Friday, March 11, 2011

Company Girl Coffee 3.11

Well, I guess I will get a post in today, contrary to what I said yesterday. I am still feeling pretty rough and I wasn't able to sleep last night due to one child or another being awake and not feeling well. But at the moment, the only thing plaguing most of the children is a cough. There were no incidents of bodily fluids being expelled in an undesirable manner, no fevers, just the cough. Well, I have a fever, but I think all four kids will be able to attend school today.

I have been attempting to lose weight recently. I started in earnst on February 7th of this year and so far, I have lost 18.5 pounds! That is incredible and I am so encouraged by that! I still have a long ways to go yet, but I feel like I have gotten off to a great start already. I am really pleased. My largest weight drop actually happened just this past week and a half when I lost 5.5 pounds. It was a lot at once and it wasn't necessarily intentional either. I think it was just that I have had a lot of anxiety lately and plus, I was starting to come down with something, so I'm sure that factored in as well.

My house is a disaster area today and I will probably only be doing a minimal amount around the house today, unless I start to feel much better very soon. I found a number of different recipes last night for making homemade furniture polish. I decided to try one out last night that called for 2 tsp. olive oil (or canola oil or whatever oil you use to cook with), 2 tsp. of vinegar mixed with 32 oz. of water. I have a bottle of extra virgin olive oil in my cupboard that I don't use because I don't like the flavor, so I used some of that along with some apple cider vinegar that was under my kitchen sink. The bottle of vinegar is a 32 oz. one and it had very little left in it, so I emptied the vinegar into another smaller container and then mixed up the polish in the vinegar bottle.

My kitchen has a LOT of wood in it. Well, truly, my whole house has a LOT of food in it. Our house was built in 1964 and I'm sure the wood accents and such are original to the home. Anyhow, I took this mixture and poured some onto a rag and tried it out. I think it did an okay job on the areas where I tested it. The one thing about the mix is that just before applying it, you have to shake the bottle to mix the ingredients together well enough to use.

I also decided to look up some information about freezing different items. We have a lot of eggs and potatoes to use up one way or another and I discovered a few different things. The first one being that egg noodles are incredibly easy to make and at very little cost. Two, potatoes can be cut up into french fries or wedges and then seasoned and baked, allow to cool and the freeze in a freezer bag or other storage container. (I would use a freezer mate container from Tupperware myself.) The third item I discovered last night is that you can freeze eggs. All you have to do is take the eggs, crack them into a bowl and whisk them (much like you would if you were going to make scrambled eggs) add a little bit of salt and then place into a container to freeze. Who knew?! Oh, well, I suppose somebody did before they posted it on the internet. I would also recommend that if you are going to do that, you write on the container or on your label or tape how many eggs you used for the mixture. And the last item is that you can freeze milk. You just open it up, pour out a glass or so and then put the lid back on and place in freezer. When you thaw it out, just place it in your fridge and allow to thaw. You may want to give it a good shake when it is thawed though, as milk will sometimes separate in the freeze/thaw cycle.

A whole load of easy tips and tricks that will save money and time and is just good information to know. I even discovered a recipe for crackers, in the event that I would need to make some today for upset tummies. I love the research power of the internet!

Today I plan to rest as much as possible and see if I can get at least a little bit of work done around the house. If I don't get around to housework until Monday, I will be just fine with that too. The most important thing to me at this point is to take care of my family and to get better myself too.

Happy Friday to all of you and hope you are all well or at least on the mend. Here's to hoping my house(hold) will be on the mend soon as well!

ALSO - please consider making a donation and sponsoring my boys by clicking on the links under my banner above. They would really appreciate it!

16 comments:

  1. I hope you get some good rest today and recover from your sickness. Loved the furniture polish -- I've been getting into homemade cleaners a bit more lately. Also, a great recipe for fries -- cut the potatoes into wedges and put on cookie sheet (with lip). Sprinkle with olive oil, crushed garlic, sea salt, and pepper. Bake at 425 for 35-45 minutes, stirring occaisonally.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, welcome to Company Girls and thanks for stopping by. Congratulations on the weight loss, that is great! Keep up the good work and hope you get to feeling better soon. I cannot even imagine how busy your life must be with 4 precious kiddos. Blessings to you!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just stopping by to say that I hope you all feel better soon. I see you also found time to play with your layout some. It's different and I'm liking it. Glad to see you got in some weight loss this week. Sorry to see you missed your post on the group blog, though. If it's too much for you, just let me know. :) Feel better!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Welcome to Coffee Company girls. I'm glad you and your family are on the mend. Congrats on the weight loss so far this year! Way to go. Keep it up.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Freeze eggs! That's awesome thanks for sharing. We have a touch if "illness" here as well, hope no one else gets it. Hope everyone at your house feels better soon!

