Mitch McConnell Would Like The Poor To Stop Taking AdvantageOf The Rich, Please         From addictinginfo.org June 20, 2012 Response to: Mitch McConnell Would Like The Poor To Stop Taking Advantage Of The Rich, Please        

David Serventi · Top Commenter · Oakland, California  

"Wow just wow. The elite really get me angry. As a staunch Republican I don't trust intellectuals like this Ivy League educated constitutional law college professor to understand our government. And I certainly don’t trust a guy who became a community organizer…they’re a bad lot. I prefer to go with my gut and prayer and listen to people like Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Larry the Cable Guy, and Ted Nugent. I fear these intellectuals, especially those in the scientific community. Science scares and confuses me and therefore often angers me. Even though my life has improved every single instance that I have taken time to figure out something that confuses me, I just think it’s easier to get angry and form ideas about public policy while angry. Science often goes against my religious beliefs. I want to cut funding for education and I would rather teach my children at home with a strong biblical curriculum; because I know I would be a better teacher than a so-called “trained professional” with their thuggish tendencies. My biggest issues are stopping the secret Muslim in the White house who was born in Kenya. I want his birth certificate…again. I think we should eliminate welfare all together. I have read those statistics that the over-whelming majority of people use welfare as a bridge between jobs and never go on it again but I just don’t believe those so-called “facts”. I go by what I see on TV, and I see lazy people taking my money. They are not at all like the people that Jesus preached about helping. As far as so-called abortion “rights”, I see no contradiction with me being pro-war, pro-guns, anti-universal health care, pro-death penalty and my being pro-life. I also want to stop gay marriage, because it really scares me and other people marriages can have a huge impact on my life. I also realize the world is out to get us and we need to constantly beef up our military because we're in danger. I just can’t figure out why the elite think it’s better to educate and help our own citizens get back on their feet when we can be using tax dollars on killing people who may threaten us. We spend 800 billion on our military's annual budget and that China is second with only 80 billion in expenditures.....I say we cut funding for education and welfare spend more on the military. I think that's the best way to make America the world leader. We don't need brilliant minds and an educated public strong in science and math. We just need prayer and a powerful military......Romney 2012.......


Eyes rolling."

The commenter really had me going on the first few sentences. As funny as this is, there is alot of truth to it.

Ignorance?

My question of the day:  Is ignorance contagious? (Would you be a carrier if it were?)
Guess I am a bit cynical today, which comes from reading and watching the news. For years I did not have time or the inclination to watch and research what's going on in the political arenas. Times certainly have changed, unfortunately not for the better. I have been an independent for most of my life and lean a bit left....or maybe even more than a bit left. The parties today do not look like the parties from the 60's and 70's. Back then I campaigned for George McGovern.

I love to read the comments on the news sites and analyze them a bit. The comments of the Fox is so different than those of... let's say the Huffington Post.

This week I found it hard to keep up with the flip flopping of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. I had hardly read Jeb's comments on how his party has changed and maybe the needed to be a bit more .... so, after a few more articles, I went back a few screens and refreshed. There was a new article and Jeb already had "walked back" on what he said. WOW that was fast!

So I decided I needed a little comic relief, so went to www.thepeopleofwalmart.com to see if I knew anyone, which I did not.
What came into mind was: THESE PEOPLE ARE AMERICANS AND VOTE!!!

I am beginning to think ignorance is bliss.

My girlfriends felt very left out, so I told them I would post a picture of us.

Trailer park trashy women: Billy Jean, PrairieFloozie, Sheena.

This afternoon, I decided I would read everything I had written over my time here. My, my, my how life has changed. My house is less full, I was right about the recession, there is a new sewing machine in my sewing room, I am heavier, cook less, and…. Let me catch you up.

May of 2010:  As every spring, Saturday morning found me out spading up the gardens and hanging out clothes. Sunday morning my left knee really hurt.  Monday I went to work,  and I noticed I still had some pain while walking up the ramp to the building. I had only gotten about 20 feet into the building, my left foot seemed to be stuck to the carpet and the pain in my knee became unreal. Talk about stopping dead in your tracks! The gals who came in with me ran to my desk and got my chair. They pushed me nearly a half block to my cubicle. We all were laughing, but it was not really a laughing matter. Two hours later I was back in town at my doctor’s office explaining the pain was unreal. (Of course my insurance was not going to kick in for a month!) There was an Xray, pain pills and I was told to stay off it for a week, then 6-8 weeks on crutches. I was lucky, as my friend, Marie, had come to live with me for a little while. She took good care of me and the furbrats.

