I’ve been thinking wayyy too much about food lately. The holidays are coming, I’m packing lunches and snacks for folks, planning my own meals away from the family, either on the road doing small writing projects or at home.

And LEFTOVERS. Oh, the leftovers. And quick-fix meals. And long-term cooking. And my freezer that keeps clicking.

The cycle usually goes like this. I get in a mood to cook a lot, or I find a deal and make a lot of something. Then I have the same tasting leftovers in the freezer forever, using up all of the few containers I have.

So I came up with a better idea while brainstorming this problem. Turn all the food into ice cubes. It worked for my breastmilk in my pumping days. It worked for kiddie purees. It works for my leftover broths!

Ice Cube Soups

I do this with left over broths but you can do it with soup or whatever – pour it into cheap ice cube trays and freeze. Crack into a big zippy bag. When you need a meal, pour some cubes into a bowl that seals firmly (to stand being tossed in your bag). Nuke when it’s time to eat.

One size fits all single meals

Go to a regular store and buy a couple of squarish or roundish containers that seal well (like you use for ice cube soup) that hold 3 to 4 cups of food (for the room not the food). Go to a kitcheny store or dollar store and buy oversized silicone cups for giant muffin sized cupcakes (or a silicone tray of at the regular store) or individual cake pans. Of silicone, that are of a size that they will fit into the solid, sealable container.

Go home. Make a big pot of whatever the heck you want. Ladle it into the silicone cups and freeze. When frozen, pop out of silicone, toss into big zippy bags. Repeat until all pot of whatever is cooked. When done, take the last one and put it in the sealable container you bought. When you eat the food in it, take it home, rinse it out, and put it back in the freezer with a new food shape block from the zippy bags.

One size fits all larger meals

This one I actually stole from the beta moms. Make a big giant batch of dinner. Take a sensibly-sized re-heat container, put a plastic bag in it, and freeze one meal’s worth of the food.

When frozen, remove bag of food, tie off, repeat until all the food is frozen. Pull each meal out of the bag and put back into the re-heat container for defrosting and eating.

Individual heat and eat meat on a stick

I do this for the kidlets; make meatballs or whatever on a stick. Basically make yourself a batch of your favorite meatballs (I use a store-bought Swedish mix, or you can do Italian or other).

1. Make meatballs the usual way.
2. After cooking and cooling, slide onto wooden skewers.
3. Freeze on a cookie tray.
4. After frozen, stack in a container (frostiest free I found are Lock and Lock brand).

Now, those might be a little dry, so if you have a gravy, you can probably do this:

2a. Put wooden skewers with meat on a wire rack.
2b. Put wire rack on cookie tray.
2c. Paint with chilled, thickened sauce/gravy of choice.

Wrap City

Burritos, tacos, tamales

Make in bulk. Freeze individually (wrapped in a teeny bit of wax paper to keep it from sticking to a partner). Grab a couple when you need a quick bite to eat.

Wraps: Tortillas, pancakes, expensive wrap carb diet things.
Fillings: Beans, meats, cheeses, barley, beans, beans, beans, spinach, nuts, cottage cheese (does that freeze well?).

This is a good way to use up leftovers, too. Have a bit of meat and beans left? Make a burrito and freeze it up for another day. Have some lasagna left? Freeze it up in single slices. If you’re working with more structured foods or you want to use a seal-and-save method of saving, put the food on the plate, freeze it. Once frozen, then go ’seal and save’ it.

Growing up, we had a huge cake box full of cookie cutters. We’d get them out once or twice a year, taking over the kitchen to make COOOKIES. Great busy, messy fun during the summer and winter breaks. But excavating them was a major chore. And the box usually sat around until all the cutters were washed and put up – usually a few days or even weeks (eep!).

I was pretty good about cookie cutters at first, but they seemed to take up an awful lot of space in the “whatever” drawer (Which reminds me – any use for corn holders? I’ve given up on those little stabby knobs.). The cutters spread to the boxed lunch area (cute sandwich shapes!) and the toaster oven (ghostest toastest with the mostest!). I did a quick purging of the kitchen and came up with a count of seventeen, and I know that doesn’t even cover the ones in our art bins.

But out of the drawers they are. And how to store them? Hanging up! My little combination pantry and laundry room (panlaundrium) has several hooks installed here and there, so hanging them up was a breeze. Of the knicknacks uncluttered as I evicted the cookie cutters, I chose an old nebulizer tube on which to string the cutters. Easy to thread, easy to tie, easy to hang – and to un-do. If the youngest hadn’t been sleeping at the time, I would have set her to stringing and unstringing the set, but it seems to me that anyone old enough to push cutter into dough can put them away afterwards.

