I absolutely hate the word “blog”

So my most recent Costco run yielded a box of chanterelles, of all things.  (I think of Costco as more of a bulk mouthwash and paper towels kinda place, but hey… they were cheap, fresh, wild-harvested, local, and bright orange with gills, so how could I refuse?)

I’d never cooked anything with chanterelles before, so I decided to just sautée them in a bit of butter and chicken broth, and let their natural flavor shine. Ahem, that was LET THEIR NATURAL FLAVOR SHINE.  (They didn’t hear me.)

Turns out chanterelles don’t really *have* much of a natural flavor.  In fact, I had to drizzle a bit of white truffle oil on them just to make them fun enough to eat!

Lesson learned: while the name may sound all French and elegant compared to, say, oyster mushrooms, the latter is actually much tastier.  Now I know!

Grant’s video iPod recently suffered a broken headphone jack, but he was eight full months out of warranty coverage. Still, he took it to the Apple store to see what could be done, and they gave him a new one on the spot. Their reasoning? “It looks fresh out of the box [because you've always kept it in a case so it's not scratched up]“.

Yep, a brand-new iPod, no questions asked. I friggin’ love those guys.

Wow, I’ve been off the blogosphere for a WHILE now!  But I swear, I have a good excuse — I went to my college reunion.  (OK, that was weeks ago, but since then I’ve both gotten sick and started a new job, both of which suck up valuable blogging time.  But it all started with that college reunion.)

Bryn Mawr is a bit odd in that we don’t have an official school mascot.  But our unofficial one is the wise old owl.  (Gives ya some insight as to how we spoiled pretentious nerd-girls view ourselves, I guess.)  I’ve always kinda dug the owl mascot, though — few people who went to BMC did so for the great sports teams or Greek system.  It’s all about the academics, and our friendly little pseudo-mascot backs that up nicely.

And in recent years, the owl motif has become SUPER trendy. They’ve been all over clothing, jewelry and accessories for a while, and they’re popping up on more and more household items now. (I myself have at least two owl shirts, an owl purse, at least one pair of owl shoes, quite a bit of owl jewelry, and a pair of owl bookends.) This aviary surplus has been nice for us Bryn Mawr grads — we all wind up snatching nearly every owl-spangled item we lay eyes on, as a subtle way to pay tribute to our alma mater. (And yes, we all compared owl gear at the reunion.)

But seriously, people. This has got to stop somewhere. My last trip to Ross Dress for Less, in which I sought only sheets, led me to one of the eeriest shelf displays of all time. I mean, there is such a thing as TOO MANY OWLS. And these three aren’t even cute, they’re just vaguely avian and bug-eyed. Please take note, Housewares Department. They were better when they were just on shirts.

Whole Foods officially discontinued their awesomely durable, heavy-duty plastic bags as of Earth Day this year.

So what are they offering instead? Paper. Yep, tree-harvested, not-so-sustainable paper. Sure, I know paper bags biodegrade, but they also disintegrate in the rain and require us to chop down and process trees.*

I kept hoping they’d replace their plastic bags with alternatives like bamboo or corn, which are sustainable and biodegradable, but feel like plastic. These bags are also super-durable and don’t fall apart when wet — a major concern of mine here in Seattle, since I sometimes try to walk to the grocery store instead of driving, and I can’t always plan ahead in order to carry my canvas bags.

But the word from Whole Foods is that those alternatives are too high of a price point for Whole Foods. I could understand this in theory for a smaller organization, but Whole Foods has plenty of money with which to be more responsible. They should a) suck it up and do it anyway, since it’s not like they’re losing money in their business; and/or b) start charging customers for the bags. So friggin’ simple.

And the real kicker? The Whole Foods delis switched from paper containers to plastic shortly after the bag changeover. Yeah, take a minute to let that sink in. Now I not only can’t walk home in the rain with my groceries, but I also can’t microwave my deli dinner in its container. How’s that for green logic?

Read the rest…

Check out this sidewalk chalk I spotted at Target the other day. I tell ya, these kids of ours are getting spoiled.

Not only does it have nicely-pointed, bi-color sticks (with secondary and even tertiary colors, as opposed to the old-school pink, blue and yellow), but they’re apparently 3-D.

Yep, you just put on your special Crayola (TM) goggles, and the whole world shifts and it looks like your damn driveway butterfly is flapping its gossamer wings or something. I don’t know. I sort of half-heartedly tried to test them out in the store, but I probably would’ve been escorted out if I’d been successful.

When I was a kid, sidewalk chalk came in a BUCKET. I’m just sayin’. Next thing you know we’re gonna have sentient Barbies running around freaking out about their outdated hairstyles and whatnot.