Children of the Corn... Syrup

Shopping for groceries with children is always a frantic and forgetful experience. I have read stories of teaching children colors and things like that by walking through the produce. That sounds like a wonderful idea, however WALKING through the produce aisle doesn't happen with my kids. It's more of a riding the cart, jump off and hope mom is looking, run towards the cookies type of trip with my two assistant shoppers. This means I don't have a whole lot of time to read ingredients. I go for as many things that say organic as possible. Recently though I had a trip to the store that required extra caution.

I went to the junky discount grocery. The one that has Pop Tarts, Trix, and florescent "fruit" snacks the moment you walk into the door. Artificial is the main word you see. They do, by popular demand of our nations "green" trend have organic things. You have to search but the prices are low enough it might be worth the battle.

I found some turkey burgers that seemed OK and went to grab some buns to go with them. The first one I picked up was pretty inexpensive so I checked the ingredients. Corn Syrup was number 2 on the list. After checking every bun they had, and some brands I had picked up at other stores without looking. Corn Syrup was on every one of them.

Next stop... "mommy can we get applesauce? I like it now!" Sure! Ground up apples sound like a great cool summer treat. Once again, corn syrup. On one of them it came on the ingredient list BEFORE apples. I'm not sure how that was even possible. After some digging I managed to find one that didn't contain that nasty ingredient. Thank you Tree Top!

Now, we are in a nation that has a childhood obesity problem. I have heard it blamed on video games and too much TV. I'm not saying they aren't to blame some, but come one! Corn syrup is in pretty much everything we buy. You have to really go out of your way to avoid it and with two children in the store it's pretty exhausting to do.

Recent studies have shown that as the use of Corn syrup in food has increased there has been a parallel increase in cases of diabetes. With all the activities that kids are signed up for these days it really is hard for me to believe that sedimentary lifestyle alone is to blame for the weight gain of American youth.

Simply avoiding products that are known sweets like cookies and cake just doesn't work. I ordered broccoli for Zionna at a market and the helpful sales person informed me that there was corn syrup in the broccoli I was about to purchase and she asked me if I was sure I wanted it. This was a rare instance of a person caring enough to tell me. I was extremely grateful for the information but mostly I was shocked.

The floods in the Midwest took out a bunch of corn fields, there is rumor of food prices going up even more because of this. Gee, do you think if they removed corn syrup from the ingredient list of all these foods maybe we wouldn't be in such bad shape price wise?

It's going to be hard, and I will have to find a recipe for hamburger buns, but my family is done with corn syrup.

Can I fix it?

YES I CAN!!!!! (Bob the Builder reference, not Obama)

This is my braggy post because I am proud of myself for being a handy gal around the house.

This past week I....
Made two rain barrels for water catchment
took apart and fixed the washing machine (i think)
dug up bamboo from somebody's yard and transplanted to my own
harvested lots of lettuce, peas, and spinach
blanched and froze lots of spinach
killed 500 million weeds with my bare hands
planted more food
ripped up some of the lawn and turned it into a wildflower bed
fixed two pumps on our pond and gave away some of the extra plants
built an Adirondack chair (ok so it was a kit in a box and mostly done)

I think that is it.
This next week I plan to paint the kitchen and possibly make my own paint. Oh yes, fun fun!

There are no photos because I have been to tired to take any. I shall now go soak in the hot tub and drink my wine!

Dead Head

I wish this was a posting about that stinking Nutria! He is still around and after my lettuce!
This isn't a posting about the Grateful Dead, although Jerry did make a few stops in Eugene back in the day. This is about Rhododendrons.
Now if you are like me a few months ago you will be like...Rhodowhat? They are a VERY popular flowering bush that grow in just about every yard in Eugene. We have at least 6 in our yard alone.
When we bought the house they were just plain green bushes and this summer I was delightfully surprised to see flowers all over them. Pink, white, purple. Oh, they were so pretty! Then the weather got slightly warm and the flowers dried up and began to fall off.
My super helpful neighbor explained to me that it was time to "dead head" them. I think I looked at him sideways for at least a few minutes before he walked into his yard and gave me a demonstration. You pluck off the top "dead head." However, you must wear gloves and bring a bucket to fill. When you pick them they are sticky like sap and will cling all over you.
Today I ventured out to the front yard and managed to "dead head" three of the bushes.
Now, why would we do such a thing? Why not wait for a heavy rain or wind to knock them off? Well, for one they look kinda depressing once they are dead. Second, and more important...they won't flower anymore if you don't! Every year that you don't take the heads off they produce less and less flowers. If you do take the heads off then you get EVEN MORE gorgeous blooms the next spring. We will see next spring if it was time well spent today.
My gloves are sappy and it's time to listen to some dancing teddy bear music... or not.

