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#OmahaFamilyDining, a Giveaway, and a Whole Lotta Mason Jars

Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert has designated October 19th-25th as “Family Dining Week” for the second year in a row, and is calling out to Omaha families to take the “Family Dining Pledge.” This pledge simply asks that you and your family commit to eating more home-prepared meals together… and taking the pledge will give you the chance to enter in giveaways with some pretty sweet prizes.

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Speaking of prizes… Live Well Kids Omaha has given me a $15 Hy-Vee gift card (enough to cover one or two home-made meals) to one of my lucky, pledge-making readers!  All you have to do is hop on over to this link to make the pledge, then come back here and tell me about it in the comments! I’d love it if you’d share what your favorite meal is to have at home with your family, while you’re at it! I’ll randomly select a winner on Saturday the 25th!

I really wanted to have some meat to this blog post, in addition to the giveaway details… and thought maybe some meal-planning tips would be helpful. I think, though, that there will be plenty of tips in some of my fellow bloggers’ posts that would be far more efficient than mine. So, instead…

masonjars

I think it’s time to fill you in on my Mason Jar journey.

Planning lunches has always been difficult for me. I can bust out a week’s dinner plan pretty easily, but half the time I forget that lunch even exists. I usually end up scrambling around last-minute to make my husband’s sandwiches, and then wind up eating the portion of macaroni and cheese that my kids didn’t polish off at lunch time. I think, though… I think I’ve found my solution.

Now, if you’ve ever fallen down the chevron-painted, pallet-studded rabbit-hole that is Pinterest, you’ll have noticed a few pictures of mason jars, artfully packed full of greens, vegetables, and very healthy-looking vinaigrettes. This, my friend, is what is known as a “mason jar salad…” or MJS if you feel like abbreviating things.

I’ve been eyeing these for a while now. The idea is that you buy, chop, cook, and pack a week’s worth of salad ingredients into these whimsical glass jars and enjoy the convenience and tastiness of a custom-designed salad every day of the work-week… without having to put forth any effort at the time.  About a month and a half ago, I decided to do it.  So far, I’ve successfully put together 10 salads for my husband and I three times out of those six weeks… and I’m calling that a success.

Rather than go through an entire step-by-step process (because my food photography is ABYSMAL, I want to share some really helpful MJS links, as well as a few of the things I’ve learned during this (still ongoing) process.

Basic breakdown, helpful links:

There’s a basic structure to these salads that’s the same in many posts:

  1. Dressing
  2. Hearty Vegetables
  3. Less-hearty Vegetables
  4. Protein
  5. Cheese
  6. Greens

What goes on between the hearty vegetables and the greens can vary according to the source, but your most important task is to separate the dressing from the greens. This will keep them from wilting.

Check out these posts from Simple Bites, Organize Yourself Skinny, and Popsugar. They’re pretty extensive in their directions, and much better at food writing than I. You can also follow my Pinterest board as I continue on my quest toward mason jar domination.

Things I’ve Learned:

– One 16 oz. clamshell of spinach and one 11 oz. clamshell of pre-washed romaine leaves (not hearts) seems to be the perfect amount of greens for ten salads; five for me, five for my husband.

– I appreciate the health benefits of spinach, but also need a little crunch in my salad… so I’ve found that the best solution is to get the pre-washed leaves of romaine (I use Earthbound Organic), rather than a bag of romaine mix or romaine hearts. The bag of mix never stays as fresh, and I do not have the time tear apart, wash, and dry those hearts.

– Four medium sized boneless, skinless chicken breasts, baked in the oven, is the perfect amount for ten salads, plus one night of tacos when you heat up the leftover chicken with canned beans, corn, and seasoning.

– If I went back in time, I would get on the internet and find wide mouthed, quart-sized jars. I could only find pint-and-a-half wide mouthed jars in the store, so I bought them… because patience is not my strong-suit. When I pack a pint-and-a-half jar totally full for my husband, it’s just the right amount of food… but he has to dump it into a separate container in order to actually eat it. I imagine that if I put the same amount in a quart jar with a wide mouth, I’d be able to mix it all up with a good shake, AND eat right out of the jar.

– My first ingredient after the dressing is always the onions. I’ve found that, when they’re chilling out in the dressing, they don’t fill the whole jar with the taste/smell of onion. Not that that’s a bad thing… I suppose it depends on your feelings about onions.

– Don’t try to spread this process out. I like to cook my meats (usually chicken and 1 lb. of bacon) in the morning and chop/assemble ingredients in the afternoon. Try to set aside a solid chunk of time to get all of your salads put together, rather than work on it all day long. I tried that the first week, and I ended up with three partially assembled salads and a bunch of ingredients in my fridge.

 

Someday…

Someday, I’ll sit down and write a for-real MJS post with actual pictures, I promise. In the meantime, I hope the links and my tips are helpful, and I genuinely hope you take the Family Dining Pledge!

