I must be feeling hungry because I can’t seem to get my meal plan plan out of my head. More than just planning out a menu for the year, I want to make dietary changes for my family. By starting now I can make tweaks early to slowly acclimate everyone off of the overly processed and onto the minimally processed foods.
The Rough Draft
As I said in the goals post I want consistency but variety. I think the best solution to that would be to divide the week into different proteins per day.
Sunday- Chicken
Monday- Legumes
Tuesday- Pork
Wednesday- Left Overs
Thursday- Try A new recipe
Friday- Seafood
Saturday- Beef
My 52 week plan will be seasonally sorted. Each season will be 13 weeks. The months to roughly include:
Summer as June, July August
Fall as September, October, November
Winter as December, January, February
Spring as March, April, May
Some Fine Tuning
I feel that would be a good start. I may end up with no left overs and then I will have to figure something out but this is a good beginning to build on. At some point soon I will sit down and start sorting through my pinterest pins and compiling the recipes to try. Label them and make a jar to draw at random. If the recipe is a success then it will be added to the yearly rotation. That will take some of the pressure off of picking a pin on the fly and trying to find one that sounds good. Someday I hope to raise rabbits so that will likely fill the “left overs” void.
I want to factor in winter soups and stews in the cold hardy months, I would like summer recipes to be cooked on a grill as much as possible. I think I would like a weekly dessert to be included in the meal plan. Something seasonal and fun to make together. I am trying to spend more quality time with my family after all and my hope is that cooking will bring us together.
But I don’t want a daily dessert. If you have a treat everyday (I am writing this very hypocritically right now as I have been gorging myself on Christmas candies every time something is within arms reach) it makes it less of a treat. It is during the days without the dessert that we will miss is and then appreciate it even more then next time. It also helps me to savor and enjoy the treat when I finally do get it. With the right treat I will dance. Seriously.
Consistency but Variety
I always want to keep the try something new day. Should I ever reach a day where I run out of recipes on pinterest I will likely put regional food choices in a jar to draw names of. Like Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Hmong. What a better way to try things I never would have tried before. I can list the top 5 recipes on the card that google recommends and when I have tried all 5 I will pull the card. Simple. And then it will likely give me recipes that are authentic.
I learned a lot of differences in cultural food when I was in nursing school. We had potlucks all the time and we had a big mix of cultures in our class of 30. I was able to try so many new things and IT OPENED MY WORLD. I had no idea there were so many other varieties of food. Not everything I ate was a winner. Some foods were almost traumatizing to eat. But it was a nice experience regardless. Besides people eat gross stuff on purpose. I have seen videos of people eating gross/good jelly beans in a Russian roulette style game. I would rather risk my palate on healthy home cooking rather than artificially flavored processed sugar. Worse case scenario, the recipe is NEVER made again.
Plus since this IS a blog, I can always take recipe suggestions too. Receive reader recipes and then review my experience. Ease of cooking, flavor profile, ect. That would be an excellent way to get a variety. But for now there is no variety. It is all junk. Trying to just finish the remaining food prior to leaving. Avoiding new grocery shopping as much as possible. A few more weeks and the life plan crack down begins.
-Cait
I love learning even though I hate (strongly strongly dislike?) school. I feel a deep satisfaction when I end the day with more knowledge then I started it with. I do believe that ignorance is bliss. Once you know something it can’t be unknown. Starting a conversation with me by saying “I have bad news” leaves me sick to my stomach. Would I rather not hear it? Do I REALLY want to know? I always buck up because on the flip side of ignorance being bliss is the fact that knowledge is power. Which was a likely longer than necessary tangent to lead up to my learning goals for the new year.
It doesn’t even feel like 2019 is about to begin. But it is. I have had so many changes over the last year. But this is not a “dwell on the past” post. This is a “look to the future” post. And with this post, I will bestow upon the masses the powerful knowledge of my new years resolution to do list of sorts.
As I write this post I am sitting on my bed in my cozy room in my home in Oregon. Here I shall live for 7-10 more days. By new years day I will be moved out and living with my grandparents. I will also be unemployed. Womp womp womp. But this is not a sad story. I will be staying with my grandparents so I can get some quality grandma time (and post holiday remaining treats, grandmas always have treats). They also want to get great grandbaby time. I may be cute, but I don’t hold a candle to my baby. And after my 2 week visit I will be moving back to Japan. Yes back. A story for another day. The plan for Japan is to plan. Plan as much as we can and read as much as we can. We should be there for 6ish months. Military life gives no concrete timelines. So this list is a running tally of what I would like to start on/ work on/ learn about for 2019 to help us get to our ultimate 10 year plan endgame.
I would like to try to plan my life in 52 week increments. Which sounds crazier when I type it out like this. I would like to basically divide tasks in my life to break things up but also to coordinate tasks. Yea. That sounds confusing. For example, I want to write out a 52 week meal plan for my family. I would like to try new foods (theme night to try more foods from other countries), I would like to make family favorites (pretty sure I make at least 1 lasagna a month). I would like consistency but variety. Pretty sure that is an oxymoron but I am rolling with it. I would also like to grow my own food someday so I would like a seasonal meal plan that has fresh food for the season and uses hopefully my preserved foods in the off season.
I would like to coordinate a garden schedule to the meal plan schedule. With staggering the seed starts to extend growing seasons on certain plants. But I have to first learn about plants. I need the menu to determine what to grow and when and what I even can grow in our zone.
I want to learn more about how to draw architectural plans. I am picky. Well, I would like to think of myself more as particular. I want to know that good choices are being made with quality over quantity being a contributing factor. I want to consider longevity for our family as well as growth potential. I have been pinning on pinterest for YEARS so I have a lot of wants. And to get them all packaged into a neat little bow will take time. And patience. Time I have, patience however comes and goes. (I also want to owner build as much as I can so the more I know and understand the easier that will be too)
I want to grow my blog. I want to help people. It’s pretty much why I love being a mom and a nurse. This is just another way to do that. By helping you!
