Puppers, holiday food, corn puddin' and the earth

Look at puppers. It's Sunday morning, and she's trying to sleep in. She's not in the least bit interested in me at the moment. Breakfast isn't for a bit yet, so she's going back to sleep. We love our girl. Lacey is an excellent dog. She is extremely loyal to me, and it's obvious that if you're around her for more than two minutes, you easily see that I'm her person. I'm honored and humbled by that. She's just beautiful.

The first Crocktober is officially cooking away on high for the first hour, then on low for the following 2-3 hours. Here it is, corn puddin', in its nekkid state. This is full of the good stuff - cream corn, fresh garden corn from friends of my parents, sour cream, colby cheese, local honey, eggs, milk, butter, Jiffy cornbread mix, all mixed up and poured into a crock-pot liner for easy clean up. I did use oil on the liner as an extra precaution against sticking. Here's hoping it works!

I would think that cutting up some fresh jalapenos and using pepper jack cheese would give this a nice kick, too. I tend to like cheese with a nearly-bitter edge like stiltons and blue cheese and very aged cheddar. A three-year aged cheddar would probably be phenomenal in this, especially served with an autumn side salad that has dried cranberries and a creamy but semi-sweet vinaigrette dressing. The Aldi kale salad kit would be VERY good with this if a strong cheese were used.

This is the time of year when food is on my mind a lot. I've got carrots cooking away in honey water on the stove top. They'll be tossed in real butter and heavily salted and peppered and eaten with the corn casserole. Later today, I'll fix an alfredo pasta dish tossed with barely steamed broccoli, which will be supper for two nights in a row. I was hoping to avoid the grocery store this weekend (my least favorite task), but we'll have to go for a few necessities. I'm thinking Aldi then Publix or Ingles.

Speaking of Ingles, it's a regional chain. Our newest one is beautiful, and during the holiday seasons, they decorate the store front. When you walk in, you see the produce market, floral shop, food court, hot deli bar, salad and wings bar, bakery and coffee shop. This time of year, there are big cinnamon brooms, pumpkin displays, bins full of varieties of apples, caramel apple displays, cider, etc.  It's just gorgeous. They carry the vegan meat that we eat, but this time of year, I like to troll their kiosk and holiday foods, as well. I don't often veer from the grocery list because it really adds up when you begin throwing random non-list items in the cart, but the last quarter of the year, I make that exception. 

This time of year, I love seeing barrels of loose nuts in the shell with those giant, metal scoops. Orange and cherry slices signal the holidays to me, too, far better than gumdrops, although I do like those as long as they aren't spiced. Chocolate and maple creme drops are killer good, especially eating them alongside cinnamon red hots. I'm not a big hot chocolate person, but I do like a mug every now and then topped with marshmallows and cool whip (yep, both of those, please). Warm butterscotch anything is wonderful, too, as is pretty much anything caramel or pumpkin.

I've got to start thinking about the garden for next year, but every time I see a plane overhead, I feel like it cancels out the good that I try to do for our pollinators. It's a tough line to walk, I've flown before and enjoyed the convenience of it, but I have mixed emotions about it. I, personally, gave it up a few years ago. I think plane fuel is very detrimental to the earth. 

The solar energy people are yelling about isn't good for the earth, either. Do you know what it takes to create those millions of solar panels? Coal. Tons of coal. Those panels are imported, usually, and the nations that make them use coal to fuel the electricity needed to make crank them out to these countries who think these panels create a lower impact on the earth. They don't, and it's heartbreaking. (BTW, I am not anti-coal. I believe that coal is useful for electricity, and if the consumption of electricity were curbed by man-kind in general, the coal resource would be far more beneficial overall and far less threatening than other types of sources.)

An all-cotton, reusable bag takes gallons of water to make, and a "paperless" society means that landfills will be full of metal and plastic and fiber optic cords - millions of miles of them - as technology continues to grow and change at rapid speed. Was paper really so bad? We can plant trees. We can replenish that supply indefinitely. But we cannot undo the plastic and the metal. 

I don't like asphalt/concrete, either. People comment about how much cooler it always feels at our house. It is because we did not pave our driveway, no do we plan to. We have not quite two acres and we have grass and trees and a rock driveway. Gravel breathes much better than asphalt, no matter how modern the design of the mix for the asphalt. Nobody talks about asphalt, but it is a significant source of pollution and affects crowded, urban areas terribly, not to mention what it puts out into our atmosphere.

There is no easy answer. I'm not a tree hugger, but I'm also not an idiot. I do believe in global warming, but my perspective is different than most people who "worry" about it. We bought an older home and fixed it up. We drive old cars so that, perhaps, at least for us, we are putting less scrap and junk metal into a landfill over the course of our lifetime. We do use reusable bags, but they're polyester so that they can be washed and hung on the line to dry and used for years. They won't rot through like all cotton does eventually, and it did not take gallons of water to create them. 

I hated the day that I got a smart phone. Flip phones were fine, society did not need to be plugged in 24/7. I wonder how many discarded phones there are now. Remember landlines? You kept the same phone pretty much an entire a lifetime. I love a lot of our modern day conveniences, but many of them also make me cringe. 

I'm trying to live more thoughtfully these days, more aware of what impacts are made and how they are made. I avoid jumping on bandwagons until I TRULY think about what some of these groups are saying about the earth. If someone is preaching about global warming then hopping on a plane, beware of the "truth" they speak. If they have an enormous home - solar power or otherwise - and they're preaching about global warming, beware of their words. Seek for yourself those truths and draw your own conclusions. 

I'm off to check my corn pudding! Fingers crossed it turns out like I'm hoping. October is officially in full swing!