Here is a quick thought, as I am trying to get everything done today. Mondays are my grocery shopping, laundry and cleaning the kitchen from not cleaning it yesterday days. I often hear people say they don't have enough time in the day to get everything done. I know I say it a lot too. The best advice I ever received from someone about time management was in the form of a question. "When you are waiting for things what are you doing?"
When you are waiting for something to heat up in the microwave are you standing there watching the microwave or are you cleaning the top of your stove? When you are waiting for the elevator are you just standing there staring at the elevator or are you checking your email on your phone? The main idea is that we have to be aware of what we are doing. When we are waiting for something we should be up and doing something. Before you know it all those little chores will be done, and you can actually have time to sit down and crochet while watching tv.

The Art of Roasting a Chicken

Since moving, and Justin starting a new job I have been trying to save money every way that I can. One of the areas that I have given a lot of notice to is our grocery bill. I have gotten to where I spend 70 dollars a week on groceries, for three people.  I guess that is reasonable. One of the things that I do to help save on groceries is to buy whole chicken instead of cut up chicken. In the five years that we have been married I like to think that I have perfected the way to roast a chicken. I have cooked it this way at least 100 times. There are 55 weeks in a year, so it might be more than that. The recipe is as follows:

One whole chicken, do not wash it (save your self some time in not disinfecting your whole kitchen after washing your chicken) Put it in a roaster.
 spray the chicken with cooking spray
salt and pepper the chicken
Add 1 tablespoon of dry basil, 1 tablespoon of parsley, 1/2 tbsp of oregano
Sprinkle on a couple of spoonfuls of minced garlic
then slice up a Roma tomato and spread out the slices of tomato on top of the chicken
cook the chicken at 350 degrees till the internal temp reaches 180.


I usually serve as is for the first meal. The second meal I will pick all the extra chicken off the bone, and make it in to a casserole. The third meal I boil the carcass into stock for a soup. The recipe for stock:

Put chicken carcass in a stock pot fill the pot with water till it covers the carcass.  I add whatever juices are left in the roasting pan, taking the fat out first. (this is usually a hard crust on top from being in the fridge). I add a whole onion and some celery, and salt. I let all of that cook for a few hours, till it is reduced to about 6 cups of stock.  

Sorry I don't have any amazing pictures, but when we ate our chicken yesterday we ate it before I remembered to take them.

Dora Bracelet

This design is for my daughter who loves Dora the Explorer. She loves having any thing that has to do with Dora. We have even recently gotten her to start eating yogurt again just because of the fact that Dora is on the package. This is a really simple pattern that I finished in about 10 minutes. Dora Bracelet . If I can figure out how I will be offering it for free on my Ravelry store.