Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--August 10, 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

Theo recovering from his wisdom tooth extractions

This week Theo had a cooking misstep and created a dish that was okay, but just not that appealing. We ate a little of it and decided that we didn't want the rest. So, out it went. It was not all a loss because Theo learned a good cooking lesson from his mistake. Also, I don't want to pick on him too much because he just had his wisdom teeth out.

This Week's True Food Confessions 

We were lucky to have a lot of fresh vegetables to use this week for our cooking.

We've been working on this eating-at-home thing for four weeks now and my attitude is starting to improve. There are still a lot of other things we'd rather do than cook, but it's becoming more of a routine and less of a struggle.

We had another successful week. Among the whole family, we only had a couple lunches out and pizza take out one night--the night of Theodore's unfortunate cooking misstep. The favorite thing we made were ham roll ups. We were trying to imitate the roll ups that we buy at Costco. They were easy to make and included cream cheese, cranberry jelly, ham, lettuce, and tomato rolled up in a whole wheat tortilla. Next time we make them, we're adding Swiss cheese. 

Let me make a correction. What we really liked the most this week, was a pan of Virginia brownies we made and took to a crab feast. They had a caramel, chocolate chip, and nut filling and were VERY rich. Yum!

Until next time...

Crayons

or School Supply Envy

Long ago and far, far away when I was in first grade, I got my first set of school supplies. Among them was a new yellow and green box of 8 Crayolas, and I loved them. In second grade I got another new box of crayons. This time the box came with 16 colors and new possibilities. However, my excitement waned when I saw that some of my classmates had something more. They had boxes with 32 and 64 crayons in them and I was envious--especially of the box of sixty-four because it had a sharpener on the back. My classmates got to color with sharpened, exotic colors while I colored with dull, plain colors. It didn't seem fair, but I suffered in silence because I knew that my mother had gotten me what was on the list. Every year was the same. I got what was on the list and some kids got the big box with the sharpener. And every year, I was envious.

Time marched on, and I survived. However, the desire for that big box of 64 crayons never left me. I just forgot about it. Thirty years later, as I was starting to buy school supplies for my own kids, I playfully told my mother about my disappointment with my "little" box of crayons. She said she never knew and surprised me by sending a box in the mail.

Doodles from my crayons

I was very excited with my new big box of 64 crayons. I colored everyday in the beginning and sharpened the crayons when they needed it. I even bought a new coloring book to use. And you know what? They were everything I imagined they would be-wonderful. I had no reason to be envious anymore.


Note:
--You may be wondering if I bought big boxes of crayons for my kids. Nope, I bought them just what was on the list.

--You may also be wondering if I color much these days. It goes in cycles, but every time I get them out, I get the same thrill.

A Second Look--August 8, 2012

A sunflower, that sprouted from birdseed, bloomed this week. Sunflowers certainly are spectacular flowers and this one is no exception. You'll notice that I included more than one picture of it because it makes me smile when I see it. Also, our lone peach continued to ripen. I picked it today after I found a small bite out of the back of it. I hope that I get to have a bite also.

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

Volunteer sunflower

Praying mantis nymph and ants on sunflower

Our lone peach is ripening.

Male house finch

Celosia

Look, more crisscrossing spirals for Ward.

I can't get enough of this sunflower.

Queen Anne's Lace Followup--A Year Later

or Not What Was Expected

Last year during one of my second looks, I was very excited because I found a Queen Anne's Lace with a black dot in the middle. It was the first one I had seen, and I learned that legend said that the dot represented a drop of Queen Anne's blood from a prick she got while making lace. I thought I had found something interesting and unusual, but for my friend, it was old hat. She said that all of the flowers she had seen had black dots. She didn't know that they came any other way.

The difference in our experiences made me curious, so I did an informal research project . There was no clear conclusion for the different blooms except from a Virginia Tech weed identification site. It said that during the second year of blooming (they are biennials),  the flower develops the spot. To test this, last year I counted the dotted and non-dotted flowers in my yard, and this year I counted them again.

What did I find? Last year I found 11 flowers with spots and 29 without. This year I found 5 with spots and 24 without. This is not what was expected. It was the exact opposite. I should have seen more black spots this year if they do indeed develop them during their second year of blooming.
 
I have a sense that there are certain varieties that have the spots and certain varieties that don't. It seems that the places where I saw the flowers with the spots this year are the same locations they were last year. But I'm not sure.That's a followup I'll have to do-after I get done with my egg cooking experiments.

The proportions here should have been reversed if the black dot appears during the second year of blooming.

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