Thankful Sunday--July 29, 2012

I am thankful that we have a working air conditioner during these very hot days.

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--July 27, 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.

Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning.

This Week's Food Waste

Apparently, this sour cream wasn't done souring or growing mold for that matter. There was only a little left, but I had plans for it--big plans. But it had plans of its own--growing mold, so away it went.

This Week's True Food Confessions

Look, we cooked!

Despite the fact that this week contained National Drive Thru Day, we had a pretty good week. We only ate out one time as a family and that was for a special occasion. Wally and Theodore just visited their favorite drive thru three times--a big improvement.

Since we didn't eat out much, that means that we did eat at home. Zucchini was the ingredient of the week, and we had it in four different dishes. (A post is coming about our zucchini cooking when we finally finish it all.) Also, we had a family meeting to establish a better schedule for meals at home. We're hoping that will help.

Next week, we still need our menu plan which will probably come from the freezer because it's getting a little messy in there. That's my favorite kind of planning-creating with what is on hand. I'll let you know how it goes.

Potato Chip Comparison

Or Playing with My Food Again 

A few months ago, we took a family outing that included a tour of a potato chip factory. We learned a lot of interesting things, but what fascinated me the most was that they match the potato size to the bag size they will go into. Meaning, that big potatoes are sorted, sliced and cooked to go into big bags and the small potatoes are sorted, sliced and cooked to go into small bags. Recently, I thought about it again and decided I wanted to check out this claim. Or maybe I just wanted a good excuse to buy chips, but nevertheless, I did a completely unscientific observation to see if the factory claim was true.

I had a very small sample size of one large bag and one small bag of potato chips. Realizing even big potatoes can have small slices on their ends, I decided to pick out the five largest and five smallest chips in each bag. What did I find? The big bag had bigger chips and the smaller bag had smaller chips. By golly, the tour info was right.

Now onto the next question. Can I keep from eating all of the chips tonight? We'll see. There's nothing like a fresh potato chip. You can't eat just one.

But wait there's more!
What you see on the big bag plate is 1/2 of a serving size. The 1/2 serving size has 70 calories, 3.3 grams of fat, and 60 mg of sodium. But the important part is that it has 5% of your daily recommended dose of Vitamin C. Now that's good news. Eat up.

A Second Look--July 25, 2012

Despite the heat, we had a new color of day lily blooming this week. Also, a rain from a couple of days ago, brought out a crop of various kinds of fungi.  The finches and cardinals have been steady visitors to our feeder, but the most excitement this week was caused by a baby rabbit. It got stuck in one of our basement window wells and had to be rescued by Wally. In the meantime, the cats were going crazy from the inside watching the bunny trying to jump out. I am happy to report that all was well in the end for all parties involved.

Here's what I saw this week during a Second Look.

The rescued baby bunny

Marigolds

Fungus

Two female house finches. One leaving the feeder and one coming to the feeder.

Celosia

Another color of day lily blooming

Deer and fox jaw bones

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.