We have had our chickens for one week now. It has been going really well, except for the day that I spent 30 minutes one morning chasing a chicken around the back yard, wearing a dress, while my children wailed inside the house because we were supposed to leave for a blogging-related shopping event. Since then I have been advised to squirt them with the garden hose to get them back into the coup. Duly noted.
This weekend is Earth Day! If you’re looking for activities to celebrate with your children, Dallas is hosting an Earth Day event and here’s another handy list of Earth Day activities for kids, even if your city isn’t hosting an event.
Ironically, I have a ton of cloth diaper related posts coming up even though this week was Real Diaper Week. Better late than never, I guess. You can also find me blogging this week on CottonBabies blog about using cloth diapers at daycare.
I continue to do poorly at saving money. Here is another reason our family sucks at this: no one in our family will touch leftovers. At all. Ever. Well, except me. But I get pretty sick of whatever it is after eating it 3 times in a row and it inevitably gets thrown away. And yes, I have tried freezing things. The kids and the husband will not eat anything leftover, whether it is thawed or refrigerated. The fact that it is not fresh makes no one interested in eating it. Therefore, I have to constantly cook brand new things and the portion sizes have to be exactly what we will eat in one sitting or else it’s wasted. Anybody have any solutions for me there?
I hope to do a garden update this weekend, but our peas were getting eaten by some sort of pest so I bought a container of ladybugs to take care if it. We released them last night at dusk.
OUR CHICKENS WERE WAITING
Many ladybugs perished in the chickens’ stomachs, but hopefully some of them survived.
In case you were wondering whether the $3.99 bottles of wine that Whole Foods has come out with are as good as Trader Joe’s “Two Buck Chuck”, the answer is NO. WF $3.99 wine is TERRIBLE. I do not recommend it. What ingredients do I need to make this into sangria or something?
Have a Happy Earth Day on Saturday!
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Well that’s all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.
I like how you have a picture of your chickens with your son in an NPR shirt.
Urban Hippie Alert!!
(Heeee! So cute. )
Haha that is what I told my husband when I first looked at that picture! And then nobody on Facebook “got it” so I thought I was just being overly analytical 🙂
The leftovers question is a good one, and I’m trying to think of a suggestion! I think maybe what you need is a ‘two part meal’ where one part is specific to the meal, and the other part is flexible between meals. So, curry, for example. You can make a small amount of curry and rice, and then offer a dozen little bowls of curry additions on the table, like raisins, shredded coconut, etc. and people can help themselves. Then you don’t waste curry or rice, because everyone only got a little bit, and the condiments don’t qualify as leftovers because you can just put them back in their bags! I’m also thinking recipes like homemade pasta sauce, where you can freeze it in cubes, and then defrost a certain # of cubes, and make pasta. Then, if people want more sauce, you just quickly defrost another cube. Maybe these will work?
 i lovelovelovelovelove the npr shirt on your son.
Thanks! My husband has a matching shirt so they like to wear them simultaneously 🙂Â
That is a good idea, thank you! I need to research some dual-purpose meals. I remember several years back, Real Simple did a few recipes where they told you want to cook each day based on the same main ingredient. Unfortunately, it was mostly meat (we don’t eat meat) but one of them was fish and I loved that one! Wish somebody did a whole book of those!
Feed them green salad as a main course several days in a row until they learn what is important. Eating. Not wasting food. A mommy who is happy and not stressed about what to make, new! for dinner every day!
Don’t get me wrong, I do think it is important to make food your family will eat. But there must be a balance between what you do for them and what they need to learn to just deal with.
I just thought of something else — at my house, I am not the best cook, (please don’t hate me for comparing my cooking to yours!), so kids don’t want leftovers because they didn’t like the meal the first time around. Maybe if you make something you know you do well and they like, it will help them with the leftover eating.