Life

My father as an 8 year old farm boy.

A good man died today, my father.

Tears and smiles mingle as we remember his life.

Easter Gathering

Laughter, tears, silliness

fill the day

Family, connections, love,

fill our life

Thankful Sunday--March 31, 2013

I am thankful for Easter

because it reminds me that all things are possible.

Good intentions

You may remember a while back I commented that my friend said she could definitely taste the difference between the red M&M's and the others. I had never noticed this before and wondered if it were really true for her and maybe others also. I thought of various ways to test this idea and decided that it was a really complicated hypothesis to test considering the number of variables involved and the number of taste memories our brain can hold at any one time. Nevertheless, the experiment held too much potential for fun for me to dismiss it. I came up with a couple of different test methods, and while they wouldn't hold up under close scientific scrutiny, I thought I could gleam some information from them. So I had a plan in place, but first I needed to try it out on a few people (Ward, me, and the boys) before I tried it on others.

With high hopes of an interesting experiment, I completed the first step. I bought two bags of M&M's. I even made it to the next step of sorting them by colors. Well, I almost made it through that step. It seemed that every time I sat down to work on this part, I got called away. And as I was leaving, I grabbed a handful of candies to eat, and scooped the rest into the bag so that cats wouldn't play with them while I was gone. And you know what? After two weeks of this, I ran out of M&M's before I ever got to any testing.

So I guess I will have to start this experiment all over again. I plan to do that as soon as I finish the taxes or when I want some more M&M's to eat. Wanna take a bet on which will come first? :)

 

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--Mar. 29, 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

 
We had more waste this week than usual. First there was a bag of cucumbers that turned slimy. Even though the first couple from the bag had a bitter taste, I fully intended to finish them. Or maybe subconsciously, I didn't. Oh well. Out they went. I also found a piece of pepper jack cheese that was moldy. I don't like this kind of spicy cheese, but I buy it for the rest of the family. I don't know if it suffered from out-of-sight, out-of-mind in the cheese drawer, but unfortunately it had to go. I guess that this week's waste is not too bad in the big scheme of things, but I don't like it. Next week will be better.

This Week's True Food Confessions

We had an unusual week last week as far as eating goes. We were gone for the weekend, and we have also been focusing on other things.  Nevertheless, one night we baked chicken with roasted carrots, and another night we had a spinach pie with steamed asparagus. We also had a rotisserie chicken yet another night. I get one of these whenever I go to Costco because I can get a freshly roasted chicken for just five dollars--better than I can do cooking it from scratch. Wally also brought home burritos from California Tortilla for us. Ward has been wanting this for about a month, so Wally treated him.  

We didn't have time to try a new recipe, but I have high hopes for the week coming up.

Until next time...