Best laid plans and some freezer cooking

Three weeks ago I had a plan to do all kinds of grocery shopping, then hit the drugstores up later that same week. The Monday I hit up the produce market and left there with a full cart, then Sams and the grocery stores.

Tuesday I stayed home to catch up on household chores. As I headed downstairs after washing the kitchen floor, I hit the top basement step, slipped and went thudding all the way down the stairs. I watched the bucket of water and mop go flying through the air and hit the basement floor. (Thankfully our basement floor is tiled, so it was easy clean up for DH) I couldn't get up for a while. Then I couldn't find my phone to call DH who was working in the shop. I finally made it to the shop and told him what happened. Thankfully I didn't break anything, but an hour afterwards, the pain hit my back and side. So for 2 weeks, I was in pain and spent quite a bit of time in bed. I'm finally back to my old self again, so now I'm once again playing catch up. This seems to be my new normal. sigh. I will say though that I am thankful for my stockpile and freezer cooking. It always comes in handy during an emergency.

This week I did a bit more freezer cooking, since I hate cooking in the morning. In a perfect world, someone would just stick a cup of coffee into my hand and everyone will leave me alone until my coffee kicks in. Of course this doesn't happen, but I still don't want to have to cook breakfast for anyone, myself included. So freezer cooking it is.

Blueberries (a favorite of mine) has been on sale at several stores, so I stocked up. I used a whole box of Heart Smart Bisquick to make pancakes and waffles. Some blueberry, some gingerbread. I always crush my blueberries so that its spread evenly in the batter. I didn't make too many waffles, cause I'm the only one who's nuts about it.

I topped the pancakes with butter/margarine, syrup, cinnamon and fresh blueberries and rolled them up to be frozen. Now it's all ready to just be heated when we want to eat some. Easy peasy. I didn't do anything with the waffles. I like to top it with fresh bananas and cinnamon. I also made some lemon/blueberry and banana oatmeal muffins last Sunday, so we have more than enough breakfast food.

Does anyone else do breakfast freezer cooking? I know most people do that for dinner, but I like having all meals prepped in advance.

Switching things up

Hi everyone

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth...lol. The past few months have been super busy. I've spent so much time working and the holiday season is always crazy. I also like to bake over the holiday season and would take a day or 2 off, just to bake all day long. I baked around 20 dozen cookies just before Christmas. DH who doesn't care for sweet things, would eat cookies at 11 am. His friend stopped by while I was baking and they started eating the cookies before I had a chance to decorate them. They said the cookies taste great without any toppings. We still have a few dozen that will be frozen, since I don't use the oven during summer.

I normally make traditional South African treats and I've never decorated cookies before, because we don't eat much sugar. Well my friend started doing decorated cookies, so we all jumped onto the bandwagon. So this is what my cookies looked like.

Sugar cookies (some with chocolate and some with cream cheese frosting)
Almond coconut cookies - DH's favorite
Hertzoggies (traditionally filled with apricot jam & coconut, but we prefer the caramel/cream filling) My favorite SA treat
Romany creams (SA treat) - Chocolate coconut cookie filled with mint chocolate
Lemon cookies

Now, as you can see, I'm not good at cookie decorating. I can work wonders with cakes, because I have the tools to do so.

So, on to switching things up. I have some big financial goals for this year. In order to reach those, I have to work more. I sell online and have decided to expand so I can earn more. This means less time for other things. One of those being point earning sites. While I still enjoy doing those, it's just not worth the frustration and energy since things haven't worked well since Swagbucks took over Mypoints. My encraves (my favorite way to earn) are hit and miss. So while I'll still try to earn some gcs, I'm not going to make it a priority. This means there won't be any month end money posts either. I'll continue to sell our old things though. I'll try to post whenever I can. Some weeks there might be one post and others 3-5 posts. I'm just trying to be as productive as I can, so I can reach my goal. If I fall short of that goal, then I at least know that I've tried my best.

I will post the remaining 2018 numbers though, so you can see how we fared last year. We did come in under budget for Christmas, so I'm happy about that.

I didn't do much after Christmas shopping, since we didn't need anything. My only plan was to head to Meijer at 6am (when they open) to pick up holiday baking supplies. As I was getting ready to head out, our local news channel was reporting from my Walmart that the store had just opened and the parking lot was empty. So I switched gears and headed to Walmart instead. This was the first time my Walmart was so empty. I did hit the motherlode with Hickory Farms. We used to buy Hickory Farms for years, until they got to expensive. I remember we used to get really big boxes of sausage & cheese for $20 back then. One year someone posted that HF had the sets for $8, so I stocked up and froze quite a bunch. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find several boxes at Walmart at 50% off. I got 5 boxes at $10 each and 2 at $7.50. The sausage are frozen. The cheese won't last long, cause we love cheese. I got a few baking items, cause there wasn't much to choose from.

Then I headed to Meijer who had even less clearance. No baking stuff to be found. Thank goodness for the news channel, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten those Walmart goodies. I just picked up some Ziploc containers. I have Pyrex, but I've always loved these small round Ziploc ones. They're so easy for storing my coffee beans and other small items. These were $1.74 per set. Not the best price, but I needed the items. I also forgot to check for coupons before heading out.

I'll try to do another post this week.