Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions-Oct. 31, 2014

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl and Jo at Simply being Mum 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. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions. Occasionally, if our eating is going okay, I'll talk about some other food topic.

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions

and Happy Halloween

This is my token Halloween part of this post. It actually has little or anything to do with the main food topic. However, I was very intrigued by the way this pumpkin was carved. It was carved by putting peanut butter on the pumpkin and having squirrels do the carving while they were eating.                                 http://www.instructables.com/id/Self-Carving-Pumpkin/

Status Update

It's been 1 1/2 months since I did one of these posts and it's time to get back on the wagon. Since the last post, things have been busy and sometimes stressful. And when that happens, one of the first things to go are meal planning and cooking. I know that it's not that way for everyone as some of you find cooking relaxing or it's so second nature that you don't often consider alternatives. But that's not the way it works around here. More and more eating out has been happening along with more and more consoling sweets. (The consoling sweets may stay around for a few more days with leftover Halloween candy.)

And how about our food waste? That's still doing pretty well, but should do even better once we start eating at home more. I do a pretty good job of working in whatever we have into the meals when I'm actually cooking them.

We'll see how it goes next week. I need to remember that slow and steady wins the race.

Until next time... 

 

A Second Look--October 29, 2014

It was 80°F today. Unexpected, but welcome weather for the end of October. The warm weather brought out plenty of bees and insects and even a butterfly or two. They were all swarming around the blooming mums in the yard. Plenty of pollen there to be had.

The leaves are close to their peak color now. However before the bit of warm weather, we had several rainy and windy days. Unfortunately, that brought down a lot of leaves, so the views aren't quite as spectacular as they might have been. But they are pretty all the same.

Here's what I saw this week 

during a Second Look.

 

 

Cucumber beetle. Unlike its ladybug look alike, this beetle can do a lot of damage to beneficial plants.

Ward saw these mating wheel bugs. He didn't stick around long enough to see if the female ate the male as she often does after mating.

I found two kinds of honeysuckle berries.

 

Nettle

This maple tree has lost enough leaves that we can see the squirrel's nest in the top.

Today...

 Today I'm going to enjoy the attention.

I am like many people and don't want a fuss made over me. It makes me uncomfortable. However, today I'm just going to sit back and enjoy it. 

Thankful Sunday--October 26, 2014

I am thankful for the smell of autumn.

Black walnuts

Autumn is a season of change and a season for the senses. During autumn, you see the world change from shades of green to shades of yellows, oranges, and reds. You watch leaves as they drift down from the trees and feel their crunch beneath your feet. You feel both the warm sun and the cold breezes.  However, the part of autumn that fills my senses the most is the smell. You know that smell. The earthy, leafy smell. I love it.

That sounds kind of strange, doesn't it? At least that's how it seemed to me today on my walk as I was thinking about what to post for Thankful Sunday. However, as I thought further, I realized that the smell I liked best in autumn is the smell of a walnut tree when it is dropping its leaves and nuts. I hadn't realized that when I walk around the walnut trees in our yard, I always take a big whiff. And I think that whiff subconsciously takes me back to my childhood. We had a large walnut tree in our backyard when I was growing up. It was a part of much of my play including a tree swing that could go high enough that I felt like I was flying--especially when my father pushed me. Also, in the fall as the nuts were falling, our town had a festival celebrating walnuts. It was the biggest event of the year--so big that we even got off a day from school for it. So maybe the tree in my backyard when I was growing up is the reason that I like the smell of walnut trees now and the smell of autumn in general. I've heard that the sense of smell can sometimes evoke stronger emotions that any other sense. Maybe that's true in this case.

So there you go. That's what I thought about on my walk this afternoon while I was sniffing the air. Maybe I should have left it at, "I am thankful for smell of autumn." But you know how it is. Sometimes it's hard to turn your brain off.

A Second Look--October 23, 2014

It's here!

Yesterday, I posted a Second Look from the past because I couldn't find the cable for my camera to upload pictures I had taken. Well, I found it. Theo accidentally took it home with him last weekend thinking it was his phone charger. He'll bring it back next time he comes this way.

