Never let a good chicken go to waste.

I hate wasting food. You would think I had come from a place where food was scarce and I was seldom fed, but that is not the case. I think my desire to use every ounce of food I purchase comes from a few different places.

The first reason I have such a need to be a crazed food saver is because I like to buy good food. I like fresh fruits, veggies, and meat from the small time ranchers and farmers that have to charge more. This means that my grocery budget does not go as far as it would if I was buying cheap meats and canned veggies. This requires that I work a little harder to get what I need with the budget that I have set.

Another reason for me to cry every time that I throw some food away is my mom. She has taught me for as long as I can remember that we should always try to help others and that we give not because we have tons to give, but because we know what it is to do without. So, when I toss a bowl of leftover spaghetti out, I just wasted something that could have been a meal for a person who otherwise wont have one. That is something that is hard for me to deal with.

Now, since we have established that I am just a few jars away from being a food hoarder, lets move on to my chicken. The breasts that I buy are very thick and I can make two servings out of just one of them. I butterfly them completely apart before freezing/cooking them. I usually buy a few packages at a time and do it all at once. These pieces also have a little fat on them, and there are always parts that I cut off, simply because it is too thin to keep on the breast where it would burn before the rest of the it was cooked all the way.

This led to me tossing out all these small pieces. I had to find else to do with them besides send them to the garbage. I decided to make chicken broth. I just boil all the little random pieces that didn't qualify for freezer status until I have a pan of delicious healthy chicken stock/broth. You can season this if you would like or even boil some onions in with the chicken, I like to keep it plain so that I can use it for almost anything. Next, strain the broth away from the chicken using a strainer with very small holes. You can also use a cheese cloth or paper towel, but sometimes that can keep some of the thicker juices from making it into the stored broth.

I then pour it into an ice tray to freeze in individual cubes. After they are frozen I remove them from the tray and jar them up for freezer storage!

BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE....
You didn't think I was going to let that boiled chicken go to waste did you? I place the chicken in the fridge until it has cooled off, chop it up in small pieces, add some greek yogurt, green onion, celery and spices. Throw it all onto a bed of spinach leaves or into a wrap for a nice light lunch!

These are my "spare" chicken pieces right out of the pan. They will soon be a delicious chicken salad! 

Cheesy Potato Soup (Meatless Monday #1)

• 4-6 potatoes, peeled and quartered
• 1 small onion, minced
• 1 1/2 c. vegetable broth
• 2 1/2 c. milk
• 3 tbsp butter, melted
• 3 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 c. shredded cheese

In a large saucepan, bring potatoes, onion, broth, and garlic salt to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer until potatoes are tender. Mash potatoes slightly while stirring in milk. Stir in butter, flour, salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. Add cheese and mix until melted. 

Serve with toppings of choice. We like more cheese, sour cream, and green onions.

Make your own breadcrumbs!!

I started a journey to be less wasteful one day when I had dumped enough food into the trash to feed a small country of starving kids in Africa. Part of a loaf of bread, half a bag of spinach leaves, a banana and a ziplock bag full of strawberries are just a few things that I was sending to the landfill that day.

That was when I made the resolution to figure out ways to stop wasting so much stuff! 

Almost half a loaf of bread, dried out and not so fresh anymore, usually I would just toss it. No one wants a crusty sandwich. Then for dinner I would use my store bought bread crumbs for a recipe. Just sounds like insanity. So I decided to use my old bread for my new bread crumbs.

It is so simple and makes them so yummy!!

Here is how:

Gather bread (I use old bread, the ends, leftover rolls from dinner, any old bread that you have)
Rub some coconut oil on the bread and sprinkle with seasonings of your choice.

seasoning ideas:
- garlic
- italian seasoning
- creole seasoning
- plain

Place on cookie sheet and bake in oven on 450 until bread is nice and crispy.
Let bread cool and then place in small pieces into food processor and blend until becomes bread crumbs. They can be as finely ground as you want or need them to be. I store them in the fridge or if it is in big quantities I will freeze some also!

Angels and Superheroes...

You have a plan for your life. A way you think it is going to be. We all have them. We are asked from a young age, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" 

I bet no one ever answered "a preemie mom!" 

Luckily, somewhere, a little boy or girl says that they want to be a doctor, a nurse, a surgeon, a physical therapist... 

And when the time comes for them to be that, they make the choice to work with babies. Not full term chunky babies. Not toddlers with colds. No, these special men and women decide to work with Gods smallest miracles. The children that come too early, fight too hard, leave too soon.... 

