O is for Orange

I Spy Something Orange

Can you find?

--A smiling magnet holding up a "pileated woodpecker"

--An excellent biography about a woman who lives on and on

--The seed we use to feed real pileated woodpeckers and other visitors to our feeders

--Some candy we're saving for National Jelly Bean Day on April 22

--A tea kettle that helps with dry air in the winter

--Wally and Theo's sleds that are now used mostly to carry mulch

--The fringe on a classic flower of spring

--A book about a girl in a singing group with her sisters and who appeared often on the Lawrence Welk Show

--A fruit that would be hard to work into a rhyming poem

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions-March 14, 2014

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. 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. 

This Week's Food Waste

These oranges were good.

The bag of oranges we got this week came with a rotting one. :( However, I cut the rotten part off and cut the rest up for the critters. The birds and squirrels seemed to enjoy it. Otherwise, we did pretty well.

This Week's True Food Confessions

 We had a good week with cooking and eating our meals. However, we had a bad week with picture taking of our meals. Nevertheless, here are a few pictures from last week.

I Spy

 Can you find...

1. A chicken casserole? This was made to use up extra noodles that were found during a pantry clean up. We also had a chili casserole made from leftover chili. Both were tasty and easy to make.

2. Cucumbers? These cucumbers provided a nice counterpoint to the heavier casseroles. They were also a refreshing snack.

3. Roasted broccoli? We also had roasted brussel sprouts. We had been wanting more of these since we bought some very expensive ones at the grocery store a few weeks ago. Brussel sprouts were on sale, so it seemed like the perfect idea. And it was.

4. Juicy fruit? Besides these oranges, we also enjoyed fresh pineapple and apples. The apples were the Pink variety and were a nice combination of sweetness and tartness. They were pretty good for an out-of-season fruit.

5. Walnuts? Even though the squirrels are snatching food from the bird feeders, they are still enjoying nuts from the walnut trees in the back yard.


 

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--Oct. 25, 2013

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. 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.

This Week's Food Waste

Two Tomatoes

By the time I got to the rest of the fresh tomatoes that I mention last week, two more had become rotten. However, I was able to salvage the rest and instead of making a sauce out of them, we ate them with cottage cheese for several meals. Delicious. Here's hoping for no waste next week.

This Week's True Food Confessions

I Spy a Good Week.

 Can you find:

Sausage and egg dinner with cheese. We had breakfast burritos with whole wheat tortillas and salsa which made them particularly good.

Spinach ravioli with sauteed kale. Those leafy greens always seem like a lot before you cook them and they wilt down to next to nothing.  Even though it was a big box of organic kale, it wasn't enough even for the carnivores.

Sausage pizza. This was another one of the huge (18") pizzas from Aldi's. I forgot to take a picture until I had started to eat the last piece.

Grilled steak with roasted potatoes and carrots and steamed cauliflower.  We buy the steak frozen from Aldi's. It comes as 4 five ounce steaks and this serves as portion control for the carnivores. The potatoes were from Uncle Billy's garden and the cauliflower was a gift from Miss Landers. We are very lucky that we have others that like to share their bounty.

BBQ pork and spinach. I did this in the slow cooker and it was very good. However, even though I was the one who put in the spices, it was a little too hot for me. The others thought it was just right.

Chinese take out--Ward's favorite. This was another one of my migraine days and it just seemed like a good idea. And it was. Not guilt feeling here.

Meat loaf with rice and green beans--I managed to slip pumpkin into the meatloaf for a little more nutrition.  I cooked the rice in the rice cooker and steamed the green beans above it while the rice was cooking. A great feature on the cooker.

Until next time...

 

I Spy Something Round

Can You Find:

1. What I look through to see if the light is turned off in the garage.

2. My favorite way to cook meat loaf because it cooks much faster.

3. A cat toy that used to be in the refrigerator.

4. The setting that my car heater is on most of the time these days.

5. An orange slice that has been eaten by a squirrel.

6. What I used to dry tomatoes and oranges and apples last fall.

7. A pocket watch that Theo took apart.

8. A cross stitch piece made for me by my sister. It was her first one and the spacing got a little off.  She fixed that by including the names of my cats at the time. To paraphrase, "Her mistake was my gain."

9. M&Ms--My friend says that red ones of a distinctively different flavor. Can you taste differences among the colors?

I Spy a Mess

or 
What Happens When Your Office is Getting Recarpeted,  

You Visit Your Parents Who are Cleaning Out Their Attic, 

and the Christmas Ads are Flooding the Mailbox

Can You Find?

1. A notebook that Ward and I use to "organize" our life

2. The new cardboard box that all of the cats like to chew on.

3. A 10 # garden basket used by my father to put tomatoes in.

4. DVDs of my favorite show on TV Land.

5. Suet that needs to be put out in the second suet feeder.

6. The ads that have come in the mail over the last three days.

7. A PVC pipe book-holder that was an "invention" Wally made in fourth grade.

8. Books ready to be delivered to an ailing friend.

9. The basketball Wally and Theo played with at their grandparent's house.

10. The boxes I hope to have sorted and processed by Thursday.

I Spy Red

I Spy Red

Can You Find?

