Scrappy

A month ago, we hosted a guest and I was stripping the bed to wash the sheets. I discovered our fitted sheet had completely lost its elastic and had turned into a giant flat sheet. It wasn't an expensive or special queen sheet set we'd used, but considering the fabric itself was in decent condition, it would be a shame to retire this sheet simply because the elastic went out.

Now replacing a queen fitted sheet runs anywhere from $10-$50+ depending on where you're buying it from and what deal you can find. We were definitely not looking to spend a lot of money to replace this fitted sheet. I got the grand idea to buy elastic and replace it myself. It couldn't be that hard, right?

Elastic was cheap. I could get yards and yards of the stuff for maybe $5-$7. The amount I actually needed for this project amounted to probably $1 of the actual yardage if not less. The rest of the project was the time and ingenuity I needed to have in order to replace the elastic.

Materials: fitted sheet, new elastic, safety pins, scissors, sewing materials

*I was gifted a sewing machine toy when I was about 6-8 years old. Sadly, I never used the machine and it has been long gone over the years. I did keep the sewing kit which came with the machine and it is still my sewing kit today, the one seen above.* 

I spent some time pondering this project before actually starting. I knew the elastic was sewn into the edge of the sheet in a little channel. Assuming they did it cheaply, the elastic should not have been sewed into the fabric but would be loose all the way around the perimeter. This meant all I had to do was cut a small slit, pull the old elastic out, and thread new elastic in. Easy, right?

The whole process ended up taking just over an hour, which relatively speaking, even for someone who knew what they were doing, is pretty efficient. The longest part of the project was actually removing the old elastic from the edge. I made the mistake of cutting the slit without pinning the elastic in place next to my slit. As a result, when the elastic was cut, what little tension was left pulled the elastic deeper into the channel away from the slit I had just cut. It probably took a solid 20 minutes just to retrieve the end of the elastic to start pulling it out. 

I can't tell you exactly how I did it. I ended up finagling it with a safety pin and a needle. Miraculously after numerous tries, the elastic peeped out with the safety pin and I could start pulling it out. 

After removing the old elastic, I began to thread the new elastic in. This part, I had premeditated for a long time. I knew threading anything through a narrow channel was not easy, so I'd make sure I had this figured out before I started this project.

I clipped a safety pin to the head of the elastic I would thread into the channel. The safety pin served as my "pusher" to get the elastic through the channel because the elastic itself is too flexible to put pressure. As I stuck the safety pin into the channel, I'd scrunch the fabric over the safety pin and then un-scrunch it on the other side, productively moving the safety pin attached to the elastic through the narrow channel about an inch at a time. It's effectively how any kind of caterpillar or worm propels itself through movement. Although still time consuming, having this technique greatly sped up this process. 

After successfully threading the elastic through, we had to properly space out the elastic around the perimeter and then sew up the slit I originally cut. This was a much faster process and it was so satisfying to be able to fix this fitted sheet with my own two hands. 

An hour of my time is worth more than a $10 sheet. An hour of my time is actually worth more than a $50 sheet. But considering it was during the night time, I wouldn't be teaching or earning money anyway, and I was able to do it while watching tv sitting on my bed in my bath robe, I'd consider the money savings worth it. 

Consumerism and convenience has turned us into people who look for the quick-fix answer. We trash the old/broken and buy something new to replace it. And while I understand the need for simplicity in our lives and less mental clutter for our own sanity, I also understand the need to value the things we have and not be wasteful if we can help it. What's one way you can be a little more scrappy? 

Journals

I kept journals for the majority of my teenage years. In my early twenties, I went back and catalogued them with their dates on the covers using index cards and tape. The earliest journal I have labeled is from 2005. The last journal I have labeled dates to 2013. I have another journal I've written in from 2013 to the present but it is not finished and therefore not labeled. I don't write in it often anymore, but if I have private thoughts, that's the journal I add it to.

I never used anything fancy. The one subject college rule notebooks were my go-to. They were cheap and easy to find. The colors were a plus. These notebooks are the ones you would have been after if you wanted to know my deepest darkest secrets in high school. 

The oldest notebook is 20 years old!

Nobody cares about my secrets anymore. Honestly, I don't even remember half of what's in these journals.  Will I ever go back and read them? Probably not. I don't think I want to reread any of them because they're cringey and full of my past I'd honestly rather forget. My husband asked me if I would just get rid of them. No, I wouldn't do that either. There's something sacred about having so much of my life chronicled within the pages of notebooks. I don't know what I'm going to do with them, but for now, they're taking up real estate in a cardboard box.

