Freezer Meal Exchange

I've always known that I spend too much money on my lunches because I buy my lunch everyday. I am not fond of bringing my lunch for two really stupid reasons: I don't like to eat the same thing all the time and I'm too lazy to prepare it everyday. This week as I watched the economy continue to tank and I started to fear for my job being that I work in the financial services industry I realized that perhaps I should be trying to save some of that money and start bringing my lunch. Every little bit helps, right? And hey, it'd probably be better for me, too!

So, here's what I did. I sent an email to my friends asking them if they'd be interested in starting a freezer meal exchange! What's that? To save some time, I'm just going to post the email that I wrote to my friends.

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Hey everyone!

So, economic times are tough and I know we're all looking for ways to save money and I know that I personally spend way too much money on lunches at work simply because I get bored too easily to pack sandwiches all the time. Also, I like to cook but cooking for one is so much harder! So, what I was thinking is that we should start a freezer meal exchange group!

Basically, we'd each make a certain number of meals (just entrees, no sides unless you're feeling ambitious). Then, we'd package them up into individual packages with some gladware or something and we'd exchange! Now, since we're mostly singles or couples there's no need to make multiple 6 serving casseroles and exchange the whole thing. I'm thinking more along the lines of lunch sized, not full family meal sized. Granted, usually 2 technical servings equal one real serving in our world so we'd make each portion a 2 serving portion. Ideally, we'd only have to cook for the exchange once a month and we'd still have meals for each work day for the entire month.

Here's an example if we had 5 people participating.

• 5 people
• 4 entree recipes each (each making 10 servings total)
  
• Each entree divided into 5 individual frozen packages.
  
• That means, each person would end up bringing 20 frozen packaged items to the exchange which is enough for 5 days a week for 4 weeks for each participant.

Make sense? If the interest is high enough we could work on the formula a bit to maybe spread out the work or something but this was my first stab at it and my brain isn't working as well as it should be.

I think it sounds pretty doable! I mean, how hard is it to whip together a casserole, or pasta, or a stew or some crockpot creation with 10 servings? I think I'd much rather spend a couple hours in the kitchen over the weekend making 4 entrees and packaging them up than making my lunch every morning.

What's cool, is that we could post the recipes that we each used on a blog or something along with the instructions for reheating and then we'd know how to make a dish on our own if we really enjoyed it. Also, there'd be feedback that way if a dish just bombed and we'd know not to make it again. As for recipes...I rely pretty heavily on http://www.allrecipes.com because you can pick any recipe and modify the number of servings and it'll adjust the ingredients for you, so it's super easy!

There'd be some rules of course.....

• We should probably set a price per entree limit or something to keep people from going nuts.
• We'd need to know of any allergy or food phobias.
• Try to keep it healthyish....we don't want to turn into blimps cuz we suddenly have some good solid meals! :)
  
• We'd need to agree on some freezer containers.
• We'd have to make sure that everyone is committed to participating so we don't have some months where we have half a month's worth of lunches after the exchange....even tho that's better than nothing!

Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that out there and try to gauge interest. I know that I'm excited about it and would love to get started right away but I obviously can't do it alone. And heck, if anything it's a reason to get together each month!

Please let me know if this is of interest to you and pass it on to anyone else you can think of that'd like to participate. Also please let me know if I didn't make sense or if my calculations are wrong!

Kim
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So far I have one friend that's really excited and another that's interested but worries about having to double the effort because both she and her husband would be participating. Oh, and one that said no because she's too picky. I understand all of that for sure! :) I just hope I get enough people that are interested to give it a try. I think having a different meal every workday for a month would be awesome! AND I'd get to collect some new recipes!

If it works out, I'll have another blog to link to but it'll have multiple contributors. I think it'll be fun! I'll let you know how it works out.

YAY Obama!

Yeah, this is late but I've been busy getting caught up on the rest of my life now that the election is over!

HOORAY PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA!

I'm proud to have been part of this amazing piece of history and I'm proud of our new President-Elect!

