Blueberry & Almond Yogurt Parfait

The local grocery stores have had great sales on fresh blueberries for the past few weeks.  Really, really good sales on deliciously perfect blueberries.  Eating them fresh and by the handful is always an option, but sometimes it’s nice to come up with different ways to use them.

This yogurt parfait is incredibly simple, easy to make ahead of time for a quick weekday breakfast, and it’s delicious.

Blueberry & Almond Yogurt Parfait:

1 cup vanilla yogurt
½ cup washed blueberries, divided
1 Tbsp sliced almonds, toasted*

Spread 1/4 cup of the blueberries in the bottom of a bowl.  Layer the yogurt on top.  Top with remaining 1/4 cup blueberries.  Sprinkle with almonds.  Enjoy!

If you’re making this the night before, just don’t add the almonds so they don’t get soggy.  Cover and refrigerate after the final layer of blueberries.

*To toast the almonds:
Preheat a small non-stick skillet over medium heat.  Add almonds, stirring constantly, for 2 - 4 minutes, just until they barely begin to darken.  It takes about two seconds for the almonds to go from not quite toasted to burnt to a crisp.  You don’t want to step, or look, away from them.

Thrifty Thursday - The Realization That Something Needs To Change

We’ve recently decided to get serious about paying off debt and saving money.  A combination of things lead to this decision:

We’ve realized that we’re not in a position that allows either one us to take a job with much of a salary decrease.  Even if it’s a job that’s otherwise perfect, it just wouldn’t be feasible.  That severely limits options, and it’s not a good feeling.  Reducing debt would change that.  Even if it’s not something that we would opt to do, just the idea of being able to is empowering.

Without sharing stories that aren’t mine to share, we’ve had front row seats to what happens when you neglect retirement planning and saving.  It isn’t pretty.  And it’s definitely not a situation we want to find ourselves in thirty years from now.  We all know that time flies, so it makes sense to plan and save now.

And the more fun motivation is that we’ve realized we want to travel.  It’s something we’ve talked about, but only in vague terms along the lines of “wouldn’t that be fun/interesting/exciting”, but nothing beyond that.  Neither one of us have ever really been outside the south, and while we’re happy here, there are so many other places to see.

We recently spent an evening with some older friends, and they told us about their trip to Italy a few years ago.  It inspired us.  There’s a whole big world out there, and we’d like to see more than our tiny piece of it.  It’s not something that’s going to happen this year, or next, but we’ve set a major trip by the time we’re 40 as our goal.  We have yet to define exactly what “a major trip” means for us.  NYC?  Europe?  Alaska?  Some sort of cruise?   But we do know that it’s something we’ll have to save up for.  We’ll both be thirty-five by the end of the year, so we’re working on a five year plan.  It seems doable.  You have to have goals, right?

Long term goals seem to be harder sometimes.  Small steps can seem insignificant or pointless.  It’s so easy to get distracted or discouraged.  It can be hard to decide where to start.  Accountability helps.  At least it helps me.  So I’ve designated Thursday as Thrifty Thursday.  Every week I’ll share something that we’re doing to save, plug up the holes in the budget, or somehow reduce debt.

So what about you?  What are your long term goals?

Dog Shaming - The Lasagna Edition

By now I’m sure just about everyone is familiar with dog shaming, where you take a picture of your dog wearing or holding a sign stating their misdeed(s).  Sometimes the pictures are taken in the wreckage of whatever they’ve destroyed.  The pictures are usually hilarious, especially when it’s not your house, dinner, car, etc.

Honestly, even when it is your dog, and your lasagna, the pictures are kind of fun.  After all, you’re (hopefully) not getting the lasagna back.  And there’s no point crying over stolen lasagna, so you might as well laugh, and get a cute pet picture out of it.

I don’t think Duke ever really feels any shame when he steals.  He seems to be more of the “I regret nothing, and it was delicious!” school of thought.  At least he’s cute.

This particular incident was a few months ago.  Lasagna is a big deal at our house.  I don’t make it very often.  It’s fairly time consuming, and it makes so much that we usually only have it when someone is coming over.  It’s also one of those foods that always seem to taste even better the next day, so leftover lasagna is highly anticipated.  We had well over two thirds of the pan left, so we wrapped it up with aluminum foil and left it sitting on the stove, and went outside for about two minutes to wave goodbye to our friend.

When we came back inside, Duke had his face firmly planted in the pan, and was just finishing the last few bites.  I have no idea how he managed to eat that much that lasagna that fast, but he did.  Fortunately, he didn’t get sick from it, and we’ve learned that you never leave lasagna unattended for even a moment.

So what about you?  Do you take dog shaming pictures when your dog is bad?  Have you lost anything tasty to a fur kid lately?

Has It Really Been Three Months?

I meant to write a blog post long before now.  I knew it had been a while, but I didn’t realize it had been over three months until I looked at the date on my last post.  Obviously I dropped out of the April A to Z Challenge. And then didn’t post for three months.  Time flies, right?

Life got a little busy, between pets, work, home, and yard stuff.  I think our biggest news is that we had to say goodbye to our cat Joey in May.  We had been battling various health issues with him for a while, and we had said we would keep on as long as he had a good quality of life.

