Bloggy Organization?

I try. Really I do. But its just not in me to be really organized. I have all of these big ideas for the blog, but most don't come to fruition because I lack organization, so I forget what I wanted to post about or forget to post all together. So, I'm going to try putting myself on a schedule.

Most "How To Blog" articles recommend that you pick a topic for your blog and stick to it. I tried doing that - my blog was supposed to be about my book business - if you read my blog for more than 5 minutes, you'll notice that its not really about my book business, at least not often. I've also thought about making this a gardening blog, cooking blog, eat local/ sustainable living blog, homeschooling blog, blog about my kids, frugal blog etc. I like to write about all of those things but to pick just one - I don't think I could do it. I'm one of those Jack of All Trades, Master of None kind of people. I don't want to write on only one topic. Here's where my schedule will hopefully help. My plan is to blog as follows:

Monday: Menu Plan Monday plus Making Money From Home tips, ideas and links
Tuesday: Homeschooling Links and Ideas plus a Book Review (for my book business)
Wednesday: Leftover Magic (recipes to use leftovers to make new meals)
Thursday: Garden Update
Friday: Independence Days Update plus Sustainable Living links

Do I think I'll do them all every week? Ha! Not likely. I'm betting that Menu Plan Monday and Leftover Magic on Wednesdays get done almost weekly and the rest, occasionally. I'm okay with that :o)

Menu Plan Monday - August 11

It has taken me all day to figure out what we're going to do for our menu this week. All day I've been contemplating the 25 lbs of chicken beef in the freezer and after 8 hours, I was still drawing a blank. When it was nearing supper time, I had to do something , so I opened the freezer and found several freezer meals (yay!) that I'd forgotten about. So this week for supper we're having:

Fiesta Chicken (again)
Turkey Meatloaf
Spaghetti
Cheese & Chicken stuffed shells with alfredo sauce

We'll toss in some steamed veggies and call it dinner :o)

Breakfast will be:

Eggs and ham
Baked Oatmeal
French Toast
Bagels and honey butter

Lunch:

Grilled Cheese
PB and honey or jam
Broccoli Cheese Soup

Snacks? Still drawing a blank. I'll update when I figure it out.

Want to see more menus? Check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for Menu Plan Monday.

GREEN BEAN DREAMS: Sustainable Superheroes

Can we consider ourselves to be living sustainable lives even if we are not yet "there". Are our efforts towards sustainability enough? A post on this subject had been floating around in my head for weeks, especially since I've been rapidly approaching burnout (I'll post about that later). Green Bean Dreams covered the subject better than I could ever hope to. Don't miss this great post.

GREEN BEAN DREAMS: Sustainable Superheroes

Independence Days Challenge - Update

Its been several weeks since I updated our Independence Days Challenge. Here are our efforts towards food independence over the last few weeks.

1. Plant Something: Its been above 100 deg. most days for the last few weeks, so until today, the weather was much too hot to plant. The weather prediction indicates a little easing of heat, so this morning, I planted 24 sweet pea seeds. A few weeks ago, we planted 18 and these are growing, although slowly because of the heat. Here's hoping to a great harvest in a few weeks.

2. Harvest something: Again, because of the heat (I think), our harvest is slowing a little. We're getting a cuke about 3 times a week, one or two tomatoes daily, purple hull peas and now red bell peppers. In addition, our tabasco peppers are turning color - such a beautiful plant.

3. Preserve something: Made 6 pints of fig preserves and froze 3 gallon size zip top bags of figs. Today, we are trying our hand a blueberry fruit leather. I'll post pictures if it turns out okay.

4. Prep something: Albertson's had bottled water on sale for the last two weeks, so we have 72 bottles of water now.

5. Cook something: we're trying our hand at making fruit leather. If it turns out well, we're making strawberry, raspberry and peach next.

6. Managed Reserves: We're doing fine rotating our stored foods.

7. Work on local food system: Still doing most of our shopping at the farmer's market and making many nice acquaintances of the farmers. Making arrangements with many of them for when the market closes in a few months.

8. Compost Something: We're still composting all of our garden scraps, organic veggie scraps and yard clippings (grass and such).

Are you working towards independence for your family? I'd love to hear about it. Please leave a comment and a link if you have a blog that talks about your journey.

Recipe: Fiesta Chicken

This is a really simple and quick recipe - I like to have the ingredients on hand for those days when we're too busy to cook.

4 Cups diced or shredded chicken
Fajita Marinade
1 Jar Salsa
2 cups (one can) black beans
! cup frozen corn

You can either use the marinade on uncooked chicken as a marinade or you can add it to the pot when you combine cooked chicken with the other ingredients. All you have to do to prepare this recipe is marinate the chicken, cook it, shred or dice it, then add the other ingredients to the pot until heated through. We like to eat it in tortillas with cheese, sour cream, lettuce and tomatoes, but it also makes nice quesadillas.

Menu Plan Monday-August 4,2008

After a few weeks off from blogging, I'm back today with Menu Plan Monday. This week, I'm going for simple, as we'll be doing a lot of canning of garden produce and my poor brain can't handle both thinking about cooking and thinking about canning, lol. So, this week is officially SANDWICH WEEK! On Sunday, I made up a few sandwich fillings to keep in the fridge and about mid week, I'll make up a few more. We have a variety of breads veggies and cheeses, plus dressings and other condiments.

So far, in the fridge, we have fiesta chicken which can be eaten on tortillas or if we're feeling more like cooking at the time, it makes a nice filling for a quesidilla (which I do not know how to spell). We usually eat this with lettuce and diced tomato plus sour cream. We also currently have BBQ roast in the fridge awaiting a toasted bun with veggie sticks on the side. In addition, we have a creamy imitation crab salad that we'll put in wraps with romaine lettuce and Cesar dressing.

About mid week, we'll make a few more fillings, including chicken salad to be eaten on French bread with lettuce, tomato and pickles, Teriyaki beef stir fry to be eaten in wraps with lettuce or on french bread. This is really yummy with stir fry veggies, so we make it with both beef and veggies and tighten up the sauce a little so that it clings to the beef and veggies and doesn't make the bread soggy. It can be eaten either warmed up or cold (I like it cold in wraps). Now, I just need one more sandwich filling. What is your favorite sandwich? Please post a comment with your favorite and a recipe or directions to make it. Thanks!

This week for breakfast, we're going easy as well. We're going to eat from the freezer. We have baked oatmeal, pancakes and french toast in the freezer so we will rotate those during the week and supplement with yogurt and fruit.

Snacks will include hummus and pita, trail mix, any muffins we might have in the freezer, bagels and probably more packaged snacks than I'd like.

Head on over to I'm an Organizing Junkie for more Menu Plan Monday.

Items from our menu that are in bold are locally grown or raised.

Garden Update

The peas are taking over, it seems. Well worth it, I think :o)

Cukes growing on the "trellis".