Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions-June 7, 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

None that I could find.

This Week's True Food Confessions

Now let me see. It seems as if we have been cooking and eating at home most of the time this week, but I can't seem to find pictures for it. Upon more careful consideration, I guess Ward and I had lunch out on Saturday while we were on our garden tour. Leftovers from that were served another time. Another day this week, Wally had some good news, so he treated everyone to California Tortilla. Tonight we are having pizza from Aldis. Other times we have had stir fry and baked salmon that we actually cooked. 

And over the weekend, I tried a recipe I got from Lili at Creative Savv--Guacamole Salad Bowl. Lili is trying to eat more fish and this recipe is one she likes that includes tuna. The recipe was a no brainer as far as I was concerned. It had lettuce, tomato, black olives, cheese, guacamole, tuna, and FRITOS. It's been years since I have had those greasy, delightful chips, so when I saw this recipe, I knew we had to make it. It was a hit with everyone and the big bowl of salad was gone in no time. (Maybe a record for the Carnivores.) However, if I were to make it again, I would add the Fritos on top just before I served it so they would be crunchier, and I would use chicken instead of tuna. I'm with Lili. I don't like fish that much. 

Until next time...

Live and Learn-Toss and Turn: The beginning

It's been two years since I started to blog. Most of you (all of you) were not with me in the beginning, so I'm going to go back and look at a few things from then. Today is my very first post in which I talked about how I came up with the name for my blog.
________________________________________________________________________________

What's in a Name?

I've been toying with writing a blog for a while now and decided it was time to put thoughts into actions. It all seemed so simple. Use one of the free blog sites and start writing. But wait, what was it going to be about and what would I call it? My kids advised me that I needed a subject or it would be nothing more than an online journal. Well, since I'm not that knowledgeable or passionate about any one subject, I decided that it would be personal reflections. My idea was to make comments about things I experience or see around me that other people may be able to relate to. Now what to name it. Not as easy as it would seem. With the millions of blogs out there, there's not much left to choose from.
 
My first idea was Observations of an everyday boring life. However, it was suggested that I don't need to tell people ahead of time that my life is often boring. Next I played with, Run of the mill, Matter of fact, and So on and so forth. All taken. Next was Watching paint Dry, but that was taken also with actual web cams set up to watch paint dry. How about Dull as Dishwater?  Maybe that was giving too much away ahead of time again. (BTW, the original phrase was supposedly, "Dull as Ditch Water.") 
 
I was going to have to get creative. The family started brainstorming. Running with safety scissors and Your guess is as good as mine. Taken. My personal favorite was one I thought up- Lend me your nose. A play on Lend me your ear but using nose indicating that you should Take time to stop and smell the roses. 
 
After several more hours of deep thought, I settled on Live and Learn-Toss and Turn. This title is supposed to indicate that no matter what happens to us, we can always learn from it and the unknown can still be a little scary and cause us to toss and turn. Or maybe the title just means, that I was really tired and the rhyming of the words seemed good enough. This morning my son asked me what name I came up with and after I told him, he replied, "Well, it's not as bad as I thought it would be." I don't think I will ever be able to live down, "Lend me your nose."

A Second Look--June 5, 2013

Here are a few things I saw this week during a Second Look.

Blanket flower (Gaillardia)

The bees are really enjoying the flowers (sage).

Dead Nettle (Lamium m. Aureum)

Day Lily (Stella dora)

Piliated woodpecker. This is by far the most impressive woodpecker that visits our feeders.

Once again, it's hard to make out much from this pile of baby sparrows, but they are continuing to mature. The pictures were taken a few days apart.

LeeAnn's Gardens

On Saturday, Ward and I went on a private home garden tour that included six city homes. Some lots were small and some were bigger, but none were huge. We saw several different types of gardens and all were beautiful. The spaces were well planned--perhaps because each one of them was designed by a landscape architect. That is all of them but one and that one was my favorite. That was the garden of 89 year old, Anne. She has been in her house for 55 years and has nurtured her outdoor space all of that time. In addition to caring for her plants, she also made friends with the birds and had some of them eating out of her hand. She had a beautiful garden, but it was a little more "wild" looking than the others with a wider variety of plants and fewer groupings.

One of the reasons I liked Anne's garden so much was that it reminded me of LeeAnn's garden. LeeAnn was Ward's grandmother and she had many interests in her retirement years. She raised prize-winning birds as well as prize-winning collies. She fancied herself a photographer and was always in search of the perfect picture. And she loved her gardening--especially flowers. Upon a first look at LeeAnn's house you wouldn't necessarily think that she was a big gardener. It was hard to pick out the plants from the sheds and dog runs. However, just go on a tour of her yard with her and you would see things in a whole different light. She would show you her night garden planted with things that would only bloom at night. Next to it was the purple garden filled with only purple bloomers. Then there were the roses that she put in the front of her yard so people driving by could see them. Also were the azaleas next to the house--one of which came from her aunt's yard many decades ago. You see, LeeAnn had a personal relationship with each plant and she saw its potential instead of seeing the work that needed to be done around it. That's what I'm trying to each week as I take a Second Look around my yard. However, I still need more practice before I can be like LeeAnn was.

 I don't have pictures of LeeAnn's yard, but here are some pictures from the tour we took. The last one is from Anne's yard.

Rooftop Garden

Thankful Sunday--June 2, 2013

I am thankful for the meat thermometer. 

With this handy device, I no longer have to worry if I've cooked the meat to a high enough temperature to be safe. The Carnivores are thankful for it too because I tended to overcook the meat (according to them) before we got it.