Photo by James Emery via Flickr Used under Creative Commons License-Attribution

With all of this money drama and life changing stuff going on, I have been reading, appropriately, God Wants You to Be Rich-The Christian Guide to Financial Freedom & Unlimited Wealth. Not because being rich is one of my goals, that’s not what this book is about anyway, but because I want to be more in control of my financial life. Now, I have a very expensive useless MBA, so intellectually, I know how to manage my money. But knowing and doing are two different things. And the dichotomy between knowing and doing is about as Christian as you can get. So I am turning to this book, and Dave Ramsey, the “Moses” of Financial Freedom, more for inspiration than how-to. Amazingly, the Bible has a lot to say about money! This verse was in the book and I seriously felt like Matthew was pointing at me like “yeah, you! I’m totally talking to you”….

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

Totally. Amen to that. You have my attention now.

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin {or shop the LOFT sale racks}. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown in the fire, will he not much more clothe you- you of little faith?”

Oh man. Right. Gee. {blush}

I am that worrier.  I am that person of little faith. He is talking about me.

“So do not worry, saying “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we wear?” For pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Well haven’t I been the bass ackward one. Just when I was feeling oh-so-foolish for getting so in debt in the first place now I feel extra foolish for being so spiritually bankrupt that I could not see that you can’t catch fish with holes in your net. The net being my faith and the fish being, well, fish.

Just thought I’d share this timely epiphany. Anyone else have something just speak to you today?

Ponte doesn’t have an indoor restaurant yet but it was about 60 degrees and sunny so it was a perfect day for an alfresco lunch at the Smokehouse Grill.

The happy eaters about to get their grub on!

That is me wearing the new shirt hubs surprised me with on Saturday.

We like eating at Ponte for many reasons. One is that they give you bread with this amazing green scallion oil {it’s more like a vinaigrette} for dipping. This usually doesn’t last long, hence the lack of a picture. Another reason I like eating at Ponte is that they have exceptional wines considering we are in Southern California. We have been coming to Ponte for 6 years now and we have been delighted by the year over year improvement in quality and taste of their wines. We love their Moscato, which is a slightly sweet, crisp sparkling white. Our other favorite is the Beverino which is a delicious, almost syrupy, but not in the least bit cloying, ed. It is very similar to a Late Harvest Zin and almost port like in that it goes well with chocolate. It is delicious served cold or at room temp. We decided to get two glasses of the Beverino. Our pours were downright icy and it was perfect and crisp. Yum!

Cheers!

Usually I order a salad because they make the most amazing salads. The salads vary depending on the menu because, as is often the case with boutique eateries who source their ingredients locally, the menu changes with the season. My latest favorite is their {almond crusted} goat cheese and arugula salad {with red pepper vinaigrette} and hubby loves their perennial Wine Country salad. This time, we were pretty hungry though and thinking alike as long time lovers often do, we both decided on the Kobe cheeseburger. It’s not often we are able to indulge in a one for the price of two burger and since the tab is on my MIL, why not?!

Kobe Beef Cheeseburger with Parmesan garlic fries. DELISH!

And yes, you most definitely could tell the difference with the kobe beef. It was very bold and savory. I’m pretty sure this is a bucket list food item!

Since we were already on the spendy path of gluttony and still had plenty on our gift card, we decided to indulge in a dessert to share. I am a huge fan of mascarpone and this is one restaurant that knows how to make amazing things with it, but I was overruled and we got the chocolate crepes instead.

{Sometimes I let hubby choose because it makes him feel like a man and that makes him happy. Gotta let them be the decision makers every once in a while. But not too often… }

Chocolate Crepes stuffed with chocolate ganache with “butternut” ice cream

The crepes were deep fried as you can see so a little different than what I expected. They were still very yummy. I don’t know what they had in mind for “butternut” ice cream but it tasted like french vanilla to me. Just sayin’….

Needless to say it looks like their new pastry chef is working out well.

At this point Cam had woken up from his epic nap that only Cupid could have made happen so we decided to walk off our food and show pookie the sights. It was nice to walk around. It is a beautiful winery, amazing views, with a rustic European countryside ambiance. When we had more money we used to be wine club members and this was our go-to place for a lazy Saturday when we had nothing better to do than bask in the sun in the rose garden sipping on Moscato. I miss those days sometimes. Life is so different now. {sigh}

If you look closely you can see a horse-drawn carriage near the flag pole

Barrel Room doors. Just pretty.

But things change and you can’t live in the past. You make new memories. I wouldn’t change any of the choices I made because I got this little guy….

…. And I would trade even more for him if I had to.

So we will make new memories. Even better ones. Thanks mom for helping us do that.