I know that our family will be moving again sometime in the summer so I will need to find housing. Problem…we don’t know where yet. But it will still be a 2019 goal.
I want to learn about raising chickens for meat and chickens for eggs. I also want to learn to raise rabbits for meat (and fur, might as well learn to tan the hides so nothing goes to waste). I would like to switch my pets to a raw diet once we are reunited after Japan and raising meat animals will help significantly with cost reduction and will reduce meat waste during culling (not that I would waste it anyways but still).
If I am going to raise these animals I would like to learn how to build their shelter. I feel like this is a smart choice over buying a kit because the materials will naturally be higher quality. (I have felt cardboard more structurally sound than some of the coops I have seen) But any troubles we encounter we should be able to modify the structures. I want solutions to my problems, not just problems. Knowing how something was made makes modification easier (this applies to building our dream home too)
I would like to spend more quality time with my family. This is a big big BIG point in our 10 year plan and all steps lead to us spending more time together. Self sufficiency leads to quality time together in my opinion. Is it hard work, yes! 1000% yes!! But it’s good! I want to garden together as a family. I want to take care of our chickens together building the memories of collecting our eggs. I want memories in my kitchen of cooking breakfast with my family of eggs that were just collected. I would love to be standing over my stove cooking, while my husband chops ingredients and my daughter mixes in a bowl. Time together. Mutually contributing to the families wellness.
I would like to truly write out my 10 year plan. Right now it is an arbitrary deadline I have placed on myself and I feel like we are going in the right direction but laying it out will allow me to know for sure. I am a visual kind of gal which is also why I think blogging will be a good outlet for me since I can add pictures and videos and sounds. I make pop culture references all the time and not everyone gets them but throw in a picture and suddenly everyone remembers exactly what your talking about.
And last on my list for the night (morning?) is to travel Japan and not waste the other opportunity I have there. So I guess I want to make a bucket list too. But telling you all about my travels I am hoping motivates me to get out and explore more. I am a homebody. This is why the idea of a farmstead doesn’t deter me. It sounds amazing.
Enjoy the pictures of my titterpittens (cats) I miss them already and I haven’t even left yet.
-Cait
The weather gives me, what I feel, is a good excuse to bum out. I should be getting up from the computer and continuing the packing and tidying to do list. I still have more items to pair down and pack. I hate packing, I hate moving. But that’s life. The whole world is ever changing and this girl can adapt. At this point in my life I can no longer count the number of times I have moved. But being a military spouse has gotten me even more accustomed to moving. I am less than 30 days away from once again moving from the continental United States for Japan. I lived there briefly for a year. I traveled around and ate mostly. Mmmm. Then I came back to work. Can’t risk losing my nursing license! I worked waaaay to hard to get it. I now have plenty of time under my belt that going back won’t be an issue in that regard but there are others. The job market is pitiful in Yokosuka, Japan. Hence the having to come back to find work. Several things worked against me and my job prospects. I don’t speak or read or write Japanese. I attempted to teach myself but it was no luck. I retained a few words and mannerisms to get by without being a stupid american tourist. The military hospital that everyone suggests i work at isn’t hiring. Maybe once or twice a year. The amount of nurses local to Japan and around the world hoping to get that job is astronomical. I am an LPN and I was prepared to take anything however so were RNs and NPs. My hopes were dashed. Next plan…Teach English! And the research into that lead me to “if I am desperate to get away, this could work but there is no money here” by the time i factored in childcare costs and train fare and whatever taxes may have been removed depending on how the student was obtained would leave me breaking even at best. Then my plan was to do a home based business. I can cook, I can crochet, I can quilt, I can bake, in all honesty I can do anything I put my mind to. *Hi Blog* However the base was in flux with leadership changes and policies changed with how home businesses work and the stipulations. Most people who were already approved remained grandfathered in, but new applicants were lost to the mists of time. Which lead our family to decide that the best thing for us financially was to return to the states and work and save save SAVE. (I am not good at saving. I am sure my husband could attest to the fact that if spending was an Olympic sport I would get the gold every time.) Regardless, I accomplished a lot in the time I have been away and now were are in a place where reuniting my family is once again a possibility. So now I am finishing my remaining 2 weeks at my current job and then 2 weeks after I will be back in Japan with my husband. So for now I am cleaning, and packing, and planning the next steps. Oh, and Christmas is coming. No pressure.
-Cait
I feel compelled to start by saying I don’t have a farmstead or a farm. But that is the goal. The 10 year plan as they call it. I have a general idea of what I want to achieve within that time frame. Just a general idea. No organization. No lists. Nothing written down. Just an idea and too much time on pinterest. The plan, or goal, or dream, is to log the steps that I am taking and the progress I am making. Maybe the nurse in me is manifesting since it’s quite well known that “if it wasn’t documented, it wasn’t done”. So this would be a good way to chart all the happenings. A lot of my goals are to learn new skills, travel more, complete some craft projects that have been dragging on for way too long. But it would be beneficial to actually take the time to list it all and organize an achievable plan to accomplish it all. Which ideally would come to fruition after the new year. My new years resolution can be to blog consistently. Weekly? Between now and the new year I need to determine what a blog means to me, where I hope this blog will go, and how to get it there, how I want to communicate and how I want the site laid out. Not an easy task for someone with this level of indecisiveness. All the blogs I’ve read and vlogs I’ve watched all say the same basic principals when it comes to how to start a blog, which is, “just start”. So here I am world. Not knowing what to say or how to say it but giving it a shot and trying anyways. I am a big believer that it will all work out in the end.
-Cait