One Dish Meals—my favorite thing to make!

Lately the creative juices have been running dry about what to cook for supper. I’m pregnant, so my tastebuds have a mind of their own, my energy levels aren’t what I wish they were, and living in the city means restaurants are close by. 

At this stage in my life, recipes that are quick and easy to prepare, don’t require many dishes (have I mentioned my cute little antique 50’s house doesn’t have a dishwasher?) or crockpot recipes are very, very appealing to me right now.

So, having said all that, I tried a new recipe this week for Sunday dinner.  A friend had just made it and raved about it so I decided to give it a go. I bravely tried a new recipe and invited my in-laws over for dinner—breaking one of the oldest rules in the book: Never try a new recipe out on company!

The recipe was one that I had seen floating around on Pinterest and Facebook for a little while.  You bake chicken breast with green beans and potatoes and it looked pretty fast and easy. I was a little skeptical, but when my friend went on and on about it, I thought I’d give it a try.

It turned out amazing!!!! The chicken was so moist, the green beans were the best I’d ever had (which floored me because there was no bacon in it), and the potatoes were perfect. I made some cream cheese chili corn to go with it and Overnight Sourdough Rolls (recipe forthcoming) and my husband pronounced the meal “The BOMB!” My in-laws loved it and my mother-in-love said she was going to add it to their menu.

It turned out so yummy that I ended up making it again for supper the next night, but with center cut pork chops instead of chicken. I wasn’t disappointed. The results were just as delicious. I will have to be careful and not make it too often, lest I burn the husband out on it.

It took only about 15 minutes (maybe!) to put together and it baked for an hour and a half.  My kitchen didn’t get destroyed, it didn’t mess up every dish in the cupboard and I had time to get things done whilst it baked. Win, win, win, all the way around.

The only thing that would have made it better would have been if I’d remembered to take pictures. I will next time! You’ll just have to take my word for how yummy it looks.

Here’s the recipe:

Oven Baked Chicken, Green Beans & Potatoes

4 chicken breasts (I used boneless, skinless, and the next night I used center cut pork chops!)

2-3 cans of green beans, drained OR fresh green beans

1 1/2 lbs-2 lbs small red potatoes, quartered

1 package dry Italian dressing mix (I used Good Seasons)

1 stick (or 1/2 cup) of butter, melted

 

Preheat oven to 350*F.

Place chicken down the center of a large baking dish (I used an 11X14 Pyrex). Place the green beans on one side, the potatoes on the other. Sprinkle the package of Italian dressing mix over everything and drizzle with the melted butter.  Cover in foil and bake for 1 1/2 hours or until chicken is done and potatoes are tender.

Hung Out to Dry

The Benefits of Line-Dried Laundry

At the beginning I want to say that this is not a dryer bashing post. I am so thankful for my electric dryer! It enables me to do laundry when it is raining, or in the middle of the night if I need to. It is a great blessing to me, but I am thrilled to not have to use it for every load of laundry now that I have a clothesline in my backyard.

       I love crawling into a bed freshly made with sheets fresh off of the clothesline. It makes the whole room smell like fresh air and sunshine. When I bring my line-dried clothes inside and put them away I feel like I am making the whole smell fresh. I grew up with a clothesline and line-dried laundry, so that is what “home” smells and feels like to me. I love looking out of my kitchen window and watching my clean laundry billow in the breeze.

    I’ve been greatly enjoying my clothesline the last few weeks. I didn’t realize how much joy I was  going to get from something as simple as hanging my laundry outside almost everyday. I get excited about doing laundry now—which for me is big because I am notorious for doing other things to avoid laundry.

Some people curl their nose up at line-dried laundry. I understand this is personal preference, but to me this is silly and the benefits outweigh the reasons some prefer to use a dryer. One thing that I hear from several people is that “line-dried towels are scratchy!” They are, but it’s not like you are using a Brillo pad to dry off with ;).  A lot of people (Jacob and I included) prefer them that way. Line-dried towels absorb much more moisture than towels dried in a dryer. When using a dryer-dried towel after being used to towels hung to dry, it feels like the soft towel is only smearing the moisture around and not absorbing much at all.

 

Another argument that some people have is that it takes too much time to hang clothes out. It really doesn’t take much longer than tossing them in the dryer. The more you hang laundry on the line, the faster you’ll get.  I prefer to fold the clothes as I take them off of the clothesline so all I have to do is put them away when I bring them inside. If the laundry is already folded, I will put it away quicker than if I have a pile of laundry looming on the couch waiting to be folded.