They are, in my eyes, essentially Angels. 

I had been in the medical field for years when my daughter was born. She was fifteen weeks early. She weighed in at a whopping one pound eleven ounces. At this time, I was slightly jaded to the medical professionals in hospitals. I had seen the worst of them, and eventually that's all you seem to see. Things changed a lot in those ninety-nine days. 

I learned a lot about these people. I saw many things that you would never sit and think about. 

I learned that they have to BE hope... Even when there isn't any... 

The first few hours after her birth are very hazy. I remember the fear and confusion. I remember faces and questions. I can still see the delivery room when I close my eyes. And in all the horror of that day, all the hustle and bustle, all the nurses and doctors in and out, the NICU team faces are the only ones I could see through the fog. 

Everyone else was there to save me... Not my top priority. I did not care what those people were doing. My only concern was the well being of my daughter, and those NICU people had the same objective. To me it was like a light was shining on them above all else. 

When she was born I was listening for hope. All I heard were the familiar words that I knew too well and feared too much. Brady, CPR, no breath sounds, not pinking up, sats are too low.... At that point I hated myself for knowing what that meant. I just wanted to close my ears and not hear that. I wanted the sounds of a baby crying to fill the room. 

Then like a beacon of hope, I hear a voice. A woman, probably a nurse, possibly a mother also. "Look at her still kicking... She is a fighter... For such a low heart rate she sure is a kicker." God spoke to me in that minute. Her words were his way of telling me that we were right where we should be. And were we ever. 

For the rest of our stay, no matter what was happening, or how bad it got, or how scared I got, someone in that NICU would do something to create hope. Maybe a story of a baby from the past that came out just fine. Maybe a statistic that leaned in our favor. Maybe a call to tell you that we had poop. Whatever it was, it was hope. THEY were hope. 

I learned that they aren't just caregivers of preemies, but of their families also. 

Twelve hours... Sitting in waiting room style chairs... With beeping in every direction... Chinese screens made of sheets falling on you... The hustle and the bustle of the NICU can be overwhelming. Yet these people somehow hold it together for themselves, the preemies, AND the families. They calm familes, reassure them, teach them, laugh with them, and send them home for rest when  they need it. They become your ally. You are fighting this war side by side with these men and women. And in a battle, you need people like them with you.  

They are still human. Just maybe super human!!!

Sick babies are sad. Dying babies are heart breaking. Yet, these wonderful souls sign up to care for our babies, knowing that they will lose too many, and the ones they don't lose, they will celebrate and send them home and possibly never see them again. In 99 days I saw the strongest nurses cry, the best doctors hang their heads in uncertainty, and yet they keep fighting. And keep coming back. Fighting the good fight. Like a superhero. 

I will never be able to repay the doctors and nurses that I came into contact with. I can never tell them enough how grateful I am to have met them. I can never tell them thank you enough for photos when I was gone, spiky Mohawks when I came back, lessons on bathing babies with too many tubes and wires to count. I am forever in the debt of the doctors who treated me like a human, like a mom, and listened to my opinions before making decisions. I will always owe the nurses for the hugs they gave, the advice they shared, the friendship they offered, the tissues they made readily available, the sympathy in the hard times, the celebrations for the good, and the love they showed my precious miracle. 

I am still in contact with some of them. I hope that never stops. I want to give them the only reward I can. I want them to get to watch Gracie grow and thrive and know that every step she takes on Earth was made possible with their help. 

You call them doctors and nurses.. But to a preemie parent... They are Angels and superheroes!!! 

Miss America in the making! Words from a new pageant mom!

Recently Gracie participated in her first pageant.

We didn't prepare for it much, I really just wanted to see how she would do. And it came a few days after I was in the hospital with gallbladder issues. Needless to say, it was a learning experience. 

Lesson #1- people spend a LOT of money on pageants. 

Lesson #2- these girls were a lot more prepared than Gracie! She still did wonderful! 

Lesson #3- they are addicting! We have five more in the works for this summer. 

Lesson #4- even if you don't plan to spend a lot... You will. They aren't cheap. 

We picked a natural pageant so we didn't have glitz and glammer. We bought a simple Easter/church style dress. After choosing from 10 we tried on, this is what we chose! 

Bright colors look great on her and this one was too cute to pass up! 

