long dark blues

As the title of my post indicates, I am giving myself a good ol' pat on the back for FINALLY overcoming my fear of my pressure cooker (it's ok to laugh) and using it TWICE today!  Not only did I soak some pinto beans overnight, but I soaked a couple cups of black beans earlier today to be used in this healthy and delicious-looking  Cheesy Chicken and Rice Bake  from TastyKitchen.com (thank you Pinterest for another awesome recipe).  I even snuck in a cup of frozen spinach to take the healthy points up a level. We shall feast on these leftovers for lunch this week, and I've portioned out my remaining beans for freezer storage.  Whenever I use beans, I like to give myself another pat on the back for discovering how easy and economical it is to buy dried beans, soak, cook, and freeze them instead of buying their canned cousins.  I love saving money, avoiding BPA/sodium from cans, and using dried beans in vintage Ball/Kerr jars as decor in our dining room. I give my

Today was one of those days that made me realize I've truly hit adulthood: totally had the opportunity to sleep in but got up early anyway so that I could review/compare Eric's employee benefits with my own employee benefits to choose which plan I should enroll in major excitement with day's plans of shopping for groceries (bonus: cheaply!) at Aldi's, food prepping, and tidying the house epic anger/frustration over two food items that had gone bad in my fridge, which we all know equals wasted money (bonus adult points here) On that note, I absolutely hate wasting food.  I honestly wanted to shake my fists at God and ask, "why?!" when I found that the lovely free-range whole chicken I'd given in to purchasing at Whole Foods had spoiled.  So much meat and chicken stock to waste... :( My pity-party didn't last too long as I wanted to salvage some of the spoiling vegetables in my fridge by making a lovely veggie stock.  I hate buying stock of

Whoo! After being out of the blogging habit for some time, I have been re-inspired to start back up. After a lot of change in the past 3 years (marriage, new jobs, moving, school, new church, etc.), I finally feel like things have settled into a 'normal' of some sort. I can't believe it took this long! So here we are, the first Sunday of December. I finally got our Christmas decorations out of storage and, considering we only have a small tree and very few small decorations, am excited to get into the holiday spirit with a little decoration crafting. I love the rustic, Scandinavian aesthetic and am hoping to make this: source: Nap Time Crafts  I've also been cooking a ridiculous amount of soups from scratch. I am a HUGE fan of Katie Kimball's Kitchen Stewardship blog -- thanks to her, I now make my own chicken stock and yogurt among other things. Lately I'll buy a whole chicken (yay Whole Foods discount!), roast it, pick off the meat and stor