Week of November 4

Caleb started a new job this week.  His other job quit having work for him to do so he’s now working for UPS.  It will take some adjusting for both of us, but in the end it will work out better for him than his old job.  

This past Saturday I was laying on the couch and started noticing one of my houseplants starting to shake.  That does happen a lot because our apartment tends to shake if the wind blows the right way or if a big truck drives past. (Side note: one time when I still worked early mornings at Target, I came home one morning and turned on the show Numbers. I started dozing off and all of a sudden a bomb went off on the tv right as a big truck drove by.  Talk about special effects!)  But this time it lasted quite a bit longer than normal.  I asked Caleb if we were having an earthquake and he said it was probably just the wind, but the tree next door wasn’t moving enough for winds strong enough to shake the apartment that much.  Turns out, there was a 4.3 magnitude earthquake in eastern Kentucky.  Crazy!  That’s the second earthquake I’ve felt in my life, and hopefully the last.

Saturday I also wanted to do some baking.  I started off making 3 apple crisps from the bags of apples I have in the freezer.  I was looking over the recipe after I had slid all of them into the oven and noticed that I forgot to put flour in the topping.  I’m hoping that it will turn out just fine.  I mean, can you really go wrong with just butter, sugar, and oatmeal?  Then I made some peanut butter blossoms.  You know, those peanut butter cookies with the sugar coating and the Hershey kiss on top?  Well, I pulled them out of the oven and they were as flat as could be.  I called my mom telling her all about my failure and she helped me figure out that only put ¾ cup of flour in instead of 1 ¾.  There I went again forgetting a whole cup of flour.  I guess I was trying to be gluten free or something.  I redeemed myself by successfully making another batch with enough flour except this time I burnt the bottoms of them.   :-(  I considered it a slight victory over my last attempt though.  And they still got gobbled up without much judgment by my small group. 



The picture didn't look blurry in my camera. Sigh.

Sunday morning (I guess technically this one would go in next week’s blog, but, eh, just some bonus material for you) Caleb got to preach at church.  He had to do it for his preaching class, but he still loves to preach any chance he gets.  He’s pretty much my favorite preacher. :)  

Here are some other things I whipped up this week.  I’m trying to figure out how many foods I can make from scratch to cut back on some costs, and because I enjoy doing it (not to mention how many things are healthier for you without all of the preservatives, but I’m not that big of a health nut to dwell on such topics, I’m more of a penny pincher). 

Homemade Hamburger Helper! 

I scored some 50 cent boxes of pasta a couple of weeks ago at Kroger.  I’m almost embarrassed by the amount of pasta we have in our pantry, but hey, cheap pasta.  I found some recipes for homemade hamburger helper and repurposed some old Starbucks Frappuccino bottles thanks to my parental units.   

Homemade Velveeta! (mostly to use in aforementioned homemade hamburger helper) 

 

This stuff is actually pretty easy to make.  You pretty much just turn shredded Colby jack cheese into American cheese using the food processor.  I nibbled on it a bit after it set and it doesn’t taste as creamy as Velveeta, but we are putting it to the test tonight in some cheesy broccoli casserole.  This isn’t much of a cost saver since real cheese is so expensive compared to velveeta, but I think it’s fun to make.  Also, if I could ever score a deal of a big hunk of cheese that I could even shred myself, it would most likely be a money saver.

Oh, and Caleb picked me this flower from a parking lot the other day.  :-)  He's cute.

 

 

That's all.  :-)