Now here's the ironic part. Besides appreciating nature, the main idea of a Second Look is to see things in a different way. However, I don't seem to be very good at that when I'm inside. I am so used to uploading my pictures with a cable connecting the camera to the computer, I didn't even entertain another way to do it. I forgot about the obvious solution of putting the memory card from my camera directly into the computer. It seems so obvious now. However, the only way I "thought" of it was when Theo suggested it. So much for seeing things in a different way.

Now onto what I saw this week during a Second Look.

After teasing me for weeks with buds, these mums finally bloomed.

These mums also bloomed this week for the first time.

The sweet gum trees are starting to turn. These are some of our most colorful trees in the fall.

I found this ball in the yard last year in a different spot. Over time it has moved to a new area and miraculously avoided the lawn mower. I left it in place to see what its next move will be.

The sun trying to come out after the rain.

More mums.

We've waited long enough to pick up the black walnuts that we're going to have to wear gloves when we handle them now lest we get that pesky, permanent black walnut stain on our hands.

We're still getting a bloom a day from this day lily.

Inadvertently, I brought this jumping toy inside for the cats to play with.

A Second Look--October 22, 2014

A Second Look--October 22, 2014  Coming Soon.

Alack and alas, I can not find the cable that hooks my camera to the computer to upload pictures. So, I can't show you what I saw this week--yet. In the meantime, I'm rerunning a Second Look from this week two years ago.
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The leaves are really starting to fall. I guess we need to find the rake.

Thankful Tuesday--October 21, 2014

I am thankful for silver linings.

For the past few days, I have been spending time with my mother in the hospital. There were many difficult parts to this situation, but there were many good parts also. Here are some of the silver linings to the clouds we encountered.

--First, an unclaimed suitcase (possible terrorist attack) shut down the hospital that was only an hour and a half away for my mother, so she had a difficult ambulance ride three hours away instead. However, the longer ride meant that she was in a hospital where she had been before and they had all of her records. 

--There was a frenzied preparation and four hour drive to meet her at the hospital. However, I got to go with my sister instead of alone.  

--It was football weekend in town which meant that the hotel rates quadrupled. However, the hospital had an inexpensive room for us to sleep in during those expensive nights. 

--The football game tailgaters occupied an entire large parking lot on game day making parking for the hospital difficult. However, we got to see the excitement of the crowd, meet the school mascot, and hear the pep band as they prepared for the game. 

--My mother suffered through some very long, difficult tests. However they showed that the problem was getting better.

--We drove my mother home on crooked, mountain roads during which all of us were carsick. However, we got to see beautiful changing leaves. 

There's no place like home.

A Second Look--October 15, 2014

Seems like I've been very busy these days--both with some good stuff and with some not so good stuff, but busy enough that my regular routine has been non existent. Among all of the busyness, I've still tried to keep up with both my Second Look posts and my Thankful Sunday posts because I realized that they are very good for me. My stress level goes down as soon as I go outside to see how things have changed during the week. Also, taking time to think about what I am thankful for helps put things in perspective. So without further ado,

Here is this week's Second Look.

This is a volunteer petunia in a pot where I had purple basil planted. It bloomed this week for the first time.

Coreopsis

This spider played hide-and-seek with me on this celosia plant. Every time I tried to take its picture, it would scurry around to the other side of the plant.

Begonia

We had several rainy, cool days and the mushrooms were popping up everywhere.

These mums are not planted in the right spot for maximum blooms, but they are still a colorful addition to an otherwise bare area.

Notice the covering brown oak leaves behind the Rozanne geranium.

The maple leaves are also starting to fall.

Every year I marvel at how this maple tree loses its leaves from the top down.

Thankful Sunday--October 11, 2014

I am thankful for our 

wind chimes.

Yesterday was a chilly, rainy, and breezy day. Just plain dreary you might say.  However, among all of this gloominess, the wind chimes rang out with beautiful sounds. For this, I am thankful.

