Tonight we had New England Boiled Dinner.

1 roast or stew beef
1 onion
Olive oil
1/3 to 1/2 a cabbage
Carrots
Potatoes

Cube and brown the meat in a little bit of olive oil. I prefer to use roast but usually use whichever’s cheapest. Add onion. I don’t bother to chop it very fine because my family really likes onion. After meat is browned, add water to cover. For my 3lb roast, I used about 2 quarts of water. Simmer. Chop the rest of the vegetables and add once the meat is cooked through. This ends up more like a soup than like a stew.

My mom always serves this the way I listed it above, but I left out the potatoes tonight. I’ve also seen recipes for it with garlic and parsnips….but I’ve never used them.

Stephen also wanted creamed corn tonight, so Little man was able to get in more carbs that way. We’ll keep bread in the house for him to ensure he gets enough carbs for his growth.

Stephanie, here ya go. . .today’s healthy dinner. It’s nice and frugal too – depending on the price of the meat. The cans of beans and tomatoes I got at Aldi for under $.50 each (I don’t remember at the moment and I can’t find the receipt). For us, this will cost us right at $2 for the whole batch.

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Chili
Serves 4 (or 2 to 3 really hungry adults)

1 lb ground beef (we’re using ground turkey instead)
1-2 Tbsp. dried minced onion
1 can chili beans (do not drain liquid)
1 can tomatoes (whole, crushed, stewed, whatever you like, but do not drain)

Brown meat with onion until no longer pink, drain. To lower fat even further, you can rinse the meat, but I usually forget to.

Return meat to skillet and add cans of beans and tomatoes and simmer until chili reaches desired consistency.

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Easy, isn’t it? It’s my mom’s recipe. We let it simmer until it’s pretty thick – thick enough to scoop up with chips, if you choose to serve them with the chili.

I’ll have saltine crackers on the table for Little man and Stephen (he prefers his soup and stews with crackers) but because they’re high in refined carbohydrates I won’t be eating them myself.

Dessert is sugar-free jello. I mixed a box of lemon with a box of lime and it’s actually pretty good.

Last night we had grilled chicken thighs, baked buttercup squash, corn, and salads. It was easy and everything we ate was purchased on sale. :O)

While I was responding to a comment from Meredith (the queen of thrift and frugality from Like Merchant Ships) I realized that I never shared about my fun last Thursday at the thrift store.

Before we moved, I frequently heard of people who managed to find amazing things at thrift stores and garage sales. Our pastor’s wife was out at Goodwill one day and found a suit for her husband. It was an Armani suit with the price tag still in the pocket, which she paid $5 for. I had heard of things like this but had never been able to do it myself.

Then we moved here. Apparently I just didn’t know where to look in the Carolinas, because it seems like thrift stores abound around here, and I have gotten some amazing deals!

Wednesday night at church one of my friends let me know that the thrift store was having a $1 bag sale. I made plans to go, despite never having been there and not knowing what to expect.

I arrived at the thrift store with $20. I had no idea what I would find inside, but I wanted to be prepared. Another mom from church was there with her 3 month old baby, so we teamed up. One of us shopped while the other held the baby. She got an extra set of hands to help her, and I got my baby fix for the day. It was a win-win situation.

We left there with the stroller piled so high with both of our bags that it took the two of us to steer it. I spent a whopping $3 and had three very full bags. Amazing.

What amazes me more is what I got. Two suits for Stephen, one of them a three-piece suit (it didn’t fit, but we found a man from church that it did fit), and a pair of corderoy pants. For Little man I got a couple pair of dress pants, sweatpants, a pair of overalls, and a Christmas-y flannel shirt and matching vest. I found 8 or 9 long-sleeved tops and a really nice pair of mid-calf black boots for myself. Just one of the tops alone would have made the trip worth it.

But the glassware I found made everything an even better deal. There was a set of 6 clear glass dessert trays, so I grabbed them. None of the accompanying glasses were there, but I found a set of six punch cups that will go nicely with the trays. My favorite find, though, was a set of four Depression glass teacups in perfect condition.

