Smoothie Packs

I kind of wish I actually took more pictures but things were a mess and fairly hectic from trying to figure up pricing and make the packs. My pricing will probably be off a bit because of already having things and i had a few mess ups in figuring things out because of one reason or another. Some items are pretty cheap because i got them from Grocery Outlet and the rest from Safeway.

First up was figuring out the prices of each item. Some were easier because it was based on serving sizes to divide into the cost. Others were based on weight so i wanted to see what i really paid for the items that have waste like banana peels.

Really didn't need this much flax but is a great add on to smoothies and i needed it for at least one of the smoothies but added it to a few extras. I paid $3.69 for the whole pack and it had 52 servings of 2 Tbs so made it roughly $0.07 per 2 Tbs. Doesn't seem so bad when it look at it like that, though $3.69 for the whole pack didn't seem that bad. I put the left over into the freezer to help it last longer since i don't go through it that fast.

For the bananas, they were priced $0.69 per pound. We paid $1.53 for the amount we got. I thought there was just 5 bananas because my mom said 5 when she grabbed them and i didn't think to count them as i peeled them. so my pricing was off just a tiny bit because i had did the pricing for 5 but turned out to be 6 bananas. Anyways, i weighed the bananas without the peel and based on what i paid for them and how much edible banana there was, i really actually paid ~$1.21 per pound instead of $0.69 per pound. Bananas are more expensive than i thought they were lol.

Probably could of gotten more out of the pineapple but i was having trouble with turning the cutter and didn't want to scrap out everything that i could. Managed to get about 2 cups out of it. which i just needed 1.5 cups so just made it more expensive for not getting more out of it. Paid $2.99 for the pineapple so the 2 cups made it ~$0.75 per half cup. Probably still better compared to like canned pineapple, not sure on frozen since i didn't look at that price.

I think my most expensive item i got per serving i used in these was the kale. I paid $3.99 for 2 cups worth. I don't use kale often so i paid more for a smaller container than the like $5 for a larger pack. I think my getting the cashew milk and frozen broccoli at Grocery Outlet was my best deals. I got a carton of cashew milk for $1.49 (About $0.37 per cup) and a bag of organic broccoli for $2.99 (about $0.33 per half cup) when a smaller bag of generic non organic bag of broccoli was more expensive than what i paid for my bag.

I tried to stretch out my smoothies over the month by doing 2 packs for the ones that says it makes 2 servings. I don't need to drink 2 servings so i made them into two packs so that i got an extra day out of them. A few packs, the recipe didn't say it was 2 servings, so i packed as one, though they are probably actually 2 servings. Will deal as it comes around to having those ones. I have enough packs for most of the rest of the month, but i didn't jam pack the month so then some mornings i don't have to have a smoothie.

Smoothies

Peach Carrot Smoothie (Found here)
The pack has:
1 cup peaches
1/2 cup carrots
1/2 banana
2 Tbs flax seeds
Flax wasn't originally in the recipe but figured i'd add it because i could. So each pack should make only one serving. I already had the coconut water so that isn't part of the cost of this pack. One pack cost roughly $1.78 for what i had to purchase. Not too bad i think.

Citrus Flax Green (Found here)
The pack has
1 clementine
1/2 banana
1 cup spinach
2 Tbs flax (did 2 each instead of separating to 1 each)
1/4 cup pineapple
Hoping that the 1/4 cup water will be enough with it being frozen and halved, but i can add more if needed as i blend it. Whether i stick with water or do coconut water instead, my cost on that isn't anything as i already had the coconut water. It was roughly $1.07 for one pack.

Pineapple and mango (Found here)
Pack has:
1 cup spinach
1/2 cup mango
1/2 cup pineapple
1 clementine
1/2 banana
I was going to add flax but spaced on it. Not sure what liquid i'll add. Maybe coconut milk, which i already have so doesn't go into the cost i added up. Cost for one pack was roughly $2.24.

