HJ Waxing Moon

If I'd known about this as a kid, my whole world would have been a lot different. You can put oatmeal in jars, add boiling water, and BOOM. BREAKFAST.   "Oh but Heather you need quick oats"/"It only works with some oats"/"You can't use other kinds of hot cereal." That's what they told me too, but they're wrong. I've tried it. I probably wouldn't use wheat berries, but any somewhat processed grain should do. Here's my recipe, you may need to tweak to your tastes. 1 pint jar 1/2 c oats 1/2 c toppings Dry sweetener if you're using it Pinch of salt Store at room temperature.  To eat: add boiling water to just below the fill line--I leave about 1/2 inch. Stir and rest for 5 minutes. Add liquid sweetener, butter, milk/cream to taste.  Cream of wheat/Farina plumps so much more than oats. I use 1/3c and no toppings.  What kind of toppings? Dried fruit like cranberries are easy & cheap Chopped or shaved nuts are great S...

Being pregnant has been a roller coaster. I've been sparing you details, hence the radio silence. One thing I struggled with early on, especially so early in recovery for a restrictive eating disorder, was eating "junk" food. It made me keenly aware how ableist and toxic our modern discussions are about food and food-health connections. I had been struggling already to follow my doctors' orders about eating whatever sounds good, however much of it feels good, whenever I want and need to. After a decade of self-imposed eating restrictions, it was a difficult adjustment. But one I needed to start before I got pregnant. Because I was already getting better at it when I was suddenly thrust into "morning" sickness and all my careful food choices became impossible to manage. I knew my OB was the right one for me when she said, and this IS a direct quote, "I don't care if you live on mashed potatoes and Sprite until the day the baby is born, just eat...

I've discussed before what my method of menu planning is. It hasn't changed much with it just being the two of us agin, except that if we don't do it, there's no one to suffer but ourselves! The basics boil down to: Know what you have in the fridge. Know what's in season/on sale. Know your schedule and be reasonable about what you can accomplish. Make the most of the time you spend cooking.  With our more-limited freezer space, I find we now focus less on freezing heat & eat foods, and more on having versatile ingredients on hand to make a variety of meals fairly quickly. Instead of making a pan of broccoli mac to put right into the oven, using freezer space for noodles that could otherwise be dry storage and ingredients that can only be used for one possible meal, we have pre-roasted chicken shredded and frozen in meal-size packages just waiting to be casserole, tacos, a pre-made pasta salad for lunches, and more. We buy foods and store them with th...

For starters, I can't get my printer to work, so I can't print off the motivational sheet I made, nor the food list & cleanse plan. Frustrating. We did not, by sheer happenstance, do the CandidaGo! pills or detox tea or ACV baths for the first three days. We just plum forgot, but I imagine the die-off associated with those extra steps would have made it even harder to deal with.  In accordance with the prophecy, the first three days were the worst. We started Monday morning bright and early, and spent until Wednesday afternoon with what seemed a constant, gnawing, hungry ache in our bellies. Despite plenty of food along the way. By Wednesday dinnertime, however, it started to ease up and the rest of the week has been, if not a breeze, easier to handle.  Mr. Moon managed not to absently eat an oatmeal cookie that was sitting right in front of him for the duration of a conversation at work, and I successfully navigated a surprise party for our neighbor's birth...

A friend and I concocted a scheme to do a bulk food-prep day. She's living in a 300 sq ft apartment with no real kitchen right now, and while she has access to the kitchen in the main house, it comes with strings attached. So, we thought we'd try having her join us for one of our food prep days, which we'd gotten out of the habit of doing anyway. It was fun! The focus: Get some quick breakfasts into the freezer, and a lunch salad prepped in bulk. Maybe a little something extra for the freezer. Our menu: Balsamic lentil salad (made with kale to hold up to vinaigrette for a few days) Homemade Egg McMuffins Mini Quiches Shredded chicken (for dumping on salads, quick lunches/dinners).  We did well! Mr. Moon dragged the microwave out of the kitchen for a little more counterspace, which will soon be available permanently when we build our microwave cart. After I did most of the paper-planning, we put him on knife duty, Friend on assembly duty, and I mostly directed ...

