Dinner Last Night

was so good!!

The orange chicken from Costco is DELICIOUS, though you have to be careful not to make the whole bag (there are two bags inside), because that would be 6 servings, not two... =D I paid attention and split them ahead, but it means that I have an open sauce packet (inside a ziplock) in the freezer that I hope doesn't fall over and get all messy.

The Cashew Carrot Ginger soup from Costco is one of my attempts at getting a natural/organic soup to replace my glorious Progresso soup, which I learned has MSG in it. I was sort of scared of the soup, quite honestly, because I had some of their (Pacific) soup before and I didn't like it! I think that kind was a roasted red pepper tomato soup. It was too funky for my tastes, so I don't know why I thought the Cashew Carrot Ginger soup would be any less funky. Fortunately for me I didn't over think it in the store and I just tossed it into my cart. It's really good!! Both Leif and I liked it and I think having 1/2 cup with an Asian meal is perfect! Plus it comes in a box with a screw cap so I can just pour what I will eat, then recap it and save it for later. Fewer dishes to wash (because with a can I have to pour it into a second container to store it), which is great! And the box can be recycled, though that part is sort of a wash on the benefit side because we were already recycling the cans. Anyway - good soup. I'm glad we tried it!

All in all it was still a pretty salty meal, with something like 40-50% of our daily salt allowance. I'd love to be able to reduce our salt intake, and I actually think I did with this meal because I didn't add any sauce to the stir fry veggies like I normally do! So I did cut out the soy there and I know that helped with the salt. But really I think that Asian food is just saltier than most. So I suppose we should reduce salt all over and just know that some days we will splurge on the salt front and eat yummy Asian. =D It just won't be every day.

Dinner Tonight....

Well, the table is set (I very rarely actually SET the table before we eat, sadly) and we are just waiting for Leif to call and say he's on his way home from work so I can get dinner going. So I figured I'd blog what's on the menu for tonight...

Cashew Carrot Ginger Soup
Brown Rice
Stir Fried Vegetables
Orange Chicken

Looks like it's Asian night!

The Organic Pantry

I don't know that I particularly feel the need to go organic with our food. At least not right now. But because of where we live, a lot of the things we buy are already organic, so I think that makes it easier for us. I love Costco for that! Still, a friend of mine has been blogging lately about going organic and it has made me think, so I thought I'd just see how many of the items we eat regularly ARE organic already. (Especially of the ones on the dirty dozen list.)

not organic
* organic
** all natural (nothing on the label I don't recognize as food or can't pronounce)

Pantry:

• Raisins*
• Pirate's Booty**
• Fiber One Bars
• Easy Mac (we just use the macaroni, not the cheese)
• Pretzels
• Kidney Beans
• Tomato Sauce*
• Oatmeal*
• Apple Juice*
• Chicken Broth*
• Puffed Wheat*
• Potatoes (not listed as organic, but they are locally grown one town over)
• V8 Fusion
• Fruit Cocktail
• Green Beans
• Applesauce**
• Bread Crumbs
• Spaghetti*
• Whole Wheat Lasagna
• Rice Milk*

Fridge:

• Whole Wheat Bread** (and local)
• Feta**
• Cranergy Juice
• I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
• Broccoli
• Carrots*
• Apples*
• Tofutti Cheese
• Celery
• Whole Grain Flour Tortillas
• Spinach*
• Soy Yogurt**
• Activia Yogurt
• Orange Juice
• Unsalted Butter
  

Freezer:

• Strawberries
• Peas*
• Peppers** (and local from a farm in town)
• Fish Sticks
• Green Beans*
• Sweet Potato Fries**
• Chicken Breast**
• Stir Fry Vegetables

The items in bold are items I'm okay with, just the way they are. I don't see any need to change what we're using right now. Some items, like the canned green beans in the pantry, I'm going to use until they're gone, but then not buy because we're switching to the frozen organic beans from Costco. We're really switching for the sodium content difference (there's no sodium added to the frozen beans) but it helps that they're organic, too.

