WFMW — Feasible Food

In my quest to achieve Complete Homemaking Queen status, I’ve learned that there are some areas I need more firepower and less precision.   So here are some of my favorite tricks and tools:

There are some GREAT Menu Planning services out there, but it’s a rare week that I’m at home ALL week to fully utelize a week’s worth of menus.  If you’re familiar with Kraft Foods’ Food and Family magazines, you know that they have a great feature called “Five Meals, One Bag.”  I considered pulling these out of my magazines when I discovered that THEY ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE!!!!!  With a 1/2 inch binder and some sheet protectors, I now have 6 weeks worth of menu plans with shopping lists:

Not sure if you can see it, but on the left page, there’s a Shopping List (w/ space for additional items needed).  You can find all this happiness at Kraft Foods 1 Bag 5 Dinners page.

Now, I realize that most homes have a built in pantry; ours, however, does not.  So this is literally the entirety my food-fitting cabinet space:

Yes, there are lower cabinets and one slim on farther to the right (between the microwave and the refrigerator), but it’s hard to see what I have when the food is in both upper and lower cabinets.

In the immediate, neither tearing out a wall or building onto the cabinets is feasible (and dry wall dust is, as far as I’m concerned, never desirable). As a temporary solution, I brought the shelves up that we’d bought for our laundry room, moved our dining room hutch farther down the wall and “made” a pantry in the dining room.

This is “oops…I forgot to take a picture, let me put the beans down and grab the camera”  I was *so* excited to discover that I had not only space for our foodstuffs, but also for our (ever multiplying collection of) small appliances.  And since our dining room entrance angles in (red wall on the right side of the picture), the shelves “hide” from initial view.

Here are the shelves as they stand tonight.  I bought some BEAUTIFUL fabric from Joann’s that matches our dining room chairs perfectly, with the thought of making curtains to cover the pantry.  However, it is SO VERY BEAUTIFUL, I’ve decided it’s going to become my new drapes (or a dress — hey, I’m Southern enough to respect Scarlet’s creativity!  hahaha!).  I’m not fond of the panels I’m using on the shelves at present because when they’re hanging down together, they look more like drop cloths or bed sheets than beautiful gauzy oh-no-there’s-nothing-behind-the-curtain allure.

And yes, the shelves are messy right now and my wheat buckets are taking over and my incredibly talented children have used the top of the gamma lids to create a semi-robotic inspired netherworld with Magnetix balls.  But you know what?  It all Works for Me!  Head on over to Shannon’s to see what else works!

when you’re gone

What I want you to know…

is that when you’re gone, our life does go on pretty much normal. We’re in the same house, doing the same things, with the same people, as when you’re home. We talk and laugh and play, sometimes we argue, but it doesn’t last long, and we usually end up at the table together over playdough or fishsticks or both. Sometimes we camp in the living room and sometimes we make tents under the dining room table (and sometimes we forget to clean them up before you come back home).

is that when you’re gone, things do happen. Sometimes toilets don’t work, sometimes air conditioners stay on too long, sometimes it just pours rain the whole time we’re out running errands by ourselves. I can’t sleep. They wake up in the night. The dog whines and scratches around. There is a warfare when you’re gone.

is that we get tired of hearing people act like what we do is unnatural. That attitude wears on the kids and it annoys me when people act as though there’s a better choice than the life we’re living. As though you being gone is unfair to us; as though the three of us doing life together is somehow pitiful; and the worst — as though they would *never* make the choices we’ve made and anyone who can A. go with their spouse or B. have a spouse who isn’t gone is far superior. That’s annoying. And hurtful. Especially when it comes from those you’d assume understood best.

is that we have been blessed beyond measure by the family God “created” for us here. There are those who seemingly “appear” when you’re gone, and when we miss you most. They want to come to soccer games and want to go with us to appointments and want to fix tires and toilets and training wheels. And they want to sit by us on the couch and watch movies, and want to tell our children what a unique plan God has for their lives because look what He’s already doing in our family.

is that when you get home, we really just want to party! We don’t want to have school or errands or bedtimes or plans — we just want to be with you. As much as they love going and playing and doing, our kids just want to be on top of you, wrestling or snuggling. As much as I love teaching, I just want to stay home and hang out with you, even (or maybe especially) when you’re talking politics. There is nothing that compares to the second day you’re home — all our spazoid excitement from the first day is expended and we get to just “be a family” (as a certain 6yo would say).

is that when you’re gone, I live Isaiah 54:5. God is a Holy, Just, and Mighty God, Sovereign in all His ways; but He is also merciful and intimate and specific. The breadth of His calling is surpassed only by the depth of His love, and I meet daily with Him — as I would with you — to talk about all the things our day holds and how to encourage each child. And He is faithful; our children call on Him like they would to you, over lost toys and broken pencils and bweedin’ boo-boos. They each have a prayer life that widely surpasses my own, and He answers them readily and faithfully.

is that the reality of you being gone is that we don’t mind. Of course we miss you, and you miss us. But this life — this life — is a blessing. Given the choice to for us to be “normal” I have said no, and would again.

You’re going to get ready to leave again. You’re going to be in The Zone, throwing clothes in a bag and gear in a truck and kisses through the windshield — and we’ll all do what we do for the time we need to do it. But in all the harried thoughts, I don’t want you to think we regret it; we don’t. We’re here. What you do isn’t just what *you* do, it’s what we do, too. This is ours, and it is real; important and exacting, it is equally enlightening and enjoyable. We are blessed, I assure you; we are blessed.