Christmas Is Coming

And I'm finished making my cards!!! These are just a few of my favorites. I made 60 cards this year! Wow!

The Cutest Little Cowgirl!

How cute are these?

A Letter to Orville Redenbacher / Con Agra Foods

So, I just got an air popcorn popper, because it was so much cheaper to buy popping corn than microwave, not to mention healthier. Anyway, I bought some Orville Redenbacher popping corn to use in it. I was so displeased that I had to write to Con Agra. Here's my letter:

I recently purchased Oville Redenbacher's Original Gourmet Popping Corn to use in my hot air popcorn popper. I was very disappointed with the results. Of the recommended 1/2 cup of kernels that I put in the popping chamber, only half popped. I tried several different methods to get them to pop more efficiently, such as: heating up the popper prior to adding the kernels, using less and more than the recommended amounts, heating the kernels slightly in the butter cup. The issue seems to be with this particular brand of popcorn kernels, as the other brands that I have all pop fine. The Orville Redenbacher's seems to pop so violently that they ricochet the majority of the other unpopped kernels out with them. Please advise if there is a better method of popping this in the air popper. I await your response.

On the upside, I did purchase some really nice blue popping corn that popped up so nicely! I made up two batches of Harvest popcorn. It's really delicious. Try it out!

Harvest Popcorn
1/3 cup melted butter
1 tsp dill weed
1 tsp lemon pepper marinade (I used dry)
1 1/2 tsp worchestershire sauce
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 quarts popped popcorn

Combine first 7 ingredients, and mix well. Pour over popcorn, and mix well. Bake at 350° or until lightly browned, stirring once, if desired.

So, I'm a total slacker

I know that I haven't been blogging. Or posting on the forum. Or doing much other than work. I'm a slacker. I did manage to do some baking today though, so we now have some blueberry banana muffins, pizza dough, and fresh crackers! I will get back on, and posting soon!

Phelps Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Free genealogy - Geneology

No Tantalizing Tuesday

Sorry, I'm still recovering from my ER trip yesterday. I'll try and get up the recipe ASAP! I know that you've been coming and checking every few minutes to see if its up.... hehehehehehehe.

For the love of Pete, It's still SEPTEMBER

I went to Lowes the other day, and they have CHRISTMAS TREES up. CHRISTMAS TREES!!!!! DH says that they should just leave them up year round and be done with it. I mean, seriously! What is up with that?????

Hey Advertisers,
We get it. The economy is bad. We know that the Christmas season is your biggest time of year. You plan for this all year long. I mean, I haven't even put up my Halloween decorations yet, and you're trying to sell me Christmas crap. Now I do love Christmas, and I am starting to think about gifts, but not decorating. Put that crap away!!! Please don't start shoving it down our throats until at least after Halloween.

A Special Saturday

Well, after working on a special work project until 1:00 on Friday, we decided to have some family time on Saturday.

We've been dying to try out this new restaurant, Wasabi Buffet, for some time now, and we were able to stop in and catch some lunch there. After which, we tried to go to BK to let Melissa play in the play area, but after a few short minutes there, we decided that it was better left for when she's older, as it was just too big for her.

After her nap, we went to the park and played! She loves the park so much, and just ran from one thing to the next. We decided to go ahead and walk to downtown where they were having the classic car show. I got a great picture of the sunset over the lake.

Melissa loved looking at the cars. She has been into cars, and watching the movie Cars a lot, and will just point and say Cars!! She learned a few new words, Edelbrock, Holley and Rat Rod. She also got to push her umbrella stroller all along the lake walk!

We really enjoyed the nice breeze, and finally a nice enough night to be out. We can't wait until the weather cools off some more so that we can spend some more nights out as a family.

A Local Restaurant Review -- Wasabi Buffet

We've been looking for some decent chinese food since our local favorite, China Lane, closed up. The restaurant has 4 seperate buffets. The obligatory "salad" bar with some fruit and desserts and ice cream, The Full Chinese bar which had a good selection of several classic dishes, The Seafood bar, I mostly stayed away from that one, and a Sushi Bar.
I had a bit of everything, and DH had some sushi. I had been craving some egg foo young, and that was one of the first things that I grabbed. It seemed reminiscient of a funnel cake, but with veggies in it. Giving it the benefit of the doubt, I added some sauce. Normally it is served with a lovely gravy, but this was barely even sauce. It had a hint of the flavor of the normal gravy, but it was disappointing. I decided that the Egg foo young was more like a tempura. Next up, was the General Tsao's Chicken. Now, this was very good. Sweet, but it had a good spicy kick to follow up. Fried Rice.....not so much. Just some yellow rice with veggies in it. Next up, wonton soup. I found it odd that they even had this on the buffet at all. They usually don't put those types of things out, as there are certain types of people that will take a bowl full of wontons and no broth. Lucky for me, someone decided to put it out there. The wontons were perfect. DH and I were split on the pot stickers. I thought that they were pretty good. They had a good flavor, but they didn't have any of the sauce to dip them. DH tried them with soy sauce, and thought that they were bland. Melissa enjoyed the Green Beans which were a perfect al dente and some chicken and broccoli. I was also really hoping to have a good eggroll, but alas my search continues. DH has been branching out and tried several of the california rolls, which he enjoyed. They did have peel and eat shrimp, and oysters on the half shell as well as the california rolls and a small selection of hand rolls. All in all, the food was good, the service was outstanding, and we will probably go again for lunch. The adult lunch buffet was $6.75. I will mention that this is a brand new restaurant, and therefore is still quite clean. The one thing that did bother me was that they were making dumplings in the dining room, and cleaning green beans. They didn't have hair nets on, or gloves, and I think that the health department might have written them up for that.

Plastic Bags and The Price of Gas

Are these things tied together? They are!

According to Vincent Coob, about 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year and are causing a global epidemic. The enormous demand for plastic bags ties into the surging global demand for oil -- plastic bags are made from ethylene, a petroleum byproduct. In the United States alone, an estimated 12 million barrels of oil is used annually to make plastic bags that Americans consume.

According to the EPA, only 1% of plastic bags were recycled in 2000. When one ton of plastic bags is reused as something else other than plastic bags or recycled, the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil is saved.

According to the UK government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, there are several problems with plastic recycling, and in particular plastic bags:

1. The high volume to weight ratio of plastic means that the collection and transport of this waste is difficult and expensive
   
2. There are often high levels of contamination in plastic making the recyclate less usable, especially where food products are involved


3. There is a very wide range of plastics in use and segregation is difficult
   the market for using recycled plastic is underdeveloped
   

There's harsh economics behind bag recycling: It costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32.

So now I ask you this.....What are you doing?

We use cloth bags for groceries. We use cloth diapers as much as possible. I use family cloth and cloth pads. We use very few paper towels, and plenty of unpaper towels. We recycle.

Leave me a comment with what you're doing, and I'll choose one winner and send you out one of my reuseable produce bags.