Turkey and cheddar sandwiches, steamed fresh broccoli, and homemade chips for which I tried out my new mandolin and it worked wonderfully!
01.02.11: Dinner
Shepherd’s Pie, thanks to Brian B. for the only version of this dish I’ve ever liked. With a replacement of peas for his corn and the use of our honey brown homebrew.
New Year’s Day Food
Andy gave me a directive that I couldn’t produce lots of dishes while making dinner for yesterday’s dinner. So, I made breakfast dishes instead! We had chocolate chip pancakes (mine were a la Papa…with molasses and maple syrup), bacon, and pineapple. The pancakes were half whole wheat and had ground flax, so sort of healthy. The dishes were done before lunchtime, so no complaints from Andy!
Then, dinner was leftover chicken noodle soup. It was once made from homemade broth and homemade whole wheat noodles, so I did do work a couple of months ago for it!
New Year Dinner
In case you didn’t know, I like to cook. I’ve tossed around the idea of adding a separate section of this site just for our nightly meals to be recorded, but never got around to it, especially since my job has had me out at night more frequently, leaving Andy to eat leftovers or things he can make for himself (mostly frozen pizza). However, I have a couple of people under me now who get to work the odd hours and I thought last night’s New Year’s Eve fancy dinner is just as good a time to start sharing as any! If I keep up with this, which is honestly doubtful, then Andy will make a separate section, but for now, here’s the first night!!
We started with roasted garlic shrimp and crusty French bread while Meg ate her dinner:
Then, after the baby was in bed, we had fillet mignon, stuffed clams (from Aldi), fresh steamed broccoli, and roasted garlic cous cous.
Dessert was this recipe, which was really easy and REALLY good, especially with homemade, sweetened whipped cream on top. We just finished mine from last night tonight for dessert and it was still wonderful!
How We Wash Our Diapers
I think that just about everyone who uses cloth diapers has their own “secret” to clean, fresh diapers, but since we know a few new parents who are getting ready to delve into the world of cloth diapering, I thought I’d share my washing routine in case it might help!
We keep our dirty diapers in a plain trash can with a lid that came from Target for under $10, so everything wet or soiled, including flannel wipes and, when I was still breastfeeding, flannel nursing pads, goes in there. When Meg was only eating breastmilk, the poopy diapers also went in as is. Now that she’s eating solids and the poop wouldn’t break down in the washer, we just dump what can be dumped into the toilet and throw those diapers into an ice cream bucket that’s on the stairs to the basement where the washer and dryer are so we can grab them on the way down with the rest of the diapers.
Generally, we wash diapers and covers every 2-3 days during the evening after Meg is in bed. Our normal routine is that I “Prewash” everything on cold first, then soak everything in warm water with a couple of coffee scoops of baking soda. I used to take out the covers and soak just the diapers in hot water, but decided that was using too much energy for not a lot of difference in cleanliness, so recently switched to a warm water soak. I let the diapers soak for about an hour, then wash on warm with an extra rinse cycle. I just use Tide Free and Clear detergent and a couple of capfuls of vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser of the washer. I’m usually not a name brand snob at all, but since we have well water, I think the Tide really does do a much better job than other brands of baby-friendly detergent, although when Aldi has their brand of dye and perfume free detergent, I use that, but they only have it every once in awhile. By this point in the routine, I go to bed and Andy handles pulling out the diaper covers to air dry and putting the diapers in the dryer on the highest heat setting. By the time we get up in the morning, the diapers in the dryer are finished and the covers are dry enough to either put away or pack in Meg’s day care bag.
We do have a couple of all-in-one diapers that Andy just puts in the dryer and they seem to still be holding up ok, but I’m not sure how they would continue to wash if we only dried them in the dryer and only used those?
I’ve bleached all of our white prefolds maybe twice in the last 7 months, but hung prefolds and handmade fitteds outside on a really sunny day to be sun bleached every once in awhile. I had plans to hang everything out on the clothesline for as long as possible, and while I did hang out clothes all summer, the diapers didn’t make it out that often, especially since I started working, just because the dryer is so much faster and can be done overnight. As always, feel free to ask either of us any questions about cloth diapering, because we think we’re pretty good at it and it’s working out so well for us, we think anyone can handle it!
R.I.P. Garden
May 2010-October 2010
Last weekend, while my mom was here to take Meg to Target to buy toys, we finished pulling everything out of the garden and turned the dirt over in preparation for the long Iowa winter ahead. I didn’t know what we were really getting into when I planted in May, I just wanted to see what would grow and what wouldn’t so I can really get going next spring. I learned that the dirt is so good here that everything grows monstrously and need twice as much room as I gave it, it’s hard to mow under out of control squash, and cheap tomato cages aren’t worth the 99 cents I spent at all. I’ve ordered my seed catalogs and am looking forward to plotting out next year’s garden plan before I start my seeds inside in a few months!
