Savings

This summer, one of my favorite stores closed. With it, came store closing sales. I went multiple times in June. I probably would have gone more but I was dealing with health issues so I wasn't as active as I normally am. 

On a Saturday where I was feeling better than normal, we went as a whole family and perused the store for a while. During this trip, I spotted a dicing attachment for my food processor which I had been contemplating buying for a while. I hadn't expected to see it because I assumed it would be one of the more popular items which would have been snagged up sooner than later. Who knew it would still be there at 30% off!

We bought it and stored it away in the kitchen cabinet, and it stayed there for a few months. Each time I thought about using it, I just decided I'd dice my vegetables by hand and it would be fine. Yes, it's true, dicing my vegetables by hand is fine, but I had spent money on this attachment and it was non-refundable. 

One morning, I was cooking after picking up the kids from school. For this particular recipe, I needed to dice four carrots, four celery sticks, and one onion. I decided that I would pull out my dicing attachment and use it instead of cutting these vegetables by hand. 

Now this was my first time using this attachment, and I had actually never looked into how to use it. So I spent the first 20 minutes looking up videos online on how to attach the pieces together. This attachment came with two pieces. One had the grid which does the dicing. The other piece has a slicing disk that spins around. So I had to watch a video to figure out how to insert them properly into my food processor bowl. 

The two pieces to my dicing attachment.

Once I assembled the food processor and had everything set up, it was smooth sailing from there. I was able to dice my four carrots, four stalks of celery, and a whole onion in a few minutes. 

Not a bad dice for an automatic tool. 

I wouldn't pass a chef exam dicing like this, but hey,  I'll take it.

Normally, I don't buy attachments like this because they usually make for more work, however, I'm kind of torn on this one. These are completely my own thoughts. This is not a paid review. 

Pros:

1. It dices well. The pieces are mostly uniform. They're not perfect, but it is definitely faster than I could do by hand.

2. I can put in whole sticks. This makes it especially convenient for carrots and celery. Other vegetables such as onions or potatoes would need a preliminary cut in order to get the shape to fit right through the feed tube. 

3. It saves my fingers. Never once did I have to worry about cutting myself with a knife. And I've done that a lot. 

4. It's really convenient for large batches of vegetables.

Cons:

1. Food gets stuck in the grid the very last round because nothing else follows behind to push it out. They do provide a tool for you to use to push food out, but it takes quite a bit of effort.

2. Not good if you want your food to look pretty. There were definitely some misshapen pieces, especially at the ends of each stick of food pushed through.

As someone who cooks a lot, I think this attachment will come in handy for me with specific recipes I make. I would definitely have to plan ahead because clean up is not the simplest so it needs to be worth my time to pull it out. I'm glad I have it and I will use it in the future. However, knowing what I do now, I'm 50/50 on if I would buy it again. 

This is only my first use of this attachment so maybe over time, I might feel differently. But I will say after using it the first time, I felt very satisfied in my "efficiency" and didn't have any blisters on my hand from using the knife. That's probably a huge value in itself. 

Pivotal

So I have not been blogging as much as I want to because life has been crazy this summer. My kids have started school (I know, they're old enough. Can you believe it? I both can and can't at the same time.) And life has felt like it's gone into turbo mode with them in school. We are doing a hybrid-type program with school and parent-guided homework so I feel like I just got dumped extra work even though I have some time away from both my kids now. But life is busy and I can't complain about where we're at, but wow, it's picked up a pace I wasn't quite expecting to be honest. 

I've always liked to be an intentional person, but the older I get, the more I feel the need to be intentional. One of the things I like is to be able to tell people from my past about where I am now and how I appreciate them for being in that phase of my life. No, I'm not going around messaging every person I went to high school with. But there are specific people who stand out for one reason or another. 

I actually started doing this with poignant books I read, too. I write to the author. In the last year, I've written to two. I heard back from the manager of one author. I don't take it personally when I don't hear back because there's numerous reasons why they don't respond. But on my behalf, I wrote to them, and that's the most I can expect of myself to do. I have yet to write to an author that I've been wanting to write to since I was a child. Her book has meant a lot to me, and yes, I've written about it on the blog. If you know what book/which author I'm talking about without me linking the post, then you really know me well and keep up with the blog. 😊 The main reason I haven't gotten around to writing her is because she does not have an online contact form. I've got to write or type out a letter to her, stick it in an envelope and use a stamp to mail it to her. Can I do all this? Absolutely. But unfortunately, it's so much easier for me to do something on a computer, phone, or iPad, so anything that can't be done from these three technologies is usually put off or forgotten. 

