Cooking Beans Part 4: refried beans

Part 1: rinsing and soaking
Part 2: boiling
Part 3: preparing beans ahead of time
Part 4: refried beans

One of our favorite recipes is refried beans. They are great for making burritos and also make a very yummy chip dip.

Start by making a batch of pinto beans (or other beans would probably work). When the beans are soft, drain the beans, reserving the bean water in a bowl.

Use a potato masher, blender, mixer, or food processor to mash up the beans. I like to mash the beans up a few cups at a time and gradually add more. Add bean water as needed to get the consistency you like.

On the stove, heat 1 tbsp. of oil and saute 2-3 cloves of minced garlic for a couple of minutes. Gradually mix the mashed beans with the garlic. If the beans get too dry, you can add some bean water. If you add too much bean water, you can just cook it until some evaporates.

You can add lots of different spices depending on what you like. Cumin, chili powder, and taco seasoning are all spices that work well. I usually just go with the garlic. I also like to add some salsa.

When you're satisfied with the taste and the bean mush is as thick or thin as you like it, you're done. Now you have refried beans.

You can make big batches of refried beans and freeze them in meal-sized portions, just like with regular beans. They are easy to reheat by microwaving them for 1-2 minutes.

As a side note, it is also possible to grind up beans in a mill (check the owner's manual of your mill to make sure!) and use the bean flour as instant refried beans. I have tried it this way and didn't like it as much because I like the more chunky texture of mashed beans.

To make burritos, spoon some refried beans onto one side of a large burrito-sized tortilla that has been heated in the microwave long enough to soften it. Don't put too much on the burrito because you need room to roll it up.

You can add other toppings to the burrito, such as avocado, peppers, tomatoes, sour cream, salsa, cheese, rice, or meat.

Now you roll it up. (I hope that between my instructions and the pictures you can figure it out, because it's kind of hard to explain.) Start by folding up the edge closest to you.

Next fold in the sides.

Starting at the end where the beans and toppings are, roll up the burrito towards the empty end.

If the beans and tortilla are warm, you can eat it now, or you can microwave the burrito for about one minute to heat it up.

Burritos are a nice alternative to sandwiches for lunch. I don't know what's in frozen burritos, but homemade burritos just have beans, a tortilla, and whatever toppings you add, so they are cheap and very healthy.

Cooking Beans Part 3: preparing beans ahead of time

Part 1: rinsing and soaking
Part 2: boiling
Part 3: preparing beans ahead of time
Part 4: refried beans

I was aware of the low cost and the health benefits of beans long before I became comfortable with cooking them from scratch, but one of the main reasons I didn't cook them very much was because of how long it took for them to be ready. Even though most of the time you don't actually have to be paying attention to the beans, it still takes planning ahead so that you can have beans ready for a meal. It didn't really seem worth it to me to spend the whole day cooking beans for just one meal, and I didn't want to be eating leftover beans for the next several days either. I think this is why a lot of people don't cook beans very often.

One solution is to buy canned beans. You can also can beans yourself in a pressure cooker (use the Ball canning book or another tested recipe to make sure they are processed correctly so you don't grow a bacteria colony in your jar). Since you can reuse mason jars and the ring part of the lid, the main costs you would have to consider are the cost of the beans and the cost of the part of the lid that seals to the jar. If that is less than the cost of canned beans from the store, and if you feel that you will get enough uses out of the mason jar, then it's worth it to can your own beans. The disadvantages to canned beans are that they will not last for years and years like dry beans will, the cost is greater, and they also take up more space. The advantages are that you can have beans for dinner without a lot of preparation, and in a situation where you don't have a lot of water or the available water isn't fit to drink you can still eat your beans since they're already cooked.

One other option is to freeze your cooked beans. When I make beans I cook a large batch and then store the beans in 1-cup-sized plastic Glad containers, which I put in the freezer. I don't add any extra water. When I want to use my beans I pull out the amount that I need and either let the beans thaw in a bowl of water or let them heat up in whatever I'm cooking. This works well for soups and casseroles. I don't like it as much for putting the beans on salads.

