I really wanted that to say ‘Food Filosophy’ or ‘Phood Philosophy’ but alas, they both just looked wrong.

Anyone who knows me IRL knows that my love language is feeding people. I adore cooking, and I want to give everyone I love real food.

At home, this looks like strategic meal planning. This feeds* my belief that ultra processed food is unhealthy and just plain not as tasty as real food made from real ingredients. But it also keeps my food budget down. Ingredients cost less than processed stuff, and much MUCH less than eating out/take out.

One of the things I do every week is sit down sometime between Thursday night and Saturday morning and make a meal plan around our schedule and the chaos that is day to day life. I shop every weekend, and I prep a bunch of food on Sundays (especially for a work week.) Today I thought I’d give you a sneak peak into this week’s plan and how I think about things as I plan.

This week’s plan needs to keep in mind:

1. It’s a full school week and all the activities that contains.
2. It’s October, and I need to have enough freezer turkey bones in the freezer by Nov 1 to make a big batch of turkey stock before Thanksgiving; ideally without burning my family out on turkey – it can’t feel like Thanksgiving turkey.
3. I’m still challenging myself to empty the freezer out and use at least one thing out of the freezer every day. Partially because I need the room for the turkey stock, but also because it got completely out of hand and now I just want it cleaned out.
4. And a guiding principle every week: Food waste is bad. Therefore I need to use anything up that will go bad.

The plan for this week:

• Saturday: Apricot and Brie stuffed turkey breasts, popovers, steamed broccoli.
  • This puts more turkey bones in the freezer without feeling like a Thanksgiving prequel. I’d eat roast turkey and mashed potatoes nearly every day, my family does not agree with this philosophy.

• Sunday: Grilled sausages, grilled peaches, and cut up veggie sticks.
  • Sausages are from the freezer – and are peach habanero brats, so obviously peaches should be grilled too.
  • The weather is gorgeous so we should be grilling.
  • Grilling means don’t even turn the stove on for a side veggie.

• Leftovers every Monday.
  • This is the late night for The Kid and me, and it helps to prevent food waste.

• Tuesday: Pork Udon Soup
  • Pork strips are from the freezer.
  • Less than 20 minutes start to finish if you use boxed broth

• Wednesday: Mac & Cheese from Smitten Kitchen
  • Deb doesn’t know me at all, but we adore her and her food around here.
  • This recipe isn’t on her website – it’s from her cookbook, but man it’s good, it’s basically shells alfredo with peas. But the peas make it healthy…right?
  • Less than 20 min start to finish.
  • Not surprisingly, I’ll probably add more veggies to mine (like leftover broccoli from Sunday or more kale from the freezer).
  • This also uses frozen peas from the freezer

• Thursday: Shrimp in red pepper cream sauce over couscous
  • I can pull more veggies from the freezer for me.
  • Less than 20 min. start to finish for a busy day.
  • The Kid just decided he likes couscous again so I’m gonna take advantage of this while I can.

• Friday: leftovers
  • another chance to prevent food waste.

That’s the week. Tasty from scratch meals every day without too much fuss or time in the kitchen. This week doesn’t even ask much of me to plan ahead on Sunday, and most of the meals are 20 min or less start to finish. Leftovers become lunches for me, and I don’t even have to spend extra money for lunch.

* pun intended.

I touched on happiness yesterday. Today it’s all I’m going to talk about.

I am a pretty happy human. Optimistic, easy-going, hard to upset. There are a few things I’ll get angry about, usually when someone is being mistreated. Really though, I’m usually content and upbeat and always there for others when life gets them down.

There are two things I have cultivated that make this possible, and one of those is gratitude. I am exceptionally grateful for all the good things in my life, many of which are not actually things. Looking at what I do have every day makes it much easier to ride out the times when something doesn’t go my way.

Thursdays are going to be my day to thank the world. A day dedicated to the things that make life special, big and small. In no particular order, here are four things I am especially grateful for today.

