Food Waste Friday 6-17-11

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.

I knew that I had better check on the bag of carrots and the bag of potatoes we had. I had an uneasy feeling about them and I was right. Some of them went into a tasty soup, but it was a little too late for others as you can see. Next week, we had better eat the rest or you will be seeing another picture like the one below.

Check this out

Recently, Grand Rapids, Michigan, was told that it was a dying city. The city took exception to that statement and made this video to show how very much alive they are. Over three million people have already viewed their work. In case there are few of you out there that haven't seen it, here's a link.

Grand Rapids LipDub

Enjoy!

A Second Look around the Yard 6-15-11

A Second Look around the yard this week found these things.

This is one of the adult rabbits we see frequently. Recently, we have seen three baby bunnies that have just started to come out of their hiding places and play.

Day Lily, Stella Dora

Astilbe

Hosta, June

Lamb's Ear

Cabbage White butterfly on coreopsis bloom (head on view)

First Coneflower of the season

Coreopsis and Blanket Flowers

Meet Leo

It's time to meet another one of our cats, Leo. You may remember that he is the litter mate of Annie and housemate of Lucy.

This is the eye he uses to watch the birds.

This is the paw he uses to poke the other cats trying to get them to play.

This is the nose he uses to sniff out the catnip toys.

This is the paw he uses to hang onto Ward as he carries him on his shoulder.

This is the tail he twitches when he's watching a squirrel.

This is the whirr he causes as he runs away from most things.

Put them altogether and you get Leo.

Strawberries for Now

It's strawberry season. That time when the aromatic, sweet, and juicy strawberries are ripe. We were very fortunate, this year, because Aunt Martha had a lush strawberry patch that she shared with us. We quickly consumed the first batch of berries she gave us, but luckily, we were invited to pick more.

Strawberries from Aunt Martha

Wally was excited with this prospect and started discussing everything we could do with them—make strawberry short cake, make smoothies, make jam and the list went on. So we set off one afternoon to go picking. As we were picking, Wally asked me if I remembered one of his favorite books from when he was a child called Blueberries for Sal. In this book, a little girl named Sal goes blueberry picking with her mother but finds herself eating the berries faster than they can fill the bucket. He said that he was reminded of the book because he was doing somewhat of the same thing. However, we did end up with some to take home.

When we poured our berries into a container, there weren't as many as we had hoped for, but we still planned to make strawberry jam. However, when I returned to the kitchen a couple of hours later, all of the berries were gone. I guess the fresh berries were just too tempting.

Now you see them.       Now you don't.

I started to be annoyed, but changed my mind. We could enjoy the strawberries now or we could enjoy them later, and I guess now was okay. I reminded myself about the practice that is hard for me—being in the moment. That helped. Then I didn't feel so guilty about my part in the disappearing berries.