2 of my 3 favorite guys

Love

So when we got home I was too stuffed for a big dinner. I decided to make hubs and me my own riff on the Wine Country salad that we didn’t order this time. Here’s how you can make your own!

Natalie’s Post-Wine Country Salad (serves 2)

3 cups Spring greens

3 tbs feta cheese {or 3 slices if you use the feta brick}

3 tbs dried cranberries or cherries

2 tbs candied/glazed walnuts

1 chicken breast

lemon pepper

kosher or sea salt

Vinaigrette:

3 tbs red wine vinegar

1 tbs balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 tsp sugar

4 tbs EVOO

2 twists of Trader Joe’s Everyday Seasoning {optional}

Directions:

1. Flatten chicken breast with a meat tenderizer until uniform. Coat both sides of the chicken breast with lemon pepper. Sprinkle some kosher or sea salt to taste. Cook the chicken breast on a Foreman Grill if you have one or you can do it on the stove top.

2. Mix salad greens, cranberries, feta {I like shaving a few slices of the brick as opposed to the crumble}, and walnuts in a container with a lid

3. Mix vinaigrette ingredients together in a cruet or small container with a lid. Shake well!

4. Pour all of the dressing into salad, cover, and shake a few times to toss.

5. Top with warm chicken breast.

6. Try not to scrape the bowl with your fork…. seriously, it’s annoying.

A word about Trader Joe’s Everyday Seasoning: If you have a Trader Joe’s  nearby, this is a must have seasoning! It is cheap, like $2.95, and comes in its own grinder. I use this stuff on everything, including my foccaccia which I will be posting soon!

That’s all for now!

That big @ss house you bought to fill with your future children will suddenly become unaffordable once you actually have said children. Here is the crappy house you can afford and by the way it’s half the size so you’re done having kids, mmmkay? Is it cool that is smells like dog? Oh and we’ll need a deposit that you’ll never see again. {come on I know how that deposit stuff works, it’s a total racket!}

Yeah yeah, I should be grateful for what I have, blah blah blah. Well know what? It’s my pity party and I’ll cry if I want to.

Hope your week was better than mine!

My husband loves me.

Deeply.

Intensely.

So much so, that sometimes, it is hard to take it all in. Hard to believe that I get all of this just for being. Or specifically, for being me.

I don’t feel worthy.

And I cannot believe my luck.

How did I land such a man?

Today after getting my hair done, totally re-done, cut, styled, fancy peek-a-boo highlights, the whole shebang….

….I come home to a husband that is so thrilled with the results that he really wants to get me upstairs.

{But not for that…not yet…teehee}

And there, hanging from my ceiling fan, is the shirt from Ann Taylor LOFT that I loved but didn’t buy the day before because…

…it wasn’t on sale.

So while I was off getting pampered, he was thinking of more that he could do for me.

I love this man.

So maybe…

…the fairy godmother does live here.

Only she is a he.

And he is my husband.

And he gets me.

<3

Hope everyone has a wonderful Valentines Day!

xoxo

natalie b

This was Tyler, now he is known as Big Cheese, for obvious reasons...

And sometimes, he is more Wisenheimer than "Cheese". He is multi-talented!

This is Big Cheese Wisenheimer's little nugget of a brother, Mack Daddy. Sometimes he is also known as the Daddy Mack, depends on the color of his suspenders that day.

Super Fly, does this need explaining?

Sometimes I like to dress up and solve a mystery or two.

{I like how it says Walen, Hennig, & Merritt at the bottom. Reminds me of The Fantastic Mister Fox…”Boggis, Bunce, and Bean…one short, one fat, one mean…”}

Oh and there’s accessories for the ladies too! Woot-woot!

This was more Sweet Mama than Cougar although I have no shame in that label....Rawr!

Anyhow there is a lot more you can do with this app. I am a little embarrassed how much time I spent playing with it. But don’t take my word for it, get it for yourself by clicking here. Hurry, before they start charging! You are welcome!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. For more information about affiliate links, please check out my “About Me” page.

Me:

Ever since I updated the app it is turning my photos 90 degrees making it extremely difficult to get the watermark in the right place. I liked the previous version where it had my picture oriented the correct way and it put it in the top right corner. I won’t be using this app now. I was planning on doing a write up on my blog about it but not now. Let me know when this is fixed.

