Baked Oatmeal Goodness

Joining the Wagner Family has been wonderful in so many ways!  One of my favorites has been the new culinary experiences I've had which have included but are not limited to pickled beets, homemade pizza, squash, sweet potatoes, oven pancakes, homemade granola, and probably my favorite (after the pizza of course): baked oatmeal!

Now I enjoy oatmeal as much as the next person and had it often enough growing up but it wasn't "the most amazing breakfast ever!"  I never woke up and craved oatmeal.  So when I was presented with this for breakfast at Will's parents one morning I was happy to eat it but wasn't expecting anything amazing.

I was wrong and am happy to say so!  This was SO delicious and I loved everything about it.  The texture was soft gooey goodness in the center with crispy outer edges.  I think the first time I had it there were apples in it and the sweet, slightly spicy taste was phenomenal.  I was encouraged to pour milk over it and that made the experience even better.  I'm pretty sure I ate a couple helpings because it was just THAT good (as is everything my mother-in-law makes, though I'm still not sure about pickled beets).

At my bridal shower on Will's side of the family I received a wonderful gift that I use frequently:

It's a cookbook of recipes from Will's mom's side of the family.  There are so many wonderful recipes in here that I've tried and loved but hands down I was most excited about the granola and baked oatmeal recipes. 

Some time ago I got an idea from Pinterest (Personal Sized Baked Oatmeal with Individual Toppings: Gluten Free & Diabetic Friendly - as you will see, the recipe I have is not gluten or diabetic friendly...) about baking and freezing single serving sizes of baked oatmeal in muffin wrappers.   I really liked this idea and thought it would be a great supplement to our usual morning fare of cereal and granola.  Plus I just bought 10 small canisters of old fashioned oats for like $0.25/canister at Meijer so I had plenty of oats!

I love this recipe because it can be personalized in so many ways!  You can add strawberries, apples, nuts, bananas, chocolate chips, sprinkles, and on and on the list goes.  I had also just gotten some pumpkin from Meijer so I decided that would be a nice addition!  The basic recipe is as follows:

Baked Oatmeal:
4 eggs
5 cups old fashioned oats
1 tbs baking powder, plus 1 tsp
2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 cups milk

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs slightly.  Add oats, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, oil, sugars, and milk.  Mix well.  Put mixture into 9x13 pan.  Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.  Serve warm with milk, if desired.  Nuts, chocolate chips, and/or raisins may be added.  1/2 cup applesauce and 1/2 cup oil may be substituted for 1 cup oil.  Makes 10 servings

I actually just made a half recipe for each of my flavors because I don't have that much room in my freezer but each half recipe yielded 6 extra large sized "muffins" and 3 normal sized "muffins".  I also made a few changes:

Pumpkin Spice Baked Oatmeal Changes (remember this was for a half recipe):
I used 2 tbs vegetable oil and 6 tbs pumpkin puree because I wanted a stronger pumpkin flavor.  If you were doing a full sized batch you would use 1/4 cup vegetable oil and 3/4 cup pumpkin.  I also added 1/4 tsp nutmeg and reduced the sugars by 2 tbs each.  Lastly I added 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts.

Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal Changes (remember this was for a half recipe):
I used 1/4 cup of oil and 1/4 cup homemade cinnamon applesauce which would be 1/2 cup of oil and 1/2 cup of applesauce for a full sized recipe.  I chopped half a medium sized apple into small pieces and mixed that in with 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts.  I also reduced each of the sugars by 2 tbs each in this recipe too.

Pumpkin Spice Baked Oatmeal

Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal

I love my "Muffinaire" :-)  These are the normal sized "muffins".

This is also a pretty budget friendly meal.  I estimated it out to be about $0.35 per serving!

