Mini-goals and mini-rewards...

I have been playing little games with myself today in order to motivate myself and get stuff done.  Our sink was overflowing with dirty dishes, the living room is a mess, and I have a ton of work to do for tutoring, not to mention several personal goals that I've been ignoring.  Sigh...  What to do, what to do?  I know! Make it a game!

Now, before you get all excited, these aren't really fun games...more little mental tricks to keep me going, and allow me to feel like I'm accomplishing my tasks.  I have been bopping between several chores, tutoring tasks, and personal goals today by assigning a mini-goal for each one.  Once the mini-goal is accomplished, I switch gears and set a mini-goal for something else, and so on until I'm back where I started.

So, the starting point....

I've been doing several tasks at my desk, which is really just a table and camp chair in the living room.  As you can see it has been semi-taken over by my son's crap (Legos, video gaming headphones, and so on).  But...I've also been trying to centralize all of my tutoring supplies, and have a plastic crate on its side as a makeshift bookshelf on my desk.  (Yeah, we have virtually no real furniture, and it's going to stay that way until we are able to move out of this dump of an apartment into something nicer.)  Our lovely pooch got all excited when I busted out the camera, so I purposely shot the pic so she'd be in it.  See the SAT world history subject test book on the floor?  One of my tasks today is to create ONE timeline from the book for my tutoring student who will be taking the SAT II in December.  He is away on vacation for a few weeks, so I'm creating some additional study materials for him (and by extension, for my son!).  That brings me to mini-goal and mini-reward #1...

Mini-goal and reward #1:  Condense 5 mini-timelines from the study guide into my larger timeline.  After those five are done, spend no more than 5 minutes on social media.

Mini-goal #2:  Go to the kitchen and wash at least 5 dishes/items in the sink.  Individual silverware pieces are NOT individual pieces!  5 pieces of silverware = 1 item.  After those 5 are done, clean a 2' x 2' section of the kitchen counter.  Then, refill coffee cup, and read a blog post.  This is a good one:  You Gotta Give it Away - Dreams of My Home by Rosalind at A Little R & R.

Mini-goal #3:  Sort the recycling from the trash, and figure out what the mystery odor is in the kitchen.  Use the old ratty kitchen sponge to do a preliminary cleaning of plates on which JP has made cheesy pizzas, and thus also made the plates impossible for me to use in the process thanks to my dairy allergy.  Throw away disgusting sponge, put plates back in sink for a real washing with a new sponge.  Check supply of paper plates for future cheese related episodes.  Reward:  More coffee, and another blog post to read.  I really like this one by Gabriela at Luminous Fire - Good Thing We Took Our Rain Jackets.  So full of beautiful pictures!

Aren't you glad I am showing you clean counter space, and not a picture of my sorted recycling and trash?

Mini-goal #4:  Go back to the desk, and practice some Spanish using Duolingo.  Duolingo is a mini-reward in and of itself.  I think it's fun, and much easier to use than Rosetta Stone although it has a similar methodology, plus it is FREE.  Today, I practiced plurals.

Now, I'm starting over with the timeline, then into the kitchen again, but this time to bake some lemon-zucchini bread which I found on Pinterest!  Due to a dairy allergy, I am making some substitutions. The original recipe HERE. UPDATED - a review of the recipe linked here.  Um...we didn't really like it.  The glaze was too tart, and the muffins were...odd. :/

After the zucchini bread, I plan to work on a post about our homeschooling curriculum choices for this coming school year...I keep promising to do that!  Today, it is on my list, and I WILL get it done (I think...).

Ok, so those aren't really games, but they are larger jobs, broken down into smaller tasks, with tiny rewards along the way.  I am in a bit of a funk today, and really needed to break things down to much smaller steps in order to accomplish anything today.  And, the next time you are feeling so down, lame, tired, or whatever that you just want to say, "Chuck it! I'm going back to bed!" instead, choose one chore or task, and break it down into several smaller steps.  Choose one tiny step, and accomplish that itty bitty goal.  Give yourself an itty bitty reward, then move on to another itty bitty goal with an itty bitty reward.  Eventually, you will have accomplished something larger, and will hopefully feel good about the results, even if you still feel like going back to bed!