That guy:

hi natalie,

we like to be encouraged and not threatened to do something. if i pay you .99 for something you’ve worked years on and send you a letter like the above what would you think? its sounds like you have been using the app for sometime but you say nothing nice or uplifting. [not true, guy, I said I liked the previous version]

i suspect you are a nice person. sometimes people on the net feel they have to bludgeon others and act tough to get what they want. its good to remember we developers are just other people with lives and families. also making a watermark app is a labor of love, its not making us rich.

in relation to what you mention please let me know what you mean. we have not heard what you are talking about. maybe we don’t understand. please describe it exactly and will see why you are experiencing that.

thanks

{what is up with all lower case? who does this person think they are, steve jobs?}

So I have spent a good amount of time in my adult life in customer service and I probably would’ve been jobless a lot sooner had I ever responded that way to a customer complaint. I wasn’t as gracious as I could be but when is an upset customer gracious? I wrote this app developer at 10:30 pm {hence the bad grammar and choppy sentence structure} after being unable to use the app to watermark pictures for the post I was writing. Can we just say that I was super po’d? But enough defending myself, here is why this guy is a jerk.

1. Own Up to Your Mistakes: His company made this product and is therefore responsible for when it doesn’t work. I didn’t see a single “I’m sorry”  or acknowledgement that he gave a damn that I was experiencing any difficulty with his “labor of love”. Instead he chose to chastise me for my very normal dissatisfied customer behavior.

2. Customer Satisfaction is your Other Product: It is a company’s job to ensure their customers are satisfied. In the event they are not satisfied and they are kind enough to tell you and not their 500 (ok, 150) friends, that is your golden opportunity to really wow them. Maybe by acknowledging their concerns and making an attempt to make it better, you can turn a bad customer experience into a great one. I often rave about Amazon to friends but that doesn’t mean that every experience has been seamless or perfect. On the occasions when things did go wrong, Amazon’s excellent customer service always made the situation better. Making things better when things do go wrong has made me even more loyal to Amazon. Hey nobody and no company is perfect, things will not always go as planned  but when customer expectations are not met, good companies fix it and great companies make it even better. This is not a great or even a good company. This guy let his bad day and his God-complex fragile developer ego get the better of him and he wrongly took this out on a paying customer. This is a major no-no.

3. The Customer is Always Right: This doesn’t mean the customer is actually always right but in providing excellent customer service you must act as though they are. You can think whatever you want, but when engaging the customer, it’s always your fault and you are humble, apologetic, and you appreciate their business. You certainly don’t gripe at them for your failed pricing strategy or require them to be “uplifting” when your product doesn’t work. Geez, did he seriously say that? What. A. Tool.

So yeah, maybe I was kind of a jerk, but by slapping my hand and calling me out, this guy was an even bigger jerk. If he would’ve handled it the right way, I probably would’ve felt bad and apologized on my own. I definitely would be writing a different blog post. That’s not to say that maybe we shouldn’t be a little kinder when complaining to a company.You should treat others as you would like to be treated and I guess you do catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. But while I am spouting worn-out platitudes, here’s another: two wrongs don’t make a right. And maybe this is the one situation when I am allowed to be a little less than nice. I am the customer after all, I did spend my husband’s hard earned money on YOUR product over someone else’s product, and, therefore, am allowed to be upset when YOUR product doesn’t work. 

At the end of the day, I expect ANYONE I do business with to conduct themselves professionally, even when their customers do not, especially when their customers do not. If you can’t handle running your own business, go work for someone else. If you let the shenanigans above become your customer service norm, you will probably need to go work for someone else eventually anyway. Or maybe, if you have the cash flow, hire someone else to handle your customer service needs, just make sure to outsource their training as well. And while you are hiring people, you might want to hire a shrink for that fragile ego. Perhaps they can provide the “uplifting” you seek.

Buttermilk Caramel Syrup (recipe courtesy of Creations by Kara)

{note: I halved this recipe}

3/4 cup Buttermilk

1/2 cup Brown Sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup butter

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking soda

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a large sauce pan, bring buttermilk, butter, and sugars to boil over medium heat.

Not boiling yet...sorry, I was multi-tasking...

2. Remove from heat and whisk in vanilla, then baking soda. The baking soda will cause the mixture to bubble up like a shaken soda can, so be sure to add the baking soda last. The bubbles will go away upon standing.

Have that baking soda ready to go!

Bubbles!

After about 5 minutes of cooling, the bubbles have gone down, but not all the way.

3. Serve warm on pancakes, waffles, ice cream, yogurt, by itself on a spoon. This stuff is so good you will find ways to eat it. I stored my excess in a pint sized mason jar which I why I posted my halved version of Kara’s recipe.

Is it sacrilege to serve this with frozen waffles? maybe but I'm not really caring right now...nom nom nom

This halved version of Kara's original recipe fits into a pint sized mason jar.