May of 2011:  There is no more gardening for me. Luckily, I have one of the best neighbors in the world. Beth takes care of moving my snow and mowing the grass and keeping the yard looking presentable.

Beth loves to be outside and do yard work. I swear she use to mow her yard 3 times a week! Over the 17 years she has lived next door, the tree in her back yard has grown so large that her garden spot is mostly shaded. For the last few years, her tomato and pepper plants were sadly puny.

I decided to invite her to use my garden spots and water, which has worked out for both of us. I get veggies and she gets to play in the dirt. Every day in the summer, there is a grocery bag of “the picks of the day”. I gave her all my canning jars, so she can make (me) salsa and refrigerator pickles. In the winter there is a bag several times a month with some wonderful baked goods!

May of 2012: I have hated to go into the back yard because the flower beds have become a real mess. Beth has worked hard to keep the yard cleaned up and looking neat, but those flower beds broke my heart. Late this winter I decided to see if Beth would like to plant more areas. She said she would be happy to have more space, so has pulled out most of the flower beds and last week started planting. The space is rather bare, but I love the look because I do not see a few flowers with all the weeds. There are still a few flowered areas, which I hope I can at least clean up a bit.

Winter 2010

This winter has drug on and on. Maybe by June all this snow will melt, but I swear, it might be July! I have had to shovel a path out back so Charlie can go out and do his business. Luckily I dug the path over to the big fir tree in back and he can go under the tree where there is not much snow. Actually he has enjoyed having some room to move around under that tree.



The last year has been rather difficult, as it seems like most of my family has died. Starting last Feb. my Aunt Sophie, who was my last living aunt, passed away. Then in June, it was my brother Leslie, then his twin LeRoy went in November. My sister, Karen, who had terminal cancer died in September. January my favorite cousin, Sandie quietly slipped away. Lately I have thought it was proably a good thing I was not real close to my siblings, as it would have really devestated me.



On a good note, I finally found a new inside sales position and am out of that job from Hell!

I got fired....yes, fired...and it was the best thing that could have happened, as I had a job interview set up for the day after I got fired. You all have no idea how relieved I was, since I had been looking for a job for as long as I had the job from Hell, which was 2 1/2 years! The depression and stress lifted instantly!!!



Talk about my luck changing? I had a string of things happen:

• Found a great deal on tires, which I needed badly. The were 80,000 mile tires for the price of 50,000 mile.


• Needed clothes for work and it was clearance on clearance at Penney's and Gordman's. For less than $100 I got 3 sweaters, 5 pairs of nice dress slacks and a really cute blazer.


• For years I have not had a stove, which was not a big deal, since it was only me. I had been looking online and stopped at a few home stores to see what was out there. I looked in the classified section of our local tv station website and found one that looked really new for $150!


• The new job is about a 60-65 mile round trip away. The 3rd day I got into a car pool for $15 a week.

I said to everyone I really should buy a lottery ticket!

This week end an old friend of mine moved in with me. We are still trying to find room for all the groceries she has and trying to figure out how to hook up the electronics we are putting together. The move will be good for both of us. Now hopefully she can find a permanent job!

I am thinking I should buy a lottery ticket. :-)

What a Mess

This is the long week end when I work like a mad woman to get the yard in order. This year is different because I am downsizing the flower beds and dividing or getting rid of flowers. All of the flowers are perennials and quite hardy, so the beds become more jungle like every year.

It had rained Friday night, so it was a perfect time to start pulling or dividing out unwanted or overgrown plants. The front flowerbed was over grown with Snow on the Mountain and Lily of the Valley, which were choking out the hostas and ferns. I pulled 5 grocery bags out and there will be another 6-7 from my east beds. Snow on the Mountain has become my main noxious weed! It has great color and is pretty, but if it is not contained...

In the afternoon my daughter came over to help her old Mom clean out junk that has to go. She is just starting to improve her yard, so many of the building materials I had laying around and flowers I need to divide have gone home with her. YES!

This pile of rubble is what was left of the old waterfall berm after I pulled out all the old cinder block we used to elevate it. There was dirt put on top of the blocks, then the plants were added. I wanted it gone! (There are pictures in previous posts of the old waterfall, which had gone thru many transformations in the past.)