1. A sign that used to hang in the boy's bathroom when they were little.

2. A favorite sour candy

3. A cardinal that I cross-stitched

4. My favorite keep-warm sweater for the house

5. An old fashioned spell check

6. What we stand on when we brush our teeth

7. Tomatoes that Miss Landers gave us when she pulled her vines last week

8. The back of a Chinese Checkers board

9. Theodore's kindergarten graduation gown

I Spy Brown

Can You Find:

1. A favorite album from my youth and today

2. A mask Ward brought back from a trip to Kenya

3. A nutty snack I have most days

4. One of the first fallen leaves from the oak tree in our front yard.

5. A twisting honeysuckle vine

6. Ward's yard shoes

7. Chocolate zucchini bread made from the last zucchini of this season

8. Sweaters that I am wearing more frequently as we move into autumn

9. A peanut butter sandwich

10. A basket of pine cones that sits on our fireplace

11. Lucy, our calico cat

12. French toast that we had for breakfast last Sunday

I Spy Black

I Spy Black

Can you find:

 1. Nuts from a tree in our yard that the squirrels like more than we do

  2. Lucky lounging in one of Wally's drawers

  3. Ward's phone charger

  4. A package of  nuts that we do like

  5. A turner that came with a cookie sheet and cookie mix

  6. A sweater I like to wear if I have time to get the cat hairs off of it

  7. A swallowtail butterfly

  8. Theodore's head

  9. A gate Ward and I saw in our recent trip to LaDew Gardens

  10.  A groundhog hole in our yard

  11. One of Ward's books

I Spy Purple

Can you find:

1. A book I liked as a girl

2. Something we have in our car every winter

3. A stinky marker

4. What I wear while doing dishes

5. A flower that looks like a balloon before it blooms

6. A puzzle Ward is going to start when the weather gets cold

7. Something that Wally and Theodore use more than Ward and I do

8. The litter we get for a good price at Costco

9. Old rickrack that I used to decorate a bib for Wally

10. A soft shirt that Ward likes

11. A plant they use to make a coffee substitute

I Spy Orange

Can you find:

1. Leo and Annie's favorite toy

2. A fancy day lily

3. A tea kettle that went on camping trips with me when I was a girl

4. Ear plugs I use when I mow

5. A library summer reading program shirt

6. Tasty summer melon

7. The towel and wash cloth Wally took to college

8. My favorite crafting scissors

9. A flower that the butterflies love

10. A great fantasy novel

11. A word that rhymes with orange

I Spy White

Can You Find:

1. The ice chest that carried drinks to the crab feast

2. Seeds from a pretty but annoying flower

3. White meat from a roasted chicken

4. Our new dehumidifier

5. The book that helps me figure out visitors to our feeder

6. The sticks that go to work with both Ward and me most days

7. The brick that used to be part of my grandmother's chimney

8. The plate given to me by the church when I was a baby

9. The eggs that went into French toast and brownies

10. An old time calculator

11. An orchid that is amazingly still living and blooming

12. Our dishwasher with many settings, but only one that we use

I Spy Green

Can You Find:

1. Wally's Pog Container

2. The watering can that we recovered from someone's trash.

3. A great book by a humorous British author

4. The fire extinguisher that is by our wood stove

5. My new garden gloves

6. One of our grocery bags

7. Ward's new drill

8. Socks that were knit for me as a Christmas present

9. Ward's lunch box that has yogurt in it most days

10. The calculator that no longer works

11. My go-to book on perennials 

I Spy Yellow

Can You Find:

1. Ward's lumber sorting system made from cat litter buckets

2.  A squash from Uncle Billy's garden.

3. What Ward and I have for breakfast most mornings.

4. The exercise ball that is used more as a foot rest than for exercising.

5. The burro from Guatemala.

6. The flashlight that Theo keeps beside his bed in case of emergency.

7. My favorite topping, along with onions, for a hot dog.

8.  Maryland's state flower.

9. Currently, our favorite cookbook.

10. A hot wheels car that Wally used to race across the floor.

I Spy Blue

Can you find...

1. Freshly picked blueberries from Uncle Billy's blueberry patch.

2. My grandmother's good luck bottle.

3. A really fun memoir about the 1950's.

4. The oil that did not fix the car door squeak.

5. The natural peanut butter than no one likes.

6. One of Theodore's textbooks.

7. Bluebird eggs that have since hatched and flown away.

8. Theodore setting our flowers.

9. A cat spoon stirring squash and tomatoes from Aunt Martha.

10. Our new hydrangea.

11. The picture I didn't name.