Rating Dishwasher detergents   If you have very hard water, clear dishware eventually becomes filmy with some products.  (they mentioned the kind of tests they put the detergents with baked on food, etc.)  A few products cleaned very well.  Finish Powerball was especially good with pots and is a CR Best Buy at 21 cents per load. But not all products have been through our test yet to see whether they leave glassware coated with the white film some readers have noticed. We can say that the Cascade Complete All in 1 Action-Pacs cleaned very well and didn’t leave a white film or discolor aluminum at 29 cents a load.  (Kirkland Signature – Costco – was at the bottom of the list of poorest rating along with Everyday Value powder.)  {CR Reports- Oct. 2011}

At this point you may be wondering, but no, my husband did not die. He did not divorce me. He just brought into our lives the eighteen month mistress of a masters degree- which I practically begged him to do. We knew it would be hard; we hoped it would be worth it. We just had no real idea. His work load has increased so much that he does nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe school. He has unintentionally alienated all of his friends, stopped participating in anything he enjoys, and has zilch time for his family. He is haggared and lonely. I am too.

Usually Saturdays are the worst for Tom. Saturday is his catch up/catch all day. It’s the only day that he has to make up for all the days in the week that went too fast. Out the window goes family time, play time, relaxation. It’s a harried day.

So, with this as the norm in our home, I invited my husband to the Pioneer Day parade. I didn’t think he’d accept, but he said he could make it work. We went and celebrated our heritage to the tune of picking up the saltwater taffy being flung from the parade floats, heckling participants that we happened to know, and by protecting our 3 year old from getting spritzed by the float riders who brandished super-soakers.

On the way home Tom asked me if I wanted to help him do his homework. My expectations of a blissfully lazy afternoon began to fade until he explained that he needed to observe a cultural event and write a paper on it. The only thing “cultural” he could find in our small-ish town was a Senior Olympics.All events were participated in by people who were at least 50 years old.  Events included horseshoes, dancing, croquet, and other more regular Olypmic sports.

We decided to go to a baseball game.  When we got there we knew we found the place immediately. Every player had white hair or no hair. The pitcher sported a Rollie Fingers mustache and instead of pinch hitters, the offence had a line of pinch runners for those who had hip replacements and couldn’t run anymore.

We watched the game and routed for the team called the Second Winds. They were pretty good and it was fun to see these very grown men enjoy themselves. They catcalled and goaded the other team. Everybody laughed easily at mistakes caused by old age.

My three year old met a friend and enjoyed trundling up and down the stands while the baby played on my lap and Tom cuddled me from the bench behind. It felt like old times. The weather was beautiful. Just warm enough with a little breeze and some shade to take the edge off. It was one of the funnest baseball games I’d ever attended and our team won 21 to 15.

We came home around one o’clock and Tom dozed off while the kids played their imaginative games and I roused myself to make some lunch.  Tom woke up in time to read to me from the book we’ve been trying to get time to get through since May. It was lovely to hear his calming voice evoke the images and scenes from the plot. I was carried away in someone else’s life, which in the end, made my own seem somehow more conquerable.

In the afternoon we laughed and joked together for a few minutes with our students before they went off to see friends and left us alone for the day.  Our kids delighted us with their little tricks and we wrestled and tickled and giggled. I prepared a barbecue. We ate with the satisfaction of a lazy summer day.

That evening, after we put our kids to bed, Tom and I cuddled on the couch and sipped root beer floats. “This was such a nice day.” Tom whispered in my ear. I couldn’t help but agree. In that moment, school, siding, rose bushes, and work faded to a distant memory. A memory enough to supply the gratitude I needed to really appreciate this simplicity, but not so much as to give me my usual sense of anxiety.In that moment I felt so happy. I felt grateful and hopeful for better things to come at the end of the school road. I also felt at peace with the way things are right now.

Even though this has been a stressful, perhaps somewhat bleak year, this has also been a time that has added depth to the lovely life I have been given. This day- compacted in so many other endless days-  seemed to me, as I snuggled into the crook of my husband’s arm, to truly be the best day ever.”

www.lowGImeals.com/glycemic-index-food-list

“Deals to Meals” was started by someone a little like me — someone researching for a class she was teaching who then started sharing her findings with friends via the internet.  She has turned her skills into a paying venture, however, and when I saw what she was doing I was very impressed (and perhaps a bit envious).