There was a time in my life many years back, when JP was quite young, that I felt stuck in every possible way.  Even the simplest of tasks felt impossible and not worth doing.  So, I would just set myself to one TINY task.  Usually it involved cleaning a 2' x 2' section of the kitchen counter.  I would do that, give myself a little reward, then come back to do another 2' x 2' section.  Over the course of a the morning, my depression would ease a bit, though wouldn't go away entirely (2 years of therapy, and a year of anti-depressants helped it go away...mostly).  At the very least, I felt like I'd accomplished something, even it if was something small. 

Off to work on that timeline, then mix up the lemon-zucchini bread, then walk the dog while the bread bakes!

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UPDATED:  Nom nom nom!!!!  I have the lemon zucchini bread baking now, but I decided to go the cupcake/muffin route instead of baking a loaf.  And, oh my goodness!  Do you like mushrooms?  Do you like breaded mushrooms???  Droooooooolllllll....try these!  Super duper easy!  For the inspiration,  WITH dairy, recipe visit  HERE.  For a dairy free, but still cheesy tasting, version, keep reading:

Breaded Mushrooms

8oz pkg whole mushrooms, cleaned (mine were HUGE, so I cut them into quarters)
2 eggs
generous handful of breadcrumbs (I didn't measure them, sorry!)
1 Tbsp so of nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

If you haven't cleaned your mushrooms, or cut the big ones into halves or quarters, start by doing that.  To clean the mushrooms, just wipe them with a dishtowel.

Put the two eggs into a little dish, and whisk.

In a shallow bowl, or on a plate, mix the breadcrumbs, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and pepper.

Dunk the mushrooms in the egg.  Then transfer the egg coated mushrooms to the breadcrumb mix.  Your fingers will probably get all goopy and gross - wash your fingers off as needed in order to keep handling the mushrooms without accidentally pulling off the breadcrumb coating.  I found that it works best to drop the egg coated mushrooms into the breadcrumbs and press down a little.  Then flip them, and press again, flip and press again, until the mushroom pieces are well breaded.

Place the breaded mushroom pieces on a lined baking sheet (I just used a piece of parchment paper).  Bake for 8-10 minutes at 450F.

Allow to cool, and enjoy!

In the process of making the lemon zucchini muffins and breaded mushrooms, I completely destroyed all of my kitchen counter cleaning and dish washing progress!

Easy vegan "cheesy" crackers

I've made vegan crackers before, trying to get a "goldfish" type of flavor, and mostly succeeded.  However, the previous recipes I've used required quite a lot of ingredients and effort so I don't make them very often.  Theeeennnnnnn....my son brought home some REAL goldfish crackers. I was like, O_O  *sniffle...I want some!  But....not enough to go through all the trouble of those time consuming and complex recipes.

Theeeennnnnnn....I came across a super duper, mega easy recipe at the 100 Days of Real Food blog.  It's not vegan, and not dairy-allergy friendly, but I thought, "Hey, I can fix that!"  Oh, and I didn't have whole wheat flour, and didn't feel like going to the store to get some (lazy!).  The 100 Days recipe says to use a food processor, but my dough didn't come together in a ball as it was supposed to...plus, washing the thing is a chore!  I'd rather just knead the dough by hand for a minute or two.

So, undaunted by the lack of whole wheat flour, I plowed onward.  Here's what I came up with...

1 Cup flour
1/2 Cup nutritional yeast 
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp dry mustard
2 tsp dry, crushed basil
6 Tbsp COLD margarine of your choice (or butter if not vegan or dairy allegic), cut into pieces, with 1 or 2 set aside "just in case"
3-4 Tbsp of cold water 

The nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and dry mustard give the crackers the "cheesy" flavor, and the basil is just yummy.

