A Second Look--November 7, 2012

Things have been busy around here recently, so I haven't had much time to spend outside. I didn't get out to do a Second Look this week until is was almost dark. And on top of that, I spend most of the daylight I had left, talking with my neighbor about the price of heating oil. So, I didn't get a lot of pictures. But nevertheless, it was interesting to me to see what has survived the frosts and to see which trees are holding onto their leaves.

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

Enough dried leaves are down now that they provide a nice crunch to shuffle through.

This noisy blue jay is among the increased bird activity we have been seeing.

All of the marigolds have finally succumbed to the frost.

Most of the mums are holding up though.

It gets dark now around five o'clock.

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 Baked Cookies

or The Low Barometric Pressure of Sandy

If you have read this blog before, you may have to come to understand that for me cooking is an activity that just gets in the way of more interesting things to do. So if there's a short cut, I will take it. For example, when baking cookies, I make them all bar cookies--no matter what kind they are. All of the cookie dough goes into a baking pan and bakes at one time. I discovered long ago that cookies taste just as good when they are cut into little squares as when they are round.

However, something unusual happened recently. Monday after all of our storm preparations were done, I decided to bake cookies the old fashioned way. I didn't use a mix* and each cookie was placed one at a time on the baking sheet. It did take a lot longer, but it seemed as if it were the right thing to do at the time. I don't know what possessed me. Maybe it was the low barometric pressure of the storm or maybe it was the full moon. Who knows? But if I ever have that urge again, I'm going to check the weather. I wouldn't want this to become a habit. :)

_________________________________________________________________________________

In case you're wondering what I baked, it was Andes Mint Pudding Cookies and they were delicious. A very nice blend of chocolate and mint flavor in a perfectly chewy cookie. The cookies were based on a recipe I got from A Place to Reside but you know how I can never follow a recipe? Marilyn's cookies used vanilla pudding and peanut butter cups, but I used chocolate pudding and Andes mints.

*I have found that Betty Crocker has very good cookie mixes and if you get them on sale, they aren't very expensive. Including baking time, I can have an entire batch of Betty Crocker cookies fresh out of the oven in about 20 minutes. Of course, you have to bake them bar style to do it this quickly.

Thankful Sunday--November 4, 2012

I am thankful for fuzzy socks.

These are my favorite lounging socks in the evening especially now that the weather is colder.

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--Nov. 2, 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. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions.

This week's food waste.

This week I found some shriveled and rotting carrots in the bottom of our vegetable drawer. I don't think we have been snacking on as many carrots recently and these show it. Either this is telling me that my family is tired of carrots or they don't look in the bottom of the vegetable drawer to find snacks. Maybe I should find out which one it is before we have more waste like this in a couple of weeks.

This Week's True Food Confessions

A week of Hurricane Sandy eating.

This week we ate mostly with Hurricane Sandy in mind. While preparing for her arrival, we ate out of the refrigerator and freezer to reduce our perishable food in case we lost electricity (luckily we didn't). For the couple of days that she lingered, we ate easy food that didn't require much cooking so we wouldn't be in the middle of cooking in case the power went out. We continued our easy eating after the storm with scrambled eggs and sloppy joes. During this unusual week, the highlights were the three pizzas from the freezer we had on Monday before the storm, and the Halloween candy we had after the storm. It may not have been the most nutritious week, but we ate at home and we had some yummy food.