Monica Kochelee

I am getting tired of turning on the news and hearing about recalls!  Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad that we have more people “on the ball” and catching these things before it gets out of hand and thousands of people get sick and die, but I do wonder if there is more unhealthy things out there now, or if the improvements in the information technology is simply making us more aware?  It is getting so that I’m a little bit worried about eating any kind of produce or meat!  I’m afraid I’m going to starve!  Salmonella and e-coli are in the news so often that it no longer surprises me.  

My kids have become more health conscious lately and have decided that they would like to make smoothies at home.  In order to do that, we need to get a good ice crusher.  Several years ago I tried for several months to find a good machine to crush ice, and I bought a lot of different contraptions, some were hand cranked, some were electric.  The hand cranked ones were hard to use and hold and froze my hands!  The electric ones didn’t have very powerful motors and burned out pretty quickly.

There is a website I’ve found called Wize.com that reviews a lot of different products.  They even review blenders that crush ice.  I was reading the reviews and saw that in addition to reviewing the product, the website lists several places where you can buy the product (and their prices) and it has a link that you can click to buy it right then and there from any of the different vendors.  If you put in your zip code it also shows you the shipping charges, and it shows you which of the vendors would give you the best price.

I like being given the chance to review products and select from a variety of vendors, instead of being directed to buy from the one that created the website.  Now that I’ve read the reviews on blenders that crush ice I am feeling a little bit more secure that I can buy one of the higher-ranked blenders and not be wasting my money!  Maybe I’ll buy one and start making virgin frozen strawberry daiquiris and virgin pina coladas (my two favorite drinks!) at home too!

I was just listening to the news on tv this morning, while reading my emails, and noticed a story about how freegans are dumpster diving for their meals.  This particular story, though interesting, was kinda disturbing.  I agree that there are a lot of grocery stores and restaurants that throw away perfectly good food, but I can’t imagine going through a dumpster full of trash to fish out the food to eat.  If the food was segregated from other garbage, maybe.  But the food is mixed in with all of the other garbage, it could have all kinds of bacteria and filth transferred to it that might not wash off.

That story kinda freaked me out!

Today my hubby asked me to teach him how to make “my” lasagna.  So I stopped reading my emails, went into the kitchen and coached him through the entire process.  He wanted to do all of it himself with me just telling him how to do it, so that is essentially what happened.  It came out great and we had garlic-cheese bread and lasagna for supper tonight!

My hubby was quite impressed with how easy it was to make and he says he plans to fix it for supper once a month from now on!  Hey, that is fine with me!  I like it when I don’t have to cook!

I was pleasantly surprised when I got home from work today.  My hubby had done all of the laundry for the week (I usually do it on Saturday!) and he had supper in the oven!  DiGiorno’s 3 meat rising crust pizza, my favorite!  Ok, so it wasn’t Beef Wellington, at least I don’t have to cook it!