Green apple (Found here)
Pack has:
1 cup kale
1 cup spinach
1 green apple
1/2 cucumber
Just noticed i forgot to write on the pack to add the lemon juice! Hopefully i'll remember. Also, i think this probably should of been done in 2 packs but it says it's one serving of 16 ounces and i'm not sure if the other packs are 8 oz or if 16 per serving. Cost for this around $4.10 which seems a lot but would of been close to the other pack costs if halved, but also this has kale in it and that was my most expensive item i had gotten.

PB&J (No picture)
Pack has:
1 cup strawberries
1 banana
1/4 cup quinoa
No recipe for this one to link. Will also be adding 2 Tbs peanut butter and 1/2-1 cup of liquid when i blend it. I already had the quinoa and peanut butter so those costs aren't included. Everything else was cost around $1.76.

Vitamin C (Found here)
Pack has:
1/4 of a red pepper
1/2 grapefruit
1 orange
Not really sure on this one but going to try it. Can always hold my nose if i have to lol. Cost for this one was about $1.83 a pack.

Sweet Pea (Found here)
Pack has:
1/2 cup peas
1/2 banana
1/2 green apple
1 cup strawberries
Then it calls for almond milk but because of finding cashew milk for $1.49 (at Grocery Outlet) and there wasn't almond milk right there for that same price, i decided on cashew milk for this smoothie. I did end up buying peas but i took it out of the smoothie costs as it turned out we had peas already so it didn't end up going in the smoothies. so cost of everything minus the peas was about $2.24 per pack.

A & F (Found here, #4)
Pack has:
1/2 cup broccoli
1 cup blueberries
1 orange
Will see how this one goes lol. Cost was roughly $2.56 per pack.

I figured out that out of everything i bought during my shopping trip, i spent about $59.86 on things for the smoothies and only about $29.30 was used in these packs for 14 smoothies packs. Still have about $30.56 worth of food left to be used in other things this month, or next month or whenever. Might use the rest of the fruit for like oatmeal or something for the days of not having a smoothie. The flax will last me a long time unless i find more things to add it to so good investment really. At least all my cost on this is for the whole month and not just for the week like it looks like on the receipt. Though i guess technically only 2 weeks worth of smoothies if i had one a day, but have stuff for other things too. Anyways, this is all about my cost per smoothie i had to pay. Prices will vary based on what you have on hand already and where you live and what store you shop at.

Small Amount of Organizing

2016 will hopefully be the year this house gets completely organized, among other things that we'd like to get done. Instead of making a push to clean everything in one day, working on small areas a little bit each day. Main starting focus has been in the kitchen. Biggest downfall for me on the kitchen is that it's so small, though probably still bigger than some i've seen pictures of.

The organizing is still a work in progress but wanted to share 2 drawers i got done that look so much nicer now.

First drawer, the silverware drawer.

Some time ago, we had already switched drawers with the junk drawer because we got this organizer and the drawer we originally had the silverware in was too small for the tray. I don't remember why i organized it going in towards the drawer, making us have to open the drawer more to get to the large spoons. I ended up switching the side that the peelers and can opener are one just for a change. Went through my daughter's spoons and got rid of all the baby spoons and too long for the space ones. There's still some small spoons in there that were just a little bigger than the baby spoons. The upper right corner ended up getting filled with some of our measuring spoons. Just looks so much nicer with the silverware going the way i moved them.


The other drawer is our, i guess random kitchen utensils drawer? It's just under the silverware drawer and we just mostly put in there the stuff that we didn't have another space for it.

As you can see, the drawer was just full of random stuff and you had to dig to just find a measuring spoon. I took everything out of the drawer to just start over. First thing i found out was that we have a hole in the bottom of it!

I pushed on it and it seems still fairly sturdy that i don't think our stuff will just break through. Just another thing to at some point get fixed. In the future, it is planned to replace all the cabinets, too bad can't be sooner lol.

