Summertime Freezer Cooking

So, I read a lot about freezer cooking online. There are a lot of ambitious people out there who do things like cook once for a whole month by using freezer cooking. But it can also be as simple as freezing some extra leftovers for later when you cook a regular meal, and everything in between. When I was thinking about how to set myself up for success in terms of healthy (and thrifty) eating during my bar-studying couple of months, I realized that freezer cooking might come in handy. From what I have heard, bar studying is pretty manageable for June (and late May) but can get a lot more stressful during July (the exam is at the very end of July). So I got the idea that I should find some recipes that freeze well, make them here and there throughout June, and thus have less cooking (and grocery shopping) to do in July. This is especially easy cooking for one - not only are there plenty of leftovers from cooking a single batch of a recipe, but if I double recipes I get even more.

So far I have cooked a couple of things that I've frozen for later. I made some shrimp spring rolls and froze about half of them in a freezer bag. Just this week I made Cincinnati Chili (recipe is linked). I doubled the recipe, which made 6 servings, ate one serving for dinner, refrigerated two, and froze nine servings! I put the nine servings in three separate freezer bags so I can spread them out over time. As you can see below, I froze the chili flat in the bags so they wouldn't take up much space. I don't have a chest freezer or anything like that, so I will have to be careful about how much space these meals take up. I will update from time to time on how freezing is going. Hoping that cooking all the time will be one less thing to worry about come July!

The chili I ate for dinner - on top of whole wheat spaghetti, with chopped onion and shredded cheddar cheese.

Chili in the freezer! Ready to be thawed and enjoyed later. 

If you happen to be reading this and have any (at least moderately) healthy recipes that freeze well, feel free to send them my way! 

Life These Days

Not a whole lot exciting happening over here - just working on keeping up with my study schedule and even trying to get a bit ahead (I am going on a week-long vacation in June and plan to not worry about studying at all). The blessing and the curse of my prep course is that it is basically self-directed - there is a recommended schedule but it will adjust if I don't stick to it. That being said, by the time one is studying for the bar exam, one should be able to take ownership of things like this, I suppose.

Some thoughts on my exercise routine:

Particularly since there is absolutely no reason not to, I have also been trying to be good about exercise. Right now the name of the game is free stuff to do at home or close to home. As is usually the case with me, my best chance of working out is if I do it first thing in the morning. There is a sense of satisfaction with that and throughout the day it gets easier for excuses to pop up. At first I was thinking I'd alternate between doing a video yoga routine some days and going on walk/jogs other days (yeah I am pretty out of shape). I am slowly discovering that YouTube has more to offer than just yoga - there are cardio workouts, interval and otherwise, and dance workouts as well! I did a cardio workout this morning. It did work up a sweat and felt good, but as I was doing it, it occurred to me that dance workouts might work better in terms of keeping up with things. I took dance classes for 15 years growing up. I love doing it, and it's FUN. Way more fun (for me) than doing jumping jacks and planks and lunges. I think right now the key is finding things that I will continue to do, instead of obsessing over the best thing to do. During habit forming time, something is better than nothing. Similarly, I am trying to stay positive and patting myself on the back when I actually get moving, instead of focusing on how out of shape I feel or how little I have been exercising the past couple of months. I will probably keep writing about exercise here so have an added incentive to keep up with it. :-)

Thinking about my next living situation: 

Right after graduation and before I really started studying, I got in touch with a promising property management company at the next place I will be living. I ended up going ahead with committing to an apartment because I couldn't really find a reason not to. I will be living separately from husband during the week, so I just needed a small place, super close to work. The apartment has nice finishes and (critically) an included washer and dryer, but the price is pretty reasonable (low cost of living area helps). Now that I know the floor plan it is fun to daydream about how to decorate! We will see how it all pans out, but I am thinking for sure I would like to get 1-2 area rugs, one for the living room and one for the bedroom. I have been perusing the interwebs lately trying to find rugs that won't break the bank!

Congratulations are in order!

Congratulations to Kristen, who reads the blog and nicely left a comment on my post from the other day. She just got engaged to a wonderful guy, and I am so thrilled for her! Beautiful story, beautiful ring, and more importantly, plans for a beautiful marriage! Since she has so long to plan, I told her to just enjoy all the thrills, the congratulations, and the glow of this newly engaged time. :-)

I'll wrap it up here for now and get to my afternoon study session I think. We'll see how this whole "exercise I truly enjoy" thing goes in the coming week or so!

*Tap Tap*

... is this thing on? Haha, super cliche, but it seems appropriate anyway.

I blogged exactly once last year, it turns out. AND it was more than a year ago, almost a year and a half. Friends and family (especially family) urged me to start up again. Husband would ask a lot when I was going to blog again, until he stopped, because I hadn't yet (why he needs to follow my blog to keep up with my life is beyond me). The blog was on my mind and sometimes I meant to start writing again, but that never happened and here we are.

Why now? Well, to be honest part of it is that now that I have officially entered the 9-10 weeks known as "studying for the bar" (congratulations, you graduated from law school, now you get to do this!), I have realized that I have a lot of flexible time on my hands and less social interaction than has been normal. Don't get me wrong, I am going to hopefully see a lot of my friends this summer, but at the same time, I live a decent drive away from most of them and I don't have the structure of seeing people at school every day. I set my own schedule, and all of my "work" for these two months will take place in my home office. Some days, including today, I don't drive anywhere and I barely interact with other humans in person. Hence, the desire to start up this outlet again.

Also, I am moving at the end of the summer, for the first time in three years. It will be a change in situation and I might want to chronicle aspects of it. Thinking it through though, I am thinking I am going to restrict the blog to the personal side of my life, and even by that I mean leisure, hobbies, trips, that sort of thing. I am lucky enough to be starting a wonderful job in August, but discussing it online wouldn't really be appropriate for a few reasons. Friends and family, just ask me how it's going if you want to know! And I try to keep truly personal things off of forums like public blogs for pretty obvious reasons as well. So what will be here? I still meal plan and try to eat well, so I'll probably share some of that. I am gardening again. Improving my exercise habits is a constant struggle so some of that might get thrown in too. And who knows, maybe I will share articles and links I find interesting too - sometimes I feel like I overdo it with links on a certain book of faces.

I am not going to try to catch up on everything I didn't record here. I am just going to start again, because the beauty of a personal blog is that I can do that. I will say though, that now I am here on the other side of law school (as opposed to when I started this blog, and it was on the horizon). It wasn't always exactly fun, but I would say that overall I thrived. I met some wonderful friends and had more than a few great opportunities. I will miss many aspects of the student lifestyle, but I am excited to have a "big girl job" for the first time in my life and see the investment start to pay off (obviously with a good chunk of it going to pay for the investment...).

So, we'll see what happens! Until next time. Maybe it will be sometime this year, who knows?