Urg! Veggies

I've learned not to buy a bunch of perishable food the week before going on a week long, out of state vacation. I didn't eat nearly enough of it and half of it that I couldn't eat went bad before I came back.

The asparagus, in particular, was really nasty, as were the portabello mushrooms. I should have known better, but I was overly veggie zealous.

Kroger and Shell Gas

**I don't get paid to write stuff like this...**

My coworker told me the other day that Shell stations have an agreement with Kroger. I don't know if this is local to Nashville, but I scanned my Kroger Saver's Plus card in the credit card reader of the pump at a Shell gas station before swiping my credit card. It saved me ten cents per gallon. My receipt even said that I saved ten cents a gallon from doing it. So, my gas price went from 2.55 to 2.45. It even took the price down on the reader above the grade of gasoline when I pressed the 87 button.

Made my day!

3D Avatar

I recently saw my first 3D movie, Avatar. I enjoyed the movie a lot, and would consider going to it again. (No, I'm not some paid spokesperson that I have to disclose with these new laws regarding bloggers).

I had to wear the special glasses over the ones I normally wear. I have a bit of a small nose, so they barely fit.

Call me old fashioned, but I was expecting to the the 3D glasses where one lens is red and the other blue. I was wondering when this changed?

Also, I felt a little sick to my stomach during the movie, but I wasn't sure if it was from the 3D effects or something else. I did enjoy the 3D aspects of the movie, and I thought Avatar was a good one to try it out, though it was a bit expensive.

Recipe for Spaghetti Squash

I got this from cooks.com.

1 spaghetti squash
2 tbsp. butter
Pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut squash in half lengthwise. Remove seeds. Spread butter over each half. Place flesh side down on cookie sheet. Bake 1 hour. Using spoon, loosen flesh into spaghetti-like strands. Serve with pepper and butter.


I served this with spaghetti sauce over it after pulling the squash onto a plate.

We first tried eating it without the spaghetti sauce, but it was pretty tasteless with just the butter and pepper. After adding the sauce, it tasted just the pasta. The texture is similar to angel hair. This is a dish I would make again in a heartbeat, though it was too much food for the two of us. Next time I'm going to only cook half of it and try wrapping the other half for cooking the next day or two days later. I imagine cooking it all and then reheating wouldn't be very good.

Toilet Paper

Lately I've read a few articles discussing how old growth forests are being felled for Americans' obsession with soft toilet paper. In the past, I hadn't thought about where my toilet paper comes from, but I am usually conscious to reuse my paper, ever increasing my pile of scratch paper before finally calling a piece completely used (think loose leaf paper).

The first time I read about the old growth forests being used for super-soft toilet paper, I pushed the thought out of my mind. Soft toilet paper makes my day a little brighter...

But I keep reading about these old growth forests being felled. Canada is one of the places this is happening, which I think is a little too close to home. I'm not saying that chopping down the rain forest is a good thing, but it's easier to push the reality behind (yes I do mean behind) my own actions when the trees are so far away.

Social and environmental responsibility aren't always easy. I have to rethink my shopping habits.

Screenplays

When I attended Killer Nashville (www.killernashville.com) last weekend, I learned many things. One of the shockers to me was the length of screen plays. I attended a panel on tricks novelists can learn from screen plays. Screen plays are much shorter than novels. I heard over and over again that they average around 100 pages, but many times less. No wonder so many times the book is better than the movie! I hadn't realized how much less room there was in a screen play to get plot across.

A typical novel runs around 100,000 words, or around 400 typed Microsoft Word pages when double spaced and size 12 font.

Grapefruit

Eating lots of grapefruit can make certain medications not work properly or may actually interact with medicine.

This is a good reason for me to never go onto the grapefruit diet.

Egg Beaters

I tried Egg Beaters recently. They aren't half bad. As far as scrambled eggs go, I couldn't tell a difference between them and real eggs. When preparing the scrambled eggs, I used olive oil, and other times I used vegetable oil. In both cases, the scrambled eggs were pretty good.

Then I tried the store brand. I couldn't tell a difference between the store brand and the Egg Beaters brand except that they're colored a slightly different shade of yellow. Both were yummy. Bye bye bad fats and cholesterol!

I've not tried baking with Egg Beaters yet. If any of you have used them in recipes, please comment on your success or lack thereof. I'm not sure I want to invest my time and other ingredients until I know about a few easy baking recipes in which the Egg Beaters worked well.

Pennsylvania Dutch

According to the Book Crossing Over: One Woman's Exodus from Amish Life by Ruth Irene Garrett with Rick Farrant, there is no word in Pennsylvania Dutch for love. I'm referencing page 28 of that book. Crossing over is Ruth Irene Garrett's true story about leaving the Old Order Amish Community in Kalona, Iowa. She says (and I'm paraphrasing) that when the "English" concept of love is referred to by the Amish that they use the German word for it, "liebe."