27 posts tagged “food”

Seth asked if he could help me. Hmmmm, a chance to put him to work. I suggested he get a wet wipe and clean all the door knobs, because they get food on them sometimes. (Y'all remember I have three little ones.) This apparently made him think he needed to clean the remote, offering to run it under water. When I told him no, we'll have to throw it out if you do that, son, he explained he'd gotten cheetos on it because he'd used his "cheeto hand" watching his They Might Be Giants podcasts. So I've cleaned the Cheeto schmear off of the Mac mini remote. I've done something with my day! :-( I think he should clean the door knobs as punishment.

A few minutes later, Seth said, "Grapes please!" because I sat down, forgetting to get their grapes. I sighed when I got up, mostly from the demand in his voice. And he knew it. He knows my sighs. He ran into the kitchen after me, and before I could finish saying, "Go sit back down." so he wouldn't be underfoot, he hugged me and said, "I love you more than grapes. I love you to the universe and back."

Today is our 16th wedding anniversary :-) We will celebrate with the kiddies this year, a late matinee to see Kung Fu Panda. (They don't know yet :)

Brad surprised me yesterday with a set of speakers that I can mount my iPhone in. It's playing Dylan in the kitchen right now. He took pity on me 'cause I was walking around the house with my iPhone in my back pocket.

He's getting apple strudel with a dollop of ice cream :-)'

My allergies made me feel puny and kinda got in the way of my baking Hackathon cookies. But I'm back today and sending in Amazingly soft oatmeal raisin cookies from a fellow Voxer's recipe. I couldn't bring myself to put in the raisins. But they're full of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Also, I use salted butter by default, so I didn't use as much salt as the recipe called for and slightly less brown sugar. They turned out lovely, soft and a good combination of salty sweetness. Sending 50+ cookies in with Brad tomorrow.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread, slightly warm, not too hot, so as not to melt the scoop of vanilla ice cream too fast.

A piece of heaven :-)'

Shortly after the label "organic" became official, I considered if buying strictly organic was for me and mine. My friends were doing it. They said you could taste the difference in the meat. After sifting through the internet's most popular opinions, I decided that no matter what someone thinks wholeheartedly, there is an opposite and equally strong opinion that looks just as sound. I wasn't sold.

I was annoyed, because I'm frugal, and I believed if our organic farmers and producers would band together in a campaign to lower prices, they'd win a whole lot of fence-sitters like myself, making more money in the long run. In other words, I was doubtful, and I was being a little cheap.

Living in California, I've slowly come around to buying a lot more organic, not because I'm entirely sold on it, but because I support the idea of living closer to nature. We're really spoiled out here. The food selection alone is enough to make me stay, and eating in season is not a terrible challenge on the West Coast. (When we visited family in Arkansas, a bag of raw almonds at the health food store was $10. They need a Trader Joe's.) I buy milk, butter, eggs and most of my meat without hormones, antibiotics, preservatives, nitrates, hydrogenated hoolabaloo... and organic grapes, apples, carrots, strawberries... because we eat a lot of them. Thanks to Trader Joe's the prices don't hurt. I follow Jose Bove not because I'm an extremist, but it takes a louder mouth to make a small, necessary change. (And his kind of bravado gives me a chuckle.)

Now meat cloning may start up in full swing. FDA Food Safety Chief says they can't "imagine" how this food could possibly be unsafe. What? I'm still upset about the margarine I grew up eating. It was "edible". It slid down the throat much like butter. But it didn't occur to anyone then that the body wouldn't know how to process it. Now that the mainstream is finding out, it will probably still take years to make it illegal.

There's an older man in our family who doesn't believe we belonged on the moon. I was young when he said it and had never heard this notion. When I asked him why, I could tell he didn't want to talk about it. I got the impression that he'd shared the opinion with his cronies and regretted it. He believed it went against God for us to go into outer space. I was hearing this at a time when I wanted to purchase a shuttle ticket myself. But I feel like him now. I'm not old, but old fashioned.

If the selling of cloned animals' offspring hits the mainstream, and assuming the official term "organic" gets tweaked to exclude cloning, it could be a huge boost to organic producers. Let's hope they pass some savings on to us.

Have you ever won anything at a carnival, arcade or midway game?

When I was six, my family went to our school's fall carnival. This was the only one we ever had. I won three cakes at the cake walk. After the third, my mother pulled me off the line. (Oddly, musical chairs has always made me really nervous. Even though it's similar to the cake walk, I might not get a chair!)

Since then, I've been routinely winning things, not all the time, and I don't gamble, but party raffles, drawings at work... I've resolved to win the weekly raffle at Trader Joe's, and I've been trying for a year :( But I still think like a winner! Bring your own bags and enter each week to win $25 worth of groceries. I go twice a week. I would think those would be decent odds.

Has anyone tried the ginger spread (suggested use is with cheese) or the citron spread (suggested use is with toast or bagels)? I will eventually try them myself, but we go camping tomorrow, and I didn't want to bring something new home today from TJ's and then forget about it. They can be found with the apple sauce and jellies.