Recently, I messaged an old friend on her website. Her name has popped into my head multiple times throughout the years. I don't expect a response from her because if I did, chances are, I would be disappointed. We went to middle school together for one year. We met through communication applications class, or better known as "speech class." Now this isn't speech class for those needing extra help in pronunciation and speaking English. This was the communications class on presenting speeches, poise, gestures, and everything public speaking. Why in the world did I choose this class? 

Because it's my weakness. And for some reason, 12-year-old me thought, why not pick an elective to work on something I'm not good at? How mature of me, right? Instead of choosing an art class or home economics to craft and cook, I chose to suffer through a semester of writing and giving speeches to a class full of people I don't remember except this one friend. 

At the end of the school year, she found out she was moving. Again. She was used to it, but it didn't make the move any easier. At the end of the school year, my mom died. Life would never look the same for me ever again. She wrote me a note for the last day of school, and put it into a pouch she made along with a friendship bracelet and her school picture. I kept them all these years in a little box at my dad's house. 

How many 8th graders know how to sew/put together a knit pouch like this today?

Yes, I'm sentimental. I'm actually less sentimental than I used to be, but still sentimental nonetheless. But it's these little building blocks of memories which have led me to where I am today. 

In a year neither of us knew would be so pivotal to our lives, we had each other. 

Dressed to the Nines

When I was a sophomore in college, a friend at another school asked me to be his date for a formal. I said yes, and of course I went shopping and bought a new dress. I found it on sale and paid a great price for it. A few weeks before the formal, he told me it was being postponed. I was slightly disappointed, but he said he'd let me know when it would be rescheduled and see if I could still go. 

The following spring, he told me the formal was scheduled for February. However, he had started dating someone, and so had I. He still asked me if I wanted to go to formal with him since we had originally planned to go together before it was rescheduled, but I declined as it wouldn't feel right to since we both had significant others. 

I purchased this dress nearly 13 years ago. And sadly, I never got the chance to wear it. When I graduated from college, I did an unofficial senior photoshoot wearing this dress. My friend who tagged along ended up taking some photos herself and snapped this photo of me. 

She ended up being our wedding photographer (we were her very first wedding!) and is a well-established photographer now.

I had a lot of fun at the photoshoot, and the pictures I did receive bring back fun memories, but the dress was never showcased or seen by anyone other than the two of them. 

When I graduated from college, the dress moved back home with me and stayed in my closet for a year while I lived overseas. It stayed in my childhood closet when I moved back home. It migrated to our apartment with me after I got married and moved out. And finally, it came to our master bedroom closet when we purchased our first house together where it's been since. 

Occasionally, I found myself pulling out the dress, admiring it, trying it on, and lamenting the fact I would probably never get a chance to wear it in my life. The dress was long, black, and formal. How many occasions would I have to wear a dress like that again? 

2023 was going to be the year. I was asked to play piano at a wedding, and the wedding dress code was cocktail formal. Miraculously, the dress still fit. This was going to be possibly the one and only time I would ever wear this dress. 

My husband and I enjoyed our time at this wedding. We didn't bring the kids with us as kids weren't allowed, but we had wonderful friends who kept them overnight for us so we didn't have to pick them up late and drive all the way home. So this was the first wedding in a long time where we could feed ourselves without needing to keep children quiet or prevent them from spilling/breaking/dropping anything they weren't supposed to. 

The outdoor area was beautiful although I'm so glad they
changed it to an indoor wedding. Best decision ever. The high was 102. 

I waited 13 years for a chance to wear this dress. I would never have thought so in college, but I'm glad I didn't have anywhere to wear this dress until now. My first (and potentially last) time wearing this dress will be with my husband. There's no event more special than one I get to attend with him by my side.

Happy nine years to the absolute best person I could have ever chosen to spend my life with. 🥰