In Honor of School Starting--Check this Out

Since school is starting in most areas, here's a video to check out. I find it fascinating to watch. 

Doodling in Math Class 

Enjoy!

A Second Look--August 31, 2011

Here in the East, we've had an interesting week with both an earthquake and a hurricane. So in this week's Second Look around the yard, I decided to focus on the things that have the best chance of surviving the wrath of Mother Nature--Bugs.

Skipper butterfly on zinnia

Praying mantis on side of house

Bumble bee on basil blossom

Stink bug on hosta leaf

Well-camouflaged walking stick in grass (See next picture for a hint of where it is.)

Looks like it has lost one of it's back legs.

Robber fly caught in spider's web on side of garage.

House fly in field, not in our house.

Green lacewings on maple limb. 

Ants rebuilding their hills in driveway crack after storm

Thanks to Daniel Marlos at  What's that Bug? for helping me identify the robber fly.

Food Waste Friday, August 26, 2011

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. 


Here it goes for this week.

Well, the refrigerator looks pretty good, but not so for the freezer. I decided it was time to clean it out when stuff was falling out every time it was opened. We found several things to get rid of--some only a month old and others several years old. The recent things were put in the freezer because they were reaching the end of their shelf life in the refrigerator. That's because no one really liked them. And if we're honest about things, we won't like them any better when they are thawed.

That means that we've got to accept that some food waste in inevitable.  It's too bad, but sometimes a recipe or a purchase just doesn't work out. 

The rice was only a month old, but the red stuff was five years old.

National Archives Food Exhibit

The National Archives

Recently, Ward, Theodore, and I went to the National Archives to see an exhibit on how the government has influenced our food over the last couple hundred years. We all found it very interesting --even Theodore who would have preferred to stay at home.

 

Pictures were strictly forbidden, but here are a couple of things from the web site that we saw on display.

This is when they started to fortify white flour with B vitamins. 
Doughnuts are made with flour so...

Notice that butter has it's own food group.

Lady Bird Johnson's Chili Recipe

An interesting and fun exhibit

Note: Besides the food exhibit, we also saw the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the tally sheet from when George Washington was elected president. Amazing!