Day 10: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!   My picture looks cute, right?  Well, I need to come clean with you guys.  So that's cilantro that is sprinkled on the clover and I went to eat it and almost threw up.  It tasted like dirt.  I tried to mix in some dressing and gagged again.  I threw it out.  I couldn't do it.  So my husband and I went out and bought some Minute rice in the hopes that I can keep that down.  I mixed most of the pre-made rice I had with some chicken and broccoli and figured that I can eat that for lunch.

What if I did have to eat it, even if it tasted like dirt?  What if it WAS dirt that was mixed in there?  Just a few of the questions that have been in my head today.

Have you ever heard of Homeboy Industries?  I loved the book Tattoos on the Heart and got a chance to eat at tacos at their Homegirl Cafe.  They share a thought of the day daily (duh) and I liked the one for today.  So here you go:
Thought of the Day, from Mary Ellen Burton: Tipping her hat to the Irish legend of St. Patrick, even though there aren't a lot of Irish here Homeboy Industries! She asked us to think about the contradiction in St. Patrick's analogy of the shamrock; every person is incredibly unique, and yet there is a universal togetherness. We are all our very singular leaves, yet we belong together as one shamrock.


She also shared a quote by her friend, Sister Peg Dolan: "Each person alive is a word spoken by God only once." This, Mary Ellen said, is true, we are all a stamp of our own upon the earth, but inside of each of us is the same tangle of beauty and fear and wonderful things, and we would do well to remember that as much as we are unique, we are all made of the same stuff.

________________________________________________________________________________

I know I said no more about food waste, but I thought this was awesome.  I'm part of the Lutheran church and have been doing a Lenten study entitled "God's Math Doesn't Just Add Up, It Multiplies."  It often has me looking at the ELCA World Hunger organization and what they're doing in the U.S. and around the world.  Here's a story from their website in the Domestic Hunger Grants Section:

Senior Gleaners of San Diego County
Gleaners Relief
ESCONDIDO, CA


“I put in a lot of heavy hours, so some days I can hardly walk,” says Ann Evans (pictured left, wearing a hat), a retired Associate in Ministry who volunteers at Senior Gleaners of San Diego County. “But I forget about my pain when I see the excitement of the volunteers and the people [we] help.”
Senior Gleaners of San Diego County was organized in 1992 to tap into the skills of senior volunteers (age 55 and over) in gleaning excess food that would otherwise be destroyed—food found in area fields, grocery stores, and packing sheds. The collected food is then distributed to 45 food-giving agencies in San Diego County, which in turn make the food and fresh produce available to people living in poverty.
Ann, a member of Ascension Lutheran Church in San Diego, is a volunteer coordinator for the South County portion of Senior Gleaners. She supervises 55 volunteers on a daily basis and has been involved in the program since its beginning. Most Gleaners work once a week for about four hours, but Ann is the exception, usually putting in a seven-day week despite arthritis. “My doctor says I should quit,” Ann confesses, “but God lets me do it!”
In 2006, more than 5,500 clients (from babies to senior citizens) were served by Senior Gleaners. The 65 senior volunteers worked for 10,000 hours to collect and distribute nearly 500,000 pounds of food.
ELCA World Hunger—through the domestic hunger grants program—recently awarded a grant to Senior Gleaners to fight hunger in the United States. The domestic hunger grants program is one primary way your gifts impact people who are hungry in the United States.

—Material for this story was contributed by M. Laurel Gray,
President of Senior Gleaners of San Diego County

If you would like to read the story on the website, you can just click HERE.
If you would like to donate to the ELCA to help fight hunger in the US and around the world, please feel free to visit HERE.

Day 8: Sick Rice

I think my rice and I are feeling about the same.  I've spent most of my day on the couch drinking orange juice (my husband is always quick to point out the ounces and time...so YES, I have drank 89 fluid ounces of orange juice in less than 24 hours) and watching the Investigation Discovery channel.  I'm a true crime nut.  Once the crappy shows come on, I turn on either the Food Network or Spongebob Squarepants.

Best story about my love of Spongebob: I was at our Common Ground church service (which is normally a younger crowd on Thursday nights) and I was talking with someone who works as a nanny and we were discussing Spongebob.  A girl was standing there and she said, "I didn't know you had kids!"  I said, "I don't...I just really like Spongebob."  The look on her face was priceless.

But that's all I got today.  Hopefully I can be more pithy and intelligent tomorrow.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Here's what I've got today.  How food waste hurts your wallet and the environment (because we need EVERY reason it's bad and we already know that it's effects others):

Day 6: Shhh!

Be quiet, rice!  He's sleeping!

For being the day of rest, I will be getting none of it. (Which explains why we're having breakfast rice today)  Which, normally, would be somewhat all right.  But since my immune system is a bit weak at the moment, I'm feeling like I'm dragging.  Could it be from the rice diet, not getting enough vitamins?  Or a lack of sleep?  I'm not sure, but I can say that I'm already hungry and I JUST finished my bowl less than 3 minutes ago.

REST today, if you can!  :)
_____________________________________________________________________________

I've been feeling guilty lately.  I have realized how much food I've thrown out and I've tried to stop.  But as I throw away the half-eaten salad I got yesterday, even though I know that I don't eat salads, I have to stop and think.  How much food does America waste?  Here are some statistics:

-According to America’s Second Harvest, over 41 billion pounds of food have been wasted this year.
-According to a 2004 study from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson, on average, American households waste 14 percent of their food purchases.
Fifteen percent of that includes products still within their expiration date but never opened. Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology who led the study, estimates an average family of four currently tosses out $590 per year, just in meat, fruits, vegetables and grain products.


Nationwide, Jones says, household food waste alone adds up to $43 billion, making it a serious economic problem.


- Official surveys indicate that every year more than 350 billion pounds of edible food is available for human consumption in the United States. Of that total, nearly 100 billion pounds - including fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, and grain products - are lost to waste by retailers, restaurants, and consumers.