Tuesday: Waffles for Lunch, Maple-Glazed Nuts & an $80 Haircut Saved

Got up this morning and the kids finished off the last of the bacon I’d made.

Which means tomorrow morning I’ll be making more bacon.

They also had bagels, and then we got to work on school and Project Day prep. We did some math this morning and continued working on all the projects we’re trying to get ready for Thursday.

Waffles Don’t Have to Be Breakfast

We haven’t made waffles in a while, so the kids asked if we could make some today.

And here’s the thing: I love homemade waffles.

I do not necessarily love making homemade waffles first thing in the morning when I’m also trying to get everyone moving and start school.

So we make them for lunch.

There’s no rule that says waffles have to happen at 8 a.m.

We made a big batch, ate some for lunch and stocked the refrigerator and freezer with the extras.

I also wanted some protein on the table, so I pulled out the leftover steak bites from Sunday’s Blackstone dinner.

My favorite method again:

Get a pan blazing hot.

Add a pat of butter.

Add the already-cooked steak and quickly pan-sear it just until those little edges get hot and crispy.

Don’t cook it all over again. You’re just warming it and giving the outside a fresh sear.

I put out fruit and vegetables too, and I made myself a taco salad with some of the taco meat from last night.

A very random lunch.

Also a very normal lunch at our house.

The Teriyaki Summer Sausage Is Back

This afternoon I cooked the Teriyaki Beef Summer Sausage I mixed up yesterday and left curing in the refrigerator overnight.

And this stuff is so good.

I made two logs.

One log is already half gone because apparently pulling warm homemade summer sausage straight out of the oven is an invitation for children to start circling the kitchen.

I put the second log into the freezer.

I’m sure I’ll be pulling it back out approximately five minutes from now.

But for the moment, we have half a log in the refrigerator and another whole one in the freezer.

Dinner Insurance.

Snack Insurance.

Protein Insurance.

Whatever you want to call it.

Twenty Minutes for the Front Porch

My mom was so sweet and bought me mums for the front porch, and today I finally took about 20 minutes to deal with them.

I pulled out the old plants, put in the new mums and gave everything a really good watering.

There.

Fall.

Sometimes it doesn’t take an elaborate decorating plan. It takes your mom buying you mums and you finally finding 20 minutes to put them in the dirt.

Maple-Glazed Nuts

Then I made a quick batch of my Maple-Glazed Nuts.

I recently posted my candied nuts, and so many people asked whether I had a version made with maple syrup.

I do!

I actually developed this one last fall, so I filmed a quick Reel today to share it again.

It’s incredibly simple:

• 1 cup nuts — I used pecans
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• Dash of salt

Everything goes into a pan and cooks together until the maple syrup reduces and coats the nuts.

And your entire kitchen smells like fall.

Maple syrup.

Cinnamon.

Pumpkin pie spice.

Warm pecans.

So good.

Obviously I Needed a Salad With Those

Once I’d made the maple-glazed nuts, I started thinking about dinner.

And obviously I needed to eat some.

So I made myself a big salad with chicken, apples, red onion and the fresh maple-glazed nuts.

This is exactly why I like having cooked chicken in the refrigerator. It takes something that could just be a pile of lettuce and toppings and turns it into dinner in about two minutes.

And because it’s Tuesday, my mom had violin with two of my girls.

There’s a Chick-fil-A right across from violin, and she very sweetly brought dinner home for the kids.

So they were handled.

For Chris, I used some rye bread my mom had dropped off because she wasn’t going to use it and made him an open-faced sandwich with chicken, onion and whatever other goodness I could pile onto it.

Basically everybody got a different dinner tonight.

And I cooked none of it from scratch at dinnertime.

And Then We Opened the Family Salon

After dinner, it was haircut night.

And this is one of those ways we save money that I don’t hear talked about quite as much.

You always see the same advice:

Don’t buy coffee.

Don’t eat out.

Pack your lunch.

Sure.

But we do almost all of our haircuts at home.

I’ve been cutting my boys’ hair and Chris’s hair for years.

I do know my limits. My teenager has wavy/curly hair, and if she wants a shorter or more technical cut, I’ll absolutely let someone who knows what they’re doing handle that.

Same with me. If I wanted some complicated short haircut?

Salon.

But I have very straight hair and wanted it cut straight across.

So tonight Chris cut my hair.

Done.

Probably $80 saved and an hour of my life saved.

We’re both engineers.

Efficiency is practically a love language.