Item One

I survived Brownies. It was exactly as overwhelming as the last time I was there, at age seven. But, they gave me a badge.

Item Two

I’ve been reading this zero-waste blog lately and feeling even more guilty than usual about our consumption levels. So when my sister sent me a Facebook post about freezing vegetable scraps for a few weeks, then dumping the mix into a slow cooker and creating vegetable stock, I thought I’d give it a try. My mom said, “Oh, that reminds me of being a kid. There was always a pot of soup on the back of the stove and you could throw almost anything in.”

All very idyllic. In theory.

This is what my vegetable broth tasted like:

It tasted like compost soup. Because… wait… it was compost soup.

Item Three

One of my proposals was rejected yesterday. When I told my daughter, she said, “If at first you don’t like your food, fry, fry again.”

Which was strangely helpful.

May your days be Brownie, compost-soup, and rejection free. I’m off to do more frying…