Well, I wasn't planning to publish the previous post yet, but Kevin had other ideas, so I hope you enjoy it.

last couple of weeks in review

Kevin has been learning a lot of new words. Some of his new words are light, towel, chair, bite (as in, "Can I have a bite?"), door, and outside. It has been rather nice that he has learned how to say bite, because now when he wants something I am eating, he will climb all over me and say, "Bi? Bi? Bi?" instead of climbing all over me and whining. I feel much more inclined to share when he asks nicely like that, although I could do without the climbing : ). A few mornings ago Kevin was running to the door every few minutes saying, "Si? Si? Si?" (Outside) I felt sort of bad that I couldn't take him out because I had something on the stove and it was also already really hot. We need to start trying to get outside nice and early, before it becomes too hot.

Speaking of being hot, my built-in space heater is running nicely. Ryan often checks the thermostat and shivers that it's cold, and I say, "I know, isn't it great?" I'm at least glad that I won't be pregnant in July this time, but it's still really hot.

Here's what happened while I was slicing up peppers to freeze. I wasn't sure if I felt like I had been productive or not.

And here's what happened when I locked Kevin out of the kitchen so I could get some bread mixing. He decided to pull the flour bucket out of the closet. I love how my gamma seal lids make it easy to open the buckets, but sometimes I really hate how my gamma seal lids make it easy to open the buckets.

Here's Kevin singing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. I think he learned it at Nursery, but now we enjoy it at home as well.



I strongly suspect that Kevin has learned the Clean Up song from Barney. Often when we are putting things away he will start helping and singing "Nuh Neee Nuh Neee Nuh Neee . . ." I think he must have picked this one up from Nursery as well, because I've never sung it to him.

Baby Girl is still doing well. Her feet and elbows are sharp, but she does seem to be mostly leaving my ribs alone, unlike Kevin. My stomach would like some extra space, though. I think she's already dropped pretty low, which I'm hoping is a good sign. One thing that I've noticed about her is that she seems to be a lot more responsive to the outside world. When I sing or rub my tummy she often kicks and wiggles in response. Kevin didn't respond as much to that sort of thing. We are looking forward to finally meeting her.

I am reading a lovely book called Birthing From Within. I was worried that it would be a really hippie book, and in parts it is, but I have really enjoyed it. I appreciate that it has helped me to think about some of the worries I have about giving birth and also helped me to have positive feelings about it. Kevin's birth was a very sacred and special event, and I am really excited to get to experience that again. There aren't many things that have been as wonderful as holding my own child for the very first time.

I finally mustered the initiative to start packing a bag. Maybe sometime I'll install the car seat in the car. I have been doing a lot of nesting, but those particular projects don't seem very important to my subconscious yet. I think I'm afraid that if I do it the bag will just sit there for several more weeks.

Last week our brother-in-law Kirk came here for a conference, and we got to spend a little time with him. The night he arrived we got sandwiches at Buns, and then before taking him to the airport we walked around Duke campus. We enjoyed seeing Duke chapel and the beautiful Duke gardens.

We also had a nice Relief Society activity last week. For the first half of the class I taught about canning, and then for the second half another person taught about bread making. I was nervous to teach about canning, but I hope that I was able to help people see that canning isn't as hard as you'd think.

cooking beans Part 2: boiling

Part 1: rinsing and soaking
Part 2: boiling
Part 3: preparing beans ahead of time
Part 4: refried beans

After your beans have soaked, drain them and rinse them, the same way you did before soaking. As I mentioned in Part 1, I like to use a colander and rinse the beans with the sprayer on my sink.

Now that your beans are soaked, there are a few different ways you can cook them.

Crockpot

You can put the beans in your crockpot (about 6 hours). This is nice because you don’t have to babysit the beans—and the beans don’t leave a nasty burned ring like most crockpot recipes do!

On the Stove

You can boil them on your stove (1-2 hours, depending on the type and size of bean). Bring the beans to a boil, then reduce the heat (I usually use "2" on my stove) and boil them gently with the lid on until they are tender. When you have waited the recommended time, taste a few beans to see if they are done. If they aren’t, check back in about 15 minutes.