I did retrieve one journal which I did want to reread. This journal was a portion of my lab credits for my first college English class as a senior in high school. I didn't take AP English my senior year and I never regretted it. I had the best professor who is still my friend today. I retrieved this journal and did want to reread it because I had turned it in to my professor once upon a time as a portion of my grade. It wouldn't hold my deepest secrets, but it had to include something worthwhile.

It was a quick read. There were 30 entries written, each in three paragraphs of approximately three sentences. That was the requirement to earn our lab credits. As an adult reading my writing, it was still a little cringeworthy. Maybe I say that because it was my own life I was reading about. I was very much a 17/18 year old high schooler working part-time after school with the same struggles that most teenagers have - emotional turmoil, friendship, and the woes of my job. I can't say there's anything profound about the writing within this notebook and it won't be making any bestseller lists, but I enjoyed rereading it.

Had I not gone through and reread this journal, I would have forgotten about the memory when I drove through a rich neighborhood with a friend and admired the fancy houses and large yards. I would have forgotten about the memory when I took my friend's girlfriend shopping for a homecoming dress when I barely knew her at the time. I would have forgotten about the time my grandmother called my dad's cell phone number by mistake instead of dialing mine because she got confused. And although these are rather "insignificant" memories in the grand scope of life, they were fun memories to relive and relearn about myself. 

Unearthing my journals made me reminisce and miss the time when I used to have to just sit and write. As I write this blog, I'm racing against time knowing I have to change out of my loungewear and get to work in less than 45 minutes. Yes, I work from home and my "office" is probably 30 feet from where I'm sitting as I write this, but it's a mental item which needs to be completed. Life has drastically changed for me. Where I used to have time to sit on the carpet of my bedroom floor and write in journals about boys, I now make sure I have enough food in the refrigerator, leave the house on time to pick up my child from school to make sure she's not forgotten, and make sure the credit cards and utility bills get paid on time. 

Considering the fact that I have forgotten to pay a credit card bill (I believe 2 to be exact), forgotten about a scheduled city permit check (I was a week postpartum with my first!), and forgotten countless times to close the washing machine so the load would start washing and instead having to refill the washer a second time because of the automatic drain feature, the headspace to be able to sit down and reflect on life and write about "simple happenings" doesn't happen much anymore.  There are so many of these everyday events and moments which are not logged because there simply wasn't time or energy to sit down and do it. 

The decade or so of my life which lives within these journals will forever be remembered as a painful but special time of my life because there may never be another decade in which I write so many things down so meticulously. I used to want to remember everything I could in my head and keep it as a memory. As I got older, memories naturally faded and only the most prominent and significant stay long-term. And honestly, it's probably better that way. These will be there if I ever want to revisit them.

For now, I don't. 

Takeout with the Tos #25

Hello again! Since coming back from Chicago, the cooking has been on and off at home because we've been doing some special activities like hosting a friend and going to the State Fair of Texas! This isn't back to sharing a week's worth of food, but I'm sharing a portion of what we grilled this past weekend.

We had a friend over who grilled with my husband and we all ate dinner together. It was fun and delicious. 

Six Pork Kabobs:  $24.00

2 pounds of BBQ wings (approx 14-15 pcs): $18.00

2 pounds of honey soy wings (approx 14-15 pcs): $18.00

5-6 lbs Beef Galbi (not pictured): $100.00

Home Fries (not pictured): $8.00

Total: $168.00

Tax: $13.86

Grand Total: $181.86

 

Kabobs

Chicken Wings

More Chicken Wings

This grilling extravaganza was definitely a splurge for our friend and us. However, we had a lot of fun cooking and eating together. 

For the honey soy wings, I followed this recipe.  We ended up grilling the wings instead of baking in the oven so it may have added to the varying result. The comments on the recipe raved about it and how great the flavor was. Honestly, I didn't think it was that amazing. Tasty, sure, but definitely not the best wings I've ever had. The BBQ wings were an improvised recipe my husband did on the spot with barbecue sauce and honey. I actually liked the flavor in his wings better. 

The skewers were made up of bell peppers, onion, and pork tenderloin. I was pleased with how they turned out, but surprisingly enough, I actually wished I had more grilled onions and bell peppers. That's the power of smoke and charcoal...