Anyways, with the drawer, i started off with changing the boxes in it for organizing as the other ones were really old and bottoms were just dirty. Kept one of them just because of not having another box of that size. Loved that i had boxes the right size to keep the measuring cups and spoons in their own boxes. The old way we either had to keep them in the same one or the spoons would get just buried and hard to get to. Now they are much easier to get to. There's still some items that hadn't been put back in or we threw out because we never used it. Hardest part of this drawer was that i had to clean like everything from the drawer. After switching drawers for the silverware, that drawer started to get opened more often and it started to like drop crud onto the stuff in this drawer. i tried washing the track to see if that helps.

There's still a long way to go with getting the kitchen completely organized. Have more drawers to go through and the cabinets to go through. And that's just the kitchen, just OMG on the rest of the house to be done LOL. Maybe once the whole kitchen is done, i'll share the little kitchen and show how it has been organized. Possibly more small posts if i get them.

Do you have any kitchen organizing tips or just amazing kitchen products you love? Like style of serving spoons, etc.

Trying out a new site i found out about

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It's Snowing!

We don't get snow very often where i live. So i get excited when it does snow, i hate the cold though. The snow was just a dry snow so couldn't really do anything with it. Still took my daughter out to go play in it, not for very long though because of it being so cold.

Since we weren't really planned for snow, she's wearing 2 jackets and 2 pairs of pants and 2 pairs of socks under her boots. Kept her warm enough for the small bit we were outside.

We walked down to the corner of my street to just see how things looked down there. With the snow being dry and it was windy, we saw a lot of snow getting blown around. It was sad that it wasn't enough or good enough to make a snowman, but at least we had some snow to play in.

As it got darker out, it turned into freezing rain and made all the snow look glossy. Before getting my daughter in bed, we got bundled again and stepped out just long enough to check out the ice over the snow. She wanted to jump around and break all the ice but i didn't want to be out too long or have her slip, it was also bed time so needed to get her in bed.

Will have to see how everything looks in the morning but school was canceled due to the snow, so she gets an extra day of her winter break.

Crystal Mining Kit

My brother got my daughter this for Christmas. Was a bit my idea when going through Amazon with him for gift ideas for people. My daughter loved the gold panning thing we did back in the summer where it was this bag of sand with rocks in it that you wash away the sand to get the rocks. So i figured she's really like this.
If you're interested in trying this for yourself or your kid here's the Amazon link.

I hadn't actually planned on doing this when we did but was "please" into it.

Here's it out of package. It also has little plastic things to add the rocks you find onto that card. We ended up not using it because i don't think a 5 year old cares about that and we had found more rocks than what the card holds and many multiple types.

My little fuzzy head working on finding rocks. It makes a huge mess! If we get another one, waiting until warm weather and doing it outside. She had a bit of trouble with the hammer part. Kept hitting the rocks instead of around them and wasn't hitting hard enough. The brushing was a little hard for her just because she wasn't following my request of gently sweeping with it. She would start to go fast and stir up the dust into the air. She found it fun to come across more rocks while we worked through it.
Here's the first rock we found

Actually it ended up being 2 just really close together. I don't have any more pictures of us getting them out. Since it got so messy, my hands were too dirty to grab my phone and after a while, she started to get bored with it, so i finished up getting the rest out for her. It took some time and after i started to get it done myself, i just wanted to get it done and over with. It is fun but don't expect it to be quick.

Here's what rocks we found. Mostly quartz and rose quartz. Not positive to what the other ones are right now. The booklet gives a few rocks to try and identify but not sure if all are on that list and just the rocks look a bit different than the pictures, or if we got some not on the small list. I have the rock list from the other rock things we did in the summer, so i plan to look at that soon to try and see if i can figure out what they are.

Over all this was really fun to do. My brother worried that she wouldn't like it because it wasn't a toy like he was getting my nieces. I knew she would like it because she likes rocks and kits. She's also enjoying science stuff and is always trying to do my little DIY candy from my monthly japanese candy box, i let her help with the easy ones on those, but still not usually because i want to do them lol.