The items in italics are ones that I would like to make an effort to buy organic. In the case of the potatoes, I'd want to buy organic AND local, otherwise just stick with local. Potatoes are a big produce here. I've actually thought about growing potatoes myself, and maybe I'll try it one of these years.

This isn't a comprehensive list of the items in our food storage, but it does give me a good idea of how many of the items we consume are organic/local/pesticide-free/hormone-free. We're actually right at 50% for this list, because there are 43 items on the list, 21 that are organic or all natural, and one that is local, but not organic.

I didn't delve into my baking supplies, but I know that we use local flour, and white sugar. I haven't tackled the sugar yet, but I might in the future. We still have a couple bags, so it isn't worth it until I use that up, but then I think I'll look into using an organic cane sugar, maybe. I think I can get that at Costco.

Really a lot of it boils down to what I can get at Costco. I could get more things organic if I shopped at Town&Country or the Coop, but the parking situation for both is wretched, and that's a big pain when I've got Ellie with me.

I can't give up my Fiber One bars. That's just not going to happen. Nor are we willing to give up I Can't Believe It's Not Butter yet. Maybe I'll look for a butter bell this summer and I'll change my mind at that point, but right now a soft spread is a must for us, so butter in the fridge just won't cut it. We could do without the fruit cocktail. And truthfully, we could probably do without the Easy Mac as well. I would just have to keep cooked whole wheat pasta on hand. And really, that wouldn't be so bad.

Anyway, it's food for thought at least. I've got a few things I can look into when I head to the grocery store this week and I can start to make a couple changes for the better. Really, though, it's pretty encouraging to do a random survey of our food items and find that we're about half way to organic/local/natural already, without really trying. It makes it easier to make better decisions when the change looming ahead isn't as big as I thought it would be.

Fly Lady

I woke up to a clean kitchen this morning, and made my bed as soon as Leif rolled out of it! I'm wearing workout clothes and I did yoga. I took my temperature and weighed myself and I'm considering going downstairs right now to do some DDR with Ellie.

That's progress!

I'm starting to have some routines in place, which is HUGE. My biggest problem is still time management, though, and I seem to be taking MUCH longer than necessary to do simple tasks! But I'm trying to plug away and work toward making those routines stick. It's taking time as I take babysteps, but I think it will be worth it.

I added the flylady tool bar to firefox, so we'll see if that helps me at all when it comes to reminding and keeping on task with my routines. I hope so! If nothing else, maybe I will listen to the blogtalkradio once in a while, as I never have and Erika raves about it. We'll see.

Today starts a new super fling boogie, so I'm going to take 15 minutes to do it. I'm trying to simplify this year, and this is always a great way to do it!

I'm also going to meal plan today for the week and add any items I need to the grocery list. I'm hoping to make it to the store today or tomorrow, so that will be good.

I've written out my 6 most important things and I need to follow that today.

Today is another day of babysteps, and one by one I will take them.

Waking up and getting ready....

I've actually been waking up earlier lately, which is pretty cool. I found that I can use my cell phone as an alarm clock and I actually wake up to it, which is nice. I don't always get up right away, but I at least wake up to it at 6 and 6:30, which makes it easier to get up at 7 like I have been. Hooray!

And today I was reading on another blog this great little list of 24 tips to becoming an early riser. Some of them are pretty good and I have implemented in the past. It looks like it's time to start implementing them (one by one, slowly) again.

Christmas is OVER!

It's January 10th.

And I'm just NOW taking down the Christmas decorations.

How did this happen? Life has been pretty busy since the start of the year, but still... I usually have the Christmas decorations down and put away by January 1st! I leave up the winter decorations and put them away sometime in February. But not this year. No, THIS year it is ALL going away. TODAY!

Because Christmas is OVER and it's time to move on!

_____________________________________________________________________

I need to put away the decorations in the following areas...

Front Bathroom (DONE)
Eliana's Room (DONE)
Leif's Office (DONE)
Living Room
Dining Room
Kitchen
Master Bedroom (DONE)
Guest Bathroom (DONE)
Family Room

That's what I need to do today.