I installed a to-do list app on my server called “Tracks“. I give it 10 to 14 days before I give up using it because I have to keep pushing my tasks back because I can’t keep myself motivated enough to actually do stuff.

Barton and I are going to Traverse City tomorrow.

Yesterday I ate a bacon cheeseburger & fries for lunch, and 2 english muffins with pb&j and half a dozen jelly beans for dinner.

Today I ate a bacon cheeseburger & fries for lunch, and an 8oz sirloin steak w/ onion straws and mashed potatoes & gravy for dinner, followed up by another dozen or so jelly beans. At the dinner restaurant my iced tea tasted like soap to me so I asked the waitress for ice water instead.

OH THE MUNDANITY.

I’m also feeling accomplished about cooking at home more often. The last few weekends I’ve managed to cook at least 2-3 meals at home each weekend. While that doesn’t sound like much, its huge for us because 3 meals cooked at home equals 1 meal going out, in terms of cost.

Speaking of costs, I’m also revisiting getting a solid budget put together. Its hard to do, especially when your $outgo exceeds your $income every single month. Since before I started working at LW I have not been able to make it one month without adding to my credit card debt, and that is really sad. However, with the help of some unexpected extra $income I got about a month ago, I may be able to break that trend. May being the keyword here. We’ll see.

Making beef barley soup/stew today. Barton found the recipe online somewhere, and I’ve slightly modified it so that we get a nice big crockpot full.

5 small-to-medium potatoes, chunked
a cup of chopped celery
1-2 cups of frozen mixed veggies (peas, carrots, corn, green beans)
2 small-to-medium white onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
a pinch or so each of oregano, basil, and bay leaves (apparently I only had ground up bay leaves in my spice rack – the recipe calls for whole so it can be discarded later)
a bit of ground pepper
(and this is where the light fixture nearly fell on my head – this’ll be in the next post)
4 cans of low-sodium beef broth (14.5 oz cans)
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
~1.5 lbs of beef roast, cut into chunks – aka “beef for stew”
2/3 cup barley

Brown beef chunks in a little oil in a large skillet. Combine all other ingredients in a large (5-6 qt) crockpot, then add beef. Cook on high 4-5 hours. Since I’m using ‘quick’ barley, I’m waiting to add it until about an hour before the cook cycle is done so it doesn’t get mushy.

Right now, its just about 1.5 hours into the cook cycle. We’ll see how it turns out tonight.

(The next day)
Okay then. Notes for next time -
Try cooking the onions/garlic in the skillet with the beef chunks
Skip the tomatoes
Use chopped fresh carrots and cut the potatoes into smaller chunks
Skip the frozen veggies and use some other fresh veggies (fresh peas, peapods, green beans maybe?)
Use less barley (I put in about 1.5 cups instead of 2/3 of a cup which at the time didn’t seem like a lot but ended up overwhelming it somewhat)
MOAR SPICES. The smell was amazing but for some reason did not translate much to taste. Maybe try a packet of “slow cooker roast” seasonings instead.

I don’t drink pop (soda, coke, carbonated-non-alcoholic-beverage-with-artificial-and/or-natural-flavors) anymore because it makes my body go whack. Sugar (well, in pop its most likely to be high-fructose corn syrup) makes me jittery. Extra caffeine in coffee or pop magnifies that effect, and also makes me cranky and unable to function once it wears off.

So, I drink iced tea. I get a little bit of caffeine so I can function, and it has a subtle tea-taste. I can’t stand sweet tea. It tastes like sugar-water. However, at this point maybe I ought to switch to just plain water to keep myself sane.

The dishwasher/sink saga continues.. a couple weeks ago I decided to call the apt complex office to see what their progress was on getting a new seal for our dishwasher, since when it leaked in late January I was told that the maintenance guy who cleaned the seal the day before filled it up with water and that was what leaked out on the floor/carpet in our kitchen/dining room. Turns out that wasn’t the case at all – their new story is that the drain pipe backed up, filled up our kitchen drain with water, which then backed down into the dishwasher and filled it with water, which then leaked on the floor since it overfilled the dishwasher. They said that they ended up snaking the drain then and that is why we haven’t been hearing the drain gurgle and having the upstairs neighbor’s dishwasher foam back up in our left kitchen sink since that time. However, a couple days ago I started hearing gurgling noises again, so I think I’m going to call them and say something like – “Hey, our kitchen sink is gurgling again.. please remember the last time we warned you about this, we had water all over our dining room carpet despite all reassurances from maintenance that the drain was working fine.”
The dishwasher itself seems to be working alright. It does still leak a small amount of water when running it, but just putting a towel under the door sops it up. The last time the maintenance guy was here I told him about the burning smell coming from it, and sure enough there was a plastic lid and several plastic spoons melted onto the heating element which he removed.