I was supposed to be implementing my goals?

 We've been sick. Really sick. And so, I've done almost nothing related to anything. Since we got sick two weeks ago we've gone out to eat twice and other than making some crackers and a couple of very simple dinners I've done almost no cooking at all. J has picked up the slack admirably and made dinner a number of times and spent quite a bit of time with the kids. On top of the plague that won't go away, our basement flooded following a weekend of modest snowfall followed by a few days of extreme rainfall. We live on a hill and not surprisingly, water tends to travel downhill. We had hoped to wait until summer to install a permanent sump pump and and all the attendant plumbing that is going to go with that but realistically we need to get moving on it now. I'm hoping to do our taxes this next week which will likely give us the means to pay for that as well as a wood stove. Our current primary heat is a wood furnace in the basement. It works well but consumes wood at an alarming rate and doesn't burn very cleanly. Also, the chimney is unlined, needs a fair amount of work, and runs right up through a corner of the kitchen. The wood stove will go in the living room. I'm looking forward to not having to go down to the basement to feed the fire all the time (although it is good exercise) and to being able to cook on it. I envision a pot of soup or stew happily simmering away on it a couple of times a week. When it comes time to remodel the kitchen we'll take out the chimney which will open up the kitchen nicely.

On a completely unrelated subject, J and I started putting dreadlocks in my hair right after thanksgiving. Most people would probably think this was an odd choice as I'm generally known for having a chin length bob that then exists for a year or two in various stages of being grown out before I get around to getting it cut again. I had considered dreads right after my first husband and I split but I was worried that it was simply a reaction to major changes in my life and opted not to do something quite so long term. The desire for them never fully went away though and I figured that 10yrs of longing was probably a fairly good indication that it wasn't a passing fancy. Unfortunately, the first time J and I did them, we did them too big and I had to take them out and start all over again. Once we started again it was very, very slow going. We destroyed a number of combs in the process and only got through about 1/3 of my hair. And there it has stayed in all its underdone glory. I'm sick of it. The roots haven't tightened up the way I wanted and it just keeps looking frizzier and frizzier. So today, I'm combing them out as best I can. I haven't given up on having them but I think that for a number of reasons we need to start from the beginning. I suspect that it may take us a couple of months to start them again but hopefully we can get my whole head done in a matter of days instead of months.

I'm headed up to Seattle tomorrow evening to share a weekend with two of my best friends and the girlfriend of one of them. It will be the first time since my kids were born that I've gotten to get together with both of them at the same time without any children along for the visit. I'm very much looking forward to it.Hopefully once I get back I'll be ready to get back into the swing of things and I'll have some progress to report.

2012 Goals- Food

Reading back through last week’s post I realized that I might want to unpick some of my reasons for choosing the goals I did. This week I’ll look at my food related goals.

Food Goals

1. Limiting eating out to once a month.

I have three main reasons for wanting to do this- Financial, health, and environmental. 

We cannot afford to go out more often than this. Even though we really shouldn’t we have been going out at least once and sometimes 3-4 times each pay period. Astonishingly enough, when you overspend in one area of your life, you’re effectively taking money away from other areas of your life. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be taking money away from things like our fuel and grocery budgets to fund going out, especially when where we’re going out is often not really good enough to merit having spent the money.

Our bodies really can’t afford to have us go out either. We don’t go out for fast food but some of our choices probably aren’t much better. We’re so careful about what we put into our bodies at home, choosing to eat a largely plant based diet with as much organic as possible and almost nothing processed, that it really doesn’t make any sense that we would put so much crap into our system when we go out. It makes so much more sense to mindfully choose one place to go out each month that will be both tasty and meet the expectations that we set for ourselves when we cook at home.  

We've made a commitment to eating foods that are, as much as we can manage, responsibly grown or raised so as to minimize the negative impacts on the environment. We also feel it is important to eat animals that are raised not only in an environmentally ethical way but also in a way that is as humane and healthy as possible for them. Eating crap food from restaurants that source everything through national food suppliers doesn't even remotely meet those standards. There are some very good local restaurants around here that source their produce and meats from local farms that responsibly grow and raise their produce and animals. They are however a bit more expensive and so take a bit more planning to be able to afford, especially if we plan on taking the kids.

