Come Cook With Me

Most measuring cups for liquid volumes have painted on markings. Which mean, over time, those marks will fade and you will look at your nice glass cup and know you can't figure out how much is a quarter-cup for making a sauce.

And you can't use a measuring SPOON for this all the time, and anyway you specifically NEED the cup because you'll be adding seasonings to it first, to make the sauce, and then using the same cup for water to get the last bits of the sauce and seasonings into your frying pan as well!

The basic version came to just $13.87 for five lunches using fish, rice, black beans, and a simple fresh salsa. The fully loaded cart was about $21, but that included rice and tortillas, extra produce, avocado, and fresh cilantro.

Choose only rice or tortillas, skip the optional toppings, or use pantry staples you already have, and it stays very comfortably under $20.

I made this for my little brother and his wife because buying groceries is easier when every ingredient already has a job.

The basic idea is one whole chicken every week:

Breasts become one dinner.

Leg quarters become another.

Wings get frozen until you have enough for wing night.

Bones become broth.

Every little bit of picked chicken gets saved for an every-other-week casserole.

Then you rotate a few other meats through different meals: steak one week might be a classic steak dinner, then loaded potatoes, then sandwiches. Stew beef becomes tacos, ragu, garlic beef and potatoes, or soup. Pork chops become sandwiches, rice bowls, tacos, or a regular pork chop dinner.

Once you understand the system, you can mix and match basically everything to fit what your household actually likes. You’re not locked into my exact meals. The important part is buying with a plan, freezing things for a specific future dinner, and making sure every part gets used.

Brushing your teeth 3-4 times a year is still better than nothing. If you promised yourself that you'd do better this year and already fell off the wagon in january, go do it now, even if you can't manage it every day.

Again, you don't have to brush with toothpaste. Not every time, and not at all if it genuinely proves a barrier.

Yeah, it's better for your teeth and gums and breath to use some kind of toothpaste product, but if that's what's stopping you? Don't! Just don't.

You have my permission and that of my dentist: just a wet freaking toothbrush run a handful of times over your teeth quickly to get the scuzz off is infinitely better than not brushing at all.

Never talk like that about yourself, WTF is wrong with you?!!

If you ever even come close to talking shit about yourself you should stop, consider why, and then change your course of direction. Never hate on yourself, why would you do that? WTF is wrong with you.

A joke now and then at your own expense is not the same as self deprecation.

Then you also have the whole, neurological aspect too, you strengthen those neurons / synapses and energy follows the path of least resistance, you make it stronger and stronger then its a hell of a habit.

Whether you believe it or not spirits and parasitic energy forms can keep you echoing those things to feed off of your energy. (Thought forms can also begin to take on a life of their own within your mind too in a similar way.)

My advice, if you struggle with that, every single time you experience it, tell yourself something like what i dont think that / those aren’t my thoughts, and complement yourself instead, just find something related or similar or whatever adjacent, if not just a random honest thing about yourself that you think is decent or pretty cool or nice, or something good you have done, etc it works best if its polar opposite of the first thought, because your brain itself only really believes the one thing, so you have to reverse that thought somehow.

If you have dish washer or washing machine, throw a cleaning tablet in them today! little first of the month cleaning that'll keep it from building up! Make sure you clean your dish washer filter too!

Some other small things you can do to keep things from building up

Drop in a disposal cleaner tablet/pod and run it.

Drop in a toilet bowl cleaner tablet or gel. Come back later and give it a quick swish if desired.

Pour an enzyme drain maintainer(Maintainers are more gentle than decloggers) down: -Kitchen sink - Bathroom sink(s) - Tub/shower