Growing up we hung everything outside, but since I’m in the city with neighbors on both sides, I hang out everything except underwear and socks. I do use my dryer for those things and anything small.

Benefits of line-dried  clothes:

~Hanging your clothes outside to dry will help cut down on your utility bill, whether you have an electric or gas dryer. Especially if you hang out items that take a long time to dry in a dryer such as towels, blankets, and blue jeans.

~Hanging clothes in the sun is an effective way to get rid of stains. My mom has used this method with great success over the years, simply hanging the stained garment outside in the sun for a few days. This works very well for baby garments which are easily soiled and stained.

~In the same vein, hanging whites outside is a great way to keep them white without having to bleach them very often.

~The sun is a great way to disinfect and kill germs. Many years ago hospitals would periodically take all of the bedding, linens, beds, etc., outside and let them sit in the sunshine. The UV rays in the sun did away with all sorts of germs. I learned this from a nurse friend of mine and she said that an older nurse told her of this practice and also that staph infections started going rampant after the hospitals discontinued this practice.

After learning this, I always try to take bedding and pillows outside to air and soak up sunshine after we’ve been sick.

My mom noticed that when she didn’t hang my siblings’ cloth diapers outside in the sun, but dried them in the dryer, they were more prone to diaper rashes and other irritations.

~You can use less starch on shirts, denim skirts and blue jeans if they are dried on a line rather than in a dryer. Sometimes you can get away with not ironing at all if you make sure all of the hems, collars, and pocket flaps are straight when you first put them on the line.

~It’s a great way to make sure you are getting plenty of vitamin D. My mood and spirits are much improved when I get a little sunshine every day and hanging out my laundry is a wonderful way to accomplish this.

Hurray for clotheslines!

Hurray for a clothesline!

This past Saturday Jacob and I spent working in our backyard clearing bushes and limbs from the fence row. He also re-strung my clothesline and  I am so thrilled to finally have one again! I immediately washed a load of laundry so I could use it.

Hurray for husbands and clotheslines!

A much more chipper update

I realized how very depressing and blue my last post was and I apologize! I will try to make up for it with this post.  I always want to honest in what I write however, and I don’t want to give the impression that the world is always rosy and perfect. I’m very human and constantly need the Lord’s strength. Thank you to everyone who commented and left words of encouragement for me—they were a great blessing, I promise!

We’ve been busy and got a lot of things accomplished over the weekend, in spite of my husband having to work extra hours (even on Saturday, which is rare). Over time is welcomed at this time of year though, and especially with the baby on the way.

I’ve had several good days recently and was able to feel more like myself and enjoy my new kitchen. Jacob enjoyed that greatly as it meant meals more like he was used to before first trimester sickness set in. I’ll be 12 weeks along tomorrow, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

One of my most favorite things about being pregnant so far has been the reaction from all the little people in my life. My sisters are beside themselves with excitement about being aunts and my little darlings at church are just about as excited. One of my little sweethearts, Mallorie, aged barely 4, when I told her that I was going to have a baby looked at my belly and said, “Well, it must be really tiny right now ‘cause you don’t have a belly at all. When Cayla (her cousin) was expecting Presley her belly was so big she didn’t have a lap!”

Jacob  worked in his garage for several hours Saturday and there are only a very few boxes left out there now. They are all in the house, but they are in the rooms where they belong, making it much easier for me to empty them now. He also set up his desk and arranged everything how he wanted it. We put his desk in the breakfast nook in the kitchen so we can visit while he works and I cook. I love it ;)

Ever the bookworm, my heart soared with joy as I unpacked my library and put it on the bookshelf. I felt like I was seeing old friends again after a long separation. It made me really want to read, but I am trying to exercise self-control and not start a book until I get more unpacking finished. I have a tendency to get lost in a book and let everything else go and we can’t have that right now!  I’m hoping for a bigger shelf for Christmas—I have too many books for the medium-sized one I have now. There are still three boxes of books that need to be unpacked.

 

Our post-Thanksgiving deerlease trip was a success, as you can see from the photo above. We are cutting up the deer Jacob shot, getting it ready to be ground into hamburger meat.  My father-in-law helped us and that really sped things up. Notice Jacob’s very comfortable camo t-shirt I’m wearing? ;) Something tells me I’ll be borrowing his shirts a lot in the future for around the house.

