Hey all! Long time, no contact.
Life has been...doing...around here. All I can say is puberty combined with severe autism just leads to life being really challenging. Honestly, I've been really busy just scrambling from day to day trying to keep a petulant teen calm...well...calmer. It is challenging, stressful and hard. It is what it is, but it doesn't make it any easier.
I've adapted. Instead of having a list of things I need to do every day, I instead am happy if I get one side task done per day. For instance, yesterday was a kind of off day, but Alvah wasn't extremely unstable, so I was able to vacuum down the stairs and the lower floor in between mood issues. The day before I was able to speed clean the bathrooms...things like that.
I am working hard on keeping on top of housework so I can focus on Alvah as he is unpredictable at the moment and is demanding on my time and energy. I, for years, have folded my clothes downstairs on my bed as it gives me a nice big work surface to fold said laundry and it was on the same floor as the laundry room, so it made sense. I adapted and put one of the leaves in the kitchen table and I just strip the tablecloth off of the table and fold the laundry upstairs. I was falling further and further behind on laundry before doing that as I had to keep Alvah basically within easy distance. I have started cooking early in the day and at times just reheating even our main dishes when my husband gets home from work as it was just too challenging to get it done without tons of stress at dinner time. Tonight I am grilling, but I the chicken I'm grilling is thin cut to cut down on time needed to prepare...things like that have become necessary. Next big tackle is removing my sewing machine from my sewing table downstairs so I can use it on my kitchen table as well to get mending and necessary sewing projects done here soon. Sometimes life is just like this, ya know?
In between everything, I focused on my major task that I was working on the last few days, which was trying to fix my dishwasher. It suddenly, out of the blue, started leaving a white film on all of the dishes and it was a kind of sticky, yucky film. I had, luckily, been able to keep on top of the dishes before it started giving me fits, so in between dish loads, I put the dishwasher through a few cleaning cycles. It didn't help. I always keep on top of keeping the dishwasher filter clean, so I knew that wasn't the cause of the problems, so I finally did what a person had recommended online and figured out how to remove the sprayers from the dishwasher to clean them out. I'd never been able to figure out how to remove the bottom sprayer in the dishwasher, but was finally able to walk through it with step by step instructions someone had typed out for a person on how to deep clean a dishwasher online (thank you kind stranger for leaving that for me to find). After I cleaned the clogs out of the bottom sprayer, I then pulled the bottom of the dishwasher apart and cleaned everything I could find (which some of it was kind of gross, I ain't gonna lie), cleaned around the door and anything else I could think of. I then put the dishwasher through another cleaning cycle and am happy to say that what I did worked! The dishwasher is working as good as new now, which was a relief as I was really starting to get worried we were looking at a costly repair or something. The dishwasher is nearly 7 years old now (which is incredible to me as in my mind it is still new *laugh*) and with how things are meant to just break at a certain age...I was concerned let's put it that way.
So, now that I've gone through a bunch of stuff, let's get to the menu plan for the next couple of weeks. We've actually already gone through some of the groceries that were in the fridge as we picked up groceries on Sunday instead of later in the week like we would normally as my husband and I got grocery store sushi to do our anniversary dinner that day, so the shots of the fridge are missing some produce. I have worked hard to prep any produce I can as soon as I can to keep my nights more stress free around mealtime, so I already cut up and put a cabbage into the freezer (to use for stir fry, soups and the like later on), we ate the chard I bought with dinner last night and I cut up the lettuce I bought and put it into freezer bags with some paper towels to turn into salad over the next few weeks. And we ate through some of the fresh fruit as well. So, I'm going to start the menu plan from Monday as that is when we actually started eating from the groceries I bought. And then I'll list what other dinners are on the agenda over the next few weeks as well. So, let's get to it!
Dinners We've Had So Far:
Monday: Leftover smoked turkey (I had a smoked turkey in the freezer we got with a holiday deal a few years back in the freezer, so pulled it out to use it up) and sides.
Tuesday: Ham and Cheese quiche, chard, fresh fruit. I am on a quest to use up food storage that is close to its "use by" date or past it, and one of the things we needed to use up was a big #10 can of egg powder I had from a breakfast food storage kit I bought a long time ago. I've so far used some of the eggs for breakfast bowls for my husband, used some by baking some pound cakes (we ate one and then I put the others in the freezer) and than I used them to make two quiches yesterday (I made the other one with smoked turkey, sharp cheddar cheese and some basil and put it in the freezer for a quick dinner later on).
Wednesday (today): Hawaiian chicken, coconut milk rice, tropical fruit (I just add the pineapple from the can I use to get the pineapple juice for the chicken recipe to a can of Dole's tropical fruit and we are good to go) and salad.
Thursday: Sweet and Sour Pork over rice (planning on making this in the slow cooker to keep the house cool as it is supposed to be hot, for us, the next bit).
Friday: Pizza, salad, breadsticks, salad with home made Italian dressing. For dessert: Cherry pie (Fourth of July and all).
Saturday: French Dip sandwiches (I made ciabatta rolls yesterday for these to make them a bit more special), french fries, coleslaw (I'm just using pre-shredded veggies in a bagged salad kit and then making up a dressing for it).
And that's about where my ability to plan actual day meals is petering out, so on the agenda for next week's meals in no particular order would be...
- Burgers on homemade bread, mac and cheese and salad.
- Pork steaks with baked potatoes and green beans
- Baked Potato soup with home made bread
- Chinese food night (chicken chow mein, sweet and sour pork or other dish)
- Spaghetti, garlic bread and salad.
- Club sandwiches with french fries (I have been CRAVING a club sandwich, so chef's privilege ;).
- Pizza night (we have pizza usually once a week, so I'm just going to write it down)
And there you go folks. Our meals for the next bit. Since I only shop every couple of weeks, this is how I tend to plan out meals now. I'll plan a few meals and add ingredients to the shopping list to help break up usual "go to" meals in between grocery trips (like the coleslaw kit), but otherwise I just plan around what ingredients we have and what we might want to eat and then I just concrete meals in as I go (sometimes I speed up what I'm going to make from a certain day as produce starts going bad faster than I thought it might, etc). This has been working pretty well and has allowed me to keep a steady supply of just enough left overs to send to work with my husband for his lunches to help cut down on eating out costs (as eating out will eat your lunch (financially)...pun intended ;).
Enjoy!