Not a huge change at all, but Mr. Moon got a second job today. Selling restaurant smallwares & appliances at a local restaurant supply store. One day a week for now, but in time there may be more shifts available. Of course, that one shift is Saturdays. Which means that after a hard night at work, and before a hard night at work, he gets to work an extra shift--the day before any potential double shifts at work. On the one hand, it's not yet impacting his days off, but on the other his workweek got a little busier. Nothing to do but redouble our efforts at weekly organization, meal planning & execution. As it stands, whenever he's had to work early morning shifts on Sundays, we've tended to use it as an excuse to get takeout for dinner. But, at one shift a week of retail income, the extra money being made will barely pay for an increased expenditure of once-weekly take-out (let alone twice-weekly). Instead, it's time to get down to business with some recipes t...

We didn't make some kind of massive turn-around on the Eat the Larder challenge this week, but that's no surprise. I took some time to review what we have stores of that we need to be using, and reflect on why we aren't using it. Some of it is because I have a tendency to hoard food that goes way deeper than we'll ever get on this blog. Though I feel like I've touched on some of the reasoning before. Some of it though is because we stocked up on some things when we were working with a MUCH more expansive kitchen at Mr. Moon's parents' house, right before we moved away from it. And of course it's been a whirlwind since then that we're only pulling out of now to take some deep breaths and focus on shaping our lives going forward the way we want them. I'd like to be starting some more/better routines, so we are more practiced at them when the next whirlwind hits us, whatever that may be. Though, on the topic of better routines, I must say that we,...

The Challenge: Northwest Edible Life has a yearly Eat from the Larder challenge in April. I only read about it on April 1, but it had been a half-assed goal of ours anyway so I jumped onboard. Their rules are a ZERO dollar food budget and no intentional stocking up ahead. Of course without any forewarning I couldn't possibly have intentionally stocked up ahead, but I'm not interested in a $0 grocery budget--just cleaning out some of our excess pantry storage and being a little creative. We're having an issue with our freezer & fridge that requires us to minimize our perishable food stock before fixing it, besides the excessive collection of condiments and pickles in there. Our Rules: No purchasing non-perishable food items.  Minimal purchase of perishable items.  No opening of new condiments if they can be avoided (until after the fridge is fixed, whether that's in two weeks or May).  Be creative!  Keep it simple, right? Bonus goals: Use ever...

Mr. Moon has a busy week ahead, only one day off work and it's for a metal concert. I had to pull him back from saying we'd just eat out at least three different days this week, not just because our budget is a little uncertain at the moment, but also because we did agree to reduce those temptations a bit and get back to good, home cooking now that our wedding is over and done with. Still, with my health, there's no way we will ever get away from convenience foods completely, and since we have been selective about which ones we keep around for just these occasions we might as well utilize them. What's on the menu? Breakfasts:  . Lunches:  . Snacks:  . Dinners: Monday:  Chicken & Rice  [chicken, rice, leftovers, fast] We just got a new rice cooker, and wanted to try one of the recipes in it. Originally this was going to be a rice cooker meal, but the fact is that we have leftover rice we decided not to use today. So I think instead it's going to...

This actually started out as a comment on OffBeat Home's 7 ways to eat healthier food on a budget. There we were discussing make-ahead soups, freezing & reheating for work lunches. Someone asked how you'd freeze them, in individual containers or larger ones. This is my response: While certainly not private, that's a surprisingly personal question. How you choose to do it will have a lot to do with your budget, values, and routines. For space and best quality as far as freezer-burn goes, the best bet is going to be ziplock bags. Get the good kind with a double lock (NOT the ones with the zip-tabs), fill with the amount of *cooled* soup you want (one serving, two, four, whatever) up to about 3/4 of the bag while it's sitting on its bottom, and zip, getting as much air out as possible. Lay in a stack in the freezer and it takes up the least amount of space. However, this means thawing in the fridge overnight before transferring to a dish for transporting & reh...