Daughter really would like to have my honeysuckle bushes and thought she could dig them out. I did not say anything, but I knew that was not going to happen! There are 3 of them. She left them a bit ragged, but I can fix that.

I swear they grow about a foot a day until they reach about 7 feet tall! I really like them, but they are placed where they are shading my small tree and it was not doing well. (You can kind of see the left side of the tree is a bit sad.) Either I will have to keep them pruned on a monthly basis or try to kill them off, that decision has not been made yet.

At the end of the afternoon there was a pickup load of cinder block from the old pond, a roll of fencing, a multitude of rolls of black edging, and numerous fence posts of metal and wood. It was about 4:30 when she left and we had worked for about 4 hours. She was going home to plant the boxes of flowers in her gardens. I wonder how much she got done.

I got the trimmer out and edged all the path pavers and around a few of the beds. Today I need to mow and it will be looking wonderful!

Charlie and the Chihuahuas were outside all day and when we came in the house they wanted food and were ready for bed. After I had a shower, a pizza, and a few beers we all crawled into bed to watch Practical Magic. It was a fluffy movie, but a great ending to a very productive day.

I am not sure where I have been, but have felt guilty I have not posted. Part has been that my camera died and I thought I should not post. So I got a new camera in Feb. and did not post. Life has twist and turns.
Do I have anything to say? For awhile I thought I did not. When you search the web and look at all there is going on....and now there is the twitter thing... Maybe I should worry less that everyone has allot to say..... and go back to thinking about writing like an old household columnist like Erma Bombeck. OK, I am not as funny, but have a few things to impart.

A TRIP THRU MY GARDEN

These pictures were taken June 14, 2008

The lilac bushes (23 of them) were in bloom and made a very nice backdrop for the rest of the garden. If you noticed the swing, you will see where I spend alot of my time when I am not digging in the dirt.

This spring I took out 3 honeysuckle bushes and 8 huge brown yard bags of a variety of weeds and plants I thinned out. There are still a few carts of dirt to move and the front yard to thin. People keep saying they would love to have some of my perennials, but no one shows up to get them. There are no annuals, as the garden is definitely full and by the end of July will be a jungle.

This is the vegetable garden..... 2 tomatoe plants and 3 green peppers. Oh and a few onion sets. This is certainly all I need. The spring has been unseasonably cool and wet. It seems they are not growing at all, but since the pix were taken a few weeks ago, they have grown alot. Finally we have had some warm weather so give them a growth spurt.

Spring in the Garden

In the last years I have had various configurations of pond and waterfall. Two years ago I got tired of fixing leaks in the waterfall and rearranged the rocks around the pond without the waterfall. I really enjoyed the pond, but it was something I continously had to mess with and I decided the flower beds and yard was enough for me to do.

Pond and Waterfall July 2004

Every spring the preformed basin is half full of fetid water, dead leaves, dead plants, worms, trash and occasionally a carcass of some small animal who did not know they could not swim. After skimming out all the debris, I pump or suck out the fetid water. It is just a very unpleasant job.

Every spring I say to myself, "It is hard to remember you came to drain the swamp, when you are up to your arse in alligators". Now with the water restrictions on in my area it is hard to justify filling the pond and maintaining it all summer. I love the water sound, but not the time I have to spend scooping out leaves, cleaning the pump filter, and trying to get the ph balance right so I do not have green slime.

The first part of May the preformed pond (4’ x 6’ x 4’) was taken out. (I am wondering what to do with it, as it is sitting on my patio.) Some of the old waterfall berm of cinderblocks and other leftovers went into the pond hole. My neighbor, John, who does concrete work, brought me a load of nice clean black dirt and was nice enough to wheelbarrow the dirt to fill the hole.

In March, my daughter and I happened upon a "bean pot" at Hobby Lobby, which I thought might work for a new water feature. Luckily it was on sale for 50% off, or I would not have bought it. Since I already had the tub, a small pump and tubing, it was just a matter of buying some 1/2" mesh wire to cover the bottom basin and top with the rock. Water feature diagram.

I am very happy with the results. Now there is more time to play in the dirt!

Water Feature May 2008

Respecting Property

As most of you know I am getting closer to 60 and am wondering if I am not an old fashioned in my ways.

Recently on the Frugal Living Forum there was a post about painting the interior of the house because the kids had been pretty hard on the walls. Several women made a comment about their young children had written and doodled on the walls that it was time to paint them.