Pressure Cooker

I don't have a pressure cooker and have never tried cooking beans in one, but soaked beans will cook really fast in a pressure cooker (as in, 5-10 minutes!). If the beans are not done when they come out, you can boil them on the stove until they are tender. I also found a video about how to cook unsoaked beans in a pressure cooker: click here to see it at Everyday Food Storage.

If you are using the crockpot or stove, add the following to the beans before cooking:

• 3 cups of water per cup of dry beans (as in, the number of unsoaked beans that you started with)
• 1 tsp. salt per cup of dry beans
• 1 tbsp. oil/fat per cup of dry beans (optional, supposedly reduces foaming)
• Spices if you like (I have never tried adding spices during boiling, so I don’t have any recommendations—sorry!)
• You can also add a ham bone or pieces of ham.

For an electric pressure cooker, I'm not sure if it's okay to add salt or oil or spices.

Boiling Guide for Dry Beans, Peas, and Lentils (if you boil them on the stove)

(I got this from the family cookbook [RT's side], so hopefully nobody minds me posting it here.)

Vegetable (1 cup)	Water (c.)	Boiling time (hrs.)	Yield (c.)
Black Beans	3	2	2
Great Northern	2 ½	1 to 1 ½	2 ½
Kidney	3	2	2 ¾
Lentils (unsoaked)	2	30-40 min.	2 ½
Lima (large)	2 ½	1	2 ½
Lima (small)	2 ½	1	2
Navy	3	1 1/2 to 2	2 ½
Peas, whole	2 ½	1	2 ½
Pinto beans	3	2	2 ½
Soybeans	4	2 ½	2 ½
Split peas	2	1/3	2 ½

The beans are cooked when they are soft and when they have a texture that you like. If they still taste a little gritty or crunchy, then check back in 15-30 minutes to see if they are done. Taste a few beans each time because sometimes you'll find one that is soft even if most of them aren't quite done.

I know there are mixed messages about adding salt during cooking. I have heard that you shouldn't add salt because your food will never cook or your water won't boil. I have also heard that you should add salt because it increases the boiling temperature of your water and your food will cook faster. Salt actually does raise the boiling temperature of water, which means that technically it would take longer for your water to boil, but when it does boil, it would be boiling at a higher temperature and your food would cook faster. However, if you want to have a noticeable effect, you would have to add quite a bit of salt (so your food wouldn't taste good). So, I just add it right away. The main reason to add salt is for flavor. And beans are pretty bland, so you will probably want to add some salt before cooking.

cooking beans Part 1: rinsing and soaking

The plan is for this to be a series of posts about how to cook beans. A lot of this will come from my notes from a class I taught about beans for Relief Society about a year ago.

Part 1: rinsing and soaking
Part 2: boiling
Part 3: preparing beans ahead of time
Part 4: refried beans


Rinsing
The first thing you should do when you begin cooking some beans is to rinse them. The way I like to do this is to measure my beans into a colander and rinse them with the sprayer on my sink. While I spray the beans I stir them a little bit with my hands and watch for sticks and rocks.

Soaking
First of all, you don't have to soak beans. If you cook them long enough, they will get soft. Many people like to rinse their beans and then cook them in the crockpot all day long. If you would like to try this, rinse the beans, and then place them in the crockpot. Cover them with plenty of water (3 cups of water for every 1 cup of dry beans), and add 1 tbsp. oil and 1 tsp. salt for every 1 cup of dry beans. It does take a while for the beans to cook this way, but it is also very easy to be able to throw it all in the crockpot and then have cooked beans for dinner without the extra step of soaking.

There are a couple of reasons that people like to soak beans:

• In my experience, the flavor of soaked-and-cooked beans is different from just cooked beans. Both taste fine, but I prefer the flavor of the soaked beans.
• It reduces the amount of time your stove is on. When you let the beans soak first, this gives the beans time to absorb the water and soften without using extra power, so instead of boiling beans for a few hours, you end up boiling them for an hour and a half or so. Overall, the time will be longer, but the actual cooking time is shortened.
• Many people find that soaking helps reduce the infamous problem of beans causing gas (although not everyone ends up having that problem in the first place). According to centralbean.com and other places, some chemical compounds in beans will react with the bacteria in people’s digestive tracts and cause gas, which is really uncomfortable for some people. Many of those chemicals are washed away with the soak water, which makes it easier to digest the beans.