EVOO what the?

So, I am mostly a non-tv watcher and my house doesn't get a million channels. (I would prefer not get any but the cable company insist it cost the same for internet with or without the tv.) I don't get Food Network. Maybe I am out of the Rachael Ray loop but for this should I suffer when trying to find a good recipe. Should my family suffer when I force them to eat this dried out thing once called a zucchini?
I had a recipe swap with some friends a couple years back and after flipping through the book we had created together I saw a recipe for baked veggies. One in particular for Zucchini. Looking at the recipe pretty much everything was a spice except one I didn't recognize called EVOO. I figured it must be a spice as well so I spiced up the zucchini and stuck it in the oven. What I got was a very dried out, flavorful, but odd textured thing that my kids refused to eat. (oddly enough my children actually like zucchini.)
Today I decided to make it again, only this time I was going to google search EVOO and figure out where to buy such a spice. Well, for non-food network watchers like myself. It stands for Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Rachel Ray said it one day and apparently it's all the rage among the cooks to say EVOO instead of the longer version. I don't have anything against Rachel. She seems nice enough, I saw her live on a taping of the Tonight Show when we lived in LA. I'm sure she didn't mean to ruin my dinner.
Come to think of it, I hate acronyms in general. My husband used them a lot when we were first chatting online (yes folks, we met online) and it just made me crazy! I finally told him about my hatred of acronyms and now he uses them even more. Nice guy eh?
Anyway, back to the Zucchini problem. Cooking the new improved recipe as we speak. Baking in the oven. La la la... this is what we do while we wait. We shall see how the recipe ends up with my new knowledge.
Here is the recipe for those of you wondering, and everyone who could care less too.

Oven Roasted Zucchini
---------------------
Preheat oven to 400
cut your zucchini into inch thick rounds
mix in a bowl with Extra Virgin Olive Oil (that wasn't so bad to type out really)
sea salt, ground black pepper, rosemary, and garlic seasonings.
lay zucchini out on a baking sheet
bake, uncovered for 25-35 minutes
check often for your desired tenderness.

Swamp Rat

If you have ever watched Aladdin you may remember him being called a street rat. Well, I sometimes call Ted a swamp rat since he was born in Louisiana. It was a joke, he claims to be a Texan and I like to remind him that officially he is not. I thought I had made up the term "swamp rat" being the clever lady that I am.
Now the point of this post isn't to OUT him as a non-texan or prove that I am a mean horrible wife who makes fun of her husband's origins. The point is, that I met an official SWAMP RAT! It's living in our backyard, it may have friends, and despite the fact that we have given it a name it will be relocated soon.
Her name is Peggy the Lawnmower and she is also known as Nutria. Looks like a groundhog with the tail of a rat. She enjoys munching on grass, taking long dips in the pond, and living under our shed. Her habits have led to making my koi pond look more like a potty and everyone tells me that she will be tearing apart the garden next.
Now, these critters were brought into the USA (Louisiana to be exact) for the fur. Apparently they make a fantastic hat! The rule here in Oregon is that you can't catch and release, you can't shoot in city limits. So grab a cage, drag it to the country and fire away!!!! yee haw!
I plan on breaking the law and releasing it into the wetlands area. If you see me on the 6 o'clock news please come bail me out of jail. I don't like killing things, even if they are pests. I even catch mice and release them far away. I do kill spiders though, so WATCH OUT nasty little spiders!!! I will smush you in a second.

Fairy Festival

There was a Fairy festival last weekend and I took Zionna. Last month she drew what she wanted her dress to look like and then I went to work sewing it. I made it out of a pillow case, a valance, and some sheer rainbow fabric. I am thinking of making these dresses and trying to use 100% recycled material from thrift stores and then maybe sell them on etsy.
We had a lot of fun at the fairy festival wandering around the life size Candy Land board and playing with our friends. For our wings we used coat hangers, and tights that Zionna outgrew. Then we painted designs on them. I didn't get a photo of mine but I was wearing some of course!

Don't eat the leaves!

While in my garden area I discovered a very large plant that looked familiar. Turns out it was rhubarb growing from the past owners of our house. My grandmother always grew a ton of rhubarb and made the best pie. I made a strawberry rhubarb pie with mine hoping the kids would eat it. Liam and Ted loved it, but Zionna decided it was too tart despite the heaping amounts of sugar I put into it. I meant to take a photo of the pie when it was finished but I got so excited about eating it that I totally forgot to take the finished photo. I could show a photo of my tummy now that I consumed almost an entire pie, but that is just gross!