Another gal made a comment how the walls needed freshening up in her house as the fingerprints, grim and scars from the children’s wear and tear looked pretty bad. There were several posts commiserating on these comments.

These remarks left me scratching my head, as I am wondering if people forgot how to respect the property they are working so hard to pay the mortage on. Why would you allow your children to write on the walls and abuse their property? What happened to pride in your home and all the hard work it takes to keep it looking nice and clean?

IF, as a child, I would have had the courage to even think about writing, coloring, painting or marring my Mother's walls in anyway……………I WOULD HAVE BEEN IN TROUBLE!

Mom was a single parent and worked hard to save to build our 1st house. She was fastididiouss and expected me to learn to be also. Her attitude was if I had to clean up the messes I made, I would make fewer. There was not the attitude of "kids will be kids"; they are going to be messy, doodle and write where ever they feel like it or run their grimy little hands along the hallway walls and smudge dirt around the light switches, spill milk on the floor etc.

After playing a sweaty game of ball it is necessary to use the bathroom and only naturally my grimy little paws, and those of my friends, would be slid down the hallway walls.
Have you noticed it is impossible for children not to lean against a corner or wall while asking to have friends over or perhaps go for ice cream? It is like the wall and you MUST support each other. A few summer evenings of the first year in the new house were spent washing grimy fingerprints off the hallway walls. I may have made a bigger mess on the floors, but Mom was making a point and teaching me respect for taking care of what I was blessed with…a nice home.

I wish I would have a dime for every time Mom told me to keep my hands off the walls AND to tell my friends they do not to put their hands on the walls either. Yes, I did tell my little friends I would be “killed” if the walls were touched!

To this very day, I wash my walls at least once a year and every few months or so wash around the light switches and around the door knobs etc. It is just general cleaning. Since I love decorating I might paint every 4-5 years, but it is not to cover up disrespect and dirt, nor has it been when I have had small children.

Think about it. It is about respect and taking care of the property you are working hard to pay the mortgage on. How much does it save you in grief and even embarrassment to take care of your home? How much does soap and water cost? How much time and money does it save you by not having to paint? What does it teach your children?

My blog and my thoughts……………

WHAT GOES AROUND...COMES AROUND

Lately some of my spare time has gone to help my daughter paint the interior of her house. It is a good bonding experience and nice to eat someone else’s cooking. We make a great team, as I like to do the cutting in and she likes to do the rolling.

Any color would be better than what she had, as it was the most non-descript color I have ever seen. I have a real aversion to taupe, but this was even worse. Have you ever noticed having an aversion to color? Does it nearly make you ill?

Over time, I have had my color mistakes like everyone else, but as we say: It is only paint! There was a time in the mid 90’s I found a cute little comforter and curtain set for my bedroom. So, thinking I could not go wrong, I picked a “pink” from the set and painted the walls. It was a bit intense, but maybe I could get use to it? Change is not always easily accepted, but I figured after a few days…. NOT. In the morning, one eye would open and see the wall, the other would open and I would groan. It should have been soothing; after all it was Pepto Bismol Pink! 6 months was enough!

The trends today are going back to what I saw as a young adult in the late 60’s.

My daughter has adopted the "brights" of the 60's-70's styles: lime green, bright turquoise, hot pink and loud orange. Her home office is called Jetfire, which is a tangerine color and much better than the pumpkin it was a few years ago.

There are awesome new designers who are getting into the retro creations. This is a sample of fabric done by Jessica Jones, who has How about orange... blog. Stop over there and see the neat ideas and creations she has going. For some of us it is a blast from the past. She does a great job updating furniture and has some fun crafts. The graphic above is from her first fabric collection. There are alot of great links to other young creative people also!

It took a lot of dissuading to get my daughter to give up the idea of putting turquoise with it. All I could think of was Howard Johnson’s from the 70’s! I was abhorred, but since I do not live there…

After I thought about the room design a long time, I realized I had a number of swatches of discontinued upholstery fabrics that I salvaged when I worked at the furniture store. I came up with some wonderful combos of wild prints and solids to use for pillows and perhaps some sort of wall art. I lugged the bag over to her house and made her look at the possibilities. Guess what! She liked the ideas. We discussed what we could do in the room, as it is very orange, a black framed futon covered in a dark brown. Cream recycled heavy weight sheers and mostly dark furniture.

