I Spy White

Can You Find:

1. The ice chest that carried drinks to the crab feast

2. Seeds from a pretty but annoying flower

3. White meat from a roasted chicken

4. Our new dehumidifier

5. The book that helps me figure out visitors to our feeder

6. The sticks that go to work with both Ward and me most days

7. The brick that used to be part of my grandmother's chimney

8. The plate given to me by the church when I was a baby

9. The eggs that went into French toast and brownies

10. An old time calculator

11. An orchid that is amazingly still living and blooming

12. Our dishwasher with many settings, but only one that we use

Thankful Sunday--August 5, 2012

I am thankful for my parents who are celebrating 62 years of marriage today.

My parents 60 years ago with my sister

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions-August 3, 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

One of the buns that didn't go bad

 A couple things went bad on us this week--a tomato and some buns. I think both of these were victims of being on the counter for too long. One day, they were good and the next day they were growing mold. Oh well, better luck next week, I hope.

This Week's True Food Confessions

If we're really going to have true confessions, here they go. 

First the negative: We bit off more than we can chew with this project. (Pun intended.) We still don't like to cook and now we're making a big mess to clean up while we're doing it. We haven't coordinated our shopping to go with our menus and we're looking for excuses to eat out. Yesterday, it was that Theo was sick and didn't feel like what we had planned. I think the bottom line for our discontent is that we are trying to do it all-or-nothing. We are not allowing ourselves flexibility.

Next the positive: Now that I've gotten that off my chest, here is how the week actually went. We finished up our zucchini week  with Zucchini Continental. We also had roast chicken, spinach lasagna, shepherd's pie, pulled beef sandwiches, and hamburgers on the grill. We finished the week out with Subway sandwiches and several drive through lunches. Despite my complaining, it was really a pretty good week. The Subway sandwiches in the middle of the week helped. Also, we are getting better at cleaning up as we go, so the kitchen does not look like explosion went off after we're done cooking. We are ready to give it another go next week.

Egg Frying--Part Three

Okay, I admit it. I'm a little obsessed with trying to fry an egg in the sun. When my previous two attempts  resulted in only a raw egg and a lot of sweat, I thought I was done with this experiment. Really I did. But ideas kept popping into my head for other tries--maybe a solar oven. This idea was sealed when I talked with my sister-in-law about solar ovens. She had several ideas, but what I heard was that your car can be a good oven. Bingo! I didn't have to worry about construction, and I had heard of people cooking things on their dashboard. This was the new thing I had to try.

On the next hot day, I started by putting an iron skillet on my dashboard for a while to heat up. After it was really hot, I cracked an egg into it and closed the car. Then I waited. And waited. But that was okay because my sister-in-law said that solar ovens cook very slowly--even slower than a slow cooker sometimes. When the sun started to go down, I retrieved the egg.  Guess what I found? A raw egg.

If I were really serious about these experiments, I would be carefully studying my techniques and researching the properties of the materials I am using--doing a complete scientific analysis. However, I'm not serious in that way. I'm serious in an impulsive sort of way. Meaning when it's hot outside, it's time to crack an egg and see what happens. This method reminds me of one of the ways they taught my kids how to do math problems. It was call the "guess and check"--meaning you guess at the answer and then plug it back into the problem to see if it is right. I thought that was a crazy method at the time. However, I kind of like that model for my egg experiments.

The solar oven for my experiment.

The egg on the dashboard not cooking

A Second Look--August 1, 2012

The things I found this week during a Second Look were especially interesting. (at least I thought so) First, the surprise lilies emerged. They are called surprise lilies because the flowers come out after the foliage has died. They seem to spring up over night and are always a nice surprise. Also, I have been carefully watching the peach tree for peaches and haven't seen any. This has been puzzling me because it bloomed beautifully in the spring. Well, today I found one, and only one peach, but it is a beauty. I am going to leave it on the tree to ripen a little longer and hope that I can get back to it before the squirrels discover it.

In addition, the hibiscus is in full bloom. This is a plant that I have had for several years that bloomed for the first time last year. After the first bloom, the deer promptly ate every bud and that one bloom was all that we got. I am enjoying the multiple blooms.

Last week, the big excitement was a stranded baby bunny. This week the excitement was watching chipping sparrow fledglings leave the nest. There were three babies and two of them could fly pretty well, but one of them could only hop-fly on the ground. The parents would fly above it trying to direct. It was all very interesting to watch.

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

Surprise lily buds

Our lone peach

Triple day lilies

Hibiscus

Chipping sparrow baby trying to fly.