You Don't Have to Be a Starving Student

I Love Food.

Or rather...

I Love GOOD Food.

Have you ever heard people talk about going to college and be a starving student. It's just one of those things people say (poor college kid, etc). Well, I have learned something about food and grocery shopping. 

Buying junk food is not cheaper than buying healthy in the long run.

Think about it. If you develop the habits now of eating junk all the time, you're going to have to pay the price of poor health and bad habits in the long run. 

But fear not! This is not a scolding post. Rather this is a tutorial on how I am eating fresh, delicious, home-cooking on a strict budget of time and money.

Welcome to my kitchen. :)

~~~

I got a crock pot for Christmas, and may I just say...that is the best thing to give a college student. The whole premise is that you make delicious food by throwing stuff in a pot and forgetting about it. All you have to do is throw the food in the pot in the morning before classes, it cooks all day, and then you just come home and scarf!

This is my tutorial on making a delicious pot roast!

Here's your grocery list:

~~ A bag of potatoes

~~ A bundle of fresh celery

~~ A bag of baby carrots or 2 or 3 large carrots

~~ An onion or a container of chopped onion

~~ A rump roast

~~ Lawry's Seasoned Salt

Just to quickly touch on the ingredients (some of my tips and tricks). Have you recently looked at the price of a 10 pound bag of potatoes? They are insanely cheap. I mean dirt cheap (pun intended)! And so versatile, you can cook billions of things with potatoes. For things like chopped onion or seasoned salt, it seems like such a rip off to buy a whole container from the seasonings section of the grocery store, but you have a few things to keep in mind. First, how often are you going to use it? They are my go-to seasonings for chicken breasts, hamburger patties, etc. So weigh those things. If you really only need enough for this one recipe, most grocery stores sell these products in little envelopes. It just takes a little searching to find where they are in the store. Now for the roast, I bought a 4 pound rump roast for between 11 and 12 dollars. It seemed really pricey for a college food budget, but there are other things to consider. When I bought mine, I went home and immediately cut the roast into four smaller roasts. Then I put them in plastic bags to store in the freezer. In this recipe coming up, I pulled one roast out and used that. The recipe produced three and a half servings for me. Meaning I had a meal and two meals in leftovers. Meaning that purchase of the roast has yielded 14 meals. Meaning, I'm okay with that purchase.

Next up, the actual recipe! Keep in mind, through this process, you really can't mess it up.

The first thing I did was take my roast from the freezer and put it in the crock pot. No, I did not thaw it, I did not put it in the refrigerator the night before, I literally opened my freezer, grabbed the roast, ripped open the bag, and dropped it in the crock pot.

Next, I washed and chopped one full celery stalk and threw it in the crock pot.

I didn't buy whole carrots, I bought baby carrots. So, I didn't measure out how many carrots I wanted. I just reached in and pulled out a handful of carrots and tossed them in too.

Next, I pulled out two potatoes, washed, peeled, and chopped them and then...you guessed it! Threw them in the crock pot.

Once I threw the potatoes in, I added a quarter cup of water to the mix.

The final step is seasoning. The first thing I sprinkled in was 2 tablespoons of chopped onions. I sprinkled it around all through the veggies. The other seasoning I used was Lawry's Seasoned Salt and just sprinkled that generously over my veggies and roast.

Once the lid is on and the dial is set to low, you pretty much just walk away and forget about it for 10 hours. It's that easy!

Now, just for your information there are a couple little variations you can try that also work well. First, if you choose to thaw the meat before hand, make sure you shave between an hour and an hour and a half off your total cook time. Second, you can also set the dial to cook the meat on high for the first hour of cooking. Also remember that if you're cooking for your entire apartment/guests and you want to cook a bigger pot roast, don't forget to increase the recipe accordingly (half a roast will have twice as much as this recipe calls for, full roast is four times as much, etc).

Once the time is up you have a succulent, moist, fall-apart, melt-in-your-mouth dinner.

Definitely disregard the chips (I had a craving) and also, I totally did not need to use that knife. I was cutting the meat with my fork. 

And you have the most delicious leftover lunch ever!! 

Try it. Critique it. Tweak it. It's so easy, even a monkey could make it. Enjoy!!

Have You Heard About Perfectionism?

So, recently I read this article. As I read along, I realized that Rebecca made some very very valid points. I started realizing something.

I'm kind of a perfectionist.

Now, I've never professed to be better than anyone else, but I have held myself to a standard of perfection. Let me explain:

I don't for one minute believe I am perfect or can be perfect. However, I have always believed that nothing I do is good enough unless it is, more or less, perfect. In school I wanted perfect grades, perfect scores, perfect assignments, perfect opinions. I wanted to be my best self physically, emotionally, and mentally. Now in some ways, these are not such bad things, but the level I took them was too far! 

I was so focused on being my best self that I didn't focus on anything else. I didn't put a whole lot of focus on friendships or other relationships. I spent a lot of time studying, exercising, practicing, etc. Whenever it seemed a friendship went south, I would tell myself, "That's okay, this just gives you more time to focus on school and family."

Now let me tell you what this has led to.

Last semester I got in a rodeo accident. As a result of this accident, I lost 2 weeks of my memory (which has never come back) and missed a week of school .You did that math right, 3 WEEKS of academic knowledge lost. I was devastated and began frantically playing catch-up. Unfortunately, I was soon faced with the decision to stay in school and fail a class or two (resulting in the loss of a scholarship I had worked all through school to earn) or medically defer the semester and keep it all. In my mind that translated to dropping out of school which then translated to failure. I felt my hands were tied and I'd just have to defer, so I did. 

Now, here's where things get interesting. Maybe that's the wrong word to use. Here's where things get rough. In the following weeks I swear I slid into a depression. Never had I felt so low or like such a screw-up. I felt that all I had worked for had been flushed down the toilet. I felt alone, angry, discouraged, and forgotten. My appetite seemed to disappear, I wasn't sleeping, things were bad. All I felt was ashamed, like I'd let everyone down. 

Now, here's the thing. I had put SO much stock into the perfect grades, the perfect school record, the perfect experience that I had cheated myself of the feeling of failure.

Let me tell you something I've learned about failure.

It makes the world go round. I want you to watch this video:

In my religion we are taught that we must taste of the bitter before we can taste the sweet. I have learned this! I felt bad, I felt that the situation sucked, but I needed to learn humility and a little failure so I could bounce back feeling happy and motivated. 

Over the break between semesters I went back to my hometown for the Holidays. The night before it was time for me to come back to school, I was talking to my mom about feeling intimidated. I told her, on the verge of tears, that I was afraid I'd fail again. I told her that I was gun-shy and afraid that I would mess everything up again like last semester. She got extremely stern, and told me I was never to say I failed.

At the time, I still felt that I had done just that, and no one could understand how I felt. 

I am here to say that I had to taste the bitter before I could taste the sweet. As this semester has begun, I have never felt so driven. Something has changed inside me. I am not trying to be perfect. I'm not trying to have it all, or be it all. Rather, I am doing the very best I can. So far, my classes have all gone smoothly. I've gained friendships that are going to last and I've gotten involved in programs that will allow me to share my talents and be apart of something great. 

Most importantly, I've learned to let myself go and give myself a break. When something doesn't go just so, I know it'll all be okay. I'm better prepared to deal with the "failures" as they come. I know that I can do anything! I don't have to be a perfectionist. I don't have to drive myself mad with stress over everything being just right. Life is to be enjoyed. Success comes to those with passion and drive, who take challenges as they come. Success does not come automatically to those who were always perfect at everything. If anything, I now am grateful for the experiences I had last semester because they've made me into a more humble, kind, patient person. I know that as I've overcome those feelings of loneliness and discouragement with the help of my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, I have become stronger. 

Life's not perfect. We will be given trials that will push us to the edge. Heck, they may push us over the edge. The most important thing is that we climb back out. 

My daddy shared a quote with me when I was younger and I've never forgotten it:

"Two Men in jail look out from the bars.

One sees mud, the other sees stars."

I used to think that rhyme was only about having a good attitude. Now I see that something got those men put in jail, but they now have the power to act and make the most of their situation. May we all allow ourselves to see the stars!!

Finally, I wanted to share a song that I have absolutely fallen in love with.

May you all keep sailing, no matter what life dishes out. And more than that may all you perfectionists out there allow yourself to enjoy! Take a step back and live a little before you wake up and realize that you've been too uptight to notice all you've missed. I'm speaking from experience here: perfect is highly overrated. I will never stop pushing myself to improve, but I have stopped beating myself up when things aren't absolutely perfect all the time. Be your best self, but don't lose yourself in the process.