One of the things we lacked on, was hair. After spending a night in the ER, and getting my fair share of pain meds, she didn't get the rollers that we had planned. So, she wanted pigtails, we did pigtails!!! We didn't paint her nails, we didn't practice her walk, and we didn't prepare a special wave. We just went onstage and gave it our best! She twirled and waved and looked to me for guidance. I had just as much info as she did but I tried. She didn't win the grand prize. She did win best smile and she won the title for "Tiny Miss Central Harrison County!" 

She was so exhausted by the end of the day that we couldn't even get her to stand up with her crown and trophy for a picture!

The state pageant finals are in July in Vicksburg, and we will be much more prepared!!! 

Saving money, spending coupons!

I coupon. No, I don't save $600 on 290 bottles of mustard like those people on that show "Extreme Couponing" do. I wont clear a shelf on a good deal, but I do have enough shampoo under my bathroom sink to wash my hair for two years... at least.

This was a $12 oop Walmart trip!!

I look at a coupon like money. Even a $.35 coupon is money that I have in my pocket instead of in someone else having it in theirs.

The trick is to only use them on things that you were going to buy at some point anyway. I wont buy things that I wont use (unless I can make money off of them which I will discuss later on). Coupons are meant to trick you into buying things, Say that you normally buy the generic brand ketchup, but you get a coupon for the more expensive brand and use it to get the good stuff. I bet if you  price compare the two, you actually spent more money. This leads us to coupon rules.

RULE #1: Do not think that just because you have a coupon for an item, it will be the best deal.
RULE #2: Get organized. I don't care if it is a binder, envelopes, or one of those cute coupon accordion style organizers... you need something to organize.

My method of organization is a binder, If you don't plan to spend as much time as I do with your coupons, something less extreme is fine. I started out in some envelopes. Each was labeled with a category. Then I progressed to a small binder with a few baseball card sheets and some dividers. Now I have a big zip up binder that has pockets, accordion sections, a pencil bag, currency sheets, and page protectors. (I will do a blog next on the binder itself, so stay tuned) If you just stick your coupons in your pocket, you will never get the maximum savings from them.

RULE#3: Be prepared to buy things that you WILL USE, even when you may not need them. An example of this is; I have toothpaste, Probably eight tubes. A few days ago the Dollar Tree had some Crest 4.2 oz tubes. I just happen to have $3 off of 3 tubes of crest. This made them free, I had two coupons so I left the store with six tubes of toothpaste that I only paid the tax on. Did I need toothpaste that day? No! Will I use these eventually and be glad that I didn't have to pay full price? Absolutely!

RULE#4: Utilize all your assets. Use every avenue possible to get the coupons and/or savings that you need. Websites, apps, blogs, store coupons, manufacturer coupons, mobile coupons... anything you can use, use. At Target you can use a target and manufacturer coupon plus cartwheel app and mobile coupons that they send out from time to time and sometimes get gift cards back. The deals work out like this...

ABC toothpaste $5.00 per tube
Target has a promo going to buy 3 get a $5 gift card
They have a coupon on their website for $2.00 off of ABC products
There was a coupon in your newspaper last week for $6.00 off of 3 tubes of ABC toothpaste
There is a 10% cartwheel for ABC products

You buy 3 tubes = $15.00
use 3 target Qs   -  $  6.00
use 1 man Q       -  $  6.00
                            =$  3.00 left to pay
Take 10% off of that with cartwheel leaving your total out of pocket to be $2.70. Then you get a $5.00 gift card. You just made $2.30.

Save your gift card until your next Target deal comes around for even less out of pocket expense.

This same principle works great at CVS and Walgreens.

Sweet Potato Tacos (Meatless Monday #4)

• 2 tsp. coconut oil
• 1/4 c. onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 c. kidney beans
• 3/4 c. water
• 1 tsp. cumin
• 1 tsp. seasoning salt
• 1 tsp. chili powder
• 1 tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. mustard
• 2 c. mashed sweet potato
• 6 flour tortillas
• 1 c. shredded cheese

Saute onions and garlic in the oil in medium skillet. Mash beans and mix into the onion mixture. Stir in water and cook 2-3 more minutes. Remove from heat and mix in cumin, seasoning salt, chili powder, soy sauce, and mustard. Divide bean mixture evenly between tortillas and then repeat with sweet potatoes. Top with cheese and then put in fold and place on baking sheet. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. 

Serve with any of your favorite taco extras. My favorites are salsa, sour cream, guacamole, and green onions!