So this morning it was cold and windy and rainy and just plain yucky out so I decided that some baked oatmeal was just the thing I needed.  I unwrapped a Pumpkin Spice muffin cup, stuck (I initially wrote struck instead of stuck because as I'm writing this blog post I'm listening to the Tigers in Game 4 of the ALCS and Max Scherzer just struck out his 4th batter!!!!) stuck the oatmeal in the microwave for 2 minutes, liberally doused it with milk and ENJOYED!!!  It was so good that I almost pulled another one out of the freezer...  

Mmmm, this was SERIOUSLY good!

Back In The Saddle, As It Were

Today I got back in the saddle.  While I wish I were talking about riding a horse, something I enjoy doing, alas I am not talking about horseback riding.  I'm talking about the drug store coupon game.  

Back before I was pregnant with Liam I would hit up Walgreens, RiteAid, and occasionally CVS and come away with a nice haul.  I was, by no means, a shelf clearer, but I did pretty well attempting to be frugal with the money God blessed us with.  While I was pregnant I just seemed to be too tired to trek from Meijer (for regular groceries) to Walgreens to McCords (for great produce and meat!) to RiteAid so I quit the drug store game and stuck to two stores.  I didn't do nearly as well but it wasn't that bad either.  Once Liam was born I thought about starting up again but lugging his car seat in and out of stores was rather cumbersome and annoying.  Plus car seats don't really fit on the little carts often used at drug stores.

Recently a friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook of her excellent trip to Walgreens and it made me miss finding those deals.  Not only that, but as we live on one income I realized that we could stand to benefit from the free and almost free items you can often find at drug stores.   One of the drawbacks for a lot of people (especially since gas pole vaulted from $3.82 to $4.09 today!!!!) is the cost of gas to travel to different stores.  Thankfully for me RiteAid and Walgreens are both on my way to Meijer so it doesn't really take extra gas to stop there as long as they coincide with my trips to Meijer.  Plus now that Liam is riding in a cart like a big boy I no longer have to lug his car seat in and out of stores!

So yesterday I decided that I would join in the fun again and I did some serious coupon clipping.  Today I headed off to RiteAid (and Meijer) and I came back with this:

I know it doesn't really look like much but I was pretty happy with my first trip.  I paid $7.53 out of pocket for all of this and then got $6 in +UP Rewards to use on my next purchase.  Sigh, I love it!

As I mentioned on Facebook earlier, I am a Fantasy Football Draft Widow tonight so I'm off to dig into my ice cream (I had a coupon so I got Breyers Mint Fudge Brownie instead of Moose Tracks) and start up Pride and Prejudice!

A Happy Accident

Tuesdays are my crazy day.  That's not really saying a lot since I have a 7 1/2 month old who is a wiggly, giggly little guy but still...  On Tuesdays I do some volunteering from 12:30pm-4:30pm  and usually don't get home until 5:30.  Plus I also give a piano lesson from 6:00 until 6:30.  So on Tuesdays I like to go the "easy dinner" route. 

I had some leftover cooked chicken that I decided to use in a Mexican Rice Bake.  I've made this dish a million times in a variety of manners (rice cooker vs skillet, from scratch vs pre-packaged, etc) and all with great success.   Tonight I decided to use up a pre-packaged rice/spice mixture that I had gotten free at Meijer.  I started getting the rice going around 7:00 and figured, based on experience, that it would be ready for consumption around 7:30.  Not bad, all things considered!

Fast forward 20 minutes and I heard the tell-tale click of the switch on my rice cooker ticking up to "Keep Warm" from "Cooking".   I walked into the kitchen, lifted the lid and immediately knew there was something wrong.  The rice still looked small and when I gave it a taste test, sure enough it was still hard.  I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt, added more water, and flipped the switch back down to "Cooking".  Fast forward another 20 minutes and the rice was still small and still hard and I was annoyed because it was 7:40 and all I had to show for my (minimal) effort was a rice cooker full of food that could potentially crack a tooth. Sigh...

