Things That are Saving my Life: September Edition

I’m back with a few things that are saving my life right now.  These are the small, and sometimes big things, that are making my life easier, better, or just a little more awesome.  I got this idea and phrasing from the blog Modern Mrs. Darcy who got it from author Barbara Brown Taylor in her memoir “Leaving Church.”  (Which I read this summer- super good!)  I share in the hopes that you may find a thing or two that could save your life too and also because focusing on a few things that are saving my life right now is good for my soul.

1.) Cleaning out my closet.

My friend Charity came over a few weeks ago to help me tackle my closet.  My closet is a weird combination of clothes I wish would fit me, clothes I bought right after I had babies that are weird fitting, and clothes that I never wear because I don’t know how or what to wear them with. Charity and I went through piece by piece deciding what could stay and what needed to go. I’m going to write a whole other post on what I learned cleaning out my closet, but suffice to say that for now, my closet only contains things I’m actually excited to wear and I have a relatively small list of things I need to buy to “complete” my wardrobe (mostly staples so that I can wear all those items I’m so excited about).  And it’s saving my life.

2.) My Avocado Breakfast

I have been eating the same thing for breakfast for months.  This is noteworthy because I typically never do the same thing everyday.  Monotony like that puts me in a rut faster than Lou says “you’re mean!” when we tell her no.  However, for some reason I can’t stop, won’t stop with this breakfast.  It’s so good.  And simple.  Toast an english muffin.  Spread avocado on each side (I’ll usually use half and avocado, so a quarter on each muffin half).  Grind some sea salt on top of that.  Then fry up two egg whites and put them on top of the avocado mash.  You could absolutely just do one egg (fried or scrambled or however you like) instead of the whites I just don’t care for egg yoke.  It’s the best thing ever and I’m not kidding when I say that I look forward to eating it every night when I’m drifting off to sleep.  If we’re out of eggs or avocados I’m super grumpy about it.  For a few weeks we had Dave’s Killer Bread (which we recently found at Costco- so good!) and I would use a slice of that instead of an english muffin…for variety.  Somedays I’ll add a piece of fruit to that, but either way it fills me up all the way to lunch.  It’s the best.

3.) Not Meal Planning

This was a thing that saved my life all summer, but I can already tell probably won’t be transitioning with me into the fall.  When it comes to meal planning my friends tease me because I rarely make the same recipe twice.  Sure, I have a small handful of staples that make their way through the rotation but mostly I have a file folder stuffed with torn out Cooking Light recipes to try and a million screen shots in my phone of things I’ve stumbled across online and every week I’m trying 2-3 new meals.  However this summer my beloved Cooking Light magazines piled up untouched and I rarely poked through my recipe screenshots.  This summer it was all about the staples, and we pretty much ate the same 7 or 8 meals all summer.  These were meals that I knew off the top of my head.  I could add the ingredients to my grocery list without having to look up a recipe.  It was a lot of tacos, and stir fries, grilled meats and veggies and this pasta/veggie/chicken sausage dish I pretty much made up.  Oh and this toasted cheese, tomato/pineapple/bacon on bread thing that my parents used to make us when I was a kid.  These were dishes that were simple and quick to prepare, which meant that if we wanted to stay a little longer at the pool I didn’t have to worry about getting home to make dinner.  For whatever reason the chaos of summer meant I didn’t have the extra energy to try new recipes each night and cooking all the things I know by heart saved my life.

Last night, however, I spent most of the night sorting through recipes, tossing the ones I never make and starting a fresh pile of “to trys” and this week my meal plan includes three new recipes, so I think my staples season may be over.  But man did it save my life while it lasted.