All that being said, there are a couple of methods for soaking beans:

Long method
Put the beans in a big bowl, cover them with plenty of water (I usually do about 3 cups of water per cup of beans--the beans will absorb some and thus will also get bigger), and let them sit for 8-12 hours. You can start them soaking just before you go to bed and cook them in the morning.

Quick method
Put the beans in a pot with about 3 cups of water for every 1 cup of beans. Bring the water to a boil, then put a lid on the pot, remove it from the burner, and let the beans soak in the warm water for 1-4 hours. I don’t use a timer—I just go back to them when I remember them again.

(The burner is off!)

Note: The first time I cooked beans by myself, I got a little nervous after the soaking stage because my beans were still crunchy when I tasted them. That's to be expected. They will get soft as they cook.

I use both methods, depending on what my plans are, and both seem to work equally well.

Is it worth it to bake your own bread?

Bread in the store is quite expensive. I guess you can get airbread for something like $1.00 a loaf, or sometimes cheaper, but there's a reason it's that cheap. But the better-tasting bread that actually has some nutritional value can cost several dollars.

Many people turn to making homemade bread in an effort to save money on bread. A lot of people insist it saves them money, even if they've never calculated how much it actually costs. But I have also started to see comments from people who say, "I thought I would try to save money by making my own bread, but then after buying all the ingredients I realized that I had already spent a lot more than if I had just bought it." And then you also have to consider if it's worth it to you to spend the time to make it.

Now, one thing that is important to remember is that a very valuable aspect of making homemade bread is that you know exactly what is in your bread. Every single one of the ingredients you put in is something that you can pronounce. And there are a lot of health and taste benefits to making homemade bread. For many people, this is enough, even if it's more expensive to make it than to buy it.

But cost is still a consideration.

So I decided to do some research and calculating and see how much it costs to make one of my recipes for whole wheat bread. This is the recipe:

Crunchy Wheat and Honey Bread

1 1/4 cups water

3 tbsp. honey

2 tbsp. margarine or butter, softened

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/4 tsp. yeast

I just throw all of these into my bread machine, and let it run through the dough cycle. Then I shape it into a loaf and bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes in my oven.

Wheat
Several places on the internet say 1 cup wheat kernels yields about 1 1/2 cups flour. That's approximately what I usually get when I grind just enough for the recipe I'm making.
There are 56 cups of white wheat in a 25 lb. bag (based on what I measured myself).
White wheat from the cannery costs $11.45 for a 25 lb. bag. (See the order form at providentliving.org.)
A little calculating:
(56 cups wheat kernels) X [(1.5 cups wheat flour)/(1 cup wheat kernels)]=84 cups wheat flour from a 25 lb. bag of wheat
The price per cup of whole wheat flour from the cannery is $11.45/84=$0.14 for one cup of flour.

Now that I've calculated that, below is a spreadsheet that shows the price of a 1 lb. loaf of bread using ingredients exclusively purchased at Kroger, Harris Teeter, and Costco, respectively. Costco doesn't have whole wheat flour here, so I used the price of whole wheat flour at Kroger for that table. The last table calculates the price of making this recipe if I use wheat from the cannery and the rest of the ingredients from whichever store has it for the best price per unit.

I should note that prices for many foods are going up or will go up soon, so these calculations might not be accurate in a couple of months, but I thought I would post this anyway, and then after prices have changed I can do this again and it will be interesting to see what effect it has had.



Explanation of columns in the table:

• Ingredient: I think this is self-explanatory. I am assuming the price of the water is negligible, which it probably is, and the price would be difficult to calculate anyway.
• Price and Amount: These give the price of a bag or box of that ingredient, and the amount of the ingredient in the bag or box.
• Price/unit: This is the number in Price divided by the number in Amount, rounded to three decimal places.
• Unit/measurement: This is copied straight from the table at the top of the spreadsheet. I found these values from the website shown below the conversions. The website converts amounts of various kitchen ingredients between different units of measurement. Since most ingredients are sold by the pound or ounce, I needed these to convert the numbers to cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons.
• Amount required for recipe: copied straight from the recipe, although fractions were converted to decimals.
• Price for recipe: This is the product of price/unit, unit/measurement, and amount required for recipe. It is the amount the you are paying for that particular ingredient every time you make bread.
• The total price to make a 1 lb. loaf of bread is in bold beneath each table.
• Below that is the total price of all the ingredients except whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour.