The Offending Rice

Trying to quickly flip through my mental cookbook and check the results against what I knew I had in my cupboards and fridge I decided that I would fry up some bacon and we would have BLT's instead.  I was pretty excited by this prospect because I do love BLT's.  But just then (Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles!  Anyone?)  I happened to glance over to where I store my produce and realized to my immense excitement that I had the makings of one of our most favorite meals: chicken, bacon, avocado quesadillas (courtesy of this blog)!!  Sweet goodness I was excited!  I went out to the garden, pulled some green onions to cook with the chicken and got to work. 

I added some ranch dressing to combat the lack of sour cream, it was pretty tasty!

I also added some garlic to the bacon grease when I fried the quesadillas, mmmmm!

Regrettably this meal isn't for the faint of heart clogged of artery because you're supposed to cook the chicken and onion in the bacon grease.  You also use it to fry up the quesadillas.  I'm sure there are healthier alternatives, but I haven't explored them yet because these are SO good as is!  So needless to say around 8:15 we finally sat down to dinner.  Despite the fact that I actually ended up making two dinners I was quite pleased with the delicious result!  Unfortunately I now have to go clean up my kitchen which looks a little like a disaster zone...

No-no Liam, no-no

I can scarcely believe that my little guy is 7 months old!  The time has absolutely flown and I'm sure it goes exponentially faster the older he gets.  There has to be some mathematical equation for that right? 

Look at that face, purely angelic right?

So recently Liam has been getting super curious about EVERYTHING.  I know this is the way of babies everywhere and in general I think curiosity is great, but it has forced me, in some circumstances, to bring out that word that is the bane of a child's existence.  NO!  "No Liam you can't eat the magazine.  No Liam you can't eat the bow from Grammy's birthday present.  No Liam you can't eat the kitty's tail." On and on it goes.  And the kid isn't even mobile yet!  I'm certainly going to have my hands full when he can actually crawl. 

Having to use the word "no" isn't easy.  What parent likes telling their "no"?  I know I don't really care for it and I certainly don't want to be a kill joy but the Bible says in Proverbs, "The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame" (Prov 29:15) and "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes" (Prov 13:24).  Time and time again in the Bible parents are instructed to lovingly discipline their children. 

"But he's only 7 months old, he doesn't do anything wrong yet" you say.  Ha!  If I didn't believe that that people were born with a sin nature before (which I did) I certainly do now.  When Liam was 6 months old he had his first play date with an adorable little guy around the same age who is the son of a friend of mine.  We sat them on a blanket outside and gave them each a toy.  Immediately they were stretching and grasping for the other one's toy.  And just this last Wednesday night at church in the nursery Liam was taking toys away from a sweet little lady sitting on the floor near him.  Now you tell me how he learned that, without any siblings or examples of that sort of behavior?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

I love my little man to pieces, and I want him to grow up to be an honorable, respectable, and respectful man who loves God, like his father.  That's going to take a lot of love as well as a fair dose of discipline and guidance.  There is this false idea perpetrated on parents today that it is wrong to set boundaries for your kids and wrong to say "no".  More and more often I am seeing the results of parents who never say "no" and to be honest it's scary.  What's going to happen when that child becomes an adult and someone finally tells them "no"?  They are going to be completely unequipped to handle that!  

That doesn't mean I'm going to be Mean Mama and tell Liam "no" all the time because, again, there's no joy in that, nor is it Biblical.  There's a fine line and it takes a lot of prayer and seeking God to walk that line and I intend to do just that.  God willing my son will learn that I tell him "no" because I love him and because I want God's best for him!

 

Bills, Bills, and More Bills!

It has been absolutely ages since I last posted.  I thought for sure that I would become a posting fiend once I started staying home with my little guy.  Pfft that is certainly not the case.  This whole mom thing takes up a lot of time and energy!  Long hours, sleepless nights, well not really the whole sleepless nights thing because I have a sleeping champ who sleeps 10+ hours each night, but definitely hard work that can't be constrained to a 9-5 job :-)

Not only that but I've been taking time lately to really take a hard look at our finances and try to get our financial lives organized.  I had been hoping to do that in the 2 weeks I was supposed to have off before Liam made his debut, but God had other plans and so I've been taking time lately to do what had been delayed. 

