Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Yikes! I am Becoming My Dad!

Whenever I look in a mirror, I see my mom's arms and a few of her facial features in my own!  I hear her voice speaking from my lips--several of those phrases I use to hate to hear from her, I actually find myself repeating!  However from the beginning of my life, if I look myself in the eye in the mirror, I have seen overall the look of my dad!  Recently, I am finding that I am beginning to take on many of the same "thoughts" that made my dad my dad!  For example, I hear myself say "you need to eat plenty of good fruit and vegetables," or what really scares me is that for the past few weeks I have found myself wanting to save empty food containers or old shoe boxes for the purpose of storage!  I didn't grow up in the depression era as my dad did, but I find myself thinking, "oh, I might want to use that later to put scrapbook materials in," or "I could put those small things in the garage in that shoe box."  Stop!  Hold it!  I spent the entire month of March 2013 cleaning out all of those collections boxed up, suitcased (I do realize this is not really a verb) up, and coffee canned up in my dad's house and three storage areas following his death!  All through his life, it had been a joke between us that he was going to leave all of that "stuff" for me (the minimalist compared to him)  to clean up after he was gone!  So with that memory, I will overcome the urge to keep all things!

One thing, however, that I will keep is the attempt to waste less and repurpose more.  Food, for instance!   When I move to a new place, is difficult not to waste at times as I can't find the brands or flavors that I am used to from the prior place of living.  My best example of this is with bread.  I fell in love with Honey Wheat Berry bread by a certain company, and I have tried to duplicate it ever since I arrived in Washington in September.  I have had failed attempts, to say the least.  That fact, coupled with an overly ambitious waitress at Outback a few days ago who greeted us as we sat down with two loaves of their finest dark bread and brought us two more loaves (which we brought home) before we had finished the first two,  put the idea in my head to make my own croutons!  Afterall, Outback has scrumptious croutons on their salads!  I did it!  I googled or pinterested (another made up verb) several recipes and combined the ones I thought would be good and turned two loaves of Outback bread and a half of a loaf of Honey Wheat Berry bread into a airtight container of goodness which can be kept up to a month!  Thanks, dad, for all of that good training!!!

Tip:  if you order pizza in and get the parmesan cheese packets and have left overs, I found that these make a good source of flavoring for homemade croutons.

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