Observations:

• If you use the least expensive ingredients and cannery wheat, a loaf of this bread costs 50 cents.
• Cannery wheat actually isn't much cheaper than store-bought wheat right now, although normally wheat costs about half of what it does right now. Right now the savings are less than a cent per loaf.
• Yeast from the grocery store is a lot more expensive than if you buy it in bulk at Costco. At Kroger and Harris Teeter, the total price of all ingredients except the flours is nearly half the price of the entire loaf, and this is largely because the yeast costs so much. So just buying yeast at Costco decreases a good portion of the cost per loaf.
• Before I did this spreadsheet I had been assuming that all the ingredients except the flour were pretty negligible and would only account for a few cents. But even using the least expensive ingredients, that was still 14 cents per loaf. It's still not very much, but it's more than I expected.
• Flour is a little less expensive at Kroger than Costco. I had been assuming that Costco's all-purpose flour must be the cheapest, but then again the price of flour at Costco has risen a little bit recently.
• All-purpose flour is less expensive than whole wheat flour, even if you grind it yourself, although when wheat kernels are less expensive the price is probably fairly similar.

So if you only take into account the price of the ingredients, it is probably cheaper to make your own whole wheat bread. You do also have to consider if the time is worth it to you, as well as what equipment you are planning to use. If you are grinding your own wheat, you will also need a wheat grinder, or you'll need to factor in the time spent using a mortar and pestle. If you don't want to mix the bread by hand, you will need a bread maker or a mixer. A mixer and a wheat grinder could cost about $600, so you would need to consider how much use you get out of those before they break down, and if you would save enough money making your own bread to justify the cost of those.

Note: I added a new table to the spreadsheet to calculate how long it would take for an appliance to "pay for itself" in the amount of money you would save by using it. The first column tries various prices for one loaf of bread bought at the store, and the second shows how much you would save by making your own with my recipe. The rest of the columns show how many loaves of bread you would have to make before you would save as much money as you have paid for the mixer or wheat grinder. So if you think about which bread you buy from the store, how often you would make bread instead, and how much bread you make each time, then that can give you an idea of how long it would take to pay for that appliance in savings.

Some more thoughts: Another thing to keep in mind is that homemade bread seems to disappear faster than storebought bread. That's partly because everyone is so excited about the warm bread that it disappears in the first hour, and partly because it's hard to slice it as thin and each slice is more dense than the store's airbread. But that could be a good thing because your family is consuming lots of nutritious and delicious bread. I also find that homemade bread makes me feel full faster and helps me feel full longer than storebought bread. I guess for me, I've stopped wondering if I'm saving money or not by making homemade bread, because I love the taste and the nutritional benefits enough that it doesn't matter to me. You have to make that decision for yourself.

tummy comparisons

The top row has pictures from this pregnancy. The left one is from about a week ago, the right one is from the end of March.

I wanted to compare how I look this pregnancy to how I looked last time. The bottom two pictures are when I was seven months and eight months pregnant with Kevin. I think I look bigger now than I did when I was eight months pregnant with Kevin, but I think I'm also carrying the baby differently this time, which is interesting.

We have about a month to go until my estimated due date. The weeks seem to be going faster now, but at the same time I feel like I've been pregnant for a really long time and Birth Day still seems far away.

snuggling

this week

This week I finished my finals. At times I didn't think I would make it. This semester has been tougher than I expected. I'm glad it's over and that I can have some time to get ready for the baby and do some projects and spend time with Kevin and Ryan.

