Gratituesday: A New Phone

What is Gratituesday? Gratituesday was started by Laura at Heavenly Homemakers as an opportunity to publicly express your thankfulness to God.

Yesterday my new cellphone came! I am so thankful to have a working phone again. I had been limping along with a busted screen for six weeks. I would search the contacts list by memory, and dialing was like Russian Roulette - who was going to answer? My sister or my long-neglected, talkative, overly enthusiastic Pampered Chef rep?

This time I bought a very simple phone. Husband was laughing til the tears came, because one of the pre-programmed shortcut buttons was for a "Pill Reminder". Yes. I am very thankful for my octogenarian-friendly phone. Not only does it work well, it was a great price (ebay!), has good reviews, and it will definitely be a great joke worth a few laughs with some of my technophile friends and family. 

And if your granny is in the market for a phone, tell her to consider the Pantech Breeze III.

PS - due to my own mistake, I lost all my contact info. So if you know me and have my number please send me yours!

Quick Cooking: The Lost Art of the Contunuous Kitchen

See the rest of this series here - parts one and two

My kitchen works while I'm sleeping - fermenting Curtido and Jalapeños en Escabeche

A friend came over today and I had so much fun visiting with her. As I put away the leftovers from our lunch, I went ahead and combined the beans and rice into one dish, to make reheating it for lunch tomorrow simple and easy. She saw me do this and asked what I was doing. I explained and then she started talking about a phrase she had just read in a vintage cookbook called the "continuous kitchen". 

That really struck a chord with me. When I'm keeping up in the kitchen like I ought to be, I make menu plans, alter the plans to use up leftovers, and think several meals ahead to do prep work in small steps throughout the week. I don't step into the kitchen right before mealtime and try to pull a meal out of thin air.

Broccoli pizza - I'm a mean mama

To cook real foods quickly you *must* establish a continuous kitchen. It won't come naturally to you at first. If you aren't a natural planner, it is going to be hard. (I'm sorry if that sounds discouraging. Hang in there!) But the good news is that like any skilled task (reading, math, crochet, computer programming, swimming, baseball, etc), the more effort you put into it, and the longer you practice it, the easier it becomes. Eventually you will realize that cooking like this feels natural and even -gasp- easy.

Have you mastered the art of the continuous kitchen yet?

Jack spilled the beans on my birthday bouquet a day early!

Shared with Monday Mania