Once again inspiration hit me and I was on a roll. I really felt the color combo she had chosen was rather juvie. I told her she need something more adult, but she was afraid she might lose the FUN aspect. I explained you can decorate more adult and have a bit more class WITH WHIMSY. She said that is exactly what she wanted.

The whimsy will come with the bright patchwork pillows using rather graphic fabrics and art work. It has been years since I have painted, but I think I can do something organically graphic? I am very excited! (Soon as I have pictures to post, they will be here.)

Personally, my diningroom has taken a step back in time to the olive (NOT avocado), golds (NOT harvest gold) and rusts (NOT burnt orange). They are not quite the shades we had in the 60’s, as they are cleaner and clearer.

After having lived with a burnt orange “living room set” for nearly 30 years, I have no desire to see that color again! Yes, it does pay to buy quality…and it is a good thing I learned to slipcover!

MY CONVENIENCE OATMEAL "PACKETS"

Last night I started to write about the winter doldrums, but got side tracked on changing the garden....easy to do these days.
Was going to talk about making your own convenience foods. If you will remember Sesame Street's Swedish Chef, you will have a good picture of my cooking style. After a week end of cooking I most definitely have to wipe down the cupboards, the floor and me! This is why I think cooking all at one time on the week end works out well for me.

For some reason this winter oatmeal sounded good...evidently I was really bored with food because, I really have not had a taste for oatmeal for years. I tried a dish one morning and found it to be rather tasty, so decided it would be a good food to "prepackaged". Usually on the week end I make up a 9-12 of these because it is just easier than messing around every morning...especially since I am a very messy cook.

I had saved a number of little yogurt cups (recycle!) and found they were just perfect to use for a single serving.
1/2 cup quick oatmeal, a few raisins, a tablespoon of brown sugar or plain, a dash of cinnamon and if you wish a tablespoon of coffee creamer or powdered milk. Just dump in a bowl, add 1 1/3 yogurt cups of water and nuke. Sometimes I add a bit of milk, sometimes not.

I have been trying to use up stuff just sitting in the cupboards.
The creamer is left over from making hot cocoa mix earlier this winter.
I was nearly out of brown sugar and remembered you can make your: 1 cup plain white sugar add 2 tablespoons of molasses (where did 2 bottles of molasses come from?) and mix well....this takes awhile and a fork works pretty good for stirring it up. After it sits a day or so it is yummy! Actually I think I like it better than boughten brown sugar.

WINTER DOLDRUMS

Don't you hate this time of year? Seems like winter has drug on and I know we will have a few more months, complete with a few more snow storms. In Mexico and some parts of the southern US gardens are being planted and people are hoping for rain. I am so envious! Here in the northern climates the seed catalogs are in the mailboxes and we are just dreaming of what we are going to plant.

For those of you who have been in my back yard, you know it has become a jungle and definitely time to divide and conquer the plants. Every spring I watch the little shoots come up and think the beds really looks sparce. I am sure the whole garden is going to look really sickly. In reality, by June it is overgrown. It breaks my heart to destroy any of the plants and I keep telling people, to come over and adopt some plants. Hopefully a few will show up this year!

The pond and waterfall are alot of fun, but a whole lot of work. The last several years I have told myself that pond has to go, as I do not want to deal with fish or green slime. My neighbor, Debbie, says she loves to listen to the sound of the fountain in the pond when her window is open at night. Of course, in the spring, she is not wading around in rubber garden boots and vacuuming the decaying leaves off the bottom, or fishing out the little critters who did not know how to swim. This year the pond is coming out!

I want to go out with a cold beverage in had, sit on the swing, and listen to the sound of water over the sound of the traffic! So I have decided to cover up the pond, disassemble the water fall area and put in a simple, but noisy fountain. Now I just have to figure out what kind of fountain I want to do. I have the pumps and a variety of bits and pieces, so should be able to come up with something. Like interior design, it is time for a makeover of the yard. I have pictures and great memories, but it is time to move on to something new and less maintenace. This is the time of year to dream of the warm breezes and watching fireflies in the evening.

I am anxious to go out and play in the dirt!

BLACK MAGIC CAKE

Lately time has slipped away...unfortunately winter has not! The weather has been perfect to stay in and hibernate. Wanted to post this for a gal from the Frugal Living Forum and for a Valentine treat for you all to try. This is probably my favorite cake of all time.

This has been a recipe I have used for years. It is a bit different as cakes go, as you do not put frosting on it, atho it says frost as desired. It is so moist that it would be difficult to try to smear frosting on top. Usually I serve it with ice cream or whipped cream. You might even want to try a bit of carmel over it with the ice cream.