A Second Look--October 8, 2014

Here's what I found this week

 during my Second Look.

A few more mums on this plant are blooming. The other plants are just budding.

Coleus

I think this group of mushrooms is sprouting on an old tree stump, but I didn't look too closely to find out. The poison ivy that you see in the upper left held me back.

As a nice surprise, I found this sedum blooming.

The dogwood trees are always one of the first to turn in the fall.

Under one of the oaks, I found several freshly eaten acorns.

This day lily hadn't bloom in a while, so I was surprised when I saw this blossom.

In our yard, we usually only see bluebirds during breeding season, so I was very excited when I saw this one the other day. It is a lot fatter than the ones I saw in March.

Granddaddy Long Legs trying to get in.

Thankful Sunday--October 5, 2014

I am thankful for gatherings of friends and family.

Yesterday we had a pig roast at my father-in-law's house. Friends and family gathered for tasty food, good music, silly dancing, and fun games. But best of all was the genuine friendship and caring that was shown by each and every person there. For all of this, I am thankful.

Vampire Electricity--Part 2

I've been wondering about vampire electricity (electricity that is drawn by something when it's not in use), so I borrowed a Kill-a-Watt device to see for myself how much electricity is actually being used by various items around my house. In August I gave the device a try and reported on five random things. Since then, I have measured our DVR player usage which is supposed to one of the worst offenders. I have read that it uses more electricity than a refrigerator. So I also measured our refrigerator. Our DVR is part of the set top box for our cable TV service. Our fridge size is 14.4 cubic feet, was built in 2004 and doesn't have an ice maker--which means that it's not very big and fairly energy efficient. I've added the results for these two items to the ones I measured before. They are highlighted in blue on the chart below.

Item	KWH/24 hours	Cost/month	Cost/year
Toaster with display	0.02	$0.07	$0.87
Outlet only	0.03	$0.11	$1.30
Lamp-off, plugged in	0.03	$0.11	$1.30
Coffee pot with display	0.04	$0.14	$1.79
Computer Monitor	0.36	$1.30	$15.55
Laptop-large	0.47	$1.70	$20.30
DVR	0.78	$2.80	$34.16
Refrigerator	1.45	$5.22	$63.51

 (As with last time, I used $0.12/KWH to figure costs.)

As you can see, the DVR player costs $2.80/month and the refrigerator costs $5.22/month to run. At least in my case, the DVR usage does not come close to the refrigerator usage as I had read. Both numbers are fairly low in the big scheme of things but large enough to see if we want to do anything differently with how we operate them. Upon first examination, we are pretty good with our refrigerator usage. We don't open the door much and rarely stand with it open for long. Also, we keep the freezer pretty full, so it can run more efficiently.

As far as the DVR goes, this is purely a luxury item, but it does provide a fair amount of entertainment for us. We record most of the shows that we watch so that we can view them essentially commercial free. This saves us both time and aggravation. However, we rarely record or watch anything during the night, so I think we'll try turning it off during that time.

Now, what to measure next? Maybe it will be our desk top CPU's. We'll see.

A Second Look--October 1, 2014

Here are a few things I saw this week 

during a Second Look.

By the time I got outside this week for a Second Look, dusk was approaching. Consequently, it was hard for me to get many good pictures with my unsteady hands and point and shoot camera. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my look.

It's easy to see from this balloon flower bud why it is called a balloon flower.

This is the first mum so far to bloom.

As the mums are beginning to bloom, the sedum is turning darker red while some has already turned brown.

Japanese Maple. Most of our maple trees produce seeds during the early summer. However, the Japanese maple produces them in the early fall.

Poke berries--a favorite of many birds and animals.

Praying mantis hiding in the grass. I've wondered why some praying mantises are green and some are brown. After a bit of research, I couldn't find a definitive answer. In our area, we have several different kinds, and apparently different kinds have different coloring. One site said that if there is good moisture, they are green and if it is dry, they are brown. Another said that as they age they turn from green to brown.