 This was a very delicious meal. It made me want to grill marinated meats more often. I don't know how much my body can handle it as we went on a semi-vegetable detox after this meal. But I'm learning more and more how to enjoy good food. 

As promised from the last post, I totaled the cost of all our "takeout" food from the first three quarters of 2025. The grand total came out to $2,619.24! 

Still Life with Piano and Cello

When I went to Chicago, we spent almost the entire day browsing the Chicago Museum of Art. I really enjoyed this because looking at art is not a luxury I get to do anymore. Taking the kids with me would mean I need to watch them and make sure they're behaving around valuable artwork. If I don't take the kids, it means I need to make separate plans so they're under someone's supervision. 

When I was at the museum, I saw authentic works by Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Claude Monet, and the famous Seurat pointillism. It was great, and I loved seeing these paintings in person because I had studied many of them in high school during my humanities class and AP art history. However, as famous as these paintings are, they're actually not the ones which stuck with me.

I surprised myself by the one which actually stuck. I had seen multiple pianos on display throughout the museum, but then I saw this artwork.

"This painting is part of a series by Vilhelm Hammershoi capturing his sparsely decorated apartment at Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Hammershoi often moved furniture and objects around his home like studio props: here, he placed a chair, piano, cello, and violin in a corner of the drawing room. Despite the inclusion of musical instruments, the scene evokes only eerie silence, with no sense of a human presence to play them."

This painting hit a little too close to home. There's definitely an emptiness depicted in this scene. The arrangement of the chair pulled back with an empty space, the violin placed atop the chair. The cello leaning against the piano. The almost empty wall behind the piano. 

 

This is my real life experience with this painting. I purposely edited the photograph so the colors are more muted, hazy. The cello is leaning against the chair, bow placed behind on the seat of the chair. The piano, although with the key cover open, has the bench pushed in, not being used. It, too, is empty. 

This painting and this photo are lonely, sad, and burdened. The piano and cello from the painting are probably no longer arranged in that way. Perhaps they were moved shortly after the posing for this painting. The piano in the photo has been sold. The cello has been packed up and moved out of this room. The furniture is gone. The frames hanging on the wall are gone. The walls have been repainted a different color and the floors have been redone. Piece by piece of this room were removed one by one. 

I'm glad my friend had this photo. It made me sad, but it is the perfect real life experience we shared represented in the painting above from 1907. 

48 Hours

This past weekend I was able to take my first trip away from my children....ever. I was more anxious about it at first than I thought I would be, but once I got on the plane and landed in Chicago, it was great. Strangely enough I'm not one of those people who misses my kids nonstop. They're also older and not as needy so I wasn't really worried about them. Don't get me wrong: I love my kids immensely, but if I have time away from them, I'm not going to be scrolling my phone looking at their pictures missing them. 

My favorite part of the weekend was not having to cook and being able to eat out every single meal. Growing up, I wasn't raised with this mentality. I had a lot of food trauma and vacations were the worst. We ended up eating a lot of meals at McDonald's and Burger King.  While I don't mind fast food and I'm not a picky eater, we weren't exactly taught to enjoy the experience of food, especially in new places. On top of the food trauma, I got sick almost every single family vacation I can remember which meant I missed out on a lot of food - some of which is even my favorite now! I just couldn't do it with the anxiety + sickness + stress of being with my family. I have a vivid memory of getting sick one year visiting the Northeast. Everyone was eating lobster and I said I'd eat a clam chowder. I love clam chowder now (and probably then) but being that I was barely crawling out of my sickness, I remember simply scooping the soup out of the chowder and leaving everything else. So sad. 

Here's a look at all the food I ate while in Chicago in reverse order. 

My last lunch in Chicago was at Navy Pier. I ordered a lobster shrimp roll and salad. Did I want the fries or bag of chips? I definitely did. However, I was about to go to the airport and get on a plane so I don't think overloading my body with greasy food was going to be a good idea. The salad was delicious and so was this lobster shrimp roll. 

Friday breakfast was a fruit plate because I had eaten leftover cinnamon rolls earlier that morning. 

Saturday evening dinner. We went to a chain and ordered peri peri chicken. Yum. Definitely spicy but flavorful. I had to eat this portion in two sittings. It worked out great. The equivalent of my dinner and second dinner at home. 

Saturday lunch was to-go poke. I enjoyed it in the comfort of our hotel room. Yay. 

Saturday breakfast at Ann Sather's. The sausage was so much more flavorful than anything I make at home. And here are the cinnamon rolls when I first got them. Ate one and saved the other. 