2. Because we'll be limiting our going out, make sure I've made snacks and easy to travel food so we don't end up going out simply because we're starving and not at home. 

This seems fairly self explanatory. It is going to require a fair amount of consistent production of easy to travel with foods though. It is not uncommon for us to have to leave the house on short notice or to end up having to be gone longer than we initially planned. These are the situations where we have been most likely to end up going out.

3. Get back to making bread, crackers, and granola bars on a weekly basis.

Some of this goal stems from the last- bread, crackers, and granola bars are all great foods to have on hand when you’re out of the house. These are also ways for me to be able to eat certain types of foods. I can’t eat conventionally made breads because of the yeast and often they contain corn also. I can however eat many types of quick breads as well as my own home-started sourdough. Commercially made crackers are often made with yeast and corn as well and are not usually be all that good for you. I’ve found that homemade crackers are both really tasty and quite easy to make but have gotten out of the habit of making them consistently. I love granola bars and the kids do too but any way you look at them even the organic ones are not good for you and very expensive. I can make them infinitely healthier and more cheaply than anything I could ever buy.

4. Track where we're spending our food money. Continue to move as much as possible to local food sources including fruits and veggies, dairy, and grains. Limit those things that cannot be provided by local sources. Exceptions to include olive oil, Asian food ingredients that cannot be sourced locally, and nuts. 

I’ve never really tracked where we’re spending our food money. I do know that compared to 3 yrs ago far, far more of our food is local and/or organic. As of right now we get 80% of our vegetables from a local organic CSA. Another 5% is grown by us, which I hope dramatically increases over the next years as the kids get older and the garden becomes more developed. The last 15% is grocery store bought, pretty much never organic, and probably unnecessary. This year we will be getting a larger share from the CSA which we hope translates into not spending anything on store bought vegetables. Fruit is much more difficult. There are some things that we easily have access to through friends and family but much more that we have to spend more time sourcing. It’s almost impossible to find good sources for organically grown local fruit around here and it is for us, prohibitively expensive. This year I hope to find better sources for local organic berries and apples but I have resigned myself to conventionally grown local peaches and that I will probably have to supplement my homegrown tomatoes with conventionally grown ones from a local farm. We have our own pear tree and my parents have some apples and Italian prunes and none of those are ever sprayed. 

We’re joining a dairy CSA in March. It will give us a gallon of organic raw milk each week for the same price that we’ve been paying for a gallon of Organic Valley milk. We won’t be able to afford cheeses that are organic and local but we do buy most of our cheese and our butter from local producers. Our eggs have long been from a local farm and will remain so until we either have our own chickens or the CSA provides them.

We buy our grains and flours as much as possible from Azure Standard which is a natural and organic foods bulk ordering company. They are based in Oregon have their own organic farms for wheat and oats and a few other grains. I can easily afford to provide our family with quality grains and flours through them which makes it much easier for me to meet my goals of making my own breads and crackers.

5. Continue to put up as much food as possible. U-picks, trades, and canning/prep parties are good things. 

I managed to can jam, some tomato puree, pickled peppers, plums, and apple and pear sauces this last year. I would like to far more canning this year especially as I now have a pressure canner. I froze broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and berries. I need probably 4x as many berries and tomatoes as I got last year . I would like to can peaches this year also. We need to get a dehydrator which would give us another option for food preserving.

6. Renew my love for reasonable portion sizes.

I’m pretty sure this is self explanatory. I can go months where I really only eat what my body needs and then suddenly will start to creep back to the habit of snacking the entire time I’m cooking, eating seconds I’m not actually hungry for, and simply eating because something tastes really good even if I’m not actually hungry. I’m not an advocate of dieting but there is something to be said for eating foods that are nutrient dense, of very good quality, and in portions that are actually reasonable.