Last year we ground an entire doe into hamburger meat and it lasted us almost a year. We’ll do the same with this deer, and as it was bigger, hopefully it will last a full year.  It really helps out with the grocery bill when you have your own meat ;)

It’s almost time for Christmas—the tree is up, and it is 80 degrees outside. Welcome to Texas. We are hoping for a cool front in time for Christmas, but we shall see. In honor of our unseasonably warm weather, I thought I’d share the following song with y’all:

Saving money on my grocery bill

I love to save money. It almost kills me to have to pay full price for anything. Tightwad and Frugal Zealot  are titles I wear with great honor--especially after reading all of the Tightwad Gazette books while I still lived with my parents.
My mom taught me how to bargain shop and get the most for my money and soon turned the grocery shopping for the family over to me. I’m so glad that she did because it prepared me and taught me valuable lessons for when I would take over my own home.
Here are some ways that I have learned to save money on groceries:

Have a plan when you go into the store. Make a list, and stick to it. Only buy something not on your list if it is vital and completely necessary.
Never, ever, ever buy groceries when you are hungry. You will spend so much more than you planned and come out with things you really don’t need.  Especially DO NOT take a hungry husband  grocery shopping with you. I find that I spend more money when I have my husband with me, and it is even worse if he is hungry. ;) Be sure to feed yourself and whoever else is going with you before you leave. This way you can stick to your plan and not have your drooling taste buds and growling stomach controlling you.
As I have touched on before, MENU PLANNING is a great way to help save money on food costs. It makes it easier to make a list, and you can save even more money by planning your menu for the week by checking the sale papers first and making your menu from there.
Be willing to try and buy other brands and off or store brands.  Sometimes even when a national brand of sugar (for example) is on sale, the price may not be as low as the store brand.
  If you have freezer space you can catch meats on sale and freeze them for later. Something that Jacob and I have done quite a bit lately is to buy meat in bigger packages as it is usually cheaper that way, and come home and re-package them into smaller meal portions and freeze them. Also, having a hunter for a husband really helps with the meat bill. Our freezer is full of venison. ;)
My latest adventure into an unknown realm of homemaking and saving money has been coupon clipping and shopping. I’ve always used coupons off and on, but I have only really gotten serious about it in the last several months. Before I’d use them if I thought about it or if I saw one I could use—now I faithfully print coupons (more on where from later) and scour over sale papers and when I remember, buy a Sunday paper. Our Sundays are very busy so I forget most of the time to get one.
There are several websites that your obtain and print coupons from. Most of them require that you install coupon printer software, but it only takes a few minutes. Below are some that I visit frequently.
Coupons.com   SmartSource   RedPlum
You can also visit company websites like BettyCrocker.com for more coupons. Usually these coupons offer more of a discount than coupons on the other websites.
There are several websites that offer free coupon toolbars for your web browser. I really like these as it makes it much easier and faster to find coupons for what you use. I have been having so much fun printing coupons and using them. And I have been saving money too so it has been productive fun.`
A great website I like that has lots of awesome couponing tips and resources is Living Rich with Coupons . They have a free coupon toolbar that I really like.
My mom never really used coupons much. She often said that you could often get  into trouble and spend more money by using coupons than not. I didn’t really understand what she meant then, but now I can see what she was saying. I have some people buy something just because they have a coupon for it, and it isn’t something they normally buy, use or need. If something is normally $5, and you have a 50% off coupon for it, but it isn’t something you need or use, that is $2.50 you wasted. An occasional purchase like this here and there won’t hurt, but several at one time definitely add up. What seems like a good deal could be a money trap. Like I said before, make a plan and a list and stick to them.
With this in mind, I have coupon rules for myself. I do not clip/print coupons for items that I do not use.
For cleaning products, I do not have specific brands that I stick with. One month I may buy Brand A because it is on sale and the next month I may buy Brand B because I have coupon that makes it cheaper. Besides, it makes it fun to mix it up, and gives you a chance to find out which ones you really like.
Like I said in the sugar example above, just because you have a coupon for one specific brand, it may not be the best buy. Check prices and make sure you are getting the best deal.
Be sure to check your store’s coupon policy and learn how to make the most of it. If you find an item for less at another store and you bring it to their attention, many stores will sell you the item at the competitor’s price. Some stores will allow you to use a manufacturer’s coupon AND a store coupon on the same item.

I hope these tips will be helpful to you, or remind you of some things you may have forgotten. It can be time-consuming, but to quote the old adage “Time is money.” It is worth it when you can consistently save money and become a better steward of what the Lord has given you.
I’d love to hear some of your tips and ways to save money—please leave a comment and share them;)