Joe's O's (and other miscellany)
Just a few short things because I'm running behind today!
A reader (I think Kristin from Going Country?) recommended I try Joe's O's from Trader Joe's for one of my post-shift cereals, so I did.
I was impressed by the shape of the O's; it was more reminiscent of a true Cheerios shape than most off-brand versions are.
However, to me they tasted sort of sweet but bland, as if they needed a little sprinkle of salt. I googled to find out if anyone else felt this way, and apparently, I am not alone.
So, I'd say I like the way the Aldi version tastes better, but the Joe's O's are more visually appealing.
I'm used to writing for an audience
I've realized a reason all these school writing assignments feel a little pointless: they're being seen by almost no one!
I'm used to writing for people; I type here, hit the publish button, and then ta-dah! It's in front of an audience.
But for school assignments, I work hard on writing a well-researched paper, I edit it, reread it, edit it again, submit it, and then...one person reads it.*
That is a tiny bit unfulfilling.
Especially for someone accustomed to blogging life.
*In some classes, I have my doubts the professor was even reading what we submitted, because my classmates and I got the same exact generic feedback on our submissions.
I really need to do a freezer challenge
After four years here, my chest freezer has gotten a little bit too full.
And my kitchen freezer is kind of a mess too.
(You know that saying, "Wherever you go, there you are."? That's me with freezers; no matter my address, I will eventually fill up a freezer. Ha.)
I feel like I might have a little bit of mental space this semester, so I'm hoping to do some freezer challenges. I'll probably do them bite-sized like I did many years ago, taking just one little freezer section each week to work on.
This is perhaps a sign my life is feeling a little more manageable; I can actually consider a freezer challenge!
Ok, that's all for today. See ya tomorrow for Thankful Thursday. 🙂
I have a freezer compartment rather than a freezer; I guess the upside of having that and a small fridge is being able to keep track of things and having less food waste.
I'm trying not to eat or buy sugary foods this month to improve dental health (and to save money) so I put some cookies and chocolate in the freezer. Not opening it and eating them is my freezer challenge 😉
That is actually very clever!
Thank you! I didn't want to throw the food away and hopefully it'll taste even better in October, assuming I get through the challenge!
I used to do that with homemade cookie dough: I'd freeze it in scoops so I could make just one. Till I learned how much I like frozen cookie dough.
That wouldn't last a day in my fridge. It is my Kryptonite.
We left the original cabinetry in the 1912 renovation of the River House. This gave us a "European" size refrigerator according to the appliance gal. I immedeiately planned to put the old frig in the garage. However, we have lived with less for about 2 months and honestly it is fine. True that there is just two of us and I have been not cooking like I use to cook from sheer overwhelm in life. I am going to live with it for a season for the exact reason you said - it is less food waste. I live out in the country. It is eat what is in the fridge or nothing.
We do have a farm shop a couple of acres over to house extra stuff when we have a party.
I've missed your freezer challenges. They always inspired me. Both my boys recently left for college so my husband and I have committed to work on eating down the freezer (now that we don't need to make full meals for supper). My one son was notorious for getting freezer foods from Trader Joe's and only eating 1 or 2 servings and leaving the rest so we have lots of randomness in there.
I'd like to second and repropose a question for a future post: what would you do differently if you had $10 million? (Since $1 million doesn't buy what it used to.) I'm interested in the answers from both Kristen and the Commentariat.
My father asked if maybe I could make morning glory muffins for him when I visit. It's hard to express how unusual this request is and I'm pretty touched.
With a bit of research I learned that I wasn't imagining it: downloaded podcasts really are disappearing. It's an iOS 26 bug that Apple still hasn't fixed.
I noticed this the other day! 3 of the ones I would download weekly did not have that option last time.
I prefer to download podcasts into a small MP3 player that clips onto my shirt, and use wired headphones since the pods tend to fall out of my ears while I'm doing anything physical. My new phone doesn't have a headphone jack, and I don't want to deal with hauling a phone around to workout or do chores anyway.
If I had $10 million dollars I would pay off the rest of my student loan, travel, enroll myself in whatever courses I was interested in, give money to family and friends, buy somewhere cool to live (along the lines of Enya and getting a castle with lots of cats) and then donate the rest to causes I believe in. I would try to be like Dolly Parton and help as many people as I could and set up some program like the Imagination Library 🙂
Fun $10 million challenge, WilliamB! Me, I'd probably do the following:
(1) Accomplish all deferred maintenance around the house and grounds, and rent an AirBNB or similar while the interior painting and wood floor refinishing are going on. (I know my limits.)
(2) Hire a 20-hour-a week gardening assistant. My lawn care/snow removal guy is a wonder at what he does, but he doesn't know one garden plant from another, or the weeds from the intentional plants.
(3) Build a real greenhouse (not just my current pop-up plastic variety) somewhere on the grounds.
(4) Give lavishly to my preferred charities: JASNA, Doctors Without Borders, the Alzheimer's Association, Heifer International, and my local food bank.
(5) And squirrel some of the money into my investment accounts, given the recent dire predictions about what's going to happen to Social Security and Medicare.
Yes, I can do that in a future post! And to everyone: you can reply here if you want, but if I were you, I'd save it for when we do a dedicated post. 🙂 It'll probably be more fun that way when we all are sharing.
Same with the freezers at my house! I had them about half cleaned out, and then found some good clearance and sales, and they're full again.
And when they get too full it's "out of sight out of mind", so it does me no good to stock up and then repurchase something I already have.
(FYI - I'm on a desktop chrome browser, and a Halloween KitKat ad at the bottom just moved up and took over 3/4 of the screen until I closed it. Never had that happen on your blog before. the bottom ad usually only cover a few inches)
Yay, a freezer challenge!
That was definitely not me, given that I have never even been in a Trader Joe's. I did once note in a post of mine, though, that I never buy off-brand Cheerios because they are uniformly inferior to the name-brand. Unlike the giant bags of generic cornflakes (Food Club) and crispy rice (Malt o Meal) that I do buy and are a good alternative to the name brand. Maybe that's what you were thinking of.
Hmmm, I wonder who it was!
There are a lot of Kristens/Kristins in the world, and here . . .