Nannying and my latest cooking theories

I am going to be a Nanny for two months or so because my good friend Carol is having her baby towards the end of March and I am going to substitute for her while she is on maternity leave. Nannying in and of itself has not necessarily appealed to me- but I am taking the job for other reasons. Of which, money is not really one of them.

Nannying
1. The toddler years are a mystery to me. I am an elementary education major. I feel competent and equipped to deal with the discipline and management of 6-12 year olds. But toddlers??? I am hoping to be able figure out a few things before William gets there.

2. Practicing on other people's children is enlightening about parenting theories.

3. They will be my guinea pigs (there are two of them- super cute kids). If we buy a home (we're in that phase we are sometimes in) I have decided I would really, really enjoy a home based preschool. I have checked out textbooks on early childhood education and the Montessori method and I am quite excited about doing it. This will be a good place to experiment with the program I am coming up with as I mesh a few other programs to make my own.

4. I can take William with me. They are very good with him and he loves watching them and talking to them. It's a good fit.

5. Who knows, maybe I will really like being a Nanny??!!

6. I feel like I might possibly be able to teach them something. This is more than a baby-sitting job. I hope I can do something good with my two months there.


My Latest Cooking Theories

Now about cooking. If you know me, you know I like systems and programs. Adhering to them is another issue entirely. But I love to come up with them. Like my reading program I designed for my class after some serious research.

I like to cook. I don't like to cook everyday. We have the most marvelous library I have ever had a card for (and this includes the BYU library). I discovered I can check out cook books. How fabulous!! Then I don't have to buy them. Or if I do buy them, it's because I really, really liked my experience with it. But I digress.

One day I checked out a book called Deceptively Delicious. I pureed a bunch of foods and have experimented with the recipes for the last two months. Super impressed. And now, I'm pretty good at telling which vegetable purees will blend well with what I'm making and can simply toss them in . . . without a recipe book.


Picture of some of my purees, aren't they pretty?


I checked out a slow cooker recipe book because I love using my slow cooker. It saved me during undergrad. There was a super yummy Split Pea Soup recipe which cited another cookbook from which they adapted the recipe. It was called Frozen Assets: Cook for a day, eat for a month. I looked it up in our library catalog and sure enough, they had it. Needless to say, I checked it out.

Now in the midst of all this, I am trying to learn from Carol how to coupon. Not something I've really dabbled in before. She gave me some handy websites and it's certainly becoming helpful as I am familiarizing myself with the couponing world. The other money saving idea I am trying to learn from her is to plan my weekly meals based on what is on sale that week. I usually plan two weeks at a time. But I had decided to give this a shot.

Back to the recipes. So the idea behind Frozen Assets is pretty self explanatory. But I don't really want took for the whole month. That is not something I'm quite ready to undertake. But in another book she talks about "mini-sessions". Choose an ingredient and she has five meals that mainly use that ingredient.

The beef was on sale and potatoes as well. I planned my meals for the week and chose a mini-session on beef, which also happened to include a lot of potatoes. Copied the shopping list that was included- crossed out what we already had. Added the things for that week's dinner and sent Jordon shopping. :)

We made five different meals that evening, which, for our family, translated into nine or ten meals. While we made them I added in the appropriate vegetable purees.

Then I thought about how all this is going to play out- actually, Jordon thought about it. Excluding Saturdays and Sundays- because I just don't plan for those days; we usually have a roast of some kind in the freezer for Sundays and we always have stuff leftover for Saturday- if I used two frozen meals a week, then the dinner swap with Carol on Wednesdays (she cooks for both our families on Wednesdays, I do it on Thursdays), and with one day designated for leftovers, that means for the next three weeks I only have to cook one meal per work week!! Hallelujah!!

I'll keep my eye out in two weeks for another sale, and cook for a few hours one day and be set for the next three weeks. Love it.

Also love that theoretically it will cut down on our grocery bill. With the couponing, we spent about a third of what we normally spend for a whole month. But for the rest of the month, each week we only have to buy the basics (milk/eggs), fresh fruits and veggies, and whatever we need for the one meal I cook. I am thinking we might be able to cut our grocery bill in half with this. But I guess we'll see if it actually all plays out how I think it will.

So, my latest program: The Deceptively Frozen Couponing Meal Plan.

I need a better name.