Waste not!

This afternoon I got a hair crossed and I purged my kitchen.  I went through my cupboards, fridge, and pantry and got rid of five and a half big garbage bags full of...  Junk.  Boxes and boxes of long-expired cereal, expired canned goods, forgotten half-full packages of crackers...  Embarrassing.  Also realized by emptying out the entire contents of the pantry onto the kitchen floor and countertops just how big of a hoarder I had become.  I had EIGHT packages of angel hair pasta in there.  (We're down to seven now as I used one of them for tonight's dinner - made this and it was incredible!!  Substituted the meatballs - my kids won't eat them - and marinara sauce with 2 cups of spaghetti meat sauce I had made from scratch and frozen in batches a few weeks ago and it was seriously SO good.)

My newest "thing" is to quit buying in such excess - only buy what we need and use what we already HAVE as often as possible.  Now that the space is freed up significantly I can actually see what is available.  I cooked this for lunch and it was definitely a hit.  I had all of the ingredients on hand!  Substituted [defrosted] frozen baby broccoli florets for the fresh and used regular carrots instead of the baby variety - chopped both in my Pampered Chef choppy thing.  My house has stayed remarkably clean the past couple of weeks.  I deep cleaned the girls' toy room again yesterday and got rid of a garbage bag full of outgrown and/or broken toys (the fourth such bag since January 1)...  I think it's safe to say I am officially spring cleaning.  I feel like I'm just trying my hardest to get all of our things in order as early as possible since we actually have some advance notice for this move.  Our previous two moves were both done on about 30 days notice (and they were utter CHAOS!), so this time I feel like I am trying to do everything possible to be prepared for the transition.  And that means cleaning out the closets.

M came home from work this evening, did a double-take at the overstuffed bags lined up against the kitchen cabinets and said, "What is THAT??"  It took both of us and a shopping cart to get them all downstairs to the garbage room after the kids went to bed.

I have fluttered along with the FlyLady for several years now but I think I am just now beginning to finally embrace the beauty of flinging.

Delicious spaghetti sauce - in our case enough for three meals!   Spaghetti the first night and two batches in the freezer (one that I used for the spaghetti pie...  I'm telling you, my kids DEVOURED it and they usually don't like spaghetti sauce at all.)

Ingredients

• 1 (28 ounce) can stewed tomatoes
• 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 2 yellow onions, chopped
• 2 green bell peppers, chopped
• 5 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 tablespoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Blend the stewed tomatoes and crushed tomatoes in a blender. (I used my immersion blender and did this step in my slow cooker's crock.) In a large sauté pan, brown the ground beef with the onions, peppers, garlic. Drain and then add into crock pot with tomatoes. Add sugar, basil and oregano, and cook on low for about 4 hours. Season with salt and pepper before serving.