In my Surface Processes class, there is a sweet lady who is probably about my mom's age and going back to school. At the beginning of the semester I started sitting in the row in front of her, and we started talking and became friends. She is one of the kindest people I've ever met and was very supportive of me having a family and finishing my education. The day of the final, she pulled out an old cookbook with favorite Mormon recipes in it and gave it to me. I had told her about my church and she remembered that she still had that cookbook and thought I would like it. I thought it was a really thoughtful thing to do. I wish we had exchanged email addresses. I don't know if I'll ever see her again.

My mom sent me a copy of Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother's Soul. I started it after finals were over and I'm already halfway through. It was just the sort of thing I needed. I needed heartwarming and funny stories about pregnancy and babies.

Yesterday we went and picked strawberries. Ryan and I ended up taking turns picking berries because Kevin just wanted to eat them, but we still had a good time. Since it's still early in the season, we only had to go a few yards along the row to get all the berries we needed. I was also surprised that it wasn't as uncomfortable as I had expected to pick berries at eight months pregnant. A man said to me, "They're not going to make you pick berries, are they?" and I replied, "Oh, it's not too bad, because I have a built-in pillow to lean forward on." We got over 20 pounds to make jam and eat. It was fun to hear other pickers around us exclaiming, "Oh, wow! Look at these berries! They look so good! This is so amazing!" You don't get berries like that in the store, so I guess most people aren't used to seeing what real strawberries look and taste like. We are fortunate to have several pick-your-own berry patches nearby. It brought back memories of going to pick strawberries with my grandma and my sisters in Idaho. I loved the feeling of being in a field full of plants.

I need to make a trip to the store tomorrow to get some pectin because the pectin I bought calls for twice as much sugar as berries, so I'm going to try to find the Ball Freezer Jam pectin that I used two years ago, which calls for much less sugar. I'm teaching a Relief Society class about canning in a couple of weeks, so I'm glad this happened because now I realize that not all pectin is the same and I can talk about that in the class. Isn't it nice to live in a time when we can just buy pectin instead of standing over a spattering pot of berries waiting for the fruit's natural pectin to cause the jam to gel while all the flavor and nutrients boil away?

on being a mother

You know what I like about being a mother?

I like checking on Kevin before I go to bed and seeing him sprawled on his stomach, deeply and peacefully asleep, and looking like my baby again. Except he's three times as long.

I like it when Ryan gets Kevin up in the morning and the first thing he does is run to greet me.

I like it when we say prayers and Kevin folds his arms unprompted, or when I give him his lunch and he remembers to bless his food when I had forgotten.

I like the [rare] times when Kevin snuggles up against me and falls asleep.

I like it when he's sad or sick or hurt and wants nothing except love from his mama.

I like seeing his face light up when he sees a dog or a bird or when he blows the seeds off dandelions.

I like it when he points to pictures of Jesus and says, "Jesus!"

I like it when he gets his favorite books and climbs into my lap to read them.

I like it when he tries to pat my tummy.

I like the feeling of a baby trying to run laps inside of me.

I like seeing a little elbow make a funny-looking bump on my tummy.

I like remembering the moment I first saw Kevin. He was different from any other baby in the world. He had come straight from God's arms. He was my son. His earth life had begun.

I like telling Kevin scripture stories or showing him pictures from the gospel art book and seeing that he felt the Spirit.

I like seeing Kevin give other children hugs.

I like the joy on his face as he goes down the slide or runs as fast as he can down the sidewalk.

I like watching him master the fine art of jumping.

I like seeing him learn to communicate.

I like it when Kevin holds my hand so he can show me something.

I like it when Kevin gets a towel to clean up his own spills, or when he remembers that strawberry leaves go in the garbage or on his plate, not on the floor.

I am grateful to be entrusted with God's spirit children. I am grateful to be a partner with Him in bringing them to this earth and helping them through the tests and trials of their mortal lives. I am grateful that the ordinances of the temple seal my children to me and to Ryan for all eternity.