And never mind the drawer (or cabinet) space I got back. I don’t have to “wait until they’re all clean” to put them away again. I can wash them up, hang them back on the tubing, and store the clutch of cutters on a drip-dry hook back in the panlaundrium room.

If you don’t have an old nebulizer tube, another option are old breast pump tubes (I’ve got Medela tubes I have yet to un-rat from the house). Locally owned neighborhood hardware stores might sell some as well, if you don’t have anything just right that will do. And if the tubes get scungy, you can always soak them in soapy water, then use a flavor injector to force clean water through until the tubes shine.

[picture of paint cans]

It’s been a crazy crazy couple of weeks since the audition and I feel as if I’ve gotten nothing done. Some logo work, some paperwork, wear and tear tests. PHEW! I feel bad because I haven’t really emailed any of the cool inventors I met last month. I need to do that, soon.

And I’m still doing part time writing work, looking for full-time work, coordinating getting a new roof on, and getting ready for family visiting/staying/traveling from now through the end of August. Double PHEW!

Anyway, birdies. I’m on Twitter now, and you can follow me here. I’ve also put together a very basic official “me” page on Facebook here. I’m trying to link them together, or not. Trying to figure out what to do with it all, keep this a mom/idea blog but I guess it’s turning more into an invention blog, which is kind of the point I was going at with the [TOAST] (Think of a Something Thursday) posts.

More birdies – we are at the halfway mark of when the inventor show producers said they’d start talking to people about being on the show. Wooo! They emailed me to get new pictures (something happened to mine, just my luck!) so I was up wayyy too the other night and wayyyy too early the next morning to get and prepare food props for my own backyard photoshoot. Good thing I had a working camera and a bolt of black fleece around. And the morning sun cooperated nicely! I guess the nice thing about inventing is that I can do this in my PJs, but the payoff (seeing it on sale somewhere or in the wild, being used) is a loooooooooooong way off – if I ever get there.

But they took a lot of footage for a lot of people, maybe I’ll be filler. Lorena Bee, queen of the “B” roll or filler tape, whatever they call it these days. I’m going to have to get cable or satellite again so I can catch all the episodes and see who made it and how. Though while we were out of town this weekend, a family member suggested I try out for American Idol – but I think I’ve hit my limit on realty TV show tryouts for a while.

I do hope (and fear! TV! Eeeek!) I get somewhere with this – either on this show or just on my own; I mean, it makes sense to start small, maybe on Etsy because seriously, who has the price of a modest home to drop on getting 30,000 of something made up on spec?

But imagine volunteering at my local school in a few years in the lunch room and seeing the kids using my stuff!? Super wow. Or even just all my friends and family, not because I made it, but because it works and it’s cool. Wow.

Anyway, the inventor life isn’t all glamor. I need to go organize the playroom of my littlest birdies and maybe mask up that bathroom for painting, after all. What do we think of the color moss green?

This last week back home was a little crazy – extra house guests and the house a fright from being away for two weeks. I woke up Sunday morning to the unusually overpowering odor of curry powder. Fearing the young ones had decided to fix themselves breakfast and managed to roll their ownselves in curry powder, I popped into a kitchen thick with curry scent and minus all my throw rugs.

Luckily, another adult had gotten to the scene first. Unluckily, my experiment in floating spices had failed. Glass, fine powder, tile floor, throw rugs … clean up on asile me!

I got the idea out of a magazine. Spice clips! Brilliant! But not being a fan of tape, I decided magnets would do the trick. I bought up a package of strong magnets, cut a hole in the tape cover of the clips, and figured it would work. But magnet strength does not equal nice surface area; I needed strong magnets, yes, but I needed a large surface area more.

So I’ll try the floating spice rack again – but with larger magnets. And perhaps a couple of rails on the side of the fridge to keep the heavier bottles from diving off and spicing up my life at 2 am or 6 pm or the next time a kid makes sure he’s closed the fridge door firmly.

I know I mentioned during one of my infrequent spring pop-ins that I joined the ranks of the unemployed earlier this year. Whee.

I have had some interviews, and some nibbles. Nothing I could take to the bank; mostly the jobs were far away but I’m so over that. I want to live in the city I sleep in. Consequently, the pickings have been slim, but I’ve managed to land a job that I can do from home a lot. Some travel, not the corporate salary I’d been spoiled by, but home-based writing, yay.

