Week ending 1/17 round-up

Fitness round-up: Ran once. In there I did run a mile at 10 minutes, surrounded on either side by some walking (and some gasping for breath, not going to lie). Going to do better next week.

Food round-up: This was a good food week—the menu worked really well. On Sunday, Food Guy and I spent a few hours in and out of the kitchen, making Potato-Leek Soup for Sunday dinner and Monday lunch.



Since I’m rarely home to help with the cooking, I asked if there was anything I could prep for the next few days. He doesn’t like to chop veggies too far in advance, so there isn’t usually anything, but instead we started making the tomato sauce for Monday’s dinner. We had two big pots simmering and cooking, and once the set up was complete it was mostly the occasional stir. And with two of us in the kitchen, we could wash dishes as whoever was at the stove finished with them. This prep helped Monday be not nearly as crazy.



We had two healthy meat free nights on Wednesday and Thursday, and Friday night we ended up having friends over and just serving various dips and cheese and snack foods that we all ate as we felt like it, so we still have our fish in the freezer for this week. The Tortilla Stoup was lunch two days, and I love it—I’d never had tomatillos before this recipe and I love the way they taste in here (although Food Guy had to go to three stores to find them, so I have to limit how often I put them on our menu! And despite his Italian heritage he’d never made meatballs himself before, so that was a fun project. We have plenty of leftovers for today’s lunch and dinner and will not have to leave the house in the terrible cold here and can have a long, lazy day at home cleaning up after our impromptu party and reading.

Frugal round-up: Suddenly having people over on Friday changed our budget for the week a bit. We bought two bottles of wine and chips and cheese, and ice cream although everything else we had on hand. (I like to keep the makings of my mom’s amazing artichoke dip on hand—three ingredients, 30 mins in the oven, and everyone always loves it. Not health food though.)

We did manage to save about $60 with the gift certificate my mom gave us. I put half into our Dream Fund, and half into our new Vacation Fund for the weddings we’re planning to attend.

Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s

I saw Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s in one of the publishing trade mags as a break-out book, a book that had just made a bestseller list somewhere. I mentioned it to Food Guy and he got it out of the library that day. We love Trader Joe’s —the green principles, the quality of the food, the set up of the store, and the prices, and each week consists of a visit there as well as one to a more traditional store in which we can get the cereal, tea, and other items TJ’s doesn’t sell.

My initial impressions of the cookbook were mixed, as the format is not as slick and glossy as the books I love to touch and drool over, and a lot of the recipes seemed overly simple. But on second thought that seemed like a good thing—this may really be a cookbook for those of us with real busy lives who can’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen. And while I’m lucky enough to have the equivalent of a personal chef, it would be great for both of us if I could make a meal plan with more days of simple prep and quick recipes. So I went through and chose a bunch of recipes for the next week.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Fit, Fed, Frugal Round-up

Fitness round-up:
Week one: I ran only twice this week, and one was much more of a walk because I was sick. But I still did get on the treadmill two times. We were talking with friends who are trying to get us to sign up for a 5K, and that sounds like a reachable goal. These friends say that they run about 10 minute miles, which I have not done since high school. So I think that’s my nebulous new goal: be able to run 3.1ish miles at a time, and trying to see if I can inch that time down to 10 minute miles. I don’t think I’ll do a strict training program, as those get boring and I fall off the wagon when I don’t have time to do an exercise as dictated. But maybe I should lest I give up altogether.

Food round up:
Two nights of leftovers this week, which is great. I also brought lunch every day from what we had in the fridge left over from dinners this week and last, so that was frugal as well. We had two nights without meat, one of which was Big Salad night (lettuce, blueberries, peppers, tomatoes, homemade dressing, sprinkle of goat cheese). I love big salad night, but it doesn’t make for a good lunch the next day. My body refuses to acknowledge that a salad is enough food for the hours it has to last me, regardless of what I put in it. The other was Pasta a la Food Guy, which is a pasta he creates out of whatever we have—this week peppers, tomatoes, tomato paste, red pepper flakes, and probably a few other things. It was delicious.

