Hi everyone! I had a fun week. Here are some highlights:
Trying New Recipes
Usually we take a yearly vacation in January or February. We were hoping to go to the Caribbean this year, but in the end we decided not to, in light of travel restrictions that seem to be popping up. We didn't want to be quarantined for half or all of our vacation time! Plus a flight with a toddler is bad enough. Flight + toddler + mask would be a disaster. Anyway. With most of the winter free this year, I've had some extra time on my hands.
This week I decided to try some recipes from a cookbook I bought several years ago and haven't used. If I can't go to an island, I can still eat like I'm on one, right?
The first recipe I made was West Indian Roast Pork. Basically, it was a pork roast (in my case, a pork loin) with a bunch of spices rubbed in, and then a rum sauce poured over top. We liked it.
The second recipe I tried was a banana cake:
Trying New Recipes
Usually we take a yearly vacation in January or February. We were hoping to go to the Caribbean this year, but in the end we decided not to, in light of travel restrictions that seem to be popping up. We didn't want to be quarantined for half or all of our vacation time! Plus a flight with a toddler is bad enough. Flight + toddler + mask would be a disaster. Anyway. With most of the winter free this year, I've had some extra time on my hands.
This week I decided to try some recipes from a cookbook I bought several years ago and haven't used. If I can't go to an island, I can still eat like I'm on one, right?
The first recipe I made was West Indian Roast Pork. Basically, it was a pork roast (in my case, a pork loin) with a bunch of spices rubbed in, and then a rum sauce poured over top. We liked it.
The second recipe I tried was a banana cake:
The cake was a little bit dense, but the flavor was good. If I make it again, I will put thicker banana slices on top, to balance out the dense bottom half.
Yesterday we had coconut rice, baked tilapia, plantains and green beans. It wasn't from the cookbook, but I felt like it was sufficiently tropical.
I spent a little more time cooking this week, but it was fun to experiment with new flavors. The recipes I chose weren't so exotic that I had to buy a lot of special ingredients. The plantain was $0.62, but I had everything else in our freezer or pantry. I would love to see what other island recipes I can make with regular inexpensive pantry staples.
Wave App
The other thing I did this week was get some of our bookkeeping in order. Recently we switched from Quickbooks to the Wave app, recommended by a friend. Quickbooks worked for several years, but we went from updating the books once a week, to once a month, to once a quarter, to twice a year... you get the idea. Hubs likes Quickbooks, but it was too complicated for me.
Long story short, Wave seems to be a much better choice. Rather than entering all transactions manually, you can take a picture of your receipt and it will pull some of the data (store, date, total spent) and start a transaction for you. This is a good jump start on your data entry, plus the program keeps the photo of your receipt forever, which helps eliminate paper clutter. You still have to assign a category and fill in the method of payment (cash, credit, debit, etc.), but I don't mind that.
So, in addition to trying some new recipes, I also updated our financial books. And that feels GREAT! We're not at a point where we need to have a strict budget, but tracking our spending makes me feel like a more responsible human being with a put-together life. LOL! I'm hoping to keep things updated without too much help from Hubs this year.
That's about all for now. Have a great weekend,
-Bethany
Yesterday we had coconut rice, baked tilapia, plantains and green beans. It wasn't from the cookbook, but I felt like it was sufficiently tropical.
I spent a little more time cooking this week, but it was fun to experiment with new flavors. The recipes I chose weren't so exotic that I had to buy a lot of special ingredients. The plantain was $0.62, but I had everything else in our freezer or pantry. I would love to see what other island recipes I can make with regular inexpensive pantry staples.
Wave App
The other thing I did this week was get some of our bookkeeping in order. Recently we switched from Quickbooks to the Wave app, recommended by a friend. Quickbooks worked for several years, but we went from updating the books once a week, to once a month, to once a quarter, to twice a year... you get the idea. Hubs likes Quickbooks, but it was too complicated for me.
Long story short, Wave seems to be a much better choice. Rather than entering all transactions manually, you can take a picture of your receipt and it will pull some of the data (store, date, total spent) and start a transaction for you. This is a good jump start on your data entry, plus the program keeps the photo of your receipt forever, which helps eliminate paper clutter. You still have to assign a category and fill in the method of payment (cash, credit, debit, etc.), but I don't mind that.
So, in addition to trying some new recipes, I also updated our financial books. And that feels GREAT! We're not at a point where we need to have a strict budget, but tracking our spending makes me feel like a more responsible human being with a put-together life. LOL! I'm hoping to keep things updated without too much help from Hubs this year.
That's about all for now. Have a great weekend,
-Bethany
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