Emily Bloss

Today I stumbled upon a very interesting site which takes the numbers of our society and puts them into graphs and such. I was amazed to find that you can spend $160 a year just plugging in a plasma TV. Ouch!

Vampire Energy

There’s a lot of good stuff on that site, too. I have to be careful not to spend too much time surfing around there… fascinating! … Bah! Another 15 minutes gone when I went back to close the original window and got distracted by some links.

Thanks goes out to Kevin for sending a link to this video… very fun!

Happy Holidays!!

Today we went over to New Smyrna Beach to visit Trav’s grandparents. We had a very fun day! We arrived around 11am and ate snacks. Then we went to the beach, because we wanted to see the shuttle take off (it was canceled, though). After spending a couple of hours collecting shells, we went back to their house for a delicious dinner of roast, mashed potatoes and all the fixins. Here are a couple of pictures - the second one being a Portuguese Man o’ War that washed up on the beach!

The cost of food is a frequent topic in our house. It’s our biggest single expense - we spend even more on it than our house payment. Geesh! But we try to eat well, preparing almost all of our meals from scratch, with very little processed food. Today I found an article which cites a recent study that found it’s a lot more expensive to eat a healthy diet:

New York Times: The High Price of Healthy Food

We often wonder how it is that processed, crappy food can be so much cheaper. They had to do a lot to the ingredients to make it, so how can it cost so little? It doesn’t make sense. Is it government subsidies at work? If so, why aren’t we subsidizing the small farmers who bring us fresh produce? Our food system is terribly backwards… I wonder how we can fix it. I suppose it’s up to consumers, but can people afford to vote with their wallets, without going hungry?

Thanks to Jeannie, I updated my Christmas wish list, so if you’re looking for that “perfect gift”, you can find it there. Maybe next year there won’t be any “stuff’ on the list… only things that would be very personal and meaningful… hmm!

We tried out this new soup recipe on Sunday. We’ll keep it, but it’s not so delicious that it will be added to the regular rotation. It’s one of those “it’s good once in a while” recipes. I thought it tasted like something out of a can, but Bleys said it was much better after adding salt, pepper and a little garlic. We’ll try spicing it up a little more next time. I wish when a recipe says “pepper to taste” they would give some kind of starting point… are we talking a teaspoon, tablespoon, or … ? I’m never quite sure.

I like to make new dishes strictly by the recipe for the first time, so we can tell if it’s good as is, has potential, or just isn’t good. It drives me insane on AllRecipes, when people do a review and they say something like, “I substituted this, and added that, and did this differently, and I didn’t like this recipe.” Well DUH!! If you followed the recipe maybe it would have turned out better.

With this recipe, I was wondering about how the rice was going to affect the soup part. On the rice package, it calls for 1 cup of rice and 3 cups of broth. The soup recipe had 3/4 cup of rice and 6 cups of broth, so I was wondering if the rice was going to suck up half of the broth… and it did! Maybe risotto rice and arborio rice are two different things? I used risotto rice. The next day, there was no broth left, it was just chunky veggies and fat rice. Still tasted good, though.

So I’m now looking for the next great adventure food. Any suggestions?

This quote from Jeff Taylor (founder of monster.com) really hit the spot for me. I’ve always liked to go my own way - much to the chagrin of my parents and probably countless other people around me. But it has served me well in my life as an entrepreneur (we’ve been in business for ourselves since 1994). I’m always looking for ways to improve, too, and this article from Dumb Little Man has some great advice:

39 Ways to Live, and Not Merely Exist

I already do a lot of the things on the list, like trying new things, getting away from the TV (a recent habit) and slowing down. There are more things I want to do, like exercising regularly (outside of our daily morning walk) and volunteering (I would really like to help the homeless). I try to add small improvements to life as I go, so I feel confident I’ll get around to doing these things sometime in the near future. How about you? What ways do you like to live and not just exist?