Food Waste Friday--March 30, 2012

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.

 

This was the week for molded bread. First, we had some Irish soda bread that my son bought for St. Patrick's day on a whim. We all liked the taste well enough, but didn't like how crumbly it was. Thus it just sat on the counter until it molded.  I probably could have found another way to use it, but I was unmotivated because of a migraine.  Next, we had some buns that didn't get used up in the meal they were intended for. They weren't on the counter very long, but a couple of rainy days made things damper than usual inside. They also molded. How did you do?

A Second Look--March 28, 2012

This week during a Second Look I saw more evidence of the yard's emergence from its winter hibernation. I found three new varieties of daffodils blooming. Also, we have seen the return of the finches to our feeder and have spotted house finches and gold finches there. The crocus are almost done blooming but the bleeding hearts are starting. The trees show a variety of stages that range from buds, blooms and new leaves to dried leaves still hanging on from the fall. I hardly know which way to look.

Daffodil

Grape hyacinth

Bleeding hearts

Daffodil

Violet--my favorite spring wildflower

 

Goldfinch

Daffodil

Cardinal among dogwood buds

Various stages of tree growth

School Days--Uncle Billy

I hope that School Days will be a reoccurring feature in which I ask people about their early memories of school. Everyone has a story to tell about this and I hope to give them a voice here. 

Here is Today's Story
 

Uncle Billy started kindergarten in 1954 when he was five years old.  He went to his neighborhood school in Baltimore that had grades K-6 in it. 

Tell me about starting school or an early school memory.

I walked to school about a mile with other kids in the neighborhood and half of that was a long hill. Miss Hess was our traffic guard and helped us get across the four-lane road we had to cross. There were four other neighborhood streets we had to cross and those were stationed with safety patrols. I was a safety patrol in the fifth grade and the captain of them in sixth grade.

When I was in first grade, they built an addition to the school and doubled the size by adding another class to each grade. They still had only one kindergarten. With the new addition, they added a gym with a stage and a cafeteria. You could buy milk and snacks in the cafeteria but they didn't serve hot lunch. I had a brown bag lunch every day and bought white milk.

I don't remember anything about my school work, but I liked school. I remember the names of my teachers.

Kindergarten: Mrs. Blunt, 

First grade: Mrs. Burkholt, 

Second Grade: Miss Orlardo--she was a new teacher and was pretty and young, 

Third grade: Mrs. Schultz--I liked her best of all, but I don't remember exactly why. I just liked her.
 

I had recess everyday and one time fell off the jungle gym and got a scar on my chin. Also, one time I was a toy soldier in the school play and wore a big hat. I wasn't nervous because I didn't have any lines.

"Jane Eyre"--a Book Club Discussion and more

This month for book club we read the classic, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. In case you somehow missed reading the book in school or seeing the many movies that have been made from it, here's a brief summary. Jane is a headstrong girl who was orphaned as an infant. She lives a difficult life with her aunt and three cousins until she was sent to boarding school for orphans when she was ten. The school was another difficult experience, but she becomes well enough educated to become a governess. During this job, she meets Mr. Rochester and love follows. However, as with any good story, the relationship is fraught with trouble and there are many difficult decisions to be made.

What my club thought:
My club all enjoyed reading or rereading Jane Eyre. We had a lively discussion that involved the actual story and characters, Charlotte Bronte and her sisters, the difficulties of being a published female author at that time, how much of the novel was autobiographical, and the influence of being a rector's daughter on Charlotte Bronte's writing. We concluded that we appreciated the complicated writing structure of the book compared to what is written today and found the moral dilemmas that were set up for Jane throughout the story an interesting study.

What I thought:
I got a lot more from reading Jane Eyre as an adult than as a student. It's an enjoyable read that I recommend.
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But wait, there's more--A thought from Wally and Theodore:

Speaking of Jane Eyre, there's another book that involves her--The Eyre Affair: a Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde.

The book involves time travel, a police state, and the plucking of Jane Eyre from the novel--a little different from the style of the original Jane Eyre, but a lot of fun. It mixes humor with an exciting plot. Give it a try. If you like it, there are more in the series waiting for you.


For a more extensive review of the Tuesday Next novels-- aplacetoreside.blogspot.com/2011/04/one-of-our-thursdays-is-missing-book.html

Food Waste Friday--March 23, 2012

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.

 

 

 

 

We had no waste this week, so we celebrated by having green eggs and ham (and brown and white eggs too) for breakfast. We're lucky that we have a friend that sometimes gives us eggs and she always includes a green one in the bunch.