We have been using outdated checklists since we moved into our new place, just because everything has been so dysfunctional in our lives. I think there is a point at which routine & organizing is impossible, and then a point at which routine & organizing will help you get the rest of the way to where you want to be. There's definitely a tipping point, just as there is with menu planning. I think we've finally hit that tipping point. Finally today I've got our checklists updated and ready to be printed. One of the nice things about living in a place before updating the lists is that we can see what's been missed and make sure to get it on the list. So that's helpful. Bright side, right? I have to tell you though, don't skip getting the shopping list white board up on the wall as soon as you move in. Forgetting that rice vinegar was on the list for over a month was torture when I kept re-discovering for three whole weeks that I was out. Or the day we f...

Yes, only three days. We're trying out a new Thing were we do our menu plans twice a week, on Sundays and Wednesdays. We are hoping it will lead to less food waste if we keep up on our perishables a little better. Of course, that means I need a new fun banner for menu days, but we'll get there eventually! Sunday: Crockpot Chili Mr. Moon is working a double, and we haven't been great about dealing with the late-night dinners lately. Late night take-out on a tight budget leads to bad choices for the tummies and the wallet. Kicking off fall with a pot of chili sounded like just the right remedy for getting some wholesome food into us at the end of a busy day. Monday: Stuffed Peppers Mr. Moon is on call that evening, so it could be a late night dinner or sudden extra time to unpack boxes. Having something we can prep ahead is good! I'm not really a fan of the tomato-and-rice stuffed peppers, but I saw a recipe for some with chicken that looked good. It had c...

Mr. Moon has finished unpacking the kitchen, though there are already some rearrangements I want to make when we have the rest of the boxes unpacked. The dining room is still not done, and yes I realize they're the same "room" but for our sanity we needed to check something off. Having the kitchen done means no more eating takeout, which is obviously the financially responsible decision. We're still eating some packaged foods that I would typically make from scratch, but I'm hoping we can wean ourselves off them next month. Right now, we're just being gentle with ourselves and honest about our capabilities. Since Mr. Moon finally caught up on the backlog of dishes, that's been our main focus aside from unpacking: keeping up with the habit of emptying the sink every single night and putting away the dry dishes first thing in the morning. The bedroom is our next priority, since we have a new mattress coming in on Wednesday and must have a path cleared to ...

For the last year or so, we have been attempting to cook vegetarian dinners for Mr. Moon's parents with varying degrees of success. The motivation for this in the beginning has to do with hormones in animal products (both the natural ones and the ones that get pumped into them in our food supply system), and how that affects certain cancers. Whatever the reasoning, that has been dropped from Pops' medical recommendations list, and he says he is now free to eat whatever he wants. Mum still wants to keep the meat to a minimum for her own reasons and because she is proud of the weight they've lost in the last year. The fact that they went from eating restaurant food 7 nights a week (and if not 7 the rest were out of a box) to home cooked meals at least 5 nights a week probably had more to do with the weight loss in my opinion, but if it keeps them from eating out or from a box too much then the "why" probably doesn't matter. On the one hand, it's been frust...

Five doctor appointments this week, five work shifts at Mr. Moon's new job, and three hours a day of physical therapy... We looked at the schedule for the week on Saturday and realized that this was going to be a DOOZY! Fortunately, I was having a spectacular day on Sunday, and we realized in enough time to do something about it. We made easy dinner plans, and if we're having soup four days this week, at least they're all drastically different. We made breakfast and lunch plans that are fast, easy, and portable. We even made snack plans! And believe it or not, we even scheduled out the chores so as to not forget them. Since we got two solid months of having a monthly dinner plan behind us, we were able to evaluate the differences. On the one hand, it was nice to have a short list of options, and a way to focus on rotating through the freezer. On the other hand, we noticed more waste as some days didn't pan out according to the plan, or simply couldn't accommoda...

