Food and Cooking: Oven Roasted Veggie Goodness

Welcome to my new food obsession... oven roasted vegetables.  While various veggie types get added or subtracted, there are four core ingredients in my current favorite side dish: onions, yellow squash, zucchini, and garlic.  Salt and pepper to taste, roast in a 350°F oven for an hour.

The mix you see here has carrots and sweet potato in it.  I've been known to dice up a tomato (getting close to ratatouille there) as well.  This amount shown here is enough for a side dish for three people at two meals, and it's incredibly cheap and easy.  I will sometimes make this in small dice instead of slices, refrigerate, and use as a relish on burgers or chicken.  It's incredibly tasty on a burger, so much so that you don't even need ketchup!  Click through to see the recipe.

We Were On A Break

There must be something about the post-holidays that makes me react this way... I just take a break from my blog.  It's not intentional, but between the warming weather, my child's school schedule, and various other factors, I'm just not writing on my blog.

I even set Facebook aside this time... *gasp*!

The new factor this time around was the totally insane flare-up of negative internet activity on Ravelry and Facebook over the credit card processing system breach on Knitpicks.  I was angry.  Then I got paranoid.  I went around removing personal information where I could.  I was changing passwords, deleting accounts I no longer needed (or no longer trusted).

Then I was just sick of the whole internet thing altogether.  I took a break.

Don't get me wrong, you still have to check your email (paperless statements, family, etc.) but I found myself hanging out on forums less and less.  It was like the bad guys had finally invaded the last haven of the geeky.

Yeah, I know... the bad guys moved in to the internet neighborhood almost before they were done putting in the "drywall" so to speak, but I never really felt their presence until now.  I had two credit cards fraudulently accessed in two months.  After the first, I blamed my husband using it at the local gas station, or my daughter's lack of PC security.  After the second, I started scouring everyone's machines, looking for viruses and malware.  There were screaming fights involved, mostly because my daughter has Aspergers and she considers her computer to be an extension of her personal space.  I am NOT supposed to go anywhere near it. 

Then the Knitpicks news hit.  Finally I had an answer... sort of.  They claim I'm not one of the people who were exposed.  I don't think they realize who was exposed.  Whatever.  Two cards, both used at their site, both used fraudulently not more than two months after KP closed their breach?  Yeah, I'm putting money on them.  It's there, or Amazon... which admittedly is also a possibility.

So I'm cagier now.  I got a new card from a company that offers virtual card numbers... a one-use CC number that is no longer valid after you use it.  Unfortunately making payments is not as simple as it is with my bank-attached card.  There it's just a matter of transferring funds.

Anyway, my point is... I've been gone.  This is why.  I'm back, but I may not be quite as active.  Also, I'm starting a second blog... not to replace this one, but compartmentalize things.  This one will remain my personal blog... an online diary, if you will.  The other is going to be more focused.   I'll share that one with you all when it's actually doing something.  For now it is dormant, but there will be some exciting stuff very soon.

HtH: One Week Later...

Same sprout, a little taller.

HtH: Why, hello there little guy!

I may blog about gardening often, but let's face it.... I have not been particularly successful.  I did not have a house until about eight months ago.  June was far too late in the year to be starting a new garden in this Texas heat, and my patio container attempts at the apartment were laughable.

I am starting to gain confidence, however.  My fall-planted garlic is still doing well, despite a couple of days last month where we dipped below freezing.  And now, there is this:

That my friends is a lemon tree seedling sprouted from a supermarket lemon.  Here's how I did it.  (Click through to see!)

A Letter to Retailers

During this time of Holiday gift-giving, socializing, children's activities, and family obligations, there is plenty of stress and distractions to go around.  I don't know if the landscape of retail sales is changing, or I'm older and therefore more aware, or both, but this year I have noticed a disturbing trend that has been building over the last five years.

1.  We consumers are not fooled by your "Friends and Family Discount" proclamations.   I could not pick any of you out of a lineup, so do not presume to call me a friend and then offer me a paltry 25% off.  My true friends and family get wholesale prices, so spare me the patronizing emails.

2.  We consumers are not fooled by idiotic "Choose Your Discount" sale prices.  $10 off your $100 order, $20 off your $200 order is still 10%.  $40 off a $400 order doesn't make me feel any more special, and 10% off during the holidays is barely worth my time to open the email.