When it got really slow at the beginning of this month (no criticism of those who are employing me!) I signed up for school. I did it the wrong way, of course, jumping in randomly on the last day of registration and missing a few days (BAD IDEA in the summer). But I caught up and my grades are pretty good. I’m re-learning Microsoft Office (2007 version) and will probably get certified in it later this year.

But my book? I spent seventy bucks on that darn thing (if I’d registered earlier I could have bought it online for about $20). And I can’t sell it back. No one is buying it, anywhere.

Why? Because it’s one of those books publishers churn out updates for every year. Use it for one year, and it’s dead. It’s not like basic math that they can re-use every year. I have not investigated, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s part of the contract that the books are provided on the idea that they are only to be used for one year. Which isn’t illegal, I believe, but not as, well, mindful of resources as it could be.

BUT. That means that anyone with a little gumption could find out what schools are teaching these classes over the summer. Find out the book price, and the sell by price, and the last day of class. Put up a notice at the school – “Want to buy XYZ book for $15 — bookstore isn’t buying it back.” Then for the cost of a couple six packs of beer, you’ve got yourself a nice self-contained “How to do this stuff” book.

It’s an old idea, really, revived from my recent experience in college during this quiet summer. I used to dive into the remainders bin during high school and in my early college years, picking up cool books and learning something new. But retraining if you need a new job? Go scout around your local community college for the “Go! Microsoft” series. I find them decently written and very helpful if you need to pick up the skills. Oh, and if anyone has the non-introductory edition for Office 07 they can’t get rid of – let me know. I think it will be useful if I do go for my MOS certification.

One of the tips I’ve picked up from daycare, summer camp, and other mommies is a focal point for herding children around. One kid, four kids, or more (especially if they are a leetle bit older). I used it just the other day herding a few five year olds and a two/three year old to the movies and park. I parked the car next to a tree that occupied a median, and had each get next to the tree and hug it once they left the car as I unbuckled them individually.

It worked in reverse, too – they stayed there as I unlocked the car and buckled them all back in, one by one by one.

But I’ve had the darnedest time getting them to stay back from the TV. It’s like herding cats as they get more drawn in to Signing Time or Dora or Magic School Bus and inch back. Until I invented the “no zone”.

The hub was suspicious when I abandoned my pursuit of our usual decorating style: late college years, early messy childhood. I asked to buy a rug for the living room. “Whyyyy …” he he trailed off cautiously.

I pointed out how the kids tended to migrate closer to the TV as I puttered in the kitchen, when we all watched something as a family, or played video games. In the heat of the moment or while juggling hot dishes, asking them to “back up” or “get out of the way” or “stop blocking us” didn’t work very well. They don’t quite get what “out of the way” means, or how far to back up.

I figured a nice rug directly in front of the TV would be a good target and solid delimiter. “Off of the rug, kids.” “Back off of the rug kids.” “Not the rug, please.” He wasn’t convinced. We thought about buying a big rug and limiting them to staying on the rug. Ehhh … no. Duct tape! Raggedy. Masking tape. Same.

Then a conversation with one of the school moms brought the solution out of the back of the clutter in my brain to the front. Window clings. I’ve got a number of them for the holidays or scrounged at clearance sales. We’ve got tiles. They’ll go great together.

I stuck the clings (Cat in the Hat seemed appropriate), one per tile, directly in the newly-designated “no zone”. When Wolfie wandered in during dinner preparation, he asked about them and learned their use. We explained it to Helvi but I expect she’ll need a few reminders now and then. And I’ll need to watch and keep her from peeling them up until she’s used to them.

But it’s perfect. We’ve got a designated “no zone” that has a measurable condition the kids can identify, and it peels up easily in case of guests. Any transferred ink can be scrubbed up. Easy peasy. Welcome to the “no zone”.

So how do you help set boundaries with your kids? How do you work towards giving them specific instructions, rather than vague notions that they have no cultural context for interpreting?

I have never had to label things so much as since I’ve had kids.

My last year of junior high, I needed a new coat and I found a lovely hot pink one (ah … the hot colored eighties; quite a change from the autumnal seventies). It included a zip-out black and pink fleece check-pattern inner jacket/mini jacket/liner. Mom told me to put my name on it, but I didn’t want to. I assured her I would be careful, and keep track of it; putting my name it in was so grade schoool.

I see you nodding along there on the other side of the computer. And the answer is, I’d be surprised if I had it all for even two weeks. The outer coat was “too hot” one Friday afternoon so I hung it up on the rack at my after school hangout. Sure enough, by the next Monday it was gone.

I think I still have the inner jacket – stashed somewhere in the Garage of Doom^TM.