The New Year

Nothing too glamorous in this post. A little, okay maybe long, itemizing of my goals for this year and because I'm totally obsessive this way, organized by category.

Food

1. Limiting eating out to once a month.
2. Because we'll be limiting our going out, make sure I've made snacks and easy to travel food so we don't end up going out simply because we're starving and not at home. 
3. Get back to making bread, crackers, and granola bars on a weekly basis.
4. Track where we're spending our food money. Continue to move as much as possible to local food sources including fruits and veggies, dairy, and grains. Limit those things that cannot be provided by local sources. Exceptions to include olive oil, Asian food ingredients that cannot be sourced locally, and nuts. 
5. Continue to put up as much food as possible. U-picks, trades, and canning/prep parties are good things. 
6. Renew my love for reasonable portion sizes.

Household

1. Maintain and track budget
2. Get back on a regular cleaning schedule
3. Follow the 5-5-5 for reducing, reusing, and recycling from each room. Do again quarterly
4. Tackle mundane house projects that will vastly improve quality of life i.e. cleaning and organizing the basement, painting, and ultimately remodeling the kitchen. 

Consumption of non-food items

1. Buy nothing new that can be thrifted, traded for, or made ourselves. Exceptions are socks and underwear and Justin's work jeans. 
2. Prioritize making/building projects and do the most important rather than the most interesting (assuming they're not one and the same) first.This will help ensure that we don't end up buying something we need because we haven't gotten around to making it.
3. Set aside specific time each month for making small household necessities such as cloth napkins and mama and family cloths.

Garden

1. Deal with the front yard. Get it cover cropped so that it's usable next year. 
2. Get back yard weeded and try to keep in some reasonable order. 
3. Plan and plant a small but functional garden focusing on those things that we like to put up for the winter and don't get in large enough quantities or appropriate varieties from the CSA. Onions, tomatoes, peppers, pickling cukes, etc.

Homeschool Goals 

1. Be more mindful of the educational opportunities inherent in everyday activities. 
2. Involve Rosy Girl more in defining and planning her learning goals. 
3. Find creative ways to teach math that don't put me right over the edge.

Parenting

1. Continue to practice positive parenting and try to add more tools to my parenting toolbox
2. Find a way to work more effectively with The Master of All Things Wood rather than constantly working against each other when it comes to parenting.
3. Make a point of having consistent distraction free time with each kid.

Personal Goals

1. Independently study math towards the goal of being able to take MTH111 in the next 2ys and then Stats so that I can finally finish my degree. 
2. Finish acquiring my essential midwifery texts and study.
3. Practice piano on a regular basis again.
4. Finish at least one garment a month for myself including participating in the Colette Handbook Sew-along.
5. More consistent aerobic exercise as well as yoga and meditation. Find ways to involve the kids in them so that I'm not constantly having to put off doing them because I can't get time away from the kids.
6. Unplug from the computer more. This is a consistent problem for me. Limit of 1hr per day unless working on "school" or waiting on something truly important. 
7. Write at least one letter a month. This doesn't include thank you notes or other more obligatory forms of written communication.
8. Find a spiritual community.

I realize that to people who don't know me well, these seem like far too many and far too specific goals to actually be achievable but as most of them are things that I already do to some degree or have done, even all at once, it's not actually that unachievable. Mostly what I need is to make them habits again. Of course a key part of this is unplugging from the computer more. While I'm not just sitting in front of it all day, I do spend a fair amount of time back and forth on it all day long and I would imagine that if you added up all that time, it would probably amount to 4-6hrs a day. Just think of all the things I could do if I spent that time in other ways. This is also probably the most difficult goal for me as the computer is the only way I have of maintaining regular contact with some of the people I love best. I don't plan to drop the blog (although clearly it hasn't been a priority) but I probably won't post more than once or twice a week. I would like to use it to track some of my progress on these goals. And on that note, I should go do something that doesn't involve the computer, namely getting ready for a much anticipated few hours with friends we haven't seen recently.