3.  "Last Chance to Save!!" would mean a lot more if I wasn't getting the same email, slightly changed, every week for the last two months.

The week after Thanksgiving, my unread emails waiting in my inbox every morning was double what it normally was.  It took two weeks to taper back.  I don't even read them anymore, just tick off the boxes next to the headers of the worst offending senders, and delete them unopened.  I finished my holiday shopping in October, mainly because anything that's a "great deal" during the shopping season will not be in stock to ship in time for Christmas.  I am not lured to your website by these great deals, therefore I do not impulsively buy other items to round out my list.

Stop relying on one month a year to make your profits.  If you can barely survive the other 48 weeks a year, then maybe you need to look at scaling back or diversifying.  All retail entities need to stop being greedy, stop trying to take over the market share.  What ever happened to being content with what you have?  Whether you're a consumer, or a retailer, stop trying to expand and grow quite so much.  In retailers it leads to spreading your resources too thin and going into debt during the year, prompting sleazy, desperate tactics during the holidays.  In consumers, it leads to a hollow feeling of dissatisfaction once the holidays are over, an attitude of ravenous consumerism, and a house full of junk you barely use.

And any good you do during the rest of the year to reduce your carbon footprint is done away with in shipping pollution, wrapping paper, and power usage.

Be content with less.

I am pledging to not spend any unnecessary money until January 1st.  Pay the bills, buy food and fuel to get to work, but no gadgets, gizmos, movies, etc.  Handmake gifts out of things you already own, if you need any last-minute additional items.  Giving your hostess a loaf of Cranberry bread is just as welcome and meaningful as a bottle of wine in wrapping paper.  A knitted scarf for your aunt is just as thoughtful as a CD, if not more so.  If the recipients do not seem to appreciate these gifts, that is the fault of the receiver, not the giver.

I could keep going on about how I think advertising has ruined this country, brainwashing our citizens into feeling worthless unless they buy certain products, or that they're not really being good parents unless they give their kids a million things, or that they will suddenly be happy and fulfilled if they only buy THIS item.  And I will look like a hypocrite because I have advertising on my web page, not that I find web advertising all that effective, but it's the principle.  I will stop now, but my main message to retailers this holiday season is this:  I am on to you.  And I refuse to be manipulated anymore.

Food and Cooking: Great Deal

Today only, Amazon has a deal on Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal for the Kindle.  You don't have to own a Kindle to take advantage of this offer... they have a free reading app for your PC or Mac, Android phone, iPhone, and other electronic gadgets.

I don't have to tell you how passionate I am about this nation's food situation, and knowing where our food comes from, and in what condition it arrives on our plate.  Books like these outline the history of America's food industry, and open our eyes to just how things got this way.  I highly recommend everyone educate themselves about food.  You are what you eat.... and that's not just a saying, that is literally and inescapably true.  You supply the building materials for your body's cells to repair and maintain themselves.  If you feed them crap, or worse, poisonous crap in the form of genetically modified or highly processed ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup or agave (which is processed in an eerily similar fashion as HFCS, yet is touted as a "healthy" alternative sweetener), then your body can only repair itself with the meager materials it finds.  If it can't find enough hidden in all the junk...

Lets just say I don't think the rise in autism, food allergies, sleep apnea, fibromyalgia, diabetes, and a whole host of other ailments is due to better diagnostic techniques.  We're being poisoned by the industrialized food system, and while I believe they didn't set out to poison us on purpose, they are ruining the food supply in the interests of making a buck.

The old ways of making food are certainly not fast, and they are NOT cheap, but if you have to eat five times as much food to get the same amount of nutrients, then what's the better bargain?

Food and Cooking: Unintentional Success

Over-eager transylvanian garlic

 Okay, my new thing (besides apparently being really good at growing garlic) is sprouting.  I bought a sampler from Sprout House through Amazon a couple of paydays ago, and we have been sprouting fools, trying the different mixes.  Radish sprouts are a really, really concentrated kind of spicy.  Like putting ten radishes in your mouth and chewing them all at once.  But it's sooooooo good on a sandwich.

It's so darn easy, healthy, and tasty, it's unbelievable more people don't do it, especially with all the contamination recalls of store bought sprouts lately.