Saturday, 4/5:
Big A, myself and a few friends went to a nearby brewery for a fundraiser for the town's freighthouse. It was closed about 3 years ago due to needing a lot of updates to bring it up to code. Prior to that, Big A and I were looking at it when we were in the early stages of wedding planning and it would have been fun to rent but when we walked through, neither of us felt comfortable on the sagging wooden floor. Oddly enough, a year later, that was one of the reasons why the city decided to close it. For a $5 donation, we got to view old pictures of the freighthouse, drink locally made beer (or smuggle in bottled water like I did) and listen to local bands that all had a banjo as one of the instruments. Yes, a banjo. I didn't realize that ALL the bands would have one but it was fun. It was also interesting to see everyone that lives in your neighborhood that you may not have seen before. Judging from the people there, we live in quite an eclectic and overwhemlingly Democratic (judging from my one and only canvassing experience) area.
Monday, 4/7:
It was sunny and 70 so I skipped my class and instead, enjoyed a small Reece's Peanut Butter Cup blizzard from Dairy Queen. What a great day.
Wednesday, 4/9:
Something troubled me while watching Idol Gives Back. Like last year, they focused on a needy area in Africa as well as a needy area in the U.S. The needy area in the U.S. last year was somewhere in the Appalachia Mountains where the ability to read is almost nonexistent. This year, it was somewhere in Kentucky, I believe, where reading levels are quite low. It also included some scenes of the living conditions in these areas - barely any running water, light bulbs dangling from sockets, etc. I find it incomprehensible that we have people in our own country living like this and the fact that this isn't as publicized as it should be is troubling. Shouldn't we help our own citizens before sending HIV pamphlets and vaccines or mosquito netting to an African country which seems to be getting much more publicity than the folks in Kentucky? George Clooney is from Kentucky. Why did he pick publicizing Darfur over what's happening in his home state?
Thursday, 4/8:
I'm not sure how Big A and I decided to do this (I'm thinking it may have been due to watching The Biggest Loser for the last 3 months) but we've chosen three things to give up over the next 6 months. For him, it is bread (other than pita or as they say in his culture, assyrian bread), chips and pop. For me, it's fried foods, refined sugar and chocolate. Just to make sure I thoroughly understood the definition of refined sugar, I Googled it and found a rather interesting article. Dated but it's still seems rather relevant. This should be fun.
Friday, 4/9:
Big A and I did the first grocery shopping with our new rules. This refined sugar is harder than I thought it was. I grabbed my usual loaf of whole wheat bread and happened to look at the ingrediant list - high fructose corn syrup. So I looked at other whole wheat breads. Same thing. Some loaves even advertised on the package that they had no high fructose corn syrup but when I looked at the ingredients, it had plain ol' sugar listed. While I researched further as to why bread has sugar in it (could it be part of some sort of preservative?), I grabbed my usual loaf of whole wheat bread for the occasional sandwich or toast with peanut butter. Then, when we hit the cracker aisle, I headed for the Ritz since they are a nice accompaniment to a bowl of soup but that too had high fructose corn syrup. The only cracker I could find that didn't was the most boring cracker known to mankind, the saltine.
Saturday, 4/10:
We continued our biweekly grocery shopping at a store that is rather expensive but has a great selection of fruits, veggies and meat (plus I had a $10 off coupon when you buy $70 or more. With iceburg lettuce going for $1.49 a head, $70 wasn't hard to reach). On Friday as well as today, we brought along our new canvas grocery bags. It was quite exciting. I've been recycling paper, cans and plastic for so long, I don't really feel like I'm making a difference but this reusable grocery bag is new so it feels like I am. I'm even looking down at people that come out with a grocery cart full of plastic bags (but Friday's grocery store did have a drop off place for old plastic bags which are then remade into new plastic bags) although I will still get plastic from my beloved Target since they make great poop scooping bags. Now I will just have to remember to take these reusable bags with me whenever I go.
8 comments:
Murf, any yeast bread has to either have some form of sugar in it (to help the yeast grow) or it has to have a longer fermentation period to allow the flour to break down so the yeast can feed off it. As for preservatives (at least this was true 25 years ago), in bread that was claimed to be preservative free, vinegar was used.
Interesting to see that the Murf's are going green. Will you add a little white into it also?
Blue and yellow make green, dear Sage. :-)
I hope this doesn't mean I'm s.o.l on bread. My last hope lives with a bakery nearby. I believe they use honey in their wheat bread which is considered a 'natural sugar'. If not, I may have to have an asterisk and a footnote added to my 'refined sugar' to exclude whole wheat bread. My next quest is to find sugarless peanut butter. Has anyone ever tried the natural kind?
Or you could buy yourself a breadmaker and make your own bread. It is really easy to do that way and tastes so much better.
I hate plastic bags. They are forever blowing around town and always cause you to repack your groceries once you get back home. I always insist on paper and the baggers always give me that snotty look and heavy sigh as they go off to find some. I then recycle them in our city recycling program. I can't imagine what kind of look I'd get if I walked into the store with cloth bags. I'm not sure they could handle that because it would mean they would have to fit more than three items per bag which would require extreme effort on their part.
P.S. I can't remember the last time I saw a $70 grocery bill. Our weekly trip bill usually is just over $100.
A breadmaker once came with the house and I gave it away. Perhaps I should get a new one. I would then have to buy one of those bread slicer machines too...
One of my favorite Ed Abbey entries was that one where you took a picture of everything that was in each grocery bag. Classic!
I've threatened to do it several times since but fortunately one or our two grocery stores has closed and the remaining one is further across town allowing me more time to cool down.
You can also knead your own bread--it'll give it much better texture than a machine.
As for blue and yellow making green--is that what happens when Michigan fans get washed up, they become green MSU fans?
As for the cotton bags, I use them too. I even know a church where you can get some.
Green MSU ones such as the rioters of a couple weekends ago? Those poor students just continuously set themselves up for ridicule.
Cotton bags from a church?!? Big A would love that.
Post a Comment