Gelato! Really good flavors. I love the tart fruity ones. That little sour burst gives me a comforting satisfaction. Anyone else or just me?

Dinner on Friday evening when I landed was fancy and wonderful. We shared a sparerib plate. 

And a salad. I took the photo after the first scoop because you can actually see what's inside. Not the most aesthetically pleasing photo of food, but hey, you would have just seen a bowl of cheese otherwise. 

 

I found another olive lover! I can't even remember when I started enjoying olives but I really like them. We ate half at the restaurant and the other half from the beds at the hotel in the evening while we chatted for hours. 

 

I've learned not to think about the cost of food when traveling. There's a reason why you're traveling in the first place - to get away from the normal busyness and stress of life. And if food adds to the experience of having a good trip even if you don't see any other attractions, it makes the cost worth it. 

I'll eventually tabulate how much I spent over the weekend for my trip for our monthly expense/budget, but for now, I'm going to revel in the memories of having a wonderful weekend with a wonderful friend. 🥰 

Takeout with the Tos #24

I cooked a mixture of individual meals as well as some Asian dishes. I've blogged a lot about the Asian dishes I make so this week I'm going to focus on the other meals we had this week. It doesn't encompass all the food we ate this week, but it provides some variety in showing you what we cook and eat in our household.

Mediterranean Stew with Naan (6+ servings) : $50.99 

Burgers and Fries (10 burgers + fries) : $89.99

Flatbread Pizza (4 flatbreads) : $39.96

Total: $180.94

Tax: $14.93

Grand Total:  $195.87

 

Burgers and Fries

I discovered this recipe for homemade burgers before 2020. It's the only recipe I ever follow when I make burgers because it's so good. When I was pregnant, I would still make this recipe because we could fully cook the burgers and it was still delicious. Last weekend I was having a random burger craving. We had McDonald's for a meal and it wasn't quite satisfying. We ended up making our own burgers for this week and it was really delicious. I made an improvised coleslaw for the burger and we fried some french fries at home with really old potatoes. 🙈 Nobody got sick. They were delicious. 

 

Flatbread Pizza 

I went grocery shopping one day and found flatbreads on clearance at the grocery store for 50% off. Flatbread is not usually on my grocery shopping list, but this price was pretty good. I also thought quickly on my feet and told myself I'd save it in the freezer for us to make homemade pizza with one day. Well, the day to make homemade pizza came this week! I pulled together this pizza in about a half hour. The flatbread was thawed from my freezer. The cheese was thawed from my freezer. The sausage I tore apart as a topping was from my freezer. The tomato sauce was two cans of tomato paste mixed with some water to thin and Italian seasonings. 

This was a really delicious pizza. It was gone in two meals. I love how I could pull out almost every ingredient from my freezer and those I didn't were shelf stable! I also really enjoyed eating sausage on my pizza instead of the usual pepperoni we would do. Pepperoni is just too greasy after it bakes, and honestly, the sausage adds a nice flavor as well. I'll have to do this again sometime if I can find more flatbread on sale. 

 

Mediterranean Stew with Naan 

I started putting together this post only to realize I didn't have a photo of the actual stew! Oops. I did get a nice photo of all my spices lined up in a row on the stove ready to be added in.

...and then I got a photo of what the spices looked like dumped on top of the stew. I didn't measure for amounts but it's about 1 tsp - 1 TB of each. 

I've never followed a recipe to make this stew. This recipe was born one day of trying to use chickpeas in a high fiber stew. I include chickpeas, beans, carrots, potato, canned corn, and this time, cabbage. There's a variety of vegetable combinations that could be used for this.

This specific batch has some bacon in it, both for the fat and the flavor since everything else is a vegetarian component.  

Yes, my children eat this. My daughter took it to school for lunch for two days. Yes, they need the naan to bribe them. But I'm thankful to expand their palette and have them eating their fiber at a young age! I will probably never go vegetarian in my lifetime, but I love being able to cook vegetarian options that are tasty to add variety to what we eat.  

The takeout total this week is on the high side, but realistically, this is what we would pay if we ordered all this food as takeout. These burgers are not In-N-Out sized...they are closer to what the Big Mac used to be back in the 90s. McDonald's is selling a Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal for over $9.50. 😱

I decided to go back and add up the takeout costs from the first 3 quarters of this year. Guess what it came out to? Will reveal in the next Takeout post! 

