The Weekend

I don't know where the weekend went. I thought I would have a lot of time to do things because I precooked meals on Thursday for the weekend and did a lot of housework as well. There are some household  jobs I dislike and I tackled 3 of them this weekend. I guess I must be in spring cleaning mode.

The range hood, filter and back of the stove were cleaned. I see I missed a few spots.

The vacuum canister was emptied and washed.

Sunday I also tackled cleaning part of the refrigerator. I dealt with spoiled items in one refrigerator crisper and rearranged things. I need to do another session perhaps later this week to bring everything up to par. The refrigerator is one thing I really don't look after too well. It's because I tend to overbuy and then don't make time to clean things out before hand. I also like a bargain so when I go grocery shopping I over buy. I'm trying to stop these bad habits by doing more meal planning and am having limited success. Eventually I may hit on the right balance.

Friday I stayed up far too late.  I was pleased with myself for getting so much done and decided to take advantage of that by staying up to watch television and read. To be honest, I didn't really enjoy myself because I was too tired.  My fatigue bled into Saturday and I did nothing except read a book. Thankfully today was back to a more or less normal.  I was able to do my daily Bible reading, lots of dishes, cleaned out a good part of the refrigerator, did a load of laundry and made some chicken-rice stew for Monday's meals. I also finished reading one of the books on my stack.  Soon the library will be letting me know that another 2 books are ready and after that I'll probably slow down in the reading department.  The days are getting lighter and brighter as long as it isn't raining.  I'm hoping to tackle some long awaited projects when the weather warms up and the light in the day starts earlier. I'm like a turtle when it comes to household or crafting projects but I enjoy the process.

One of the things I did on Friday was wait for my meat delivery. The ranch that delivered the meat is located almost 3 hours north of me and they delivered right to my front door. It's my first delivery from them and I was only able to get ground beef because that was all they had left besides ground pork.  I am pleased with the process so I'll see whether I'm able to order different cuts next time. It will really depend on cost, timing and room in the freezer. My freezer space is limited and it would need to be emptied to get one of their 'packages'. That makes it very tricky right now so we shall see how it goes.

For the first package of ground beef I made some roasted veggies, ground beef patties and salad. It's also the first time I've used rainbow carrots. Altogether it was a satisfying meal and the beef patty was filling so I only had one. The other one was saved for the next day lunch/snack.

I do have a sweet tooth so I made these blueberry muffins with a mix of unbleached flour and spelt flour. They are dark from spelt four but also because I accidentally dumped a lot of cinnamon in the batter. No worries though. The cinnamon spice is well past it's prime and the taste is quite weak. The muffins were just right.

If you have done the FlyLady system before and want to try it again I thought I'd provide a summary chart for you.  This might save you having to go look for it. Click on it to enlarge.

Thanks for stopping by!

Wednesday is Anti-Procrastination Day

Hey friends and fellow bloggers,

I hope the week is going well for you.  It's been a bit busy for me but not with anything major. I just have a lot of little things to do and small things to catch up on. Don't you find that little things seem to take more time somehow?

I completed the murder-mystery by Canadian author Shari Lapena. I enjoyed it but the ending left me a bit disappointed though I think someone else may find it suits them fine. I don't want to say more because I know many of you are fans of murder-mystery novels so I don't want to give anything away.  Currently I'm reading, The Lemon Tree Hotel and Arctic Man both of which are good for different reasons. However I  wouldn't say they are totally engrossing.  Just satisfying and satisfying is good enough.

I'm still working to try and keep the meals tasty and interesting.

These are a few of the meals we had in the past few days.

Stir fried beef and onions and stir fried noodles with chili and vegetables.

BBQ Ribs and Kraft dinner with side of coleslaw (coleslaw not in photo)

Curried cauliflower & split peas served with rice and homemade chapati

Penne-pasta-lox-n-spinach with caesar salad.

BBQ-salmon-pilaf-salad

 

I think I mentioned that I try to follow the Fly Lady household routines. One of the big principles is to clean and shine your sink at least once a day. I try but often it seems like I don't get to it until very late at night.  It takes me so long just to wash the dinner dishes after I've finished eating dinner. Now and then I get ahead of the game and it always feels good to have a nice, clean sink.

Yesterday I paid the fee for the community garden and asked my nephew and his girlfriend to take over the plot once again this year.  After that I'll decide whether I want to continue renting the plot going forward. My nephew and his girlfriend gained some valuable gardening experience and I was able to focus on my patio garden and also catch up with a lot of projects and tasks at home.

One of my favourite days is Wednesday which is called anti-procrastination day in the land of Fly Lady. I usually am able to get one niggling item out of the way on that day, sometimes two.  I think it helps me to stop thinking about my long list of items during the week if I have a dedicated day to work on them. Of course, if I'm up to it I can also work on such tasks on any other day.

Errand day is on Thursday and I usually run to the post office, grocery stores and the library. Actually grocery shopping usually takes me about 3 separate errands on different days but Thursday is the main shopping day and some weeks I don't have so much to buy. Tomorrow I am expecting a package and I'm looking forward to it.  If it turns out to be helpful I will write about it in a future post.

Friday I'm also expecting a long awaited delivery of grass fed beef from an area where the ranchers were flooded out in November. You might remember me writing about the floods and the destruction of a major highway from Vancouver to the Interior of BC and beyond. I'm surprised the rancher has anything to deliver but I'm anticipating they won't be able to fulfill all their orders, possibly even mine so we shall see what happens.

We had some sunny days last week and fog earlier in the week. The weather forecast was for possible snow today. In fact it is did snow but barely and it quickly melted before the rain started.

As you can see, the sky is very gray and not very interesting unless there are some distant lights to look at.

Other things keeping me busy are liaising with long distance friends and relatives, watching a lot of Netflix, daily devotions and prayer and the daily things that keep the household going.

What about you dear reader? What things kept you busy this week?

Whatever it is you are doing, I hope you are keeping healthy and happy.