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Jen - I did get some sleep today. Thanks so much! I even got a decent 3 hour stretch of actual sleep before I got woken up! Can't go wrong with that! :)

    Love the fry recipe. I plan to make some tomorrow. I have a bunch of potatoes that I got on sale that I need to use up, which is why I was searching for that kind of thing in the first place. Your recipe looks super yummy!

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Cici - Thanks. Once I got a little bit of sleep today, I felt MUCH better! I couldn't even believe the difference in how much better I felt! Life is super busy with four kids, but I wouldn't have it any other way! They are all awesome blessings! Even if they do drive me crazy from time to time. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Katie - I know, I feel bad for missing it this past Wednesday. I will be back next Wednesday though. I was feeling horrible on Wednesday and kept thinking, oh, I'll get to it a little bit later and then, yeah, procrastination at its finest.

    I'm glad that you like the new layout. I thought it went really well with the buttons and banner you made for me. It was fun to play with it.

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Kathleen - Thanks so much! The last week, where I had a huge amount was the one week where I wasn't trying. (Go figure!) I mean, I wanted to, but it was the week that I tracked my intake the least and yeah, I dunno, other than the fact that I've been a bit under the weather and haven't felt like eating, I'm not sure what caused it. But I will definitely take it! :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. @Jen - I couldn't believe the whole thing about freezing eggs! That was incredibly good news to me because I have eggs that need to be used up or stored or something and this was just the thing. I hate wasting food and so this little tip is going to help me to be frugal as well. Gotta love that aspect of it too! :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Wow..that's a signifigant ammount of weight in a short ammount of time...good for you...wish I could lose abt 20 lbs.! I never thot of making the potatoe wedges ahead of time and freezing them..what a good idea...then it's just like the premade ones from the store...but you control what's on them...I'm trying to avoid canola oil because of a thyroid problem and canola is on or in everything that you buy! Hope you are feeling much better and thanks for stopping by!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Oh no! We were taking turns with one kind of bug or another over here the past 2 weeks too. I hope you all are feeling better soon.

    Yes, I have read all kinds of things about freezing food. I will have to try some more because it is much better than buying the frozen varieties from the store. I didn't know the egg one though.

    Take it easy, and have a restful weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  13. @secondofwett - I think that the actual weight loss in that time frame was too significant of an amount, but it's done.

    I didn't realize that potato wedges or fries could be made ahead and frozen for later. I have been trying to make things from scratch more often, because I want to control what is on them/in them and for weight loss purposes too. I also have a history of thyroid issues. But I've been borderline hypothyroid for about 8 years now, without medication. I get checked regularly but the doctor says that as long as I stay just borderline, he is okay with me not being medicated, which is really my preference. I'm just trying to improve my overall health, hoping that in doing so, it will help alleviate other issues as well. It might now, but it's worth a shot. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  14. @Joyceandnorm - Thanks for stopping by. Sorry to hear that you guys have been dealing with illness as well. Thank goodness spring is just around the corner, right? I think other than JoNo and Boo, everyone is pretty much doing better in the house right now.

    I was really happy to find the egg idea. We have a TON of eggs bought when they were on sale, and I was getting worried that I would end up having to throw them out if they got to their expiration date before I could use them up. Thankfully, between finding a recipe for egg noodles (which will go into some super delicious homemade chicken noodle soup) and being able to freeze them, I don't have to worry about it!

    ReplyDelete
  15. *laughs* Woman, you should have asked me. I knew all these tricks. Plus, I think I posted my fry recipe a while back. I just have to remember where I posted it to. I love homemade fries. Plus, as long as eggs are in the fridge, their expiration date is really just a suggestion unlike other foods. So glad to hear you guys are getting better.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Katie, I didn't know. :) Now I know who to ask, if you're available at the moment I decide to seek out knowledge about something. ;) I didn't realize the dates on eggs were just suggestions. I always wondered about that, especially with farm fresh eggs, since they don't come with a date. We don't have any farm fresh ones, but if we were to get some...

    ReplyDelete