Jeffrey R. Holland on motherhood

Happy Mother's Day! Here is one of my favorite Mormon Messages about motherhood.

milk food

Today Kevin saw an empty ice cream carton in the kitchen trash can. He stared at it for a while, wanting some ice cream and trying to figure out a way to communicate that, even though he didn't know a word or sign for ice cream. Then he turned to Ryan and very deliberately made the sign for milk, then the sign for food. After all, ice cream is like milk, except it's food, not a drink. That is, he asked for "milk-food." We were very impressed that he was able to synthesize the two words into a new word.

notes about decluttering

Last Thursday we had a Relief Society activity. We started out with a speaker who gave us some tips about organizing our lives and decluttering, and then we had a clothing/hobby item swap afterwards. So here are some of my notes from the things we talked about:

• Don't fill your attic with stuff. Even though you can't see it, it presses down on you, because you still think about it. It drains you.
• If someone asks you to store something for them, say no unless they have a date that they will come back for it or they give you a contract saying they will come get it. The speaker said that she and her husband had lived in a house with an attic, a basement, a cellar, and a three-story barn, and they ended up spending a bundle of money before they moved to have someone come haul all the stuff away that people had asked them to store.
• If someone offers you something that you don't like (curtains, clothes, furniture, etc.) and that you know you never want to use, politely say no. Don't take it and store it for years because you didn't want to hurt their feelings. It's okay to say, "I don't think I'll ever use that."
• It's usually a lot easier to go through someone else's stuff and point out what they should throw away than it is to get rid of your own things. But it's not okay to go through their things and get rid of stuff without them saying it's okay--it's not worth the hurt feelings, and you never know if that thing had special meaning for them.
• With kids' toys and books, use a 1-2-3 method. Pick up three things, and they can choose one of the three things. Do the same with the next three things. If they want to choose two, then they can't choose any from the next three. Set aside the items they didn't choose. Over the next couple of weeks, if they ask for one of those items, give it to them. That's something they still play with or read. Whatever is left that they never ask for, you can throw away or donate.
• When you are taking kids' items to the thrift shop or garbage or whatever, do not put them in a see-through grocery bag. Put them in a thick garbage bag so the kids can't see them as you carry the bag out the door. If you put the items in a grocery bag and they see what it is, it will suddenly become their favorite toy ever and they won't let you take it, even though they haven't played with it for over a year.
• Don't store clothes that don't fit you anymore. If you have clothes that are too small but you are saving them for when you lose 25 lbs., you are punishing yourself every time you see them in your closet. Instead, get rid of them. And if/when you actually do lose 25 lbs., yay! Now you can go buy some new clothes as a reward!
• Only touch things once. When you get the mail, go through it over the trash can, and then immediately file whatever you don't take care of right away. Don't pick up a book and set it someplace else, thinking you'll put it away later. Put it away right then.
• Declutter the bathroom. You don't need a lot of stuff in the bathroom, and a lot of the things that are sitting on the counter could be put away. It's a similar idea for the kitchen.
• Clutter takes away your time from more important things. Lots of knickknacks means lots of dusting.
• Never rent a storage unit. If you are spending $100 a month on a storage unit, you're effectively raising your rent $100--and you could be spending that money on a nicer place instead. And if you do really need a storage unit, make sure that anything you store is something you will still want in a year, because that's probably how long it will take to get back to that storage unit.

This is a topic I have been thinking about a lot over the past few weeks. I think it's nesting, but I've been really wanting to go through things and just get rid of stuff. Before the swap, I went through all of my clothes and donated several of my pre-Kevin things. Even though I eventually got down to about my average weight after he was born, those things never fit nicely again because my body was shaped differently, and I realized that it was time to accept that. So after the baby is born, I'll just have to get some new clothes that I actually like. Gee, that's too bad. : ) We also started talking about Kevin's toys, and we realized that a lot of them are just used for banging on things or they get thrown on the floor with everything else but never get played with. So we went through his toys and put away things like matchbox cars, puzzles, and wordy books that he will eventually want to play with but isn't old enough for yet, as well as baby toys that will be nice to have for Baby Girl but that Kevin isn't interested in.

pennies in his pocket

Here's a closer look at the treasure he found. I'm pretty sure he got a couple of dollars in there.

lessons in being flexible

Sometimes when you have kids you have to learn to be flexible, and to keep a clear head when plans change at the last minute.