He started losing weight, and stopped responding well to the medications he was on.  Our vet did a few non-invasive tests to confirm her suspicions of an intestinal tumor, and once that was confirmed we knew it was time to let him go.  Our vet was wonderful about helping us make the decision.

Joey was always a people cat.  He loved people, and other than demanding attention was very laid back.  Almost everyone who has ever been to our house has spent hours holding Joey.  He liked (and often demanded by tripping or clawing you) to be held like a baby.  He was very popular at the vet’s office because of his personality.

Once we talked to the vet about the results of Joey’s tests and made the decision to let him go peacefully rather than putting him through anything else, all of the vet techs came in to tell him bye, and what a good, sweet boy he had always been.  Even the vet cried when it was over, and she came to take him away.  She kept apologizing for crying, and saying she wasn’t being very professional.  Honestly, it made us love her even more.  When your vet cries with you over losing your cat, you know they’re invested in their care, and have done everything possible for them.

We’re finding our new normal now that we’re down to just three cats, and the two dogs.  We’ve decided to wait a little while before we add another fur kid to our family.  We aren’t actively looking to foster or adopt at the moment.  We lost three pets last year, one this year, and have been dealing with at least one pet having extensive (and expensive!) medical issues for a few years now.  For the moment, everyone is reasonably healthy.  We’ve decided to take some time to savor that.

We don’t have a certain time frame in mind as to when we’ll start looking to add another furry family member, but I know it will happen.  Knowing us, it will happen sooner rather than later, but we both think we need the break right now.

Other than that we’ve just been keeping busy with ordinary day to day things.  The garden is doing reasonably well this year.  We’ve almost completely finished reinforcing the fence, and Duke has been staying in the yard.

So what about you?  How have the last three months been?  Anything fun or exciting going on this summer?

Grandparents

Jeanie, at The Marmelade Gypsy recently became a new grandparent, and wrote a nice post on being a grandparent.  It made me think of my grandparents, and the different types of grandparents there are. So I decided that my G post for the A to Z Blogging Challenge would be Grandparents.

I had the good fortune to start off with more than the usual number of grandparents.  My mom’s parents were divorced and both remarried.  I was also the first grandchild on both sides of the family. That’s kind of like winning the lottery when it comes to being spoiled by grandparents.  They were all different, and I had a very different relationship with each of them.

My mom’s dad and step-mom died in a car accident when I was six, so I have only early childhood memories of them.  For them, being grandparents was a calling, an occupation, and a hobby all rolled into one.  He had missed out on most of my mom’s childhood due to the divorce, and was determined to be there for everything when my sister and I came along.  She adored children, but was never able to have her own, so my mom, and then later my sister and I presented her chance.

They were the kind of grandparents who snuck us cookies after bedtime, and let us do pretty much whatever we wanted.  They played house, dolls, dress-up, pretty much anything we wanted, with us.

They did things like let me drink juice out of a coffee mug and stir it with a spoon because I loved the sound it made.  Even today, there’s something soothing to me about the sound of a spoon clinking against a mug.

They packed a lot of grandparenting into six years.  I honestly don’t know if I would have such vivid memories of them otherwise.

My mom’s mom, Granny, embraced grandparenting with equal fervor.

My mom has always hated gum, and would never allow us to have it when we were kids, so Granny kept us well supplied with gum.  She would send us huge boxes of gum, with every flavor imaginable.  Mom would make us go outside to chew it, but that was fine with us.

Granny wrote the best letters, and she wrote often.  I loved writing letters as a child, and wrote them on a near daily basis for a while.  She always wrote me back.

She loved shopping, and could always sense a good sale.  She taught me how to bargain shop, and the wisdom of stocking up on things when they’re on sale.

She made the best pumpkin pie.  I have her handwritten recipe for it, and it was her contribution to our wedding cookbook.

My dad’s parents, known as Mama Kitty and Dad Dog, lived a little further way, so we didn’t see them as much when we were kids, but they still whole-heartedly embraced being grandparents.

They came to stay with my sister and me during our other grandparents’ funeral.  My parents made the decision for us not to go, and I don’t think there was anyone else we would have willingly stayed with.

He taught me how to ride my bike.  It didn’t go well at all when my parents tried, but Dad Dog’s method was successful.  He went with me for show and tell when I was in kindergarten (no one else had a Dad Dog, so he was a big hit).

He took me out driving when I had my learner’s permit and taught me not to be so terrified of getting in an accident.

Mama Kitty has always been more of a homebody, so she was largely the one who taught me how to cook, and taught me nearly everything I know about baking.  We always cooked and baked together.  Lasagna, shrimp scampi, biscuits and gravy, cake.  Whatever it was, it was always delicious.

She’s the avid reader in the family, and passed on a love of reading and books.  She’s the person who convinced me that the worn, well-read books are the best when you’re at book sales or thrift stores, because they’re clearly the ones people have read and loved.

I think all of my grandparents helped shape the person (the good and the bad parts) that I am today.  I learned different things from all of them, and was able to have a unique relationship with each of them.  I realize that I was very fortunate to have that.

So what about you?  What were/are your grandparents like?  If you’re a grandparent, what are you like?