My first trick of labeling things as a mobile pumper was the use of Post It flags. I had a TON of them from a previous co-worker who stuck them on every page to mark every change. I labeled the bottles simply, with numbers. The day-mommies fed the bottles to the kid in the order they were labeled. This was important because I’d send some fresh milk and some frozen milk, and I wanted the frozen milk to be served first. These durable, reusable labels were also great for home use and babysitters.

This last time around, for youngest, we needed to date and name each bottle every day. Enter 2-inch wide masking tape. I used a marker for the dates and names, one for each bottle, and we’re done. The bottles don’t need to be served in a particular order anymore (I didn’t really have much of a frozen stash, and this kid was more predictable milk-wise), but each bottle lined up in a cutlery tray marked with our name. The day-mommies simply pulled and served each bottle in order.

As for clothes, well …

I tried marking unders and casual wear with Sharpies. Lots of ink bleed and some colors just didn’t work (Teen Titan underpants have black bands … gah). The labels that come on the clothes might not have room, or might fall off. And the latest trend is to go “Taggless” … oh joy. Regular ink washed messily away.

At the same time multiple changes of clothing became needed at daycare (potty training time), I sewed up a bunch of short play pants up for the kid (sixteen pairs, if I recall correctly) and then had to label them. Hrm, thin play cotton, so … the kid could have a name on the seat of the pants in reverse when the marker bled through. Never mind the bright shark and animal prints that defy all but the most creative name tagging (maybe on the alternating white stripes on a zebra?). So I got lazy and used my Sharpie to make my own labels with ribbon.

Blurry, but doable. Now I see why folks pay good money for name tape.

For this latest round of clothes-labeling, I’ve bought name tapes. We are at a large daycare this summer, and two mobile messy kids to keep track of stuff for. Quite by accident, their first given names share a first initial, so all of the first lines of my labels have a first initial and their last name listed.

But the second line … has an email address. I went and set up a generic email address that forwards messages to me if something is found and we get emailed. I’ve had a few friends send test emails, and it works great.

The kids haven’t lost anything yet, which is good … because I haven’t actually gotten around to sewing those name tapes on everything yet. When I do break out the sewing machine, I’ll use light blue or light yellow or light green thread on one side, and thread that matches the fabric on the other (multiple bobbins for the win!). This also lets me see my stitches: then I can rip the labels out later if/when these clothes get handed across to the next cousin or friend.

I had a plan when it came to breast feeding and traveling for business. Don’t.

It didn’t quite work out that way, though, as an unexpected trip came my way before my youngest was on cow milk in any substantial amount.

My supply has always been sporadic at best, and she wasn’t helping the situation by refusing formula. I kept up as best I could for as long as I could, but was relieved when she finally took to solid foods. Even then, I pumped at work and home, and slowly built a little freezer stash.

Once I found out I’d be traveling in the middle of the transition to more cow milk, I burned through my stash as quickly as possible and started up a new one.

Having pumped for more than a couple of years now, I had my routines down pretty pat. I had three methods of storing frozen milk that I liked: Flat Gerber bags in Lock and Lock containers, the new Avent Via system, and ice cubes.

Method one (flat Gerber zipper bags) worked best for the oldest for his freezer stash. If i didn’t have enough one day to send to school the next, the flat bags thawed quickly in warm water to pop into the now-defunct Avent disposable system (replaced by a system that uses the standard Avent nipples instead of the blue ones). These bags fit in my lovely Lock and Lock containers easily, with a bit of toweling to cushion jostles.

Method two (the new Avent VIA system) turned out to be a good idea, though I still dislike the fact that if you squeeze the cups just a little bit, the lids or collars pop off. If Avent is smart, though, they’ll address that in a later refinement of the line, as well as make collars to convert these to drinking cups, like Playtex has.

Method three (milk cubes made in ice cube trays) was great for ultimate flexibility. When we stopped sending bottles and send a very personal bottle of milk, we could crank the cow to mom ratio up or down as needed quite easily. My quart bags also rode along in the Lock and Lock containers, for ease of freezer moves and to keep frost bite to a minimum.

All three systems relied heavily on dates and stock numbers to ensure milk was used in the “right” order (first in, first out).

So, pre-trip, all milk went into VIA cups. In preparation for the trip, we burned up that stash at school, emptying the cups both for re-use on the trip and to switch us over to method three – milk cubes.

As I started restashing with milk cubes, I’d pour each night’s milk into ice cube trays. Cheap ones, dollar store, never popped the cubes out correctly, but good enough. I’d freeze the cubes overnight, then pop them out the next day.

