Friday, March 20, 2009

7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 5)

#1 - I learned about something new this week that I thought was pretty cool! As I have delved into the world of gluten free living, I believe I've mentioned in the past that I've found a lot of the best prices on goods (particularly pastas and flours) to be on Amazon (especially if I buy in bulk). Well, as I was stocking up on some supplies this past weekend, I ran across a brand new program through Amazon that I had never heard of before, and it made me pretty happy! Perhaps you know about it, but I thought I'd share in case you'd never heard of it either. It's called: Subscribe and Save.

Basically, Amazon has certain items available under this program that, if you know you're going to order them regularly, Amazon will give you an even lower price on, always give you free shipping for, and which they will then regularly deliver to you every few months (you specify the time) without you having to do anything more. And you can cancel the subscription whenever without any fees or anything. For someone like me, this is a brilliant program because there are things that I know I'm going to be ordering semi-regularly, and this gives me an even lower cost and saves me some hassle! I love it!

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#2 - As I pulled out my bike a few days ago, I was startled by a bunny zooming by me at top speed to hide in the bushes at the edge of our yard. There is a family of bunnies that live under our neighbours shed. I've decided they are slight dare-devils as they seem to revel in playing in our backyard, always risking being caught by the dogs!

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#3 - On the subject of bunnies, it's turning into Springtime, and the ants have begun marching two by two through our house. And while they are annoying, what is even more annoying (for me) is that the spiders have begun appearing again one by one in our mail box. Now, as I've had several discussions on this topic, you no doubt know that I love getting mail. Checking my mail box every day is something I love to do.

I do NOT, however, enjoy the dreaded experience of opening up the mail box and finding a big, fat, ugly spider sitting inside or crawling frantically away from me. BLEAGH! Takes away some of my mail box pleasure. And that, my friends, is just not right. They need to go find somewhere else to live and quit pestering me.

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#4 - Our Netflix movie last week was "The Red Violin." Now, first things first, this is an "R" movie, so please do not let your kids watch this movie. It's "R" primarily for one series of scenes with some sex in it. Just had to give the warnings!

Having said that, this is a very interesting movie. This fictional story follows the life of a violin - a Red Violin (based off of the Red Mendelssohn currently being played by Elizabeth Pitcairn). It's fascinating because at the beginning of the movie, a woman has her fortune read to her, and you think that what you're seeing is how that fortune plays out for her. Except it's actually the fortune of the violin. The entire movie follows the path the violin takes for about 200 years of history. It travels to a number of countries, and, because it's supposed to be a nearly perfect instrument, the violin gets picked up by all sorts of interesting characters from monks in Austria to virtuosos in England, to Western music lovers in Communist China.

And the sound track is really beautiful (if slightly haunting sounding).

This is actually the second time I've seen this movie. The first time was about 9 years ago, and I remembered liking it but wanted to see it again (you know how your tastes change or what struck you as good initially you can watch again and despise!). Still like it, want the sound track, but please keep in mind the R rating!

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#5 - Green Smoothies: I make smoothies a lot of mornings for breakfast for both Christopher and I. Last week I tried something new. The resulting email conversation last week went something like this:

Me: So how was your smoothie?

Husband: Not as good as usual. It had a slightly odd aftertaste and there was weird green bits floating in it.

Me: Oh darn. I was hoping you wouldn't notice! I wanted to try a Green Smoothie and get some extra vegetables in and so threw in some spinach. I liked it.

Husband: Cheeky!

Well, cheeky or not, I kind of liked my Green Smoothie and fully intend to keep throwing the spinach in on my half of the smoothie at least. If you like smoothies and are trying to figure out ways to get those extra servings of vegetables into your life, try it. If you're not anti-green bits like some people are, you might really enjoy it! (I love you husband of mine).

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#6 - I am intrigued by a new concept (my husband is groaning as he reads this). This past week, I can't remember originating from where, I came across the concept of Square Foot Gardening. I'm not a good gardener. I like gardens, I really do. But green things seem to die when I'm around them. But I would like to have a garden. I wonder if this is something I could manage? I've also thought of maybe starting with something like the ideas found on the Better Homes and Gardens website for "Simple Salad Gardens".

From those who can actually garden without killing things - thoughts?

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#7 - This makes me laugh (has for years now) and is a picture that I regularly rotate in as the background for my computer. Right now, it feels like my job in a nutshell. And it goes along with the Spring theme of late. So I thought I would share.

3 comments:

Amber said...

Use a food processor to puree the spinach first and you wont get the floaty bits. Then you can also throw in puree carrot, which fits well with a lot of fruits, as there is a bit of natural sweetness in a carrot. (Blenders can't really handle carrots, so you gotta puree first in the processor.)

almamater said...

A mom told me that she simply throws spinach in the blender for her vegetarian teen daughter. Claims it is frothy, sweet and delish.

We haven't tried it.

Square foot gardening is excellent!

Mercutio said...

I'm still not sure why we haven't tried puree-ing some peas and putting them into our smoothies. Or how about chicken? Stick with me on this. We can have a smoothie that hits all the basic food groups--dairy, meat, vegetable, fruit--all we'd need is sugar and bread and we'd be set.

Who's with me?

Yeah, I thought not. Sounds just plain silly to me, like spinach.

:)

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