Kara claims this is a life changing recipe. Now I don’t like to throw that word around unless I really mean it. I would have to say, however, that this is a grocery-list-changing recipe because now instead of putting maple syrup on my list, I will be buying buttermilk. And if you give a girl some buttermilk, chances are she will make some pancakes….and then… she’ll want some hockey to go with it.

And hopefully, with playoff season fast approaching, Dustin Penner’s wife doesn’t get a hold of this recipe! Go Kings Go!

Two things lead me to Wean Green and this life changing experience. First, I knew before I even got pregnant that I wanted to make my own baby food. For me, it just makes sense and cents also. How easy is it to steam a carrot and throw it in the blender? Really easy, super cheap, and healthier too I might add. You are looking at   maybe 25 cents per serving versus what they charge for those jars (or worse, the new plastic containers) of baby food. And speaking of jars and plastic containers, that brings me to the second thing: I’m trying to reduce the amount of plastic I expose my family to. Now, I am realistic and I know that it is probably not possible for me to 100% eliminate plastics, but there are some things I have control over. The containers I use to heat and store my family’s food is one of those things. So I have slowly been purchasing Pyrex and Anchor Hocking to replace my old and thus probably extra toxic craptastic plastic containers.

Now, I had looked at glass baby bottles and had ultimately went with the polypropylene brand that was compatable with my {plastic} breast pump {like I said, I’m not going to be able to get rid of all things plastic} but the thought of storing Cam’s food in glass had already been planted; I just hadn’t gotten to the point where I had to deal with solid food storage. When Camden hit the 5 month mark however I started thinking about making baby food; six months would be here before I knew it. Turning to my trusty oracle Google who gives me all of the answers I seek, I searched for “homemade baby food blog” and happened upon Weelicious. {Weelicious is an awesome site for nutritious and delicious food for the whole family, not just babies.} One of the very first posts I happened upon on Weelicious was a giveaway for a set of Wean Green glass baby food containers. All you had to do to enter was leave a comment on the first food you fed your baby. No crazy goose chase or social media scavenger hunt {not that I am above this} required. I subscribed to Weelicious tout de suite and crossed my fingers. Imagine my surprise when a week or so later I get an email from the founder of Wean Green, Melissa Gunning, informing me that I had won! Talk about awesome customer service, heck, I wasn’t even a customer I was getting it for FREEEEEEE! She was so nice even asking me to let her know what I think about them once I receive them. Well it goes without saying that a company that cares about your feedback, and not by asking you to complete a survey, but whose founder emails you personally, is probably going to make a really amazing life changing product. Why? Because they care. In fact, caring is what brought this product into fruition: caring about the environment and caring about the health of babies.

So Melissa Gunning, super personable super-mom founder of Wean Green, this is what I think:

I love the great colors and shapes of the containers! They come in cubes {small, snack sized, and sandwich sized}, tubs, and bowls with sturdy lids (read: these suckers aren’t going to break or crack. In fact they withstood over 3 million uses in the use test machine! They are going to last longer than me!) in gorgeous colors with cute fruit and veggie names like pea, carrot, raspberry, and blueberry. Each shape has a different capacity so you know at a glance what size it is.

.

Wean Green Sandwich Cube in Carrot 16.5 oz

Wean Green Bowls in Blueberry 5.6 oz

Wean Green Snack Cubes in Pea 7 oz

Wean Green Tub in Raspberry 5.1 oz (carrot stick & pretzel shaped!)

I also love how sturdy they are!  I have a whole stash of baby food that my sister gave me that I planned to use when out-and-about. But I don’t have to worry about that with Wean Green because they are made of super strong tempered glass. I can throw these in my diaper bag no problem. In fact I can throw them in my big boy’s or hubby’s lunch too for a non-leaching container for dips, fruits, veggies, and snacks. And just in case you are skeptical, the fun people at Wean Green made this video where they are, among other things, playing pool with these bad boys.

So all of the reasons that plastic slowly began to replace glass have basically been addressed in this product {with the exception of weight, but these aren’t heavy at all}.

Another thing Melissa said in her email to me was that she was excited to see how I would use them. Well….they are baby food containers, what else could I use them for? Oh the pressure to be creative! But once I took them out of the package and started actually using them I found an ingenious use for them: breast milk storage!

You see, when I pump milk to freeze, I have to scald the milk to keep the lipase from breaking down the fat. For those not in the know, when lipase breaks down the fat in breast milk it can lose its tastiness and scalding, heating on the stove until the edges bubble, stops this process. The problem with scalding is that I wind up pouring hot milk into a plastic milk storage bag or risk contamination by letting it cool first. Then when I defrost the bag of milk, I expose it to heat a second time. Get it? I expose the same small sample of milk, in plastic, to heat twice and heat+plastic=bad. {My bags are BPA free but that doesn’t mean they are safe.New studies are coming out all of the time} Wean Green to the rescue! They take my milk from stove top to freezer toxin free.