Also, if you’re interested, you can heck out a few of the other participating bloggers:

CoolestMommy, Liv Laugh Love, Sensory Mama Saving Cents, Mom Saves Money, Making Mine, Oh My! Omaha, Family Fun in Omaha

Real Talk:

I was contacted by Live Well Kids Omaha to blog about Omaha Family Dining Week. I am being compensated with a $15 Hy-Vee gift card, as well as one to give away to one of my readers. I was also compensated  with a fresh, homemade batch of warm-fuzzies.

 

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Check out my expanded horizons: An Evening with David Sedaris

I think that, at almost 30 years old, I can examine my character flaws without it reflecting a lack of self-esteem on my part. There are a few aspects of my personality that I recognize as “not ideal,” at least when we’re thinking about the ideal characteristics of a human being contributing to society.

One of my most socially offensive flaws (in my opinion, anyway) is the intense desire to live in a carefully controlled bubble… a bubble containing my family, friends, nostalgic pop-culture, and music-related news.

I’ve spent my life carefully avoiding current events and nonfiction writing, because I prefer the fiction. If the fiction stresses me out, I can console myself with the fact that it’s not real. I recognize that, as a parent raising two other (hopefully) contributing members of society, this is an example I need to work on.

So, I’m trying, with baby steps, to expand my bubble. Perhaps someday, when my kids are older and more able to hold their own in the world, it will get easier to keep listening when NPR switches from Car Talk to the news. For right now, though, I’m slowly broadening my horizons with non-fiction storytelling. I’ve found that listening to things like This American Life and The Moth Story Hour makes it more possible for me to learn about the struggles of real people, without getting them carelessly dropped into my lap like a bowl of eyeballs. That might seem a little extreme… but sometimes that’s what the news feels like to me: like someone very nonchalantly handed me something horrible, in hopes of scaring me out of my wits.

So, slowly but surely, I’ve been learning about things outside of my bubble, and I do feel better for it. This is why, when I learned that David Sedaris was being brought by Omaha Performing Arts to speak, I quietly jumped up and down. Sedaris has been a fairly regular fixture on This American Life, and is one of the most spellbinding people I’ve heard (on the radio, anyway) speak. His words have a way of sounding so beautiful, even when he’s talking about things that are not inherently so. I think that seeing him speak in person will humanize him even more for me, and make his stories distinctly more real in my mind.

If you’re as interested as I am, An Evening with David Sedaris will be held on Thursday, October 30th at 7:30 pm at the Holland Performing Arts Center in Kiewit Hall. You can get tickets by visiting http://www.ticketomaha.com/productions/David-Sedaris.

I hope to see you there, whether you’re trying to expand your horizons or are simply interested in an incredible evening of storytelling! If you’re interested in reading some of his work, this website is a great place to start.

 

Real Talk: In return for this blog post, Omaha Performing Arts is compensating me with two tickets to An Evening with David Sedaris. Although I’m being compensated, all these words are my own, you guys. I ain’t no sellout.  

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General Housekeeping

Why do I want to call this a “housekeeping” post? Is that a real thing? Did my brain just make that up? I don’t think it did. Anyway, I’ve got a few general announcements, and it feels like housekeeping, but not the lame kind. The kind where you fold clothes and watch seven episodes of New Girl in a row.

#Science

We’re doing something called a “Naked Egg” at home. You soak an egg in vinegar, then in corn syrup, then in food colored water over the course of four days to demonstrate THE AMAZING POWERS OF OSMOSIS! Here’s the video we found on YouTube from a couple of dudes called the Sci Guys.  Charlie loves science experiments, so if you guys have any favorites, please send them my way!

Omaha Bloggers Network

This is a pretty cool group that was started a little over a year ago by Erin at Her Heartland Soul and Lisa from The Walking Tourists, and I’m glad I’ve stuck with it. We had a meeting on Sunday at Wilson & Washburn in the Old Market, and discussed things like community, future projects, and the creation of a committee system. It’s exciting to see this group turn into something official and formidable, and I’m genuinely looking forward to participating in its evolution. It offers support and education for bloggers, a chance to share your posts, and even more chances to gain exposure and community involvement.  Leave me a note in the comments if you’re interested in joining, and I’ll help you get hooked up!

Curtain & Pen Book Club WOOOOOOOOO!

This Wednesday the 24th at 10 pm, head on over to my Facebook page to participate in the first ever Curtain & Pen online book club!

We’re discussing The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell. The book is relatively short, but does take some concentration, in my opinion.

I’ve been researching some discussion questions, so all you have to do is read the book and sit down at your computer ready to chat. Pants are optional, wine/beer/hot tea/cocoa is encouraged, and I can’t wait to see how this goes!

On Thursday, I’ll throw out three new genres to pick from, and we’ll start the whole shebang all over again!