A couple of nights ago I was fully expecting that we were going to have oatmeal muffins and fried potatoes. The potatoes were already in the pan, and I was working on the muffins. Then out of the blue I heard a crack and the sound of styrofoam hitting linoleum. There was Kevin, standing by the fridge and staring at an egg carton on the floor.

Five eggs had broken. "All right, I guess we're having scrambled eggs for dinner," I said, and started working on salvaging the eggs. The broken eggs went into a bowl, which I left on the counter so I could rinse off the three intact ones. Scrambled eggs are no big deal--we would just be having a nice big dinner.

After cleaning off the eggs, I turned to find the bowl tilted on its side. There was a puddle of eggs on the floor, and one egg yolk still floating in the bowl. Why do I keep forgetting that Kevin can reach that high? I don't know if it's to my credit that Kevin pointed down at the puddle and said, "No! No!" But I'll have you know that I didn't yell at him this time. Occasionally my patience still comes to my rescue, tried as it is.

Data, please.

I think that one effect that studying geology has had on me is that data is more important to me. It's one thing to draw a picture and color it in and say, "See? This is how hotspots work." But just because you draw a picture or even make an animation doesn't make it so. It's important to have the data to back up an idea. That involves studying the chemistry and mineralogy of the rocks, observing formations and making geologic maps, examining how seismic waves move in an area, and many other things. Then you organize the data in a way that makes it possible to analyze it, and you see if the data matches your ideas, or if it suggests other ideas.

I've found that this attitude is starting to spill over into other things I see or read about from day to day. For example, I have a bottle of St. Ives lotion in my bathroom, and the other day I was noticing an explanation of some of the ingredients printed on the back. Here's what it says:

Olive Leaf Extract: Known to restore dry skin with its skin-nourishing moisturization.
Cranberry Seed Oil: This nutrient rich antioxidant is known to relieve dry, itchy skin.
Grape Seed Oil: Known to prevent future skin damage.

So I read that and the first thing that went through my head was, "Where's your citation? Where's the study that proves that those things are known to actually do that?" Now, I'm not complaining about the lotion. I've found recently that I'm allergic to many lotions, and St. Ives is one that I know doesn't make red bumps break out all over my skin and I also know that it is effective at keeping my hands and wrists nice and smooth. But it occurred to me that you can write anything you want on the back of a bottle of lotion, but that doesn't make it so. I want to see the study that made it so we "know" those ingredients do those things.

It seems like you can make just about any claim, and if you can get enough people to believe it and spread the idea, then it will become "common knowledge" and people will start saying that it is known that the claim is true when in fact it was just made up or was purely anecdote. It helps if people already want the claim to be true, because then you just have to present it as fact and people say it's just what they always thought and they had been waiting for a study that would prove it. The internet has made it easy to find that kind of thing, and it's getting harder to sift through it to find the good information.

Kevin's latest tricks

Lately Kevin has this thing with drinking out of bowls. It can be messy at times, but he's actually getting pretty good at it. It was awfully cute the other day when he got a hold of a big bowl that we had cut some pineapple into and drank the juice from the bottom.

Kevin has been getting to the park more often lately. I think it helped that it occurred to me that the park doesn't have to be a huge trip. I felt like if we were going to the park we were supposed to stay for three hours, but sometimes we just go for 45 minutes. We are so lucky to have lots of parks nearby.

For the last half of nursery, Kevin's class and another class go to the gym to play. One of the games Kevin really enjoys is when everyone stands at one side of the gym, and when the teacher says, "One, two, three  . . . go!" they all run to the other side. It's great for the very end when the toys are all put away and the kids' parents are arriving. Lately Kevin loves playing this game at home too. He will stand at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall, and yell, "Go!" and run to the living room, then yell "Go!" again and run back to the hallway. I think it's very cute.

Kevin is getting better at letting me brush his teeth. Only problem is, I either have to make silly faces or let him shove his fingers in my mouth in order to get him to cooperate. If I don't, he pinches his lips and teeth together so I can't get the toothbrush in. Or sometimes he'll let me get the toothbrush in slightly and then he'll bite down on it hard. I distinctly remember using this trick against my mom when I was little, and I thought I was so clever.

Oh, yes, and Kevin loves to shriek. Just for fun. It hurts.