Saying Goodbye to Rotten Tomatoes, Empty Pocket Books, & Last Minute Trips to the Store

Guys, for the past few weeks I have been working at a friend's publishing company, not doing anything important, just manning the phones for when an order comes in or a subscription needs to be renewed. Some days it is slow and I spend most of my time surfing the web thinking of ways to build up my own business. 

After a seven hour day, I am exhausted. (I know its sad right.) And when I get home the last thing I want to do is stand in the kitchen for 30 min to an hour preparing a meal. And many times, I'll get home ... start cooking ... then realize I am missing one ingredient that I have to have. So, I  put the meal on hold, and make my way to the grocery store. Luckily, we live 5 minutes out of town. We have two stores, a grocery store and a dollar store, those are my only options unless I go to one of the gas stations which as we all know are over priced on all their attempt at "food". 

So lets say I go to the normal grocery store ... oops ... I procrastinated to long ... and they are closed so its off to the dollar store, which is actually not a 'dollar' store, let's just call it Dolla' Land, and I will most likely be paying the price of the Holy Grail for my desired ingredient. So I walk into the store, and Ooo hey... garden supplies are on clearance because it is now the middle of November and I live in Wisconsin, and I was hoping to get another plant hanger, Wait what... 90% off? And there is like 15 of them here and buying all of them would actually be cheaper than buying one at full price. I'll take 'em! 

This almost makes me feel better about my insufficient meal planning skills. So, with that splurge out of the way ... let's get back to the reason for this whole trip ... the desired ingredient. I head to the back of the store which is where the refrigerated items are ... but then I am struck by a wall of dumb ... the item I need is in the produce section ... and in this world of Dolla' Land where supposedly every thing is a dolla' there is No. Fresh. Produce ... Heck ... there is barely even any canned produce ... So I stare ... watching a sea of hungry husbands, picky kids, and way to much sugar coated junk come flooding over me.

I'm defeated ... I turn around, grab a box of cereal and a gallon of milk, and make my way to the check out. My family will eat cardboard for dinner once again.  This failed attempt of a dinner deserves a pity party, so I make a pit stop to the candy isle and grab a bag of chocolate covered peanut clusters, but then I see them ... my favorite thin minty cookie is on sale for 'Buy one get one half off'. I grab four and add them to the leaning tower of sugar in my arms, since I didn't grab a basket ... because really ... all I was planning on getting was that ONE ingredient, and we all know from this post, and my jean size, that I am woman with a strict sense of will power.  (be sure to note the sarcasm there.)

I practically dump my failed attempts of a happy family dinner and sugar filled condolences on the conveyor and look sheepishly at the cashier who is ten years younger than me and just adding insult to injury with her puny waist. I give a smile, and she makes some random comment about how she wishes she could come to my house and binge on all this chocolate, but if she even looks at the stuff she'll turn into a cow. HA! I stifle a snide remark. 

"Your total is $20.64."

What?! How is that possible? I was only going to spend like $3. I sigh. I'm not gonna ask her to put it all back, because there is now a line of three other customers behind me and I gotta try and find enough quarters to pay. Forget it! I pull out the preferred plastic of choice and make a quick swipe with Jolly Master Debt Raiser and storm out of the store. 

My 5 minute ride on the Minty Chocolate cookie express is enjoyable ... but as soon as I enter the kitchen and see the remnants of an attempt at a healthy home cooked meal I remember the nearly empty box of cookies, I panic and realize there has to be a better way. 

[Here is a sad note: This is actually a true story that happens happened to me frequently ... sometimes on a nightly basis.]

Enter Thrive.

So after I devour a bowl of the cold processed pillows of sugar filled with GMOs and pesticides cereal I head to my station of forget-about-the-world-around me, a.k.a my computer and I start to look up meal planning recipes and a thought pops into my head about food storage and how I really need to build it up past the 7 bags of wheat and a few flats of canned vegetables we have.

I have some flats of canned mixed veggies that I know I should just donate to a food pantry, because lets face it ... I hate canned carrots ... and it would be better to share them with someone who will actually eat them.

Anywho ... so I was looking at different food storage options, then I remembered a commercial which lead me to my experience at a TimeOutForWomen a couple of years ago, where I got to see Mercy River. Afterwords, I bought their CD and next to their table was a booth with a huge food storage rack loaded with Thrive freeze dried foods. At the time the company was called Shelf Reliance, and I had seen the products in our LDS bookstore which is sadly now closed and turned into a liquor store. (Still can't wrap my head around that one.) I loved everything about Shelf Reliance and Thrive foods since the day I saw them. Something about them just intrigued me. That was about four years ago.

