Grilled Cheese Rolls with Bread Heels

We don't eat a lot of meatless meals around here, thanks to my meat-loving, anti-vegetable husband, but one meatless meal we do enjoy often is grilled cheese with tomato soup. I normally use eight slices of bread for grilled cheese, making 2.5 sandwiches for Nathan and 1.5 for me. But when I wanted to make grilled cheese this week, I realized we only had four slices of bread left. However, we also had two heels. I had recently read about making grilled cheese rolls by removing the crusts and rolling a slice of cheese with a slice of bread, so I decided to give that a try with the two heels I had.

The verdict? They were delicious! They're really more grilled cheese "envelopes" than rolls since they wouldn't fold that well, but they tasted fantastic

What do you do with the heels in your loaf of bread? Do you eat them like the rest of the slices or use them for something else. I have a few in the freezer that I've been meaning to use to make bread crumbs. Sometimes I'll put them in with the brown sugar if it gets hard to soften it up again. And now I know I can use them for grilled cheese!

My Home Office

If you've ever wondered where I am when I write my blog posts, this is it. It's been a little over two months since we moved, and my little work space is finally getting close to how I want it.

I use the term "home office" loosely, as you can see. My desk is very much out in the open! So, I've tried to make it look as nice as possible without spending a lot of money.

With two monitors, I don't have a lot of room for much else on my desk. The keyboard and mouse are wireless so they can be shoved in my desk drawer when I'm writing or clipping coupons. I keep all the papers that need to be addressed (bills, coupon inserts) in one pile that I try to go through once a week. Other than that, I only have a coaster and a magnetic sculpture on my desktop.

My brother-in-law put up this shelf for me (thanks, Tim!) that I can use for my office supplies, a few design books...and toys.

Hanging from the shelf brackets are my cork board and dry erase board. I wish I'd taken before photos of these! For the cork board, I spray painted the frame of an old bulletin board, cut fabric to size and adhered it to the cork with spray adhesive. The dry erase board was just a large picture frame that I also spray painted. It had a collage mat in it that I wrapped with matching fabric and put behind the glass.

It's may not be the fanciest home office, but it's a functional and happy office!

And unlike at my cubicle at work, I can actually see outside!

Shared at Take it on Tuesday at Romance on a Dime.

Being a One Car Family

One cost-cutting measure I've seen recommended numerous times is becoming a one car family. Ugh. Every time I saw someone make that suggestion, I cringed. I vowed that would never happen in our family. I'm sure part of my thinking came from my grandmother, who had her own car despite the fact that she almost never drove. Cutting back to one car just seemed too radical.

I started to think a little differently when we moved at the beginning of this year. Instead of being 20 miles away from work, my commute is about 0.4 miles. In other words, I can walk to work, home for lunch, back to work, and back home in less time than it took me to drive to work before. Do we really need another car when I'm that close? Even if the weather conditions make it unsafe for me to walk, it wouldn't be too inconvenient for a coworker to give me a ride. In fact, three people offered to take me home one day when it was snowing.

I still resisted the idea of going down to one car. I wanted to at least have the option to drive. But two weeks ago, Nathan's car died. Completely died. There's still a chance it could be fixed, even though we've been advised not to put another dime into it, but so far we haven't messed with it. Nathan has been driving my car to work, and I've walked every day, even in rain and snow. And guess what? It hasn't been that bad. Will we buy a replacement car? Maybe..maybe not. It will of course be necessary when we move or if I change jobs, but for now, one car is actually okay.

There are several advantages of not having a second car and walking to work...

• I'm forced to get some exercise.
• The walk to work makes me much more awake and ready to start my work day.
• I can't go buy fast food for lunch (at least not on my own).
• I sometimes see geese, ducks, and killdeer on my commute.  
• We save money on gas, even if not a lot. 
• If we do get rid of the second car, we'll save on insurance and maintenance. 

And the disadvantages?

• I don't feel like jogging when I get home. (I do walk another mile with Nenya though.)
• If Nathan has car trouble, I can't go pick him up.
• I can't run errands during lunch.
• It's not easy to go to doctor's appointments, although I found a dentist right by work.
• People think I'm weird. Walking commutes are rare in the suburbs I guess.
• I don't like inconveniencing people, so I hate asking for rides.

We aren't sure what to do about our car situation for the time being, but at least I know we can survive with one car.


Are you, or have you ever been, a one car family? If not, would you ever want to be one?