We also had Loaded Baked Potato night (and lunch the next day), with topping choices of butter, sour cream, cheddar cheese, baked beans, scallions, and bacon bits. (Bacon made it non-veg but oh so tasty. Not a healthy meal, although we could make it so with fewer high fat additions.) Guinness Beef Stew (a la Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook) is awesome, with a few Food Guy tweaks (the bottom layer of crust isn’t necessary, we decided), Chicken Piccata was a fun late lunch made with friends, and Leftover Night. All good! Not as many greens during the week as we should, though, other than salad night, so I’ll keep that in mind when making the next menu.

Frugal:
Thanks to a Trader Joe’s gift cert from my parents for Christmas, I think we’ll save some money this week on food and be able to put a little extra into the Dream Fund. I had the thought of splitting any extra money we save or make between the Dream Fund and a yet-unmade Vacation Fund, so we have a short-term goal as well as the much longer term goal. But I also hate feeling like a house recedes farther and farther into the distance.

My 401K: This will automatically be bumped to 11% this year unless I unbump it, which I may do. I don’t get a match until I’ve worked at the company for a year, and unless they change it, that’s a match up to 6%. But with the other things to which I’d like to allocate my money, that extra percent makes too much of a difference. I think that auto-bump is really for people who are either getting a raise (and raises in publishing are pretty much frozen right now) or who aren’t paying close attention. I like the idea of helping people to save who might not otherwise, but since I am paying attention I don’t think I’ll feel guilty for not taking advantage.

Goals for 2009, Part 2

Budget

I am starting 2009 without any debt, but with a fairly small salary and lots of goals. How will I meet them all?

IRA: I’m planning on fully funding my Roth IRA in 2009, which means putting in five thousand dollars. $415 dollars a month will get me there, if I can put that much away.

Savings: I’ve been putting $100 into savings each month, and I have a fairly sturdy emergency fund. But after being unemployed for 6 months just over a year ago, I know how quickly job loss would decimate that, especially through paying for insurance.

401K: I currently put in 10% of my salary. This is a lot, especially since I am also trying to fund my IRA, but so far it's been doable since I never see the money. I won't get a match until I work at the company for a year.

Dream fund: I’m putting $50 a month into a dream fund, matched by Food Guy. We know we’d like to buy a house someday, and we’re always flipping through real estate books and getting depressed at how far away from that we are. If we can hit $2000 by the end of 2009, which we’re not quite on track to do right now, we would have about 1/10 of a downpayment saved. I’d like to do better if we can, and learn more about how to get from where we are to where we want to be.

Investments: In February 2008 I put my carefully saved $3000 into a Vanguard account with the Total Stock Market Index. And then the stock market tanked. I’ve continued to put in $50 a month and reinvest my dividends, and I’m down at $2463. This is painful, but I have a long timing threshold and should recover. I know I’m not likely to play with individual stocks given my lack of time and experience and also how much it would make me worry, so I’m planning on index funds. But should I be trying to save to open another account? International, small cap, bonds? I need to learn more about these so I can make better informed decisions.

Vacation: Food Guy would really love to go on a real vacation this year. Additionally, we have at least two weddings coming up this year, one of which will require travel to and stay in California, and one of which will require travel to and stay in Massachusetts. Last year we spent a weekend at an organic farm B&B in the Adirondacks for our yearly vacation, and we loved it. We really want to be able to do that again, but with two other vacations we know we’ll have to take, I’m not sure if it will happen.

Philanthropic: I donate $28 a month to Save the Children. I also gave money to three friends running marathons, who were all supporting cancer research. I feel like this is really important, but I’m not sure how much is reasonable to spend each month, especially when I’d like to be able to field requests from friends like those above which I can't plan for. I think I’d like to shop for my local food bank a few times this year, and make at least one donation to Modest Needs this year when I see a request that speaks to me personally. But I think I need a plan or else this will fall by the wayside.