying. He found a cat on top of our kids’ play structure and was jumping up barking like a mad-dog for like 10 minutes straight. Definitely long enough to drive me nuts and wake me up and certainly long enough to I’m sure piss off one or more of my neighbors. He’d only been in the backyard for a little while. My husband let him out before he took our son to school. In order to get him inside I have to bribe him with going for a walk or a treat and then get the back door shut before he runs out again. The dog doesn’t listen to me at all — I have no pull. My husband says here boy and he comes running, even my little one can call him and the dog comes running. Me? He looks at me and thinks ohhh no that chicks gonna make me stay inside! Why oh why can’t we have a nice well behaving chill dog? Maybe a nice lab or even a bull dog. Just a big lovable pup? Instead I have spazz :/ ugh. Don’t judge me! ok well I guess ya could I don’t care our dog drives me nuts ugh ugh and triple ugggh.