Confessions of a Grandma

A recent post on A Slower Pace got me thinking about recycling once again. Mike calls it my hobby. My children grew up with recycle bins under the cellar stairs. There was one for newspaper, one for cans, and one for glass (which then had to be further separated into clear, brown, green), and one for plastic like gallon milk jugs and shampoo bottles. The first time my daughter came home from her college dorm, she said, "Mom, there are people in the world who don't recycle!" She'd been amazed to see one of her roommates toss an empty shampoo bottle into the trash. You try to protect your children from the cruel realities of life, but eventually they have to leave the sheltering nest. One of the things that really put me over the edge at work was colleagues who tossed paper in the wastebasket when we had a paper recycle bin in every room. I mean I can feel my blood pressure spike just recalling that. Just pure laziness in my book. My family thinks I am a bit of a trash ...

Yesterday I read Arkansas Patti's post about eating to empty the refrigerator ( http://thenewsixty.blogspot.com/2009/12/eat-refrigerator-empty.htm ). We are also in the the process of emptying the refrigerator, freezer, and any open pantry items. We will be leaving for Florida on December 28th. This chore is complicated by the fact that we are hosting my family Christmas party this Sunday. That means lots of food and I can't very well serve a big bowl of cornmeal mush just because I have an opened container with about a cup and a half of cornmeal in it that I need to use up. Last night we had cornmeal mush (let's call it polenta) with a scampi made from the remains of a bag of frozen shrimp, a bit of garlic, the last couple of splashes of juice from a week old lemon, and the last of a jar of capers. Hey, it was pretty good. We're sure to have much stranger meals before we leave. I have a dread fear of leaving flours and grains in the cupboards even though I transfer eve...