Author Archives: Nora

May Grocery Review

06 Monday Jun 2016

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I still need to go back and fill in some holes, but let’s get caught up to the present.  May was high.  I don’t know that it felt high in process, but when I started totaling up the receipts there were a lot of them!

May TOTAL: $1,171.01

  • Stop & Shop: $273.52
  • Wegman’s: $262.04
  • BJs: $383.85
  • Other: $251.60
    • Local: $43.76
    • Star Market: $153.60
    • Trader Joe’s: $24.93
    • Target: $29.31
    • Other: $0

Maybe to make up for this, I didn’t buy too much last week.  I made one trip to Wegman’s – on Thursday.  We’ve been going through tomatoes at quite a clip so I got two Family Packs; hopefully they’ll last a full week.

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April Accomplishments (belatedly)

31 Tuesday May 2016

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I feel like I’m catching up to real time, finally.  Though, I still have to go back and update the grocery shopping and spending updates for the past couple of months.  April was the start of spring hecticness, with kickoffs for both soccer and baseball.

  • We sold our house! Yeah!
  • We had 3 dentist appointments.  Everyone got their hair cut, except the baby.
  • We had parent-teacher conferences for the older three.  We got spring reports for the next two.
  • We hosted one birthday party.  We attended another.

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  • I made more tile and stone decisions.  Neither of those are our actual cabinets, but they are the correct colors for those that will be nearest these stones.
  • Over spring vacation, the older three participated in a mock revolutionary war battle which everyone seemed to enjoy.
  • We went to a Red Sox game using free tickets.  The weather was accommodating and taking the very small ones was not as bad as I had feared. (We would not have done this except for the free tickets.)

Cheesy Cauliflower

27 Friday May 2016

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This recipe is a variation of Alton Brown’s Cauliflower Say Cheese recipe.  The flavors are the same, but the cooking times and general process are rather different.  Note this can be adjusted to fit your needs/taste, from the amount of cauliflower or sauce to the level of heat.

1 head of cauliflower
4½ ounces grated Cheddar cheese
½ cup Panko bread crumbs
1 egg
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp dry mustard
½ tsp smoked paprika
¼ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp cayenne pepper (personally I don’t prefer heat so I go a little light here)
½ cup heavy cream

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°.
  2. Trim the curds from the cauliflower, leaving them in 1 or 2 bite sized pieces.  Place in a glass bowl.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap and microwave on high until it is just starting to soften (4-10 minutes depending on your microwave).  Rest, still covered in plastic, for another 4-10 minutes.  At this point you should be happy with the consistency as it will barely soften any further.
  3. Combine all the other ingredients except the cream.
  4. When one minute remains on the cauliflower rest period, microwave the cream on high for 30 sec – 1 minute (Again, it depends on your microwave.  You want it just hot enough to melt the cheese.)
  5. Add the cream to the cheese mixture and stir to combine.
  6. Carefully remove the plastic from the cauliflower.  Spread the cauliflower in a shallow glass baking dish.
  7. Spread the cheese mixture over the cauliflower.  This can be tricky, but try not to leave giant chunks of cheese mix.  You can also leave some cauliflower plain if some members of your family would prefer.
  8. Bake for 20 minutes.
  9. If desired, sprinkle some extra cheese over the top and broil for an additional 6-8 minutes.
  10. Rest 10 minutes before serving.

We quite like this with ham, raisin sauce, and egg bread.

A Turning Point

26 Thursday May 2016

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Today marks the beginning of the end of the school year, hence the tortoise & hare theme.

  • Today is the last day for before school activities.
  • Today is the last day of Rec Center activities until next September.
  • Today is Kindergarten visiting day for the graduating preschool class.

Today I am going to the grocery store to shop for Memorial Day weekend BBQ opportunities, though we have very few this year as baseball will continue through the weekend and we have two birthday parties to attend.

After today we have exactly 4 weeks of school left.

March Accomplishments (belatedly)

24 Tuesday May 2016

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Still in catch-up mode here.

  • March is an ease into spring month for us.  We have our first classes of the year at the Rec Center (indoors), winter baseball clinics, and the end of skiing lessons.
  • We celebrated a birthday.  Yes, I made two cakes just for us!

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  • We attended three birthday parties.
  • I continued selections for the new house with a trip to the tile store.  I also went to lighting and granite showrooms.  Here’s a preview for those interested in what we’ve chosen.  We’re not using all of them.  We’re using both tiles in the upper left, but only the top one in the upper right.  As much as I like the brown tiles in the lower left we opted for granite instead.  But, we are using the blue circles.  We’re only using the far left mosiac from the lower right.  I’ll leave it to you all to try to figure out where they’re going!
  • Our current house went on the market.  This pretty much consumed the month.
  • We went to the 4th grade concert.
  • I got my hair cut.

Grocery Update

23 Monday May 2016

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This was not a particularly eventful week for grocery shopping.  And, with baseball & soccer still underway meals really weren’t interesting.

First, I went to Wegman’s.  There really isn’t anything here that will become a meal (unless you count the eggs or cereal).  This is pretty much all to fill the kid’s lunchboxes.