*UPDATE 9/24/14*

I totally published this too early, because a guest post that I wrote went live yesterday! Flywheel is a super-hip local company that offers managed WordPress hosting for designers and other creative agencies.  The post is about public speaking and, although it’s geared toward designers, the tips highlighted in it would be helpful for anyone. Please check it out, and share if you feel so inclined!

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Barcamp Omaha 2014: What I Learned

I know it’s been over two weeks since I attended, but Barcamp Omaha totally deserves a post.

I enjoyed this “un-conference” so much more this year than I did last year, and it was mostly because I changed my own expectations of the event. More on that in a mo.

I also did a presentation with my good buddy Erin from Human Illustrations. That made for a VERY different experience as well

So, in classic recap style, let’s make a list:

What I learned at Barcamp Omaha 2014:

Barcamp is a place to evaluate and supplement YOUR goals, not compare yourself to the realized goals of others.

When I went to Barcamp last year, I left feeling fairly deflated. I definitely had a good time during the day, but by the time it was over I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was trapped in work-related quicksand. Everyone there appeared cooler and more successful than me. It seemed like every other attendee had their entire days to dedicate to their small businesses, and I was the only one who was trying to squeeze things in between diaper changes. Obviously this was ridiculous, because Erin was my Barcamp buddy last year, and she, in fact, was doing exactly that.

This year was different. I attended with the memory of my feelings last year, and that was helpful. I’m also a year older, so maybe I actually learned a little bit about comparison? Probably not, but who knows. It was a little bit more obvious to me, this time around, that everyone there had something they were trying to achieve, AND that each person probably knew something that would be helpful to me.

Basically, if you go in to one of these conferences thinking everyone is too cool for school, it’s totally going to feel that way. If you go in thinking that everyone knows something valuable, and that you need to learn from them, you’ll have a much better experience. Granted, there are going to be some people who are too cool for school… but that’s life, right?

If you’ve got the opportunity to present something, doooooooooo it.

Barcamp is an “un-conference.” That means that the attendees are the presenters, and you sign up the morning of the conference to speak. There are usually a few open slots throughout the day, but they almost always get filled up.

Presenting was terrifying and awesome. Erin and I both initially walked around feeling a bit like puking, and I’m glad that we signed up for a morning slot so that we didn’t stress about it all day long. After the presentation was over, though, I felt a little bit like a superhero. I hadn’t been in front of people like that in a long time, and I rode that adrenaline alllllll day.

Our presentation was about working from home with children, which is something we’re both very, very familiar with.  Erin drew up some incredibly awesome slides to accompany the presentation, and you can see them (along with her recap) here.

That’s the beauty of Barcamp: you are qualified to talk about something. You may not feel like it, but you are. Erin and I have been working from home around our kids for at least four years each, now. That means we have both successes and failures to share… and plenty of people can benefit from them.

Are you good at keeping pet snails alive? Come to Barcamp next year and talk about it. Are you an expert at meal-planning? Please, come to Barcamp next year and talk about it. Are you incredibly good at pairing wine with chocolate? You should definitely come to Barcamp next year and talk about it. Someone is going to learn a lot from you, whether you’re a tech expert or a professional basket-weaver.

It’s okay to sit on your business for a while.

What? What does that even mean?

One of my favorite talks was a fantastic panel presentation called “The Leap.” Five local business owners talked about taking “the leap” into officially opening their businesses, and a woman named Sharon from Buds and Buttons said something that really resonated with me.

Someone had asked her if it was scary to officially open her business, and her response was “No.” I’m removing the quotation marks now, because I’m totally paraphrasing here, but it wasn’t scary to her because she had spent the last eight (I think?) years running her business from her basement. She was more than ready to open up because the foundation for her floral business was already forged and was ready to meet the world.

This hit home big time for me. I need to change my attitude.

Rather than thinking, “I’m NEVER going to make an actual living off my business,” I need to be thinking, “When I have the time to fully devote myself to my business, I will have already done most of the work.”

Really. When Charlie is in kindergarten and Lucy is in preschool, I will magically have regular time-slots in the week to work. I already have clients, I’ve been gently marketing myself for years now, and I will be able to hit the ground running, rather than think, “Holy crap, what do I do now?”

 

I love Omaha. I love Omaha. The fact that opportunities like Barcamp and Wordcamp are available is something I am so thankful for. Nurturing my business has not been easy with my lifestyle, but Omaha… with the cultural, technological, and social opportunities it provides… has been an irreplaceable resource in itself.

I know that I have friends and family members in Nebraska with small businesses, and I want to take this moment to urge and beg you to fit this into your schedules next year, regardless of where you live. Whether you present or just watch, I know you’ll leave with helpful knowledge you didn’t have when you left the house that day.

When the date for next year’s is announced, I’ll make sure I announce it, too. If you come, we can totally sit next to each other and high-five at multiple times throughout the day, I promise.  OR I can promise NOT to high-five you… if you’re not into that kind of thing.

(Big thanks to Lauren at Lauren Prentiss Designs for snapping a picture of both of us NOT looking like we’re going to puke!)