Often they wouldn’t actually pop, so I’d prop the trays on the counter top, upside down, over a clean dish. As the trays emptied, I’d put the cubes into a quart freezer bag, which in turn went into the Lock and Lock container. Each bag would be given a date and a number, to allow the milk to be used in a “first in, first out” system.

As we weaned her to more and more cow milk, the daily formula would change. We started out with four cubes for every two ounces of cow’s milk (the cubes averaged .75 ounces), and upped the cow content as the frozen stock (and my ability to make the stock) dwindled. I kept a chart on the fridge to remind myself and the hub (he took over milk mixing duty when I left) of the current ratio.

When I finally left for my trip, the Avent Via cups went with me. I used them to keep the milk contained and frozen (thank you Doubletree for the fridge!) until I was ready to haul it all back home. Once home, the milk was defrosted and split as needed for daily use, and my post-trip pumped milk reverted to the cube system. This let us adjust the cow to mom ratio as needed, and let me prepare to wean off of the pump when I was ready.

She weaned herself a short time after my trip, earlier than I’d expected, though. I ended up pumping longer than I’d planned after I returned. But she seems to have adjusted to regular cow milk well enough, and I’m hanging up the horns for good now, just trying to stay handy for my friends just starting this journey. Though I do miss the bit of a break in the days I got while pumping, I certainly don’t miss the daily prep work.

TOAST: Think of a Something Thursday

Long before I acquired my stable of shopping bags, and when I bothered to remember, I’d tell a store clerk trying to bag one or two items: “No thank you”. A habit borne of managing to accumulate too much junk (which I still do, adventure-girl/packrat that I am) but a habit that also fit in nicely with the Reduce part of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

When I was a kid, the grocery stores in my area were dominated by paper sacks. And that was it for a long time. They were great, useful – book covers, art papers, shipping paper, patterns, “canvas”. When plastic bags started coming around along with the advent of “bag your own” stores in my neck of the woods, the bags were your typical two handled affair seen today. Us kids adapted and used them to make simple box kites. Tie a string, find a gust of wind, and go. No sticks, no tails, no tape and paper and glue … But no sharks teeth or dragons, either. Nothing to paint or enhance. I think after one or two gos we were done and bored.

I started out my latest foray into self-bagging and non-plastic bagging like I do most things. In fits and spurts. (The hub asked me the other day how long my to-do list was. I asked in return, “which volume?”.) But I rounded up a sampling of totes I had anyway (I prefer simple totes instead of most diaper bags) along with the inexpensive reusable bags I mentioned the other day.

Surely there was one perfect bag to hold my ‘fancy’ cheeses, wines, crusty loafs of bread, and swirly pops for the kids, right? Be it a quick trip for a parents-only dinner or the restocking of the hurricane pantry, just grab a cloth bag and go, yes? No, not so much.

The oddball totes are okay for a short trip to the store. You can unload your cart quickly, then run to the other end of the counter and start loading the bags. Otherwise, you need to plan it out a bit to get things into the bags in reasonable shape. I’ve got a couple of “long totes” that I almost consider the perfect bags … but they still leave something to be desired. So I stick mostly to the “store bags”.

But of all the bags I’ve tried and set for a variety of uses, the hardest things I find to carry are long breads and wine. And I have no way to really keep those little plastic bags for veggies contained when I reuse them. I tried stuffing little bags in my pockets or purse, but I often forget to bring them along or to take them out of my pockets and use them. I tried carrying the wine or breadsticks separately, or handing them to the eldest … yeah, no.

I finally hit upon what to do. I took some stretchy cloth, measured it to the circumference of a typical wine bottle, gave myself a couple of inches to sew it, and simply sewed a sleeve into a grocery tote bag. The images outlining the steps are at the foot of this entry.

I can slide in a bottle of wine and not have it flop over on the other groceries, or I can slip in a nice loaf of bakery bread and not have other foods roll on it or have it slip out of the bag (you can optionally add a drawstring or elastic). Before I head to the store, I stuff the sleeve (even make it detachable) with the small veggie bags – and when I hit the produce department, I have a ready supply of bags from my previous trips to re-use.

Simple, easy to augment a bag (heck, sew an old long teeshirt sleeve in there or old stretchy pants leg) such as my lovely “long totes” that I favor for quick trips to “pick up a few things for a nice quick dinner” shop.

Like the bag? Like the idea? Make one and share it with us. Just post your link to your picture in comments.

Like the bag? Like the idea? Stay tuned, you could win one of your own before the month is out!

Note: Wine not included.