Tofurky Holiday Vegetarian Roast and Gravy (it's also vegan)

I have been up and down on trying to eat more plant based, sometimes more vegetarian and sometimes more vegan and then sometimes i'll eat some meat. So no real set diet plan that i'm doing. Anyways, as i've been following more vegan/vegetarian posts, i've seen this many times before but had no idea where to even get it. I figured i was going to need to go take a trip to Whole Foods or something to find it. Out of random luck, i came across this at Safeway. Of all places, i never expected Safeway to have it.
Originally i had gotten it for christmas dinner. But after the opening the gifts and the other food getting cooked, didn't want to deal with making this at that time. So had it for my first dinner of the year instead.

Here's how it looked after getting it out of the plastic wrap and putting on the oil and soy sauce baste it suggested to put on. More and more vegan foods have been looking good to me, but this does look a bit odd.

It even comes with "gravy"

That's how it started off as. That is very off putting for me... After it got heated up, it got thinner and got more gravy like. But i didn't really like the taste, just wasn't really any flavor to it. so i added some stuff to it and this is how it ended up.

Looks good right? Yeah, not so much for me either. Tasted a little better but still wasn't that great.

After cooking for 1 hour and 35 minutes, this is how it looked.

Slightly looks like a little ham. It did smell really good while it was cooking. It was a pain to cut though.

I was the only one who tried it so here's my plate.

I made some cranberry boxed stuffing to go with it, pretty sure it was vegan before cooking and i just used a vegan butter i have instead of normal butter to make it. so this whole plate should be vegan. Sounds great, looks a bit blah, and was a bit meh in taste.
Tried the gravy with the roast and it was a little better, but still not great. the stuffing in the roast was really good, best part of the whole thing. The boxed stuffing was decent, just made me want more cranberries though. The actual roast itself, well if it had the sliced tofurkey before, it tastes just like a big chunk of that. Isn't too bad, i like the sliced Tofukry but on a sandwich with other flavors. Was able to eat more of it when i did a mix of piece of roast and some of the boxed stuffing...It pretty much covered the flavor.

Well, now i can say i've tried the roast. I may not of been super pleased with it but i'm glad i've tried it. Vegans who are full vegans and eat this stuff more often than me, i'm sure they like it more than me, but still all the matter of taste. I won't be buying it again, but i'm not going to tell someone to not buy it if they are curious in trying it.

Now i need to go buy cranberries when i get to go shopping....

The New Year! 2016!

Once again it's a new year. The time to get all excited for all the new things to happen and start over on things you may of failed at. Though really the hype of New Years isn't really much of anything. "I'll start getting healthy at the start of the year", why not start when you first think of doing it? I'm guilty of "I'll wait til then to start" on whatever it is. It is a decent starting place, like how starting something on a start of a month or start of a week just gives you a starting place.

I don't really have much of goals for 2016, just would like to get done what i can. Among those things i would like to get done are to get healthy, actually finish a 365 project (thought 366 for this year, it's a leap year), get things organized, etc. I have tried many times to do each of things and of course fail. Will see how the year goes, just going to take it day by day.

My actual New Years day was spent getting pretty much nothing done. Main goal i wanted to get done was to clean, i did no cleaning. I sort of got a few things prepped on things i want to get done. I ended up spending midnight getting my shower head changed.

I had opened the package and didn't get around to putting it up right away because i couldn't get the old shower head off. So i ended up losing a piece that held the rod on. I used these silicone hair ties i have for now to keep it on. Maybe i'll find it after i get some cleaning done. After getting it up, i got a shower then went to sleep.

I started my day after getting up with doing a few things and i decided to take a picture of myself to be the first picture of the year and so then i have a picture of myself from the start of the year to compare with at the end of the year. This is the picture i took.

Nothing glamorous but it's a picture.

Hopefully i can get this year to bring great changes for me!