Got leftover ham from Christmas? Here’s a good way to use it up. I found this recipe online and modified it with my hubby to make a tasty dinner for three, and we used up all of our leftover ham! It could have easily been doubled – possibly even tripled – using the same glass casserole pan. There was plenty of leftover space in our pan when it was cooked.
Ingredients:
- One can of Cream of Celery Soup
- ½ cup milk
- 4 small red potatoes, sliced
- About ½ large onion, diced
- 3 cups cooked ham, diced
- Your choice of spices
- ½ to 1 cups grated cheese
Directions
1. Preheat your oven to 375ºF. In a small sauce pan, combine the soup and milk over low heat, blending until smooth. Then, pour into a casserole dish and add spices. I used about ¼ tsp. black pepper and a bit of garlic powder, which are simple staples that I can use in most recipes.
2. Layer the potato slices on top of the soup and milk mixture. Try to spread them out evenly across the casserole dish. On top of that, layer your onions and the pre-cooked ham.
3. Make sure to cover your casserole dish with tin foil before putting it in the oven to cook for about one hour. Then, take it out, uncover it, and sprinkle your cheese on top. We used a combination of parmesan and cheddar. Return to the oven uncovered to cook for an additional 20 minutes. (If you cover it back up, the water from the cheese can’t evaporate, and it makes it a weird consistency.)
4. I would suggest serving with green beans or another green veggie. (I’d say peas, but I don’t like those!!) As I said, it should serve 2-3 people, but could easily be doubled or tripled. It tastes a bit like scalloped potatoes with ham.
I’m a new Avon rep, yes, but my perspective is fresh, and my personal experience is recent enough that I can still remember the difficulties.
I got into Avon for reasons similar to what others say: I liked the flexible hours, the working for myself, the additional income, the discount on products. I think it’s a good endeavor for women who are not otherwise employed, or who are students. I would advise that if you think it will be easy money, think again. It’s not hard to break even, but it requires effort to make a profit. You have to treat it as a job, or else you won’t get an income from it.
Startup:
It’s easy to sign up. If you don’t know an Avon representative personally, you can just get on the website and fill out a form. Then, an Avon rep in your area will contact you. It costs $10 to get started, which pays for the “kit” you’re given. If you have a good upline manager, you will also be supplied with a few brochures for your first few campaigns.
I’d suggest you register for the website youravon.com as soon as possible, which will be a couple of days after you are appointed as a representative. The website gives you access to product reference guides, online ordering and payment, and much more. Some of the useful things took a while for me to find, on my own. I would specifically point you to the “community” tab, where you can find forums (message boards) for communicating with over representatives and, on the left hand side, a link called “Avon advantage,” which will show you all of the business partners that will give you discounts on products for being an Avon rep. One of the most useful ones will even give you free business cards, minus shipping costs.
Do the online training courses, especially if your upline manager is not in contact with you frequently enough to answer all of your questions. You should try to finish these within the first few campaigns if you have the time.
Marketing:
When I first talked to my sister about Avon, she immediately assumed that, since the brand is so well known, I must be doing little-to-no work and getting tons of sales. Wrong. As evidenced by my own sister, who has known of my business for a month but has ordered nothing, Avon does not simply make money grow on trees for me. It does, however, sell itself. To a degree.
The good thing is that it is well-known. But you have to get your name, and more specifically your brochures out there. Buy some printable address labels as soon as you can and print out something with your name, phone number, email address, and website if you’re an E-rep. Stick them on your brochures. Get on some nice, business casual clothes. Then go out and do it. If you walk into a business or up to a stranger with a brochure, the worst that they can do is say no (to avoid embarrassment, check businesses for “No Soliciting” signs). The more brochures you get in people’s hands, the more potential customers you have, and the more calls you can get.
More than anything demos or samples or gift baskets or sales, you should make it a priority to get brochures out. Just do it.
Bookkeeping:
Keep your Avon money separate from your personal money, and keep accurate, thorough records. This means saving receipts for anything that might be a business-related expense. Traveling to make a delivery = gas money. Printer cartridges, printer paper, internet service, and gas money are all business expenses to track. I’m no tax expert, but I know you can write off business expenses, so keep good records! Start early so that at tax time you’re not running around stressed, trying to find those long lost receipts.
Things I Didn’t Know:
When I started my Avon business, I was probably less familiar with Avon than most people. Maybe you’re in my position, maybe not, but I want to go through a few things I didn’t know or understand at first. Hopefully it will help you out.