In a dry bowl, whisk together the flour, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, mustard, and basil.  Use a pastry cutter or fork to work in the 4 or 5 Tbsp of butter/margarine. When it is looking like a bunch of crumbs, add 1 more Tbsp of butter/margarine and 1 Tbsp of water. Knead by hand until you have a fairly smooth, non-sticky ball of dough.

(Mine was quite dry and crumbly so I added one more Tbsp of butter, and 1 more Tbsp of cold water.)

Once your dough is sticking together in a ball, roll out with a rolling pin to about 1/8 inch thick, and cut with cookie cutters for fun shapes.  Or, do as the original 100 Days post suggests, and roll the dough into a log and just cut into simple rounds.

Place your cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet, and bake at 350F for 8 to 10 minutes.  Check them at 8 minutes - the bottoms should turn a golden brown.  The tops will NOT brown or really change color much so you MUST carefully use a spatula to lift one or two up and look at the bottom side.

Store in an airtight container for a few days, or freeze if not eating right away.

***Just a side note: If you eat a whole bunch of these all at once, you pee will turn a sort of neon yellow!  After doing some research I found that this is because of the B-complex vitamins in the nutritional yeast.  Your body will get rid of the excess when you pee.

Whatcha got pasta....

I'm calling this "Whatcha got pasta" because it is made of just whatever ya got in the fridge and cupboards!

This is vegan, but it would be super easy to add some crumbled bacon, browned sausage, or whatever you prefer.  I like vegan, but am not a vegan...I eat vegan about 50% of the time, vegetarian 25% and omni the other 25%.  I've just never really liked meat all that much - the taste, the texture, the cholesterol...a few meat based dishes can get a "Oh my gaaaaawwwww...soooo good!" from me, but not many.

Anyhow...back to this "Whatcha got pasta."  Start by taking a peek in the fridge and cupboards.  We had a bit o' pasta, tomatoes, baby spinach, scallions (the long skinny green onions), shredded carrot leftover from making vegan carrot muffins yesterday, um...what else?  Oh, pimento stuffed green olives, capers, tricolor bell peppers, garlic powder, nutritional yeast, olive oil, and mushrooms.

I'm not going to take you step by step through making this (although if someone asks in the comments, I will...), because it seems pretty simple to me.  I cooked the pasta, browned the mushrooms in olive oil and margarine (oh, wait! The marg isn't vegan...oops!), then softened the bell peppers (diced) in olive oil over medium heat as well.  It's a "throw it together" meal, ya know?

I strained the pasta, put it back in the pot, dumped in all of my other ingredients (except tomatoes), stirred, dished it out into two bowls, and topped mine with the tomatoes (none for the boy...he won't eat tomatoes), dashed with garlic powder, pepper, and nutritional yeast, and then we ate!

I thought it was fantastic, but the boy said there were too many flavors.  It was a lot of variety, so I see his point, but I love veggies, and I love pasta, so I thought it was great!

What was the last "throw it together" meal that you made?  Is it one you'll make again?  I'll definitely make a version of this pasta dish again! Yummmmm!!!!

Homeschooling - Mixing it up, plus a recipe...

This is the very inconvenient place where most of my best ideas come to me:

Where is your "idea" place?  Is it convenient for you?  How do you compensate if it is not convenient?  I often take pen and paper into the bathroom and place them on the shelf above our toilet, and make sure my towel is nearby, just in case I need to dry off my hand and arm to write a note.

Today's brainstorm did indeed take place in the shower, but it was one of the few times I hadn't brought my pen and paper into the bathroom.  Thankfully, it wasn't too hard to remember...  We've been struggling  in our homeschool this year.  My son isn't enjoying the free flow approach that has been wonderful over the last few years.  But, he also doesn't want a lot of structure (nor do I!).  I've been a bit at a loss for what to do about this.  He is struggling to get his work done each day, and really hates the writing projects that I've had him doing.  For social studies, neither of us is inspired by any curriculum or materials that we've looked at, and the same is true for science.  In the past, neither of us had interest in unit studies, but I think we are going to give them a try...and, we will incorporate writing into the studies.