Running off track.....

What happens when you set a goal to run a 5k on a specific date and everything is going well and you're feeling great? Something comes up to take you off off track and you don't make your goal...and it sucks.

Technically, I did meet my goal of running a 5k before I turned 30 when I ran the Beaverdash in September. But, I had always considered that a practice run and the 5k on Oct 19th was supposed to be my real run. Well, I somehow managed to severely jack up my hip and was unable to run for a few weeks. I just got the okay from my doctor to try running again and I intend to give it a go tomorrow. I'm going to start on the treadmill though to minimize the impact so I don't break myself immediately.

Just thought I'd throw out an update since I know a lot of people were wondering how I did in my goal race. The answer is, I did a great job cheering on my friends from the Injured Reserve bench that my friend Amy I created near the finish line. :)

I Just Voted for Barack Obama....

I'm proud of the part that I've played this moment in history. I caucused for Obama in Iowa, I volunteered for the campaign, housed staffers and now I've sent in my absentee ballot for the general election.

Given the anticipated turnout for election day, I felt it'd be a good idea to vote absentee. Also, I'll be out knocking on doors or giving rides to the polling places so I made sure to get my own vote out of the way so that I'd be completely free to do whatever it takes on the big day.

Voting early or absentee is REALLY easy and you'll benefit in a few ways!

1. The campaigns won't call you anymore....seriously. They know when people have voted (not how you voted, but just that you've turned in a ballot) and your name is removed from the calling lists. So, if you're tired of being contacted by campaigns here's your way out!
2. You get your vote in when it's convenient for you and you won't have to worry about inclement weather or a late meeting keeping you from the polls. And given how crappy Iowa weather can be in November, it'll be nice not to wait in line outside. :)
3. You're free to help other people get to the polls or to help out the campaign in your area.

Whether you intend to vote early or not, go to www.voteforchange.com and at least make sure that you're registered to vote and that your address is correct. It's super easy to use and you'll be able to register to vote, request an absentee ballot, or find your polling place!

I did my part, now do yours. :)

Obama-Biden '08!

My First (practice) 5K Race

As I've mentioned before, my goal for my training was to be able to complete (without walking) the Principal 5K that's part of the Des Moines Marathon on Oct 19. Today I ran my "practice" 5K to get used to the race environment so that come October I'm semi-prepared for the nerves, people, etc.

The BeaverDash 5K was the race that I chose as my "practice" race since it's almost exactly a month from my "real" one.

This is was my very first organized race ever. I was a nervous wreck before it started and my stomach was in a knot. I don't get nervous very easily but man, I was a freak this morning. There were 1000+ people there (we'll see the official numbers when the results are up later) and it was a flat course, as promised. Oh, here's a course map for anyone looking for it. I couldn't find one to save my life before the race until I checked in. It was a beautiful morning for a run, too.

Here's the thing though - and this isn't me making excuses...it's me trying to figure out what I need to do to improve for next time - I know I could have done better had I known better how to prepare for a run in the morning. This was the first time I've run any great distance in the morning and I wasn't sure what to eat before hand or anything. I always run at night where I've had food during the day so I have some energy to use. I looked on the internet for breakfast suggestions and I went with a Clif Bar, a banana, and half a bottle of Gatorade. Not a good plan. My stomach was already in a nervous knot before the race, then add on top of that WAY too much food and you have a recipe for an upset stomach. My goal was to run the whole thing and not walk....but I walked when I felt my stomach starting to try and re-gift the Clif Bar. You can see in my Runner+ Jog Log where I walked a bit in the run..just after mile 2. Luckily I didn't have to walk much before my stomach righted itself so that's good.

Overall, not a terrible run but I know I can do better. I'm going to do the following to ensure that I improve over the next month:

1) Make sure I don't have big gaps in my practicing. I've given friends permission to verbally abuse me or even kick my ass if they see anything more than a 3 day break between runs in my Runner+ logs. Those 5 and 6 day gaps are unacceptable. I'm definitely shipping my shoes to DC next week so I can get a run in while I'm on my mini-vacation (yes, I said shipping....I refuse to pay American Airlines to check a bag...bastards).