1. Campaigns & Brochures – Each brochure is good for one campaign, and a campaign is 2 weeks long. At the end of the two weeks, the brochure is expired. The new brochure may have different products available, or it may just be they’re available at different prices. You put your order in at the end of the campaign, and then you receive your products and make deliveries. And that’s how it goes. Every. two. weeks. Also, you pay for your brochures. They’re not expensive, and they do get cheaper the more you buy in bulk, but they’re not free.
2. Upline & Downline – Your upline manager is whoever is above you, who appointed you. It may or may not be your district sales manager. It may just be another representative. At any time, you, too, can become an upline manager, but be aware that the first “appointment” you make must be done with you, your upline, and the new rep. And you won’t receive any extra commission right away.
3. Ordering Early – Don’t do it. I learned the hard way, following the advice of my upline. If you want to submit your regular order early, forget it. If you try to add another order to your regular order after it has processed, you may be stuck with an “additional order” fee. For some reason Avon refuses to add items to an order once it has processed, even if the deadline for submitting orders hasn’t passed yet and the order hasn’t shipped yet. So I’d advise to just avoid it. Don’t order early because it gains you nothing.
My husband and I made this recently, as a sort of experiment, and it turned out quite tasty! It’s a simple recipe for an inexpensive salmon dinner and a good way to use up leftovers. I wanted to document what we did so that we can recreate it, and maybe you’d like to try, too!
Ingredients
- 2-3 (we used 3) salmon filets, skinless and boneless
- 3 small red potatoes
- about 1 cup of steamed rice
- 3 tbsp cornstarch
- 2 tbsp olive oil or canola oil
- 1 can of sliced mushrooms
- your choice of spices
- optional: about 1/2 green bell pepper, diced
- optional: about 1/4 cup onion, diced
Directions
1. Prepare your ingredients. Thaw the fish, chop the vegetables. I would suggest readying a non-stick frying pan with some canola oil in the bottom. In the canola oil, you will scatter the seasoning you wish to use on your fish. I sprinkled garlic powder and onion powder, because I was too lazy to use the real thing. This actually worked well and soaked in to the fish nicely. I’d recommend including a bit of savory and/or thyme, dill weed, black pepper, and seasoned salt. Regular salt should work if no seasoned salt is available.
2. Rinse your thawed salmon and pat dry with paper towel. Then, over a plate to catch the excess, pat on an extremely light coat of cornstarch. I read about this on instructables.com and have found it to work very well keeping the moisture in and keeping the desired spices on the fish. Without it, you’ll find you end up with a very dry piece of fish! Make sure to shake off the excess cornstarch, as it is meant to be just a thin coating. Place in your pan, on top of the spices.
3. On the top of your filets, add a light coating of oil with a brush or a spoon, and then spice the top. I did not use all of the same spices on the top, but I did add a coating of the big flavors: the seasoned salt, black pepper, and garlic powder.
4. Cook on medium heat for several minutes. You will know it’s ready to turn when the pink fish has turned white about a third of the way through, and the bottom of the fish will be a sort of crisp golden brown. Simply flip and wait. Remove from heat after the bottom is the desired color. The fish may be either cooked white all the way through, or with a thin line of pink through the middle.
5. We started the potatoes cut into pieces and microwaved to get them soft. Then, we chopped them up into more bite-sized pieces and added them to pan that the salmon was cooked in. By this time, the salmon should be set aside. You will want to add another teaspoon-or-so of oil to the pan. Add any vegetables that need to cook, such as your green peppers or onions. Add your mushrooms, including about half the water in the can. Black pepper and seasoned salt may be added to taste.
6. Lastly, add your pre-cooked rice. We used leftover rice we had in the fridge. Continue to stir and fry until the vegetables are softened and the rice is slightly browned, then remove from heat.
7. Serve the salmon on a bed of the rice and veggie stir fry, and enjoy! (Good for 2 large or 4 small servings)
Why should you drink coffee?
Because it’s made out of a bean, not a nut. Duh.
No, but seriously. I love coffee. I love it even though it give me terrible heart burn, and I have to take Prilosec OTC every day to counter it. It makes me tall! And strong! And smart!
No, but seriously. (What?) I find coffee to be a great social-interaction-maker. I don’t smoke, so when I worked at an office I couldn’t take smoke breaks outside with other people. However, I could go to the back and pour myself some coffee, and interact with the other coffee drinkers. We have something in common right off the bat! When I worked at the hospital on some days, I could go downstairs to the little snack shop, order coffee, and chat with the other customers about how much cream and sugar we use though we know we shouldn’t. And how expensive the coffee is, and how much better it is to buy it here than at Starbucks, where the prices are so outrageous.