In addition to unit studies, we are going to alternate social studies and science.  We will start by trying every other week, but may adjust depending on how well this goes...  I'm going to give JP the option to choose which we start with.  Once he has chosen, I'll be giving him a list of ten topics to choose from, and then we will pull together materials, and if it is practical, will plan a field trip too.  I'm also going to ask that JP take notes so that he can fashion a report of some kind on each topic.  For some topics, it might be a straight essay style report.  For others, he may build a model to go with a shorter report.  We'll see...maybe he'll do a lapbook type of project for some topics.  I see this evolving as we go along.  I also see it being much more interesting than the approach we've been using!  Wish us luck!

(Amended: we are changing our math curriculum too!)

On to the recipe...while looking around for recipes a few weeks ago, I came upon a broccoli-garlic-pasta combination that seemed so yummy and easy that I just had to try making something similar!  I'm so glad I did!  This version is not vegan but is dairy free.  It would be very easy to make it vegan by just omitting the sausage.

Broccoli Sausage Cheezy Pasta
1 pound pasta
2 cups of broccoli florets, or bite sized pieces of broccoli
4 inch piece of sausage, cut into a dice
3 garlic cloves, minced
4 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp nutritional yeast
salt and pepper to taste

Cook your pasta according to the package directions.  While the pasta is cooking, steam your broccoli (I did it in the microwave - just put it in a microwave safe bowl with a couple of tablespoons of water.  Cover tightly with cling film/saran wrap.  Microwave for about 2 minutes.).  Also, while the pasta is cooking, cook your diced sausage.


Drain your pasta, and return it to the cooking pot (or put it in a large serving bowl).  Add the steamed broccoli, cooked sausage, olive oil, and minced garlic.  Stir to evenly distribute everything.  Add the nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper.  Stir well to distribute the nutritional yeast as it tends to clump up when it gets moist.  Taste, adjust the salt and pepper, and serve hot.


YUMMY!

On another note...if you haven't seen the notice already, we are closing our Etsy shop on December 15th.  We need to focus on other things right now...I hope to reopen our shop over the summer.  So, from now until the 15th, we are offering two deals:

• 25% off our entire shop with coupon code SHOPCLOSING at checkout.
• FREE US Priority shipping on all orders over $25 (after discounts) to US addresses. 

Bonus - if you live in the USA, you may combine the two deals! 

Visit our shop at http://maleaab.etsy.com for stationery, art cards, and more!  Great stocking stuffers for Christmas and little treats for other winter holidays, or just because! 

 

Postcrossing...

JP and I love to send and receive postcards and snail mail.  I realized this morning that I neglected to mention Postcrossing in my post about turning children into writers.  Postcrossing is a great, low-commitment, and low-pressure, way to encourage writing.  Postcrossing is a post card exchange program, and great fun!  To date, my son and I have sent 79 cards, and received 82. We currently have 8 that are "traveling" around the world.  These 8 are on their way to China, Taiwan, Vermont, Latvia, Netherlands (2 cards), Russia, and Germany.  It is so much fun to receive a handwritten postcard in the mail!  My son and I love to look at the cards, read the messages, and study the postage stamps.  We've received a wide variety of cards...take a look at a few...

From Finland (my favorite postcard EVER!)

From Estonia

From Boston (as noted on the card)

This card came from China, despite the fact that it has a US mail box on it!

From my friend Chris, all the way from Japan.

From my best friend, C, in California.

From the Netherlands (aka - Holland, as noted on the card).

From Canada (as noted on the card).

Beautiful stamp from Valerie in France.

In other blog-related news, I plan to implement two new features to encourage me to blog more regularly:
* Mail Call - where I share with you the post cards, and other fun mail that JP and I receive.
* What's for dinner? - exactly what it sounds like.  I tell you what we had for dinner, and share a few recipes.