2) Haul my ass out of bed in the mornings a few times to try and find the perfect amount of food to consume before a run so that I have enough energy but don't have to hold back from throwing up. I'll still run at night because I enjoy it and it works best for me. But I need to get my body used to running first thing in the morning.

3) Get in several runs that are longer than 3.5 miles so that I'm well practiced so that 3.1 doesn't seem like a challenge.

My results will be posted later and I'm sure that my time will be different there than it is in my Jog Log, but since my distance was spot on in my Nike+ thingie I'm going to go with my times since I was near the back of the pack so I didn't get to the starting line until a little bit after the gun went off. I waited to start my Nike+ thingie until I crossed the start line so I know it's accurate.

I knew I signed up for a "practice" 5K for a reason!! :)

Couch to 5K Update

The last time I updated you all on my Couch to 5K progress I was in the middle of week 4 of 9 and progressing nicely in my running. Well, one of the things I was doing was avoiding looking ahead to the coming weeks so that I couldn't try to talk myself out of going on days when the workouts were going to be especially challenging. Week 5 is when the runs that were scaring me started, but as it turned out they weren't that bad!

I just finished week 7 today and I'm still feeling pretty good about my progress. Now, if you do the math you'll see that I should be further than week 7 by now if I stuck to my 3 days a week running schedule. Well, the state fair, weddings, and an ingrown toenail (eew) interfered with my running and set me behind a little bit. I'm still going okay tho! I didn't run for 5 days this week and then picked right back up with my 25min run tonight. My pace was a little slower than I'd like, but really....when you consider I hadn't run for 5 days and my toe was still a little sore....I did pretty well! So, my goal for the coming 2 weeks worth of runs is to really stay on schedule and not let life interfere as much.

As was the case in the last post about my running endeavors, the podcasts and Runner+ have been instrumental in my success! The community on Runner+ has been awesome as ever and I even have a new Facebook friend out of it! I even have their iPhone app as one of my shortcuts so I can access my stats anytime (now that they've blocked the site at work...grrrrr).

I've had a lot of good feedback from this blog and from my Jog Log on Runner+ so I'm going to try and be better about posting updates more frequently than every 4 weeks! I figure I'll give an update at the end of the last week which should be 2 weeks from now and then keep you posted as I just keep on running 5K in preparation for my races.

As always, thanks for reading and wish me luck on the running! Good luck to those of you that are also working through the Couch to 5K program or any other fitness program!

Reggie's Sleepout 2008 Donations Needed!

Last year some friends and I participated in an event called Reggie's Sleepout. The event is held to raise awareness and money to address the critical problem of youth homelessness in Central Iowa.

Participants gather in the Drake football stadium and sleep under the stars in cardboard structures, tents, sleeping bags, etc in the cold of November. Teams are formed to raise funds for Iowa Homeless Youth Centers and The Des Moines Area Religious Council to help combat the issue of homelessness.

Another part of this event is the cardboard structure contest. Last year my friends and I created a huge cardboard replica of the 801 Grand building in downtown Des Moines to illustrate just how much space would be required to house all of the homeless in the state. It would take nearly 4 buildings the size of 801 Grand to house all of the homeless in the state as of 2005. That's a ton! Our creation was the biggest and most impressive structure at the event and it went a long way to put the size of the problem into perspective. This year, we're going even bigger and hope to increase awareness even more.

Our team, the Huddled Masses, would love to not only go bigger on the structure but also bring in an impressive amount of money for the event by way of fund raising from our friends and families. Donations of any amount would be greatly appreciated! And if you're interested in joining our team, just let us know!

Donate to our team, the Huddled Masses!

Learn more about Reggie's Sleepout: http://www.reggiessleepout.org

Thanks for reading and an extra big thanks to those who donate to the cause!