Taken on the road to Greensboro, Alabama on February 18, 2010.
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Fun Stuff
Scenic Sunday
On the way to Bryce Canyon National Park from Kanab, Utah in July 2008.
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I’ve Been Grilled!
Lisa over at Grandma’s Briefs has featured me on Grilled Grandmas. I felt really honored to have been asked! Go over there and take a look!
Scenic Sunday
This was taken at the helicopter pad at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was an awesome sight!
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My Vacation Kicked My Hiney
FabGrandpa and I went on a little trip to Atlanta last week. Our daughter, Becky, gave us tickets to a concert, and two nights in a swanky hotel downtown. We had lots of fun, but I’m tellin ya, that trip kicked my butt!
We stayed in our hometown of Douglasville for one night before heading to the Big A. While we were in town, we we stayed at Hotel Palomar. It was fun to be pampered for a couple of days.
I got to go to my favorite place in Atlanta, the Dekalb Farmer’s Market, and to Whole Foods, where I found the most divine chocolate bar ever, Mo’s Bacon Bar.
Yes, you are seeing correctly–it IS chocolate covered bacon–food for the gods!
The concert was fun, the whole reason for the trip, Dweezil Zappa Plays Zappa. Frank Zappa’s son playing his father’s music. It was a great concert.
But now that I am home, I am having trouble gettting back into the swing of things. I don’t know if it is the blood pressure meds the doctor put me on, or the hectic pace of the trip, but I slept for 14 hours the last night of the trip, and have done nothing but veg out since we got home.
I am hoping this lethargy will leave me alone soon, because I have so much to do!
Remember Whensday
This is Emily, Spencer’s Mommy, on Christmas Day, 1983. Who do you think he looks like?
And, because I couldn’t decide which photo to use, you get two! Poor old Santa! Me and Becca in 1990, trying our best to be good.
Remember Whensday: The Christmas Food Box
My post today has no photograph to jog my memory. Way back years ago when I was a divorced mother of three young children, trying very hard on a very tight budget to make ends meet, I was the recipient of a food box from a community organization at Christmas. I was happy to get it, but one of the things I have always remembered from that experience was how many cans of hominy were in it.
I did appreciate getting the food, but I remember thinking “I wonder how many people really eat that stuff?” and wondering why, if you don’t eat something yourself, would you put it in the donation box for others. Do people think that just because we are unable to provide for ourselves for a minute that our taste buds or nutritional needs are going to change? Back then, it was just a matter of tastes. If I were the recipient of a food box now, though, it would be a matter of whether or not I would be able to eat the foods that I received.
I am not alone in this line of thinking. Dee Valdez, who was diagnosed with Celiac Disease 17 years ago, remembers talking to a mother with a sick 7 year old who had Celiac. The mother said she had to choose between feeding her whole family or just feeding her sick daughter the very expensive gluten free food she could find. That distraught mother said, referring to her Celiac daughter, “She’s just going to have to live with diarrhea.”
“There is a great need to develop a systematic approach to establishing Gluten Free Food Banks across the nation.” says Valdez. She is making that happen in Loveland, Colorado, where there was a dedication and ribbon cutting for the new gluten free section of the existing House of Neighborly Service Food Bank (HNS) on Tuesday, December 15, 2009. This location will serve as the test site for the new program Valdez is designing to be implemented in communities across the country. What a wonderful thing for the 1 in 133 of us who can not eat gluten!
I was also happy to read that Pamela’s Products, a dedicated gluten-free company, is a supporter of this effort, and is donating their Baking & Pancake Mix and their cookies to HNS. I discovered Pamela’s Baking and Pancake Mix early on in my gluten free life–it is now one of the staples of life in the Fab household.
While the costs of gluten free products has come down, and there is a much wider selection of them, they are still more expensive than regular normal foods. For example, you can pick up a loaf of regular white wheat bread for under $2.00 at any grocery store. The last gluten free bread I bought cost me about $7.50 for a 12 ounce loaf. Fabgrandpa and I can afford it, but with so many people losing their jobs, many people who must eat a gluten free diet are finding their budgets stretched to the limits, and facing the choice of whether to eat foods that are toxic to them. Ever since I started eating gluten free, whenever I donate items to a food drive, I always donate gluten free–pasta, bread mix, baking mix, cookies, cereal. Because, what is the point of giving something I wouldn’t eat myself?
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Remember Whensday
Something I saw this week made me think about this furniture. I bought it in (I think) 1978, as a Valentine gift for myself. The set came with a sofa, two chairs, a coffee table, two end tables, and two lamps. All made out of heavy pine boards, and all had matching brown plaid cushions. It was not very pretty, and not really very comfortable, but it was cheap and sturdy. I think I paid about $300 for the whole shebang!
I figured that with three kids, who were about 6, 4, and 3 years old, that it would be indestructible. I was right. That furniture went through a lot of spend the night parties, a lot of “Friday night everyone sleep in the living room so we can wake up and watch cartoons in the morning” and lots of teenager pizza parties.
This photo was taken in 1984, the day I moved into the last house I owned. We had that furniture until 1993, when I finally bought a new set. We took the pieces apart, and had a bonfire in the back yard.
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