The premise is simple — save money on food by taking advantage of the loss-leader specials at the grocery store each week.  “Deals to Meals” takes on the task of locating those for its’ subscribers, posting all the weekly specials for each store with the best deals marked in red.  All you do is select the stores in which you are interested and up pops a list of everything from their ad.  To determine which are the best deals, the founders compare the listed prices to the regular price at WalMart, Costco, and Sam’s Club.  If you can purchase the same item there for less, the special is listed in blue instead of red.

But they don’t stop there — each week they post dinner menus created from the items on special, plus tips on how much to buy for food storage.  They even have the shopping list already created, listing every ingredient you will need by category and marked as to which recipe requires it.  If you follow their complete meal plan for the week all you have to do is print out the grocery list, mark the items you need to purchase (I also marked which store at which I wanted to purchase the item) and go shopping!

“Deals to Meals” offers a free two-week trial, however you do have to have or create a Pay Pal account and sign in to get the offer.  After the two weeks is up, they will automatically bill your Pay Pal account for $4.95 each month, but if you save $1.25 each week on food, it pays for itself.  I am a fairly religious reader of grocery ads, but I found enough things on sale that I hadn’t noticed that I believe I have saved at least that much in the two months I have been a subscriber.  I used to have to drive across town to pick up Ridleys ads, but now they are all listed on my computer.  It is also especially convenient for those who aren’t paying a lot of attention to the best price available to have the comparison already laid out.

I decided to really try the plan to see if this was something I would use and/or recommend.  I printed out the menu and the grocery list and started marking the items I needed.  I was happy to see that the majority of the list was things I commonly purchase and many were already in my freezer or pantry.  In half an hour I had determined what I would purchase and was ready to hit the store.  For me, this was a big savings of time over my old procedure of spending an hour or so making the menus and the grocery list myself.  I did cover two or three stores, but I probably could have just chosen one or two had I chosen to simplify a little.

Actually making all of the meals was a bigger challenge for me.  With my work schedule I am often not able to start cooking until 7:00 or later, which is really too late for dinner on our schedule.  A few of the meals can be done in a slow cooker, but most require hands-on preparation right before serving.  It took me about two weeks to get through the entire menu instead of one because I would sometimes substitute a faster option of my own.  And, I confess, the barbecue chicken pizza got replaced by a run to Papa Murphy’s on a busy night.  Still, just having the menu done and knowing the ingredients were already purchased made it much easier to skip the dash to the store and dive into cooking instead.  Most of the dishes required a moderate amount of preparation, but I was able to divide some of them into steps that could be done earlier in the day so that the finishing went faster.  It was especially fun to eat something not on our ordinary ho-hum list and the majority of the ones I tried received a thumbs-up from most of the family (we don’t count the opinion of our pickiest eater).

Since that week that I was dedicated to the process, I have come to the following conclusions:

“Deals to Meals” is a very helpful tool.  For me, the price comparisons and the new recipes are what I use most.  I have difficulty incorporating that many new recipes on a regular basis, but it is nice to have the inspiration and I have used many of the meal plans, just not every day.

If I were running the site, I would do it differently — but then isn’t that true of about everything?  Many of the recipes are high in fat, some high in sugar or other carbs.  I don’t think I have made any of the dessert recipes yet although some of them looked yummy.  Most weeks there are sandwiches and dinner salads included in the menu.  They are fabulous, but since it is cold where I live I would normally save these recipes for summer and eat soup or a hot casserole instead in the winter.  I also frequent the “Bountiful Baskets” co-op and have vegetables and fruits that need to be used that are not included in the menu, so I frequently rearrange things to use up those items.

It may be worth the $4.95 just to know when boneless skinless chicken breasts drop to $1.39/lb.!  I definitely save time reading the published list over poring over every grocery ad that comes in.

And of course, the bottom line is — it is different for every person who tries it!  Only you can decide if it is worth the money.  I’m glad I subscribed to “Deals to Meals”.  I may get bored later and unsubscribe, but right now I’m busily collecting the recipes in a binder until I decide which ones I want to keep permanently, and I’m using some of the menu plans each week.  If you decide to try it for yourself, let us know what you think!