 

Takeout with the Tos #23

It finally happened. I forgot to take pictures of all of my food this week. Oh well. I guess this is what happens when I don't cook everything on the same day. There are no photos of ketchup shrimp or my snow pea tofu stir fry, but I made them on week 12 of this year and it's pretty much the exact same dish. 

Pork Belly Tacos (2lb pork belly): $25.99

Homemade "Ramen" Bowls (4 servings): $35.99

Ketchup Shrimp:  $16.99

Snow Pea Tofu Stir Fry: $14.99

Asian Marinade Chicken Tenders (1.5lb): $20.99 

Total: $114.95

Tax: $9.48

Grand Total:  $124.43

 

Pork Belly Tacos

 

One of the chefs I enjoy watching on television (and is still airing new episodes) is Pati Jinich. There's many recipes in my collection which are from her cooking shows. We were watching an episode of her show one evening and it was all making us hungry. When meal-planning for this week, we thought about using pork belly as a protein since I had some in the freezer. We also had leftover tortillas which needed to be eaten. I picked up some vegetables from the grocery store and we were able to use our Kewpie dressing.

 

We found this dressing on clearance at the store. I'd never used it before but I do enjoy other flavors of Kewpie dressings. We decided to buy one to try. I used a little in a recipe last week but decided it would make a great taco condiment. 

 

I winged the pork belly marinade. It's a combination of soy sauce, sugar, cooking wine, sesame oil, honey, and a little salt. I wish I had actual amounts to tell you....I don't. I literally just grabbed ingredients and poured some in. For two pounds of pork belly, each ingredient was probably between 1-4TB. I bet you could mix and match between the ingredients I listed above and it would still taste good albeit a different "stronger" flavor. That's one thing I love about Asian cooking. When you have the main staples, any combination of them is going to give you a nice flavor. You just have to know how to control the amounts based on the flavor you actually want.  

I had some pickled banana peppers in my fridge which made a great sour addition to the savory taco.

 

 

Homemade "Ramen" Bowls

We have lots of instant ramen at our house....despite all my cooking with fresh meats and vegetables, we still love a good late night instant noodle when the time calls for it. 

This meal came about on my lightest day of work. We were starting to run low on food - middle of the week - and I thought of something quick and easy with some ingredients I already had on hand. 

The protein for these noodles came from an egg and some spam. Yup, I cook spam. I had frozen broccoli in my freezer so I pulled some out for a quick blanch to reheat and added them in. I cooked the instant noodles and used the seasoning packets from our Mi Goreng. I didn't season any of the add-ins because there would be enough flavor from the instant noodle seasoning and spam. 

My kids ate this so quickly all by themselves with no need for coaxing. I realize it's not the most healthy meal I've ever made, but as a mom, a self-fed meal with no fuss about finishing is a huge win.  

Everyone got their own bowl of this.

 

The ketchup shrimp and snow pea tofu stir fry I made were delicious. Unfortunately I didn't get photos of them. I did use my stainless steel wok  which I had written about earlier this year. I spent a few months away from the stainless steel and back to my nonstick because I got scared after a few bad tries with the wok. The unfortunate part of learning is that you have to keep cooking in stainless steel, even if it means messing up dishes. 

I got brave this week and tried again. The last three dishes - ketchup shrimp, snow pea tofu stir fry, and my chicken tenders were all made using stainless steel. These attempts were much more successful. I think I need to remind myself not to use too high of heat. 

Asian Marinade Chicken Tenders (1.5lb)

This is all that was left when I remembered to take a photo.

Originally, I pulled this chicken out of the freezer to thaw in order to make curry. By the time the chicken thawed, I wasn't in a place to make curry and if I let it stay in the refrigerator for another 15-20 hours, it would begin to go bad. I realize not everyone enjoys freezer meat because they can taste the difference from fresh meat. I don't notice it. However, I do use my thawed meat immediately because the longer it sits in the refrigerator after thawing, the more likely it is to go bad. 

So instead of making curry, I took my chicken and marinaded it - and then put it back into the refrigerator for 36 hours. Once you add something with salt and sugar, the marinade serves as a mini "cure" for the meat which is why it will not spoil so quickly after that. Simply leaving raw unseasoned meat in the refrigerator will go bad after an extended amount of time. 

The seasoning for this chicken was very similar to the pork belly. I think I used the exact same ingredients for the marinade, probably in slightly different proportions because I just dumped everything into the bowl. I like making this because it's a quick, easy protein with lots of flavor that goes well with rice and a vegetable for a balanced meal. 

That's all for this week!