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On Tuesday I went to Stop & Shop.  I guess you could say this is more interesting.  Besides being on sale, the mac n cheese, marshmallows, and ketchup combined gave me 400 gas points (40¢/gallon off).  The Eggos were on sale and gave me free strawberries.  The precut fruit was for preschool breakfast on Wednesday.  The ground beef went into the freezer because I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with it yet.  The only things that aren’t on sale here are the precut fruit and hot dog buns.

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Finally, Saturday night I went to Star Market.  I never go shopping Saturday night, but I had another errand to run and wasn’t sure when this week I’d get there otherwise.  I did not take a picture, but can summarize.  We were almost out of oatmeal so that was my main reason for going.  It was on sale so I bought the whole shelf – 12 boxes.  I bought 6 pizza dough balls, not on sale.  Pizza cheese was on sale though so I bought 9 of those (thought about the whole shelf, but it was too much).  Lastly, grape juice was on sale so I bought that whole shelf too – 7 containers.  That’s it!

Moving -> Get a POD

20 Friday May 2016

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No, PODS isn’t paying me anything to write this.  Regardless, we found the POD to be a critical part of our moving process.  It doesn’t need to be an actual POD, many companies offer storage boxes under different names.

But, the first thing to realize when you are going to sell your house or condo is that you need to clear it out.  Space, everyone wants to see space.  They want to see how the space might be used too, but they do not want to feel cramped.  So, in February we brought in a POD (with a mild winter this was manageable).

First to go was anything seasonal that would not be needed until next Fall – Christmas decorations, Halloween, and a lot of winter stuff.  The next category for us was kid stuff that was between kids – cribs (yes, we have two from the twins), bikes, strollers, clothes, and lots of large plastic stuff.  Third, we packed up most of our books (and we have a lot).  Books are time consuming to pack well and heavy so they go in small boxes that require many trips, i.e. expensive for movers to deal with.  They also generally go on bookshelves that go up towards the ceiling making the room look smaller.  So, into the POD went many boxes of books and most of our bookshelves.  Many of our bookshelves fold flat, and I found the paper pads to be very useful for wrapping them up.  I actually found these pads more useful than I had expected.  I highly recommend them if you’re packing things yourself.

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Finally, we filled up the rest of the POD with whatever else we thought we could part with.  This included some of the pictures from the walls, some kitchen gear, and some tools/shelving from the garage.  This has left us with a house that looks less cluttered for potential buyers and is easier to keep super clean as there is just less stuff to get strewn about.  I highly recommend one.  (Admittedly we haven’t gotten our POD back; its at their storage facility until we get to the new house.  I reserve the right to change my opinion of them should things come back in less than optimal condition.)

February Accomplishments (belatedly)

17 Tuesday May 2016

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It’s been quite a while since I wrote one of these posts – January to be precise.  And, there haven’t been many big events in the past two weeks.  So, I’m going to take the opportunity to catch everyone up on the past.

February was a busy month.  While the boys don’t do many winter activities, we were still in new baby mode, we were prepping to put our house on the market in March, and decisions on for the new house were just getting underway.

  • To kick up the cleaning out process, I sold a few items on a local online sale site.
  • We had the contractors back to touch up some exterior paint since we had a very mild winter.
  • The older boys finished up their ski lessons.
  • Winter soccer finished.
  • Winter baseball lessons started.
  • The old house on our new lot came down.  (It was chock full of lead and asbestos, among other problems.)

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  • We attended a preschool family breakfast and the 2nd grade concert on the same day.
  • We made two trips to the showroom to select appliances, plumbing fixtures, and lighting.  Only the appliances had to be finalized this early, but its easier to make fewer trips so we made many of the other decisions at the same time.
  • Two boys went to the Bruins-Penguins game.  The other two had been in December.

Altogether a nice mix of things.

Grocery Update

16 Monday May 2016

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If you missed last week’s post, it’s baseball season.  That means we have a 6-8 week stretch where we’re at someone’s game from 5:30-8 pm almost every day (it varies each week) except Friday & Saturday.  But, Saturday we’re all gone basically all day, getting back exhausted just in time for dinner.  All in all it doesn’t make for good meal planning / quality eating / family dinners.

The grocery shopping reflects this.

On Monday I went to BJs; I basically bought staples.

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Since they’re nearby, I went to Target the same day.  Again, this was basically staples.

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I made my monthly run to Star Market (used to be Shaw’s) on Wednesday.  Again, there’s little here that makes a meal.  My approach to baseball season is to have some basic stuff on had and make a last minute decision as to what to have based on who’s available.  Pizza dough and pizza cheese are the two items I travel to Star Market for.  I was out of baby carrots.  Hot dogs and chicken nuggets were on sale and make easy quick dinners.

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I also went to Stop & Shop on Wednesday.

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Hot dogs were also on sale here, and buns are cheaper.  There was an extra 400 gas points (40¢) for buying 7 PAM.  The ground turkey and potato chips were on great sales. The turkey will get divided and go into the freezer for after baseball season.  Margarine, lemonade boxes, and bananas we were just low on.