Today's mail had nothing interesting.  For dinner? We ate an Israeli salad, rice, and garlic bread.  My friend's dad makes this for her family frequently.  They are from Israel and have told me that it is one of the most common dishes eaten there.  My friend's family often have it as an afternoon snack.  Although I found many recipes online, they all were slightly different, and I didn't have the exact amounts of some ingredients for some of the recipes.  So, thinking about the flavors, I just created my own:

Malea's Version: Israeli Salad

* 1 tomato, diced
* 1/4 of a large red onion, diced
* 1/4 of a red bell pepper, diced
* 1/4 of an orange bell pepper, diced
* 1/4 of a yellow bell pepper, diced
* 1 medium cucumber, diced (skin on, seeds removed if you wish)
* 3 Tbsp lemon juice
* 1/4 Cup olive oil
* dash salt
* dash pepper

Mix the veggies together in a bowl. Whisk the lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper together in a small bowl (I just mixed them right in the measuring cup used for the olive oil).  Pour the lemon juice and olive oil mixture over the veggies.  Stir to coat the veggies in the dressing.  Taste, and adjust seasoning as necessary.  Eat!

Sorry about the lack of a picture...ate it all without thinking to snap a photo!  Oh, but here is my one and only postcard from Israel:

From Israel

Simple pasta with spinach, garlic, and cherry tomatoes

This was inspired by a video with Giada de Laurentiis making a pasta and spinach dish.  Her's involved goat cheese and cream cheese.  With a dairy allergy (the protein molecules in goat's milk are so similar to that of cow's milk that I can't have it either), that is a no-go for me.  But, it looked so good, I had to make an alternative version!  Her dish also made me think of pasta with pesto, but I didn't have all of the ingredients for a true pesto.

Here is my version:

* 1 pound of pasta (I had cavatappi on hand - corkscrew shaped)
* 1 to 2 Tbsp olive oil
* 1 large clove, or 2 small cloves garlic
* 3oz (half of an average size of bagged baby spinach) spinach
* dash of salt (to taste)
* 10 to 12 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
* either a bit of parmesan cheese, 2 Tbsp cream, or 2 Tbsp rice (or soy) milk (optional - my garlic clove was huge, and I used rice milk to tone down the flavor, but you might just like the addition of one of these others add ins!)

Cook your pasta according to directions on the package.

While the pasta is cooking, add your garlic to your food processor and spin.  Then, add the spinach, a bunch at a time, alternating with a drizzle of olive oil, until all of the spinach is has been added.  At this point, stop your food processor, scrape down the sides, and take a taste.  If it is too garlicky for you, add your cheese, cream, or milk, and spin until incorporated.  Also, add a dash of salt (or salt it to taste).  Your mixture should look like very fine bits of spinach and garlic that hold together like a paste.

Put your spinach-garlic mixture into a bowl.  Wash and halve your cherry tomatoes, and add them to the bowl.  If your pasta is still cooking, put the bowl in the fridge.

When the pasta is done, drain it, reserving a bit of the cooking water - maybe 2 Tbsp or so.  Add the pasta to your spinach-garlic mix and tomatoes.  Add the reserved pasta water (it will help to prevent the pasta from sticking to itself, and allow the sauce to stick to the noodles instead), and toss until the sauce is evenly distributed.

Yum!  I would imagine that this is delicious either hot or cold.  Tonight we ate it cold.  I added the pasta to the spinach mix, and waited for it to cool enough to put in the fridge.  Chill until it is either the desired temperature, or until you are ready to eat!  In hindsight, I realized that if you want to eat this cold, you should probably cook the pasta first, cool, and refrigerate.  Make the spinach-garlic sauce right before you are ready to eat.  Just pull the pasta out of the fridge, add the sauce, mix it up; add the tomatoes.  Yum!

You could also add diced ham, salami, or some other meat for protein.  I don't like meat very much, and feel awful if I eat much protein.  For me, this dish was delicious, and satisfying.  My son would prefer it with some diced meat.

I also had enough that we have two more meals worth of leftovers.  I have one meal in the freezer, just to see how well it will hold up to freezing and thawing.  UPDATE: The portion from the freezer? Ewww...I recommend you only make one meal's worth of this.  It is really yummy when you first make it, but the next day, or out of the freezer? Not so much...

As you can read HERE, I am trying to be very careful with our budget, and making use of leftovers will go a long way towards that goal.