Enter in the need to revamp my grocery attempts and my memory for some reason did not fail me this time. (Usually it would leave me to fend for my self and I would be lost, falling into the same trap that has been occurring for the past 10 years of marriage. TEN years people!)

Anyway, I placed my order of a variety of things, and then read and watched more videos about ThriveLife. I know ... it was probably backwards ... but hey ... that's how we roll here ... After watching the videos and reading the blogs, I fell in love with ThriveLife even more and enrolled as an independent consultant.

My consultant kit will arrive tomorrow, which again is backwards from the way I actually purchased everything, which is funny by the way, because I now am doing it in the right order. (Sorry if this is all confusing. I get excited about one thing and then quickly move on to the next all while stepping on my tongue.)

I can't wait to share with you everything I learn while on my journey with ThriveLife.

Here are some things I learned about ThriveLife.

IT's FRESHER THAN FRESH!

IT's HEALTHY!

 THERE IS VIRTUALLY NO PREP! 

Washing fruits and veggies
Chopping, slicing, and dicing produce
Peeling skins
Removing fruit rinds, seeds, pits, etc.
Thawing and browning meats
Breaking and separating eggs



Find out more, like HOW THRIVELIFE IS COST EFFECTIVE by clicking HERE

{Foodie} Pumpkin Pie Recipe and Tutorial

Since today is the first of October, I thought I would share what we did to honor this fact. Well, Remember Orion's School pics? Well we decided to make use of the props. :D So this is  my tutorial for making your own pumpkin like you would get in a can.  You can get so much more from a pumpkin than from a can that would cost about $1.99. Yes, two dollars does not seem like a lot but it really is especially when you can get a 10-15 pounder for roughly the same price. The best thing I learned was that you can use regular field pumpkins for the pie. This rocks! So here we go. 

Making your own canned pumpkin...minus the canning

Scoop out all stringy stuff and seeds.  You may need to scrape with a spoon to get everything out. 

Make sure to save the seeds on a cookie sheet  try to pick out most pumpkin parts. I sprinked with sea salt and roasted at 350 for about an hour. Be sure to stir halfway. 

once pumpkin is cleaned out cut into chunks that will fit in your pan. 

put pieces with skin up and ad a little water to pan. Bake at 350 for an hour or until fork can be inserted into the skin. 

Let pumpkin cool for 10 minutes or until able to handle. 

scoop out pumpkin and mash.

You may have to strain some water off.

Mash or puree to desired consistency.  Viola! You can now add desired amount to your favorite recipe. NOTE: The average can of pumpkin is 16 oz. 

MMM Yummy  Roasted pumpkin seeds. 

Pumpkin Pie Recipe

1 3/4 cups pumpkin puree

3 eggs

2 TB unbleached flour

1/4 cup unbleached sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (tweek to liking)

3 TB Butter

2 Tb Milk or cream

1 uncooked pie crust

Preheat oven to 350. 

Mix all ingredients until at desired consistency. Pour into pie shell in pie pan (some people have actually poured it into just the crust, no pan).

Bake at 350 or until knife inserted into center of pie comes out clean.

There you have it my first recipe that I created. WOOT! 

Thanksgiving in March

We found this great recipe from Simply Recipes. We used it for 2009 Thanksgiving and it was a hit. I have been craving it since we had turkey 2 or 3 weeks ago. So we got the same turkey from the Menomonie Market Food Co-op. They get them from Kadejan in Minnesota. We are on the edge of Wisconsin so that is kind of local. I am totally in love with their turkey. It is free range. Not necessarily organic but no antibiotics. I hope it turns out as good as it did last year.

So we have really been struggling to eat 100% organic. It really doesn't help that my family doesn't care about organic or not. So the trip before the last to the store we ended up only buying one item organic. Now when we shop we shop for our food that will last us for 2 weeks or more. So thats alot of food. The only thing we got that was organic was a box of Kraft Organic Mac and Cheese.

Those two weeks were torture and we are still trying to detox. I totally noticed a change in my mood and the way we act. I was much more tired and I lost all enthusiasm. Since we switched back I have kind of regained my energy. But not completely. We like to try and follow the Dervaes example.

If we can't do the first thing on the list we strive to do the next.

• produce it your self
• buy farmer's market
• buy local
• buy organic
• buy fairly traded
• buy whole food
• buy minimally processed

I think it is really easy to lose sight of what is really important to you during the winter. We stopped making our own food from scratch. today I actually did it again. And boy did it feel good. I made homemade cinnamon rolls (we even ground our own wheat). Then tonight we are having the turkey. I am super excited. I had so much energy when we lived like this last summer/fall. I hope we can make it a habit for the whole year. and not to poop out on it once the weather gets cold.