Changing Shifts & Shifting Gears

The good news is that Nathan started a new job this week. The bad news? He works 3pm-11:30pm. He doesn't get home until I'm in bed and doesn't wake up until after I leave in the morning. Both our jobs are a half hour from home and 20 minutes from each other, so dropping by for lunch isn't going to happen either. In other words, we aren't going to be seeing much of each other.

This is going to be quite the transition. These last couple weeks before he started the job, I tried to make the most of our evenings, spending as much time with him as possible. I wasn't worried about things like dusting, reading, or blogging. Now, I'm going to be on my own each evening with plenty of time to get work done. But so far, I'm not doing much of anything. I've just been sitting around while the dishes pile up and the floors get dirtier and dirtier. I've gotten used to this relax mode I was in.

I need to figure out how to switch gears and restructure my time. My weekly chore schedule is going to need to change to make my Saturdays open. I'm thinking one day of intense cleaning, one day for intense cooking and baking, one day for shopping, and two days of light cleaning and whatever projects I want. We also need to figure out how to pack a week's worth of quality time into the weekends. We've been having date nights almost every Saturday since we've been married, but we'll need to make it a date day!

I'm thankful for this new job. I'm thankful we only had eight weeks with just my paycheck and didn't need to touch our emergency fund. I'm just not thrilled about this life change, and neither is Nathan.


Anyone have tips on how to survive working opposite shifts?


Check out more Try New Adventures Thursday at Alicia's Homemaking.

Our First Farmers Market Trip

I'd been meaning to check out the local farmers market since it opened a couple months ago, but I had never managed to make it there. I usually don't go grocery shopping until at least 11:00 on Saturdays, and the market is only open until 11:30. 

What finally motivated me to get out of bed and go? Corn. Corn is one of the five vegetables Nathan will eat, and he's very picky about the kind of corn. All my attempts at serving him good corn had failed, and locally grown corn was my last hope. I also wanted to find some tomatoes, green beans, and red potatoes.

Now that we've had our first experience, I can't believe we waited this long to go. I found everything I'd hoped to find and even threw in a beet as well. The corn was really, really good.

I boiled the red potatoes and green beans and served them over pasta, loosely following this recipe. I think my potato to pasta ratio was a little off since the potatoes I used were so big, but it was pretty tasty.

The most amazing find for me was this lovely little thing. I have always hated beets. Or so I thought. It turns out I just hate canned beets.

After 35 minutes at 400 degrees and some olive oil, it's a completely different story. I was shocked. The taste reminded me a little of sweet potato fries, which I love. That beet pretty much changed my life.

I cut the corn from our last cob and tossed it with chopped tomato and avocado. Too bad we don't have any locally grown avocados!

  

We will definitely be returning to the farmers market. The food might be a little pricey, but if it's 20 times better than the produce you can buy in the grocery store, not to mention chemical free, I think it's worth it.

Do you shop farmers markets?

More Try New Adventures Thursday at Alicia's Homemaking

More Finer Things Friday at Amy's Finer Things

Nathan's Wedding Gift

A year ago, when we were planning our wedding, Nathan got the idea that instead of having a limo pick us up from the wedding reception, we should have a helicopter. He wanted this to be a surprise for me, but once he decided it would probably be a little too expensive, he told me about his idea. 

Not long after he told me this, there just so happened to be a Groupon for an introductory helicopter flight lesson. Up until that point, I wasn't sure whether or not to buy Nathan a wedding gift. Sure the sales ladies at Jared insisted that I had to buy him a watch since "It's tradition!" but Nathan was happy with the Walmart digital watch he had. 

Flying a helicopter on the other hand? That's something he could enjoy. So, although we left the wedding reception in our own car, later that night I told Nathan that he would get to fly a helicopter. I really thought he would have his lesson last summer, but somehow we just never got around to it. Finally, two weeks before the Groupon expired, Nathan flew a helicopter!

First, the flight instructor showed him and another student all the controls. The two other students there that morning were also using Groupons, so Nathan wasn't the only one to wait until the last minute.

Then he went inside the tent classroom for his ground training.

...while I sat and watched the birds. The metropolitan airport is probably one of the quietest places in the city when there are no helicopters or planes taking off - just the sounds of red-winged blackbirds, mockingbirds, and killdeer.

And then it was Nathan's turn to fly!

A few more instructions

A little bit of hovering

And he was off!

I wish I could have seen the view he had of the city up there. He even flew over our apartment and saw my car on the ground.

Still smiling after his flight 

 Yep, I'd say it was a lot more fun than a fancy watch!

Linked at Try New Adventures Thursday at Alicia's Homemaking.

Once a Week Cooking

I don't think I could ever attempt Once a Month Cooking. I know it works for some people, but to me it just sounds overwhelming. I can't even plan out meals a week at a time since I never know when we could decide to go out of town for the weekend. But what about once a week cooking? What if I could do almost all of my food preparation for the following week on Saturday? That's my new plan. I've rearranged my chore schedule so that Saturdays are strictly grocery shopping and cooking days. This won't work out every week; some Saturdays I will be out of town, or I may be busy doing something else. The idea is to leave the day open so that if I am home and have the time to do something, I can spend some of that time cooking, whether I cook six meals or just bake a couple dozen cookies.