1. My wonderful, charming, delightful and supportive husband. We’ve been together since high school, and he has always been there for me through the hard parts and the easy parts. This year will actually be our 25th wedding anniversary, and that’s pretty darned awesome. I am truly grateful he puts up with me every day.
2. My children. I often joke that as a teacher, I have 100’s of children, but in this case I mean the two that “I made”. They are charming, and intelligent and wonderful humans and I am proud of them every day. The Kid is a middle schooler and College Kid lives (too) far away and isn’t not really a kid anymore.
3. Good food. I expect that we will discover over time that food is a major theme here. A really good meal can make a tough day a whole lot better. I don’t mean a gourmet or expensive meal. (Although those can be amazing too.) I mean a flavorful, satisfying, and nutritious meal in your belly can bring a comfort that not many other things can. I do my best to produce good food daily for my family, and I am always grateful at how a family dinner can bring us all together.
4. And today I will pick a small one to round this out. The end of 100 degree days here. From October to April, the Phoenix area can’t be beat weather wise. But From May to September, you really question whether humans were even meant to live here. Last weekend was the first really beautiful weekend, and this coming weekend promises more. I am extremely grateful for that.

It looks like the theme this week is comfort. All of the above are things in my life that bring me comfort. That comfort makes it easier to deal with discomfort that comes along. So, I pass it to you – what’s one thing that you are grateful for today that brings you comfort?

I’m a teacher.

I don’t mean ‘I have a job teaching’ (although I do.) I mean, I am a teacher at heart. And I really wanted to share what needed to be taught most.

What I see is a gap…The problem with being a classroom teacher is – you teach your wonderful students one subject for a year, then they move on. But there’s no, “what does the real world look like?’ class.

So many of my students march off into the world knowing subjects, but not life. They have social media – but we all know that isn’t real life. It’s not going to help them see how to build their own lives.

At first, I thought this was going to be more of a ‘how to adult’ site. But teaching that requires more interaction with my students than a blog would provide. So I decided I would start here with a snapshot of my life. An ‘adult’ life. The things I think of day to day, the things I manage day to day. And, more importantly, why.

How and Why I choose to eat/cook/feed my family the way I do.

How and Why I manage my money.

How and Why I drive a 13 year old car.

How and Why I choose how I take care of my health.

How and Why I … whatever else I think of.

Because seeing it in action, and choosing to take what resonates with you and leave what doesn’t, that is how a person figures out their life. I’m a real person with a real life. It isn’t always pretty, it isn’t the most glamorous, exciting, or fast-paced. But it’s real. It’s authentically mine. And my life makes me happy.

If I help even one person get to an ‘adult’ life that makes them happier, this blog is totally worth it.

One of the things I try to do is save money where ever possible in ways it doesn’t matter to me so that we have the money to spend on the things that really do matter. So I am adopting a weekly habit of my favorite blogger (Kristen over at thefrugalgirl.com) and posting 5 things I did this week that saved me money on the small stuff. Because saving a few dollars a day adds up.

1. We picked up three rolls of wrapping paper from the curbside ‘big trash’ of a neighbor. As my 11 year old and I went for a walk around the block this morning, we found 3 rolls of completely unopened Christmas wrapping paper in the trash pile on the curb! Since we are big on excessive wrapping around here, this was a true win.
2. We used a gift card for dinner on Friday night. Every other week my 11 year old has a music practice right around dinner time, which means one of us has to take him to and from each week, totally interrupting dinner prep. We have started a weekly tradition of taking a gift card from the stash and going out to dinner for cheap/free those nights. This week we went to a wonderful Mexican restaurant we didn’t even know existed until Friday, Blanco Cocina. The food was excellent (I had the sweet potato tacos, and they were amazing!) we got to eat outside on a beautiful evening and best of all, I saved $50 off dinner. Plus, I took all the leftovers home and I got two more meals out of them. Double frugal win.
3. This last week I have focused on using 1 thing out of my freezer every day to either include into dinner or some other meal. This is reducing my grocery bill, and preventing food waste – a major pet-peeve of mine. So far we have used, chicken thighs, corn, kale from the garden, bananas, almonds and a pastry from a fund-raiser I bought from one of my students. Not all at once, of course. But I am making progress towards an emptier fridge and less food waste.

4. I planted seeds. This is a frugal win for later when the harvest comes in. I have a vertical planter on my back patio that I adore and I planted carrots and beets yesterday for harvest in a couple of months. (For the record, I live in the Phoenix metro area, so this is the beginning of the growing season…or one of them. It’s a weird place to be a gardener.)

5. I celebrated over 100,000 miles on my car! One of the most frugal things anyone can do is not buy into the ‘new car’s are better’ mentality. My car is over 13 years old now and just hit 100,000 miles and I am absolutely ecstatic about that! My car has been paid off for a really long time, so right now it’s just maintenance and gas and my car costs are super low.

This exercise is harder than I thought it would be. With any luck, next Tuesday I can have even more excellent frugal wins big and small.

What did you do this week to save money?