Life

I’ve had something on my mind lately and I can’t shake it. I keep thinking about living life slower. Taking my time to do the things that I’m doing. Such as making dinner or even taking a walk. I mean does every dang walk have to be a power walk. Sure I need the exercise, but I think slowing down and enjoying the scenery is just as important. And, honestly it should be more than just the scenery from my front porch with a glass of wine in my hand. Yes, it’s true that I have no problem taking my time doing that.
I just keep thinking that the first 40 years of my life lived me and now it’s time for me to live life. Actually walk slower, talk slower, be more patient and enjoy the sound of a laugh or the sound of a song and actually hear the words. As for laughing the ZMan takes care of that for me on a daily basis. I often tell him he should do stand up comedy. He is by far the funniest person I know. I hope one day I can get him to try it, because I know he would rock at it. He can take the simplest story and turn it into a great hilarious adventure.
I know (now) that the early years of life (god I sound old) being the 20’s and 30’s, they are supposed to be busy with new jobs, new homes, new spouses (a couple of times) and babies. So, it’s perfectly understandable that you feel like life is living you. Which also makes sense to reason that after the kids have grown and doing their things, after you’ve worked 20 years or so and realize now that what’s most important about the job is benefits and retirement, settling into your home and realizing that you don’t need a new set of living room furniture every 3 years, just finding your style of living.
I don’t remember having big dreams of becoming…. Anything. I knew I would become something, but I wasn’t one of these people who knew early on she wanted to be a scientist or a doctor or an astronaut. All I ever wanted was to be happy. I always liked to write. I’ve been putting words on paper for many years. About a month ago, shortly after I started ZLifeBlog my Mother gave me a homemade booklet of poems that I had made her when I was a young child.
So it makes sense to me that I feel like after all these years I’m finally living my life. I’m married to the love of my life and we share similar interest and goals. Yes, I finally have goals for life that include more than just making the mortgage and car payment. It feels good to enjoy life so much now that I want to slow it down and really take it all in. I want to smell all the flowers and watch all the stars in the summer night sky with the ZMan.

This is life. This is the life I’m living, laughing and loving. The Z Way.

Y’all Take Care!

Lori

The Switch Has Flipped…

Now that it’s just the ZMan and I at home, I’m trying to cut back on the amount of food that I cook. I still want to cook enough to have leftover for lunches and perhaps to freeze a second meal for later use, which makes dinner time a breeze.

In combination with that I’m also trying to cut back on the amount of electricity we use. Not only because we are facing “another” rate increase in May, but because I’d rather keep as much of our money as we can, and it’s the right thing to do. Another form of waste I’m trying to cut out.

These two efforts have led me to use my toaster oven more instead of my conventional oven. It uses less energy, and smaller meals are by design a requirement.

The problem was I only had the one baking pan that came with the small oven, that was really getting a work out and limiting me to what I could cook.

Then I came across these smaller cast iron pans. You can see them on top of the toaster oven.

First let me tell you I love to cook in cast iron cookware. I love that it will go from stove to oven and that they will literally last forever. I even use my cast iron on top of the wood stove to cook.

I love that my kids will someday inherit my cast iron cookware and then their kids and so on…

Finding these little babies has allowed me to really open up the meal options while still using the toaster oven.

The toaster oven gets warm enough that I can even heat a side dishes on the top of it.

I love that (pardon the pun) the switch has flipped and I am always trying to think of ways to cut back and save, instead of just tossing it out, cutting it on, or buying a new one.

I’ll admit it does take quite a bit of planning, but thinking about a process instead of just jumping into it always works out best doesn’t it. Kind of like the measure twice and cut once theory.

Sure, I still have my impulse times that I shoot from the hip and make a stupid purchase, but they are a lot less frequent now which is allowing the hopes and dreams jar get a little more full.

Are you thinking of ways to cut back or perhaps to off set the electric company increase that’s coming? I’d love to know what your ideas are.

Y’all Take Care!

Lori

Friday Fun… Oh My!

I hope you’ve had a good week.

Here in Virginia we did have a warm weather week, however the rain and cooler temperatures are coming back in for the weekend and next week. YAY, NOT!!!

This weeks warmer weather did allow for some of the flowers to pop out, like these.

And, the warmer weather got the ZMan in the garden planting radishes, cauliflower and beets.

This weekend we are going to hopefully get our potatoes and cabbages planted.

I’ll also do a bit of spring cleaning this weekend. Windows, baseboards and floors… oh my!

Last Friday for our pizza night I attempted a deep dish pizza that turned out pretty darn good.

See….

Now, if I’m being honest the motivation behind this pizza was simply that I wanted to use my toaster oven instead of the conventional stove oven to cook it.

Save electricity = save money.

But hey, I’m glad my frugal ways kicked in because it was one of our best homemade pizzas ever!

It was so good, we’ll be having it again tonight.

I hope you have a fun Friday and a lovely weekend!

Y’all Take Care!

Lori

PS: After noticing my stove top in yesterday’s post picture, I can see that I need to “scrub” it this weekend too. Oh My 😉

Head In The Sand…

Have you ever not done something because you were worried about the out come and perhaps being let down by it? I know I have!

Last summer was when I really got into preserving food from the gardens. More than just the usual of canning tomatoes and green beans, I really broadened my skills by buying this book…

This book has a canning recipe for anything you could imagine. And, this book has paid for itself multiple times over by feeding me and the ZMan.

One of the canning recipes I experimented with was pickled red cabbage. The reason was mainly because we had so much cabbage in the garden, and I didn’t want it to go to waste.

It wasn’t a difficult recipe but it was time consuming.

The jars turned out beautiful, but I have to admit that these jars of pickled red cabbage have set in my pantry for about seven months untouched because I was worried that it wouldn’t taste good for some reason.

I worried I would end up tossing it out and all the time and effort that went into growing and preserving the food would be wasted, ultimately leading to disappointment.

All that is another way of saying I had my head in the sand over it.

BUT, last week when I made pork chops I decided to open a jar of our pickled cabbage.

I added it to a pan with a little bacon fat, celery seed, caraway seed and honey and heated it through as you can see here.

IT WAS AWESOME!!!!

It paired perfectly with the pork chops and the sweet potato in this meal…

We will be canning more pickled red cabbage this season, and I hope that my lesson is learned about sticking my head in the sand. I’m thinking at the very least I’m getting better about it because I took a chance and started this blog.

I suppose a chance for failure is just as easily a chance at success.

Y’all Take Care!

Lori