For my first attempt at once a week cooking, I made tuna noodle casserole, tomato teriyaki drumsticks, basil pork chops, biscuits, and chicken nuggets.

I started by cooking the egg noodles for the tuna noodle casserole.

The I trimmed the skin and fat from the drumsticks.

I made the sauce for the drumsticks and poured that into a bag with the chicken. All I had to do to complete this dish was throw it in the crock pot the morning I wanted to make it.

Once the noodles were done, I mixed in the other ingredients and my second meal was ready. (Putting the chow mien noodles on before baking was a bad idea. We decided putting them on the individual servings works best so they don't get soggy in the refrigerator.)

Next up were the biscuits. I'm trying to find a good biscuit recipe so I can make extras and freeze them, but this wasn't it.

Since the basil pork chops are a quick meal anyway, the only preparation I did for those was mixing the basil, brown sugar, and olive oil together while the biscuits were baking.

With three main dishes done, the only thing I had left to do was make the chicken nuggets for our dinner that night. 

Nathan made some amazing filet mignon and loaded mashed potatoes for one of our other dinners that week (still enjoying our Christmas steaks!). The other two nights were a date night and leftovers night.

Making four dinners in one afternoon was fairly easy and seemed to go quickly, even though I probably spent about three hours in the kitchen. If I have a little better planning for the next time, it should go even more smoothly.

Have you tried once a week or once a month cooking?

Vacuuming The Car from a Second Story Apartment

Nathan is the official family vacuumer. He was apparently hit with a bit of spring cleaning fever this past weekend and decided he was going to vacuum out both cars in addition to the apartment. I didn't really think about the fact that he would have to find a way to plug in the vacuum in order to do this. Not finding any outdoor outlets, he resorted to this:

A chain of power strips running from the closest outlet to the hallway...

All the way down the stairs...

And outside to the sidewalk! Unfortunately, the cord still wasn't long enough for the vacuum to reach the entire car.

So then he found an outlet in the laundry room.

Success!

You may be wondering, why didn't we just go to a gas station and use a coin-operated vacuum? Well, while I tend to be the frugal one, there are some things that Nathan just doesn't like to spend money on. (He thinks clothes at Goodwill are too expensive.) Why pay to use a vacuum when you already own a perfectly good one?

What crazy things have you done in the name of saving money?

My Attempt at Making Red Lobster at Home

Red Lobster is one of my top five favorite restaurants. Nathan isn't a huge fish fan, but he enjoys the crispy fish and chicken they have for lunch, and of course we both love their Cheddar Bay Biscuits. I decided to try to make my own "imitation Red Lobster" dinner this week of fish and cheddar biscuits.

I used this recipe for the biscuits.

After baking,I brushed the garlic and butter on top. I was pretty happy when I saw them. They certainly looked like the real thing! The taste, however...not quite right. The texture wasn't fluffy enough, and they just didn't have as much flavor as Red Lobster's. This was only my second attempt at making biscuits from scratch though, and they turned out much better than my first attempt (which Nenya wouldn't even eat). 

For the fish, I decided to try broiling for the first time ever. Ooh, pretty flame!

I used this recipe, only with pollock instead of tilapia. Pollock was half as cheap as tilapia at Kroger, and based on a quick comparison of the nutrition facts it looked healthier.

After broiling for a few minutes on both sides, I put the topping on and broiled a few more minutes.

 

It turned out pretty well, but dealing with taking the broiler pan in and out was a little annoying. I think I'll stick with baking.

Although it wasn't as flavorful as a meal at Red Lobster, it was much cheaper, and probably healthier at least in terms of sodium. Nathan didn't have any major complaints. I think the biscuit recipe is worth another try.

Any tips on making biscuits or fish?

No More Monthly Budget

Nathan and I made our first monthly budget for July of last year. Since neither of us used a budget while we were single, a lot of guesswork went into creating it. After a lot of work, we finally decided how to spend every dollar of income we would make that month. Little did we know that Nathan would lose his job a little later that month and not get a paycheck for two months. So, our first few months of budgeting were a little weird, and we've only had three "normal" months to really figure it out.

One thing we have figured out? Making a budget based on the calendar month doesn't work for us. With Nathan getting paid every other Friday and me getting paid every Thursday, our income varies quite a bit each month. For example, in October Nathan got 3 paychecks and I got 4, and in December he got 2 and I got 5. That's a huge difference! We originally based our budget on our average monthly pay by taking our annual net pay and dividing it by twelve, but this meant we were technically spending more than we made some months. This might work for some people, but it bothered us.

The solution Nathan came up with is to base our budget not on the 12 calendar months but on 13 four-week periods. This way, our income for each budget period will be roughly the same. This also means that our expenses will vary each period - we will not pay rent in one period, won't pay electric in another, etc. - but we prefer it this way. Before the start of each four-week period, we will look at what bills we need to pay that period and then decide how to allocate the rest of our income.

Our first budget period began January 2, so it's too early to tell whether or not this will really work better for us. I think it's worth a try though.


Do you use any unconventional budgeting methods?