Yum! Freezer food :)

I have finally succumbed to the fact that there is no way that I am going to be able to cook for myself each and every night of my life. See, I like cooking, but I have a problem with required routines. In fact, there are some days that I would rather go without dinner than actually prepare and cook a meal. This is definitely a personal weakness, but I figure if I can find a way to accommodate for it, it doesn’t have to be a problem.

So, this entry is going to come about in two parts.

1) My obsession with the Mac recipe organizing program called Yum! (something that came about long before my compulsion to actually cook food) and 2) My new fascination with foods that can be cooked ahead of time, frozen and actually enjoyed once reheated.

Yum!

I love this program. You can copy an ingredient list from a webpage and simply press the “paste ingredients” button and it automatically fills in all the ingredients in the formatting that works for the program. If you put in how many servings the recipe makes, it even has a feature to convert your recipe to work for more or fewer people. Finally, you can choose recipes and have it create your shopping list for you!

Now, I found this program a while back and recently discovered a new version. Yum! is free and actually seems to work better in some ways (recipes can have multiple category labels for one thing–this may be a glitch in the newer version). You can download it here. However Yum (no exclamation mark–they seem to have lost some enthusiasm as they’ve gone corporate) costs $26 dollars after a 15 day free trial. This is the latest version of the program and, as it is a good program, it may be worth the money. The real incentive to buying Yum is that there is a syncable iPod Touch app. This allows you to bring your recipes with you and create a shopping list on the go–without printing anything out! If you would like to try Yum, you can find it here.

Freezer Food

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. There was a time that I honestly ate mostly freezer meals, take out and pasta. This is not healthy, it’s not economical and often it’s not even all that good! I do enjoy cooking, but I’ve become accustomed to the convenience of simply microwaving a boxed meal and I detest cleaning dishes every single day! Also, whenever I am committed to pushing through and finishing the job of grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up, there is always the inevitable happenstance of spoiled food that I just couldn’t eat or cook quite fast enough.

I am currently accumulating as many freezable recipes as I possibly can in the next 15 days. Eventually I’d like to buy the new version of Yum, but until then I need to use the free trial to fill my iPod with as many as I can possibly find.

So I leave you with some questions:

What are your favorite recipes that freeze well?

and

Is there a recipe that I should just have on hand?

(hint: Mom, I’d like your recipe for your special soup and tuna noodle casserole, Nessa, I’d like the savory muffins and Aunt Peggy or various Ward family members I’d like Uncle Trevin’s Pizza recipe )

If you don’t want to put the recipe in the comment, but would like me to have it feel free to email me (you should be able to find my email on my Facebook if you don’t already have it)!

-K

Need to find a place for everything, because everything is most definitely not in it’s place

So, I tried to make myself accountable. I really did.

A week (or more) ago, the title of this entry was my facebook status. The idea was that I would keep it so until I actually had solved my problem. I’d hoped that little bit of embarrassment that comes with putting things out there and my recent compulsion for letting everyone know what I’m doing at all times would help me to actually get this done. In reality, I’m sure no one really noticed the status and I finally just gave up.

Still, the idea behind this well-articulated statement is still a priority and I do plan on getting this done… eventually. I want my room presentable and available for get-togethers with friends as well as a place that seems more like home.

What I need for this to work:

-Ideas for storage of certain items –> actual storage for these items

Really, that’s about it.

So friends and family, this is a test to see if anyone is actually reading this thing!

How do you store or organize your books, make-up, magazines, extra food (we have no pantry in this apartment), papers, craft supplies, clothes, DVDs and technological paraphernalia?

I welcome anyone’s comments. I really need it.

-K

The Neat Company

So I guess that this going to become a bit of a tech blog, but don’t worry, it won’t last forever–hence the name “Random Ramblings.”

I recently came across a website called “Uncrate;” a site that displays items that are for sale. Now this is a dangerous website for me because as everyone knows, I love to shop. However as most of the items on the website are too expensive, free or not at all interesting to me, I shouldn’t end up actually spending too much money. Still, after seeing a specific product, I felt it was worth a mention in this blog.

The Neat Company - NeatDesk Scanner and NeatWorks 4.0

The item in question is the NeatDesk Scanner. This product is exactly what I have been looking for to organize my life. Mom can attest to this as I already told her the secret to my crazy organizational system that I am planning on using when I teach. This product allows you to scan and back up anything that you want (equal to or smaller than a normal 8×11 piece of paper of course).

This means that you can scan all of those papers in your house, those receipts that you get when you shop as well as anyone’s business card. The scanner scans both sides in color (worth the high price already in my book) and then uses text recognition software to upload the information into an organizational software program.

The great thing about this software, in my opinion, is that it allows you to stow away all of those old papers for easy reference. I have always had trouble organizing anything in real life, but if you look at my computer, you will see that it’s a whole different story. I thought I might scan my documents into my computer and then organize it there, but NeatDesk took it a giant leap forward. The best part about it is that  it makes the task simple for anyone to do.

Edit: I accidentally submitted the first sentence without finishing the post. Oops. Also, this took me a long time to write, so I’m going to submit this now. Hopefully it makes enough sense.

2nd edit: I reread it and fixed some typos/formating/etc.