Breastfeeding Savings
I debated about just adding this information to my Diaper Savings post, but decided that this topic might warrant it’s own comments!
Meg is breastfed and was exclusively (except for about an ounce of formula in the hospital because I was freaking out that she was hungry…I know better now) until she started eating rice cereal at 4 months. There’s another post coming about how that’s going for another time. I still continue to nurse and to pump while she is at daycare about 5-6 times each day, which I’m guessing gets Meg about 28 ounces of breastmilk a day, which should be plenty. I’m starting to think about weaning her to a combination of stored breastmilk and formula from a bottle in the next month or so, mostly because my work schedule is complicated and there’s not always time or a place for me to pump when I need to, and because I’m starting to feel like I’ve done my job in this arena. I have a feeling that weaning will go slowly to ease the hormonal and therefore emotional toll it will take on both of us (or all of us, really because Andy will have to deal with it, too).
I think to breastfeed or not is a very personal decision, just like I think most parenting decisions should be. It’s super easy to start thinking that your way of doing things is better than anyone else’s, and why this is true for each parent’s situation, I’m trying really hard to not worry what other people think of what I’m doing with my job and at the same time not judge other parents for their decisions.
That being said, when I was looking at how much money we’ve saved my cloth diapering, Andy was also interested in how much money we’ve saved by not buying formula. Here are the CDC’s statistics on the numbers of infants in the United States who were breastfed in 2006:
* 73.9% were ever breastfed
* 43.4% were still breastfeeding at 6 months of age
* 22.7% were breastfeeding at 1 year of age
* 33.1% were exclusively breastfed through 3 months of age
* 13.6% were exclusively breastfed through 6 months of age
So, obviously, most babies are being breastfed at least some, so this number isn’t this high unless a baby has only ever had formula. But, for a basic, name brand formula, for the first 6 months of life, you will have spent $717.93 to feed a baby. Breastfeeding is absolutely free!! In our case, since I have a pump and the necessary accessories for storing and feeding pumped breastmilk, the net savings is about $400.00. That’s pretty good from a purely monetary perspective, if you ask me (and I know you didn’t, but whatever…)!
Diaper Savings
So, I bought a new pair of boots, and in trying to justify the purchase to myself and Andy, I started thinking about all the things I do to save money.
How we’re cloth diapering was discussed here, but not the costs. A lot of people will say that, in the end, the costs associated with cloth diapering doesn’t really save a lot over disposables, while others say that you break even with your first child and the savings come with subsequent children. I contend that disposable diapers are WAY more expensive than cloth. And, from my experience, I’d also say that anything that is cheap is also good for the Earth (hanging clothes on the clothesline, gardening, driving a high gas mileage car…), so we’re doing our part!
I also added in 20% of the cost of our new washing machine because we probably wouldn’t have bought such a nice one if we weren’t washing diapers 2-3 times each week. The amount of electricity used seems fair, as it also includes water since we have a well and sewage since we have a septic tank. We do not currently have trash removal, but if we used disposable diapers, we would have to pay for that as well!
The ongoing costs of cloth diapering from this point will include a few more covers as Meg gets bigger, but the current ones should fit her until she’s at least 18 pounds, and electricity. Our electric bill may increase a little in the winter when I can’t hang the diapers out to dry as often, but I really don’t very often now anyway because they have to hang outside all day and I usually need the clothesline space if it’s a Saturday and I’m doing lots of other laundry.
I totally paid for those boots just in cloth diapering the last 6 months ($186.00 saved!!!!), but now I’m looking for other ways that Andy can thank me for being so frugal! Up next, canning, canning, canning.
A Busy Saturday
Thanks to my recent incessant PBS watching, I found this recipe for whole grain bread from America’s Test Kitchen. I want to make our sandwich bread, but haven’t seen a recipe I like that’s also easy until now. This one is definitely a keeper (ATK makes you join to get their recipes, but you can do it for free and get everything from this season if you want!)!
I also picked the first several-tomatoes-at-a-time crop today. Andy took this shot of some of them in the window sill ripening a little more. I’ll process them tomorrow, hopefully.
And, for your viewing pleasure, here’s Meg, in her bouncy seat where she spends a lot of time while I’m cooking and whatnot! You can tell how excited she is about the BLTs we had for dinner.
Andy’s Favorite
Those are from my first picking on Wednesday, but there’s at least that much in the garden ready to be picked today and canned tomorrow!