 

Once a Week Cooking in 2 Hours

If you read about my once a week cooking experiment last year and wondered if I've kept up with it, well, I haven't. I never tried it again after that one time. It would be rough for me to do that much cooking on a weekday (I work full time), and my weekends have been fairly busy with other things. But a couple weeks ago, I decided to try it again.

This was my dinner menu plan for the week:

Potato Bacon Corn Chowder

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas

Chocolate pancakes with strawberry topping (for Valentine's Day)

Salmon patties, macaroni and cheese

Pizza casserole

Chicken Fried Rice

Dinner with friends

I didn't make every dinner ahead of time since the others were quick ones anyway, but I was able to get two main dishes ready to bake and two others ready to assemble. Before I started, I listed all the tasks I would need to complete and then ordered them in a way that would keep things moving. I forgot a few things initially, so this probably would have taken much less than 2 hours if I'd been more efficient. I also didn't menu plan based on the idea that I would be cooking ahead of time. Next time, I would choose more meals that are easy to prepare ahead of time and that share common ingredients (two dishes with pasta, two with beef, etc.).

12:50 - I start cooking the rice and heating up the skillet for the bacon.

12:58 - Cover rice to simmer; still cooking bacon

"Can I have some?"

I start putting together the enchiladas (with chicken I had cooked previously). Then I remember I need to be cooking hamburger and pasta for the pizza casserole and get that started.

1:44 - Enchiladas are ready, except for the sauce. The tortillas are falling apart (they were a little old), so I switch them to a smaller dish to keep them together a little better.

1:56 - I remember I have laundry that needs switched to the dryer.
Nathan steps in to work on browning the hamburger.

After the hamburger is done cooking, I make the sauce for the enchiladas.

2:22 - Enchiladas are done and I start assembling the pizza casserole.

2:33 - Pizza casserole is done!

2:34 - Oops! I forgot I needed to cook onion for the chowder.
I chop one up (sniff, sniff) and cook that.

2:49 - And we're done! Chicken enchiladas, pizza casserole,
rice for fried rice, and bacon and onion for chowder.

I try to pretend the kitchen doesn't exist for a while,
but Nenya is happy to begin cleanup for me.

Shared at Works for Me Wednesday.

Back to a Monthly Budget and Other Budget Changes

 
One of my most popular blog posts and the oldest one still currently in the top ten most read is No More Monthly Budget. I'm sure we scared a lot of people with that title. What? No budget? If you haven't read the post, what we did for 2011 was track our budget in periods based not on calendar months but on thirteen periods of four weeks. Since I'm paid weekly and Nathan is paid every two weeks, there can be quite a variation in income from month to month. With four week periods we would have consistent income (two of Nathan's paychecks, four of mine). It sounded good in theory, but it only took a few months to realize how inconsistent income really is. Although we kept with it for all of 2011, for 2012 we're going back to monthly budget periods. We've also made a few other changes to the way we budget that should work better for us.

A monthly allowance

A new budget category is an allowance for each of us. For the first year and a half of our marriage, we basically had to discuss every purchase with each other. And if one of us made a big purchase, that meant the other had to curb his/her spending for that budget period. To help eliminate some of this, we've now budgeted a small amount of money for each of us to spend each month however we choose. If Nathan wants to eat out for lunch, I can still buy shoes. We still have a "General Spending" category for purchases that we agree to make.

A dates category
Last year, we lumped all eating out (lunches during work and dates) into one category. We also had a separate entertainment category. We've now eliminated "Eating Out" as a separate budget category and made it a sub-category under our allowances and under a new "Dates" category. We've also made "Entertainment" a sub-category under "Dates."

Adding "rollover" money
What we did last year if we had money left over in different categories, was put the leftover money into paying off debt or our emergency fund. Now, if we have $7 left in the date category at the end of the month, for example, that's money we can still use for dates next month.

A new budget system
We track all of our spending, income, and bank accounts in an Excel program Nathan made. Last year we had a separate spreadsheet for each budget period, but this year Nathan made one Excel file that we can use for all our financial tracking for the entire year. If anyone would like to know more about our system and how Nathan programmed it, I'm sure he'd be happy to explain it.

Here's what the big picture looks like for February. That big chunk we're putting towards student loan payments still isn't enough to keep us on track with our goal of paying them off in two years, but it's close and there's not much else we can cut. I said it was an ambitous goal!

What changes have you made to your budget to make it work better for you?