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Humor and woodsy wisdom by Laura Lollar

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New Year Discoveries and Determinations

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Happy New Year! Blessings on you all. I hope you’ve had a happy, safe, sane holiday season and I want to thank you for your enthusiastic support of my scribblings. As we head into 2025 there are some discoveries I’ve made and determinations I’ve formed which may be of interest to you. At the very least, I hope it’ll motivate you or provoke a few smiles.

Post Braces Benefits

First, (yahoo!) I finally got my braces off! I’ve had them on since last January and there were days when it was a mighty struggle to maintain patience. (If you missed it, read all about my frustrations with braces). But now that they’re off, I’m free to eat all the gooey foods I had to avoid — like pizza!

You’d think I would have lost weight during the year of “deprivation,” but nooo! So my New Year’s “to do” goals are to shave off a few pounds and increase my exercise. Thank goodness for my husband who urges me to walk the 1.5 miles around our neighborhood with him. We’ll see how disciplined I can be to keep that up during these cold, windy winter months. (I’m afraid I said this last year, didn’t I?)

The Fountain of Youth

But there is one area where I’ve had success. I read an article about how drinking alcohol contributes to aging and leads to the bruise spots that appear on my forearms whenever I bump into something. So, no more wine for me! Not that I’ve had a lot of it – about 4 oz. in the evening and whenever we went out for dinner. But since I’ve cut it out, the bruises have all but disappeared. I’m also saving myself some calories and we’re not spending as much at the grocery store. Yippee! The jury’s still out on the aging benefits though. Despite my best efforts, I’m sure I can only fool Mother Nature for so long.

I gave up wearing makeup/foundation this year once I learned it fills up the cracks in my face and accentuates wrinkles. (Yep, I have plenty of those.) I also discovered that when I’m outside and the wind blows, sand accumulates in my crows feet. Good grief. Sometimes I feel like a walking Navajo sandpainting.

So I’ll drink more water to plump up those facial lines and keep the wrinkle wolves at bay.

Fun with Food

With all the talk of chemicals in our food, I’m paying more attention to the ingredients on labels. I used to spray Pam to coat cookie sheets, etc. I thought we were safe because they proclaim “no preservatives, colors, flavors” — that is, until I looked on the back of the can. Holy cow, whatever is Dimethyl Silicone anyway? They say it’s an “anti-foaming agent.” (It makes me think of fire retardant.) Instead I’ll be using plain old butter and olive oil.

Now I was on a roll so just out of curiosity, I googled “food additives in bakery products” and found this article…

It appears there’s quite a list of hard-to pronounce chemicals swirling around in our favorite cookies, crackers and coffee cake. Makes me want to break out the flour and start baking from scratch. But even flour is jam-packed with all kinds of additives I can’t pronounce. I wonder how the Europeans do it. Their food is relatively free of chemicals. Recently I heard of someone moving back to Paris after getting allergies from U.S. cuisine. Turns out, she was healthier in France. So don’t get me started on the palm oil, corn syrup and lead in our cinnamon.

In pursuit of healthier choices, last year I decided honey would be a wiser option than sugar to sweeten my coffee. I also thought it would cut some calories. But again, curiosity got the best of me and I looked at the label. Considering the amount of honey I’ve poured into my coffee, I discovered that between the two, sugar has fewer calories. It’s also cheaper. Honey is $11.00 a bottle!

So the choice is clear — either bide your time and hope that smart people get rid of the toxic sludge in our foods, or look at the labels and throw out the contents of half your pantry. No more white bread, processed cheese or Cream of Mushroom Soup casseroles!

In the meantime, our counter is covered with plates of cookies, a chunk of fudge, apple pie and chocolate covered pecans. Easily within reach, we’re doing our best to whittle down that supply of sugar. I figure, once we’ve eaten it all up we can pursue a more healthy diet.

It’s best to start the New Year with a clean slate, don’t ya think?

Have a wonderful New Year, friends!

The Great Veggie Caper and Serious Subterfuge

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In the early years, I took a lot of pride for feeding my kids nutritious meals. We had vegetables, a starch and some meat because I wanted them to be well balanced. I think I did okay on that front. Nobody can accuse my kids of being unbalanced. (Me? That’s a story for another day.)

They gobbled up what I set in front of them. Or at least I thought they did. Unbeknownst to me, there was subterfuge going on in those angelic little heads. My kids could display the most innocent looks possible — they made me feel like such a good mom. I thought I was just a little bit this side of June Cleaver. You know, she’s the one with the pearls.

Then one day I was cleaning up the dining area and just by chance I opened the slim drawer on one side of the green metal table. And what to my wondering eyes did appear but a bunch of wadded up napkins. Oh but they weren’t just any napkins. No sir. Each bundle contained a half-chewed mouthful of peas, lima beans and brussel sprouts.

There were lots of them. Solid as a rock like something out of the Flintstones. Dried up chunks of veggie regurgitation. I could see my kids now, covering their little mouths with napkins and trying to look so mannerly while all the time there was devilish behavior happening right under my nose. The little gremlins — no wonder they were giggling!

Now I was curious. I looked under the table and my eyes scanned the floor for anymore debris. All clear. But then I spotted a big hole in the fir floor. We lived in a 1925 Victorian home. It was a stately house, situated right next to the funeral home owned by Mr. and Mrs. Dye. (You think I’m kidding?)

Anyway, the kitchen had linoleum flooring that covered up a layer of masonite which was right on top of the knotty fir floors. We had taken the linoleum up years earlier. Then we tore up the masonite and burned it in the big, black coal furnace during the ice storm, hoping the heat would rise to the third floor. (That’s also a story for another day.)

That big knothole under the table went straight through to the basement. My motherly antennae shot up like a jack-in-the-box.

I hated going down to that basement. The floor was dirt. There were spiderwebs. And mice. Who knows what else was lurking in the dark corners.

I looked up to the hole in the ceiling, then looked down at the ground. Then I saw it, right in front of the furnace. It was a tidy little pile of half-chewed veggies wrapped in paper, like fortune cookies.

I love these memories. And now that my kids are grown and have children of their own, I should roll out this story just to give the little ones a few new ideas. I’d like to prove my mom right when she says, “The apple won’t fall far from the tree!”

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