Pouring scalded milk into Wean Green bowls

See the steam forming! Too hot for plastic!

Frozen scalded milk

When you are ready to use the frozen milk, you can put it in a bowl of hot water to defrost. Once it is defrosted, you can mix the cereal in the same bowl! You can’t do that with a plastic storage bag….

Defrosting frozen milk

Mix cereal directly in the bowl, no waste or trash!

Tip: Use an Expo Vis-a-Vis wet erase marker to write the contents and date made on the outside. Since it is wet erase it won’t smudge but will rinse off when you wash the dish!

Tip: Use a Wet Erase Marker to write contents and date on the container. The marker comes off when you wash the container!

So as you can see, this isn’t something you want to wait to have until your baby starts eating solid foods. This is a registry item folks! This is a product that will grow with your child: breast milk storage for newborns, solid food storage for weaners, snacks for toddlers, and your imagination is the limit for the lunch-toting school-aged {or work-bound} family members. And with 3 million plus uses, Wean Green containers will have no problem seeing your family through all of these stages. I only wish I had gotten my hands on them sooner and that they made bigger ones for my leftovers.

So thank you to Wean Green and Weelicious for holding this awesome giveaway! Thanks to you my little one will have that much less exposure to toxins in his food supply. Using Wean Green for Camden has lit a fire under my butt to speed up replacing plastic with glass for the rest of the family too! My husband took a glass container to work tonight for the first time. Life Changing. Now if I could just do something about those canned tomatoes…

For more information on Wean Green products, visit their website here. You can purchase Wean Green directly on the Wean Green website or from Amazon.

Hooray for Wean Green!

Disclosure: Writing this review was not a condition of winning nor was it requested of me after the fact. All opinions are 100% my own.

This post contains affiliate links. For more information on affiliate links, please read me About Me page.

So I’ll spare you the stew recipe, because, everyone usually has their own and I made mine in the crock pot. Womp, womp. And Camden has been a poo-butt so I didn’t even attempt to brown the beef first.To add to my shame, after I threw all of the ingredients willy-nilly in the crock pot, I sat down to watch Tyler Florence travel to France to learn how to make a perfect stew. Dang, I suck. It’s all good though because this cornbread will totally make up for the shameful stew.

So first off, you need a cast iron skillet. I used an 8 in. Lodge Logic.{They are pretty reasonably priced if you don’t have one.} Next you need a corn bread recipe. If you aren’t partial to one already, here is mine:

Natalie’s Rustic Cornbread

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup bread or all purpose flour

3 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup milk

1/3 cup canola oil (reduce this by the amount of bacon fat used)

{I like this recipe because it has a 1:1 ratio of cornmeal to flour. It’s has a nice rustic, grainy texture. Some cornbread is too bready, this one is not.}

Okay, so before you get started on the cornbread, cut about 4-5 slices of bacon into 1 in. sections. Cook these in the cast iron skillet, stirring often enough to keep them from sticking. While these cook, start on your cornbread.

Preheat oven to 400. Put cornmeal and milk in a large mixing bowl and let soak until your bacon is crispy. Once, bacon is done, put burner on lowest setting to keep the bacon fat melted. Add flour, sugars, and baking powder to cornmeal/milk mixture. Remove bacon from pan and chop as finely as possible. Put almost all of the bacon grease in a measuring cup, reserving enough to grease the skillet. Top off with canola oil so that canola oil+bacon grease= 1/3 cup. Pour oil mixture into the batter. Then add the egg to emulsify the fats. Last, fold in the bacon bits. {you don’t need the fancy mixer for this one, a big wooden spoon works just fine}

Give the skillet a good swirl to evenly coat with the remaining bacon grease. {I still sprayed the sides with some Pam.} Pour in the batter and bake for 25 minutes.

Don't drool yet, I have more photos...

Wouldya look at that crust?!

This cornbread was so good, it deserved two angles. Hubby and I shared a piece and were fighting over the crispy crust. Seriously, who fights over the crust? Get used to it if you make this.

Wouldya like another slice of cornbread, pa? Sure shootin' I would, ma!

You can top with some honey butter or make a fruit butter by mixing two parts butter to one part fruit preserves. I used my pepper jelly. It was messy so I didn’t take a picture. If you have a good cornbread recipe, leave it in the comments!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. For more info on affiliate links, see my “About Me” page.