The Bible talks at length about money, finances, debt, lending, etc and I've come to realize that as a Christian it is very important to be a good steward of what God has provided for us.  He encourages us not to worry, "Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all." (Matthew 6:31-32 ESV).  But that doesn't mean we need to have a hands-off attitude either, "The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty." (Proverbs 21:5).  Verses like these encourage us to care for our finances.

When I was working I loved that I got paid on the same 2 days every month.  I knew I could count on my paycheck on the 1st and 16th of every month.  This was great because bills typically come on or around the same day each month.  Even though my paycheck went straight to the principle on our mortgage or into the savings account it was nice to have that security because the State of Michigan (Will's employer) pays ever other week.  Not the 30th and 15th, not the 1st and 16th, but every other week.  That means that sometimes he got paid 3 times a month, sometimes twice monthly, sometimes he got paid around when bills were due, sometimes he wasn't.  

I found this very frustrating because I wanted an organized schedule that didn't fluctuate. Further compounding my frustration was the fact that all of our bills were on automatic bill pay.  Don't get me wrong, I love with automatic bill pay and how easy it is, and the fact that there was no way I could forget to pay them but I didn't have any say over when bills were paid.  Plus we don't use a checkbook for pretty much anything anymore so my check register was virtually useless.

Enter a bill paying schedule :-) I've been pondering the merits of a family organization binder and things like that so I did some serious research and came across a blog about this family of 6 who lives on less than $28,000 a year (The Peaceful Mom).  I was reading her blog when I stumbled upon one particular entry in her series that resonated with me.  Each time her husband gets paid she sits down that day and decides where all of the money is going to go until he gets paid next.  She doesn't actually pay the bills right then but I thought about that idea for awhile and finally decided to implement my own version.

Organizational Nerd Alert:  You might find the following boring and tedious :-) First of all I went through the calendar and wrote down all of the dates Will would be paid for the remainder of 2012. Just seeing these dates written down helped alleviate some of my stress!  I then went through each of our monthly and quarterly bills and did some research on billing cycles and figured out when each of the bills for the rest of the year would be due.  

I grouped each monthly bill with the paycheck that preceded the due date of the bill.  For example if our internet and phone bills were due on 6/15 and 6/20 respectively and Will got paid on 6/7 and 6/21 I grouped those two bills with the 6/7 paycheck.  Now each time Will gets paid I sit down the day the money comes into our account (yay for direct deposit!) and pay all the bills that are due in that pay period.  I even have a handy spreadsheet:

Sorry this is so small....If I went to the next largest size it overtook my sidebar :-)

As you can see the left column has all Will's pay dates and then next to each date I list the bills that are due that need to come from that check.  Each pay date has 2 Sundays, hence Church(2). Please know that I don't consider our Church offering a bill :-) It's just how I can keep track of our recurring expenses.  I have also estimated the amount that our bills will cost so I know in advance about how much will come out of our account.  This works because most of our bills don't fluctuate too much.  Our electric/gas and insurance are on a budget plan and the internet and Netflix are always the same.  The only two bills that really ever fluctuate are our water/sewer/trash and our phone bill when (ahem) I text over my allotted 200 texts per month.  When I pay the bills I write in the amount paid next to each bill and then tally the total amount paid for that pay period.

Let me just tell you that this has simplified my life so very much.  Yes there is a little extra time involved in paying the bills verses automatic bill pay but there is so much less stress involved and I pay the bills on my own timetable.  They no longer own me, I own them :-)

There are a couple other things I'm hoping to implement soon with regard to our finances so maybe if you're lucky I'll blog about it!  

And as a reward for reading this far you get a picture of my seriously adorable little man :-)