Next week I embark on a three week vacation. I feel like we are completely on track for preparing for this, all the laundry is done (or is getting finished tonight) and most is even folded and put away. I'll be packing my suitcase tomorrow so I can't accidentally wear something I want to take with me--and subsequently if it does happen to be currently dirty, we have plenty of time to wash it. I finished the to-do list for projects Mr. Moon can work on while I'm gone, all prioritized and everything. There's a menu plan for each of the three weeks I'm gone. We're hoping after I get back to do a monthly menu plan system (at least as far as most of the grocery shopping is concerned), though we will still have to plan which meals are on which days weekly due to the nature of flexible scheduling. Week of Dec 9-16: Breakfasts: Cottage cheese & pineapple, smoothies, bagels with cream cheese. Lunches: Grilled cheese, Bacon Chicken Cheddar Ranch pasta salad....

My mom is a list-maker. She doesn't have any special paper that she uses, although more often than not her lists could be found on the backs of used envelopes. She makes lists for everything from a quick trip to the grocery store, to a 3-week cross-country vacation. Clothing to take, food to prepare, things to do before she leaves... These lists don't have any special place they live, either, we'd just find them lying around randomly and have no idea whether they were being used currently or not. But she always knew. So when I say I'm a list-maker, you know I come by it honestly. I have gone through two notebooks that were specifically set aside for packing lists, and countless memo pads, blank sheets out of college notebooks, and yes even the backs of used envelopes. I definitely prefer the method I've perfected, using memo pads for grocery lists and a notebook in my planner for prepping for trips, everything from an overnight out of town to the three-week bender...

In three weeks, I'm headed on vacation for three weeks to see blood- and chosen-family over the holidays. Mr. Moon will at that point be committing to commuting 13 miles each way by bike to work for what will presumably be 3 days a week if the schedule stays roughly the same, and so I'm anticipating he will be low on energy and definitely lower on time than we have right now. So we are spending these next three weeks planning ahead so that the meals while I'm gone are taken care of. Freezer meals that can be re-heated in the crockpot and oven as soups and casseroles, mostly. Things that even on the worst days, anyone can pull out and cook with less effort than picking up take-out. And only a couple that will require prepping sides to go with. Rather than make it more difficult on ourselves, it means that over the next couple weeks we will also be having some of these items for dinner. But it's a switch in thinking that I'd like to get everyone else used to doing, ...

There are 7 days in a week, right? Here are our goals for meal planning, in no particular order: 1: Fish day 2: Vegetarian days 2: Freezer meals 1: Salad day 1: Crockpot meal 1: Hearty meat dinner 2: Fend For Yourself days 2: Batch meals But that's 11 days! Oh noes! Let's see how that breaks down into a week. Remember, days are fluid but let's use them anyway for illustration purposes. Monday: Vegetarian Batch Crockpot meal Tuesday: Salad Wednesday: FFYS Thursday: Hearty Meat Batch Dinner--roast or crockpot Friday: Fish Saturday: Vegetarian Freezer Meal Sunday: FFYS That... was actually a lot harder than it looks. But I got all the requirements! I kind of want to put that goals chart above right onto my white board, so I don't forget what we're trying to accomplish--so I don't forget to plan meals that can be frozen easily, so I don't forget to schedule something to be pulled from the freezer. We'll see. Maybe I'll just write i...

Mum has diabetes. For the last two to three years, it's been what you might call "out of control." At least, her doctor does. In the process of making better meal choices for Pops' sake, I've been able to make some menu switches that are arguably better for her as well. Regardless of one's opinion on how humans should be eating in general, the "mostly vegetarian" diet to keep added hormones to a minimum, and the "low carb-no sugar" diet to keep blood sugar in control is generally accepted as "better." We had a diabetes scare a couple weeks ago, and I think it opened Mum's eyes about the effect the diabetes has had on her body. And what she can expect to continue getting worse if she doesn't get it under control. Fortunately, though it was uncomfortable and scary, part of that scare was her blood sugar that has been high for three years suddenly crashing to a just-below-normal level (and then having to bring it back up a ...