Black Magic Cake
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup strong black coffee
1 cup of buttermilk or sour milk*
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9 inch pans or one 13X9X2 inch pan. In large mixer bowl blend sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add eggs, coffee, buttermilk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed with an electric mixer for 2 minutes. Batter will be thin. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 30 to 35 minutes for round pans, 35 to 40 minutes for rectangular pan or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes then remove from pans to wire racks. Frost as desired.* To sour milk: use 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to 1 cup of milk

USING UP FOODS - WEEK END COOKING

Every week end I try to cook for the coming week. The pantry is a little slim right now, so worked on using what I had. There was a large bag of potatoes which were starting to sprout and I really did not want them to go bad.

With the old Saladmaster grinder/shredder I make some of the taters into hash browns, skins and all. After shredding them, I nuked them so they were partially done, spread them on an old pizza pan to cool and bagged them up for the freezer. I love

hash browns!

The Saladmaster was boughten at a flea market for $10 about 5 years ago. At the time I thought it was a bit spendy, but I have really gotten alot of use out of it. Amazingly the original manual was with it. There were 6 "cams" with it. The best part is that it is stainless steel. I need a small screw to put a knob on the handle, so will have to remember that when I get to the hardware store.

Some of the taters were peeled, as were some carrots, then boiled and mashed. If you have not tried this, you really should, as it is excellent. Babies love them too! The peels all went into my compost coffee can to be spread later this week on top of the snow over the flower beds. One of the gals from the Frugal Living Forum does this and says it works great.

There was turkey from Thanksgiving in the freezer that needed to be used up too. I had some sauteed celery and onions in the freezer (also saved at the spare of the moment) and, of course, some chicken broth, then added some mixed frozen veggies for turkey soup. I made a few egg dumplings, then all of it was cooled and put in the freezer.

I always save the ends of my bread and whatever seems to be getting a bit old in a plastic bag in my freezer. There was enough to make some great bread pudding. Bread pudding is wonderful for desert with a bit of milk or ice cream or for breakfast.

Bread Pudding

3-4 cups cubed dried bread. Wheat is ok! Dried, stale etc.
2 cups of milk heated, but not boiling (I used powdered milk)
2 T butter
1/8 t salt
½ cup sugar, I use brown sugar.
2-3 eggs beaten

1 t. vanilla
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
Raisins and - or dried cranberries

Heat milk (Put the raisins in it to plump them up) and butter then add bread. Supposedly you are to let this cool, but I never do.
Beat eggs; add the rest of the ingredients. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 min. in a buttered or no stick pan.

Sunday morning I had put a small beef roast in the crocked pot, so had a fabulous dinner about 2:20 of roast beef, mashed tater-carrots and some frozen broccoli. Yummy!

Between cooking this and that, I wiped down the cupboards, throughly dusted the diningroom and livingroom and mopped up the laminate floors. Then I did a little rearranging of furniture to give things a new look. It lifted my spirits, if nothing else.

Sunday evenings have become bread baking time. My daughter gave me a bread machine for Christmas and I am trying to get the nack of it. The white bread comes out great, but my wheat breads are either crusty and dry or crusty and doughy in the middle. I have gotten a few ideas from posters and am going to try wheat bread again.

A BIT OF FOLLOW UP

After writing "Are you making your share of trash?", I decided I would see how much my trash weighed this week. I made 10 #, which is not too bad, but would like to get it down lower yet! All the cardboard was torn up and flattened, no recycleable, puppy newpapers and chicken bones all fit into one large kitchen bag.

I know 5 pounds of it was skin and bones from the 10 pounds of chicken I cooked, cut up and froze. I have wondered if buying Wal Mart's 10# chicken hindquarters was a good deal or not.
It is alot of work:

• get the big roaster out
• cook chicken, cool, drain
• put the broth in a container for soups
• skin, debone and chop up then bag it
• clean the roaster and put it away.
• put the unusable parts in the garbage.

The 10# bag is $4.30. I end up with a bit less than 5 #'s of usuable chicken and some broth. So that is about $.86/#. Even adding in the energy to cook it and the garbage man to haul it away, it's still a good deal for chicken. Since I have the time...I will continue with this mess. It is nice to have the chicken for Maggie, Jack and me. It is convenient to have it in the freezer, but not convenient to make!