Speaking of which, I think I’m in the minority here. I am a coffee lover who actually likes Starbucks. I don’t go there often because I’m a cheapskate, but if I get a gift card…I’m all over it! I love it. The atmosphere, the flavored coffees, the friendly staff. But that’s okay. Not everyone can be as classy as I am!
To sum it up: you should drink coffee because “it does a body good” – or is that milk? Hmm.
What do you think? Love it? Hate it? Drinking it since you were under the age of five, like me?
I’ve been not writing because I’m too worried about what YOU might think. Things keep running through my head, such as: You won’t think I sound professional enough. You won’t think I said anything interesting. You won’t think I write as well as those other blogs you read. You won’t like me. You won’t come back.
You know what?! I don’t care any more! You don’t like my writing? Screw you! You’re still here, reading, aren’t you? You disagree with me? Fine! Tell your friends, or don’t for all I care.
I’m going to write, and I’m not going to pretend to be anyone else. I’m going to write, and I’m not going to worry about anyone else. I’m going to blog whether or not I get any traffic. It’s going to be written in my style, in my words, as often as I like. Unless, of course, you have a friendly suggestion or request….
…Or something like that.
A couple years ago, my mom got me started reading a series of books by Beverly Lewis about the Amish. Despite the books being a little slower-paced than I’m used to, I quickly found myself hooked, looking for more and more of the books at my local library. There was something appealing about their way of life in those books. They had real, close relationships with each other, and they did work that bettered lives and fulfilled them. They worked together, studied together, lived together. I don’t know about you (though I can guess), but I often feel disconnected. I talk to my family on the phone sometimes, I email my friends, I work with near-strangers, and I shop at a huge supermarket with other strangers. It was during this time frame, while I was reading all these books, that I started talking to a few of my friends about my plan: I wanted to be Amish. Or something. Why not have a few of us move off to the middle of nowhere and live as a community. Grow our own food, build our own homes, sew our own clothes.
Well, life goes on, and we do what we must, and I read other books and forgot about the whole thing – until I was recently reminded of that desire. It’s an attractive idea to me, still! My husband and I watched a movie with our friends called Food, Inc, a documentary about where the majority of our food comes from. If you’re anything like me and wary of sitting down to watch a documentary, I promise this one shouldn’t put you to sleep. It had us riveted. It’s scary, too! It’ll almost scare you into growing your own food. Do you know about how they raise the chickens we eat, how many of them grow so fat, so fast, that they can only take a few steps before falling down? Their legs are too under-developed to hold up all the weight. Did you know that we’re feeding our cows massive amounts of corn, because it’s cheap, rather than the grass diets their bodies need, and that this is a huge factor in the outbreaks of E. coli we’ve seen lately? Did you know that a small handful of companies manage a huge majority of all of the meat sold and used in restaurants and grocery stores?
Sound related to Amish? Well, no, not directly. But it provoked one of our friends to say that she and her fiancé, my husband and I, and a couple other friends of ours should go live on a farm and homeschool our kids. And suddenly I was reminded of my idea.
And I still can’t say I think it’s a horrible idea. (Only – what would we do without the internet?)
While it may be a bit extreme to think that I’ll really go live on a farm and leave society completely, there are some aspects of a simpler, more natural lifestyle that I try to incorporate into my own life. We eat less fast food and frozen pre-prepared foods and instead try to cook our own meals more often. We try to DIY, when possible. (My husband just completed a new set of shelves for our bedroom on Monday!) And I’m starting to look for more organic produce at the grocery store.
But I want to do more.
And I can’t shake this feeling that maybe the Amish are doing it way better than the rest of us.
Have you ever been attracted to running away to a simpler life? What would you miss about your life if you did?
I love Avon’s Skin So Soft Gelled Body Oil. I started using it almost a month ago, and now I hate to go without it. You put it on after showering while your skin is still damp, it soaks in and stays put. Make sure you rub it in well! It has a soft scent that can be combined with body wash or other fragrance products to keep you smelling nice (and fresh) all day! It comes in all your favorite Skin So Soft scents. I’m currently using the Soft and Sensual Gelled Body Oil, Deodorant, and Body Wash.
When it dries, it leaves what I can only call a light, silky finish and skin that is smooth and soft to the touch. Last but not least, it doesn’t leave my skin feeling greasy, oily, or sticky!
My husband also says it makes my skin feel “so soft” – hehe. Look it up at my store, if you’re interested. It’s one of my favorites!
Introducing Martha Stewart Pets Exclusively to PetSmart!
