New Year's Resolution Check in

Wanted to do a quick update on my New Year's resolutions. Maybe I should make this a monthly thing so I can keep reminding myself to keep up the work. Wonder what my future self would say looking back at this post haha.

I'm super proud to say that John and I have eaten about 94% of our meals at home since the beginning of the year. We still go out to grab a bite if we're visiting parents (once a month) of if friends treat us out to dinner, but the main point is that we've been doing well at decreasing spending on eating out. Our longest streak was 2 weeks of eating and preparing all 3 meals/day at home. I know that's not impressive for some, but we'd eat out at least once during the weekday (a Wednesday for instance) and at least one other time during weekend in the past. Cooking on the daily can be time consuming and tiring, so I'd always needed a cooking break scattered throughout the week. That puts us at about 85% of homecooked meals, which is pretty good to start with. But a limited budget (read single-family income) like ours doesn't stretch very far at restaurants. Now that I've started to up my meal prepping game and limiting it only to the weekend, dinners are (almost) a breeze.

Some tips and tricks:

• Cook brown rice in giant batches, transfer them onto a slightly wet baking sheet to cool, then portion them out single servings (or double for me and John) in sandwich ziplock bags for freezing. Pop them into the microwave for "minute rice" when you need them and you're done! Hooray to cleaning that unwieldy rice pot only once a week!
• Plan meals ahead of time. Picking a protein or theme for the week really gives you an idea on what leftovers to anticipate, and how to incorporate them into the next meal to cut down on waste. Sounds like a hassle but makes cooking/heating up food fuss free after a long day at school or work.
• Dough freezes well! I had no idea until I read about "5 minutes artisan bread a day". Supposedly freezing dough allows longer rising/fermentation time and gives the dough even better flavor. No more going through the hassle of starting from scratch and waiting for dough to rise each time you need it. 
• Salad is your best friend for extra busy weeks. Just spend a Sunday chopping up all the ingredients you need, whip up the dressing, and your salad is ready for assembling during the week. No cooking time needed at all.
• The same method can be applied for Chinese stir fry obviously.
• Make an extra portion of anything freezable and freeze that meal for later use. Forreal. Mega timesaver.
• Get a pressure cooker. The most amazing thing if you hate braising, simmering, or anything that requires slow cooking. I could write a whole blog post on it. 17-minute brown rice, 8-minute mashed potatoes, 20-minute baby back ribs, 15-minute beef stew. Have I convinced you yet? A simple one like this is affordable and works well enough. 

Carbs is the biggest hassle for me since they always take the longest, and you can't eat a meal without carbs. Okay, maybe just me since I'm Chinese. Cooking rice isn't difficult with a rice cooker, but the process takes sooooo long. Especially for brown rice. I also hate waiting for the rice to be done before starting my dinner prep. If I get home late, I'd have to postpone dinner at least 40 minutes for the rice to be done unless I decide to cook using the stove top method with just enough rice for dinner, but that still takes about 25 minutes total. Ugh. And then sometimes I'm so out of it I forget to make the rice...ULTIMATE frustration right there. Now my sweet and sour pork is going to get soggy and cold! Ugh. You'd think after years of being in the kitchen I wouldn't make such a novice mistake, but it still happens. That's why when I found out about frozen rice I was overjoyed. Better than the invention of sliced bread! (Cuz Asian ahem)

Also, did I mention that I got a bread machine and it's super awesome?! I love that thing. I hate kneading dough, so that took the hard work out of bread-making hahaha. Besides, making your own bread is much cheaper. Did you know you can get 25lbs of flour at Costco for $6? You can also buy yeast in bulk for $6. So much cheaper than buying bread! I'm well aware there are 99c bread for sale out there as well, but the quality of the bread I got is much better. Of course, you can also skip the kneading if you use the "5-minute artisan bread" method, but I haven't figured out if that technique works for naan or pizza crusts. 

In terms of health, I've been working out at least 4 times a week! My new mantra is consistency over intensity. I used to go hard with the whole "no pain, no gain" mentality, but that burned me out quickly. I don't run on adrenaline so I'm not sure why I thought that was a good idea for me. What usually ends up happening is I get so sore the next day that I take two days off and then revert back to my lazy self lol. Before I know it, I've only worked out twice a week...and then once a week...and then never.

Devotion wise I've been trying out more plans on YouVersion, but John and I are looking for a small group bible study at church now that I am out of school. Oh yeah, I haven't mentioned that, so I'll leave that for another post.

Passing actuarial exams is still a work in progress, but I signed up for the one in March. Hopefully I'll pass!

That's all for now!