Today was my consultation and lab follow-up appointment with my new doctor. Wow – I like her! She has PCOS herself (I thought that was nice – she can identify with what I’m going through) but says that they’re calling it PCOS less and less and simply referring to it as Insulin Resistance. . . or even pre-diabetes (yikes!).

She didn’t have my progesterone, testosterone, or estrogen checked like I thought she would. She checked my thyroid and my fasting insulin (and the a1c) instead. While the insulin was at a “normal” level of 12, she said that was way too high considering that I’m on 1500mg of metformin a day. It should have been much lower. Supposedly it’s supposed to be 5 or under.

Then she informed me of my new lifestyle changes. Basically a low-carb diet and 30 min of exercise a day. She said fruits and veggies are ok (I asked her how it compared to Atkins since I’m somewhat familiar with that diet), but no rice or pasta or bread. I told her that I’m famous for my homemade bread and she just laughed at me. I asked her about the exercise (we just got a treadmill and an exercise bike in the past couple of weeks) – she said that I have to sweat for 30 minutes. . .so I told her I hate to sweat. . .she told me that that’s what showers were made for. She’s pretty no nonsense, but you can really tell that she cares.

She switched me from the extended release metformin and put me on the regular (which is cheaper, yay!), but upped the dose to 850mg a meal, so I’m going from 1500 mg a day to 2550 mg a day. . . (the tummy fun began about an hour after eating dinner tonight) She did tell me that the fewer carbs I eat the fewer GI problems I should have, so we’ll see.

I was concerned about picking up the medicine today because this week is one of the tighter weeks of the month (because of where bills fall in the month). I prayed that God would provide the money for the medicine, and picked up the phone to call the pharmacy to see how much it would cost. It was $3 less than I had mentally allotted. I couldn’t help but smile – God was proving to me that He indeed would provide. It was just a small thing, but it was a reminder that I needed, especially after the medical bill that came in the mail today from the testing I had done last month.

So. . .Stephen is changing his diet too. We started tonight. I don’t mind changing our eating to low-carb, but it’s going to take some getting used to while I get new ideas for meals. . .

The dreaded doctor’s appointment has been moved forward – to tomorrow. Suddenly I find myself rather nervous! On the other hand, it is a real relief. I have a lot of questions for my doctor, and it is nice to know that by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll have some answers!

There are a ton of pictures in this post, so if you have dial-up, it might take a while to load.

Saturday was so much fun. Our church drove up to Lake Michigan for an afternoon at the beach. This was not a trip to go swimming (our Independant Baptist church wouldn’t have planned a swimming trip), but a trip to enjoy the sand dunes and to play some beach football and volleyball.

26 people piled into vans and off we went. It was somewhere between a 2 and 2 1/2 hour drive. They loaded our van with everybody else’s stuff so Stephen and I didn’t have anybody else riding with us. It was really nice to have some time to talk.

There had been some concern about the weather becaue there was a 70% chance of thunderstorms. It was fairly clear when we got there, and not too cold. Most of us kept our long sleeves on, but there were a few people in tshirts. We ate lunch, and then everybody scattered to have fun. The younger kids made sand castles. Little man just enjoyed being outside.

One family made the teenage brother into a sand mermaid – I didn’t realize it until I saw pictures, and then I had a good laugh. Later Little man and I took off for a walk along the beach, looking for neat things. He was thrilled to find a monarch butterfly. Stephen joined us a few moments after that. We really enjoyed looking at all the rocks that had washed up on shore.

As the afternoon wore on, we watched as clouds gathered over Chicago. Eventually we couldn’t see the Chicago skyline anymore. We enjoyed watching the storm come across the lake. Once the lightning began we realized that the storm was coming faster than we thought, so we packed our things and left the beach. We stopped just long enough to take a few pictures.

Here’s what the storm looked like coming across the lake:

It was absolutely breathtaking. Our God is so amazing!

We couldn’t have had better timing – the rain began right as we were finishing loading up the vans. By the time we got back on the interstate it was hailing, but that passed quickly. We went to a nearby mall so we could all eat at the food court (I think the reasoning was that everybody could eat what they wanted). Apparently the Lord wanted us to leave the beach right when we did, because the rain stopped as soon as we reached the mall. We ate and then headed home. It was a long and busy day, but the time away for Stephen and I was well worth it.