Mamarati

Email from rep regarding the powdered sugar in Newman O’s (doesn’t break the ingredients down):

Stephanie,
There are some corn ingredients in the NewmanO’s. the vanilla is grain
distilled (probably corn), but you are correct about the powdered sugar-
there is about 2% cornstarch in the powdered sugar.

Newman’s Own Organics pretzels (all varieties), Soy Crisps (4 varieties)
and 3 varieties of Hermit cookies are corn free. There is corn present
in the manufacturing facility.
I hope this is helpful.

Peggy Westenhofer
Director of Customer Relations
Newman’s Own Organics
831-685-2866

—–Original Message—–

Posted At: Monday, March 24, 2008 6:44 PM
Posted To: Web Inquiries
Conversation: ‘Talk To Us’ Information Sent!
Subject: ‘Talk To Us’ Information Sent!

This was sent from the ‘Talk To Us’ page of the Newman’s Own Organics
website.

Name: Stephanie Brown

Do your Newman Os have any corn ingredients? My son is allergic to corn
and it\’s in everything. I\’d love to find a safe cookie for him. I\’m
thinking if it\’s in anything it\’s in the powdered sugar (sometimes
contains corn starch) unless you process your own from straight sugar.
Thanks a bunch!

Corn-free according to rep I talked to yesterday. No ingredients derived from corn.

No reaction from the kiddo thus far in brownies that contain said chips.

Well, something has gone wrong in the date keeping area of my brain. And it’s been going wrong since I gave up the use of my DayRunner. Actually, when I was using my Mac exclusively, I had iCal and there’s this thing about a Mac… it’s much like opening a book. When you open it, everything is visible and working in just seconds, so it’s like having a paper calendar. That worked for me.

On Windows, not so much. Back in the 90s, I tried to get used to using the Outlook calendar and others. But when you want a quick reminder of what’s on your To Do list and your computer is asleep, it’s a much bigger fiasco. There’s more chugging and churning and time passes so slowly. Like a watched pot that never boils, so were those systems on Windows trying to awake from sleep and open programs without giving a blue screen of death.

So, I ditched any Windows-based calendars and stuck to the devil I knew, which was my DayRunner, classic edition, one page per day.

When I got my iBook a few years ago, iCal took the place of my DayRunner quite nicely.

Then I fell off the roof and had to get the Windows Vista so I could do accurate speech recognition / handwriting recognition. Since I was functioning at a bare minimum anyway during the months and months of recovery, a calendar really didn’t do much for me. I wasn’t making any appointments, going to any meetings, driving. I had to depend on everyone else around me for my scheduling needs.

Now that things are back to normalish and I’m needing to be more productive (I’m back in school full time and working as full time as possible, doing the normal mom things) I’m finding that I can’t seem to get my ducks in a row. My system has been all jacked up and all my habits broken (both good and bad) by the time I spent on bedrest.

In writing all this out, I’m wondering why I feel the need to justify or rationalize my decision to buy a DayRunner refill. Do I feel guilty because I like paper? Do I feel like it’s an oddity since I’m such a computer nerd and yet I crave hard copies of parts of my life? I’m not sure, but I just know that this is not the year for me to be unproductive. This is the year I get it all done.

On top of that, after some hemming and hawing and much complaining about the way Vista behaves and after counting in my head all the hours that are wasted on extra clicks, clicks, clicks, clicks… After realizing that my system is loaded with more RAM than Vista can even handle and has way fast processors and still it is just so slow and clunky… After thinking about all the ways Vista is not intuitive and after way too many times thinking in my head, “If I were on my Mac, I would just do x, y or z and this whole thing would be overwith, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO here I am still waiting on Vista,” or, “Why did Vista just do that? I did not tell it to do that. I did not tell it to reorganize my desktop icons or save that file there.” I decided to just break down and buy a MacBook.

So, I look forward to joining the ranks of the productive again. Some time around the 14th, I will be there. Until then, I will continue to curse, throw my hands in the air, bang my head on the keyboard and sigh exasperatedly at this piece of crap machine.

In other news, I did not take many pictures at Camp Baby. I was too busy talking and well, I was just tired the whole time I was there. I did manage to snap this shot, confirming that I am the master of Wii Bowling and that Heather is a looooooser. Actually, I’m not that great at bowling on the Wii. Jacob is way better and beats me all the time. Somehow on this night, however, I managed to get like 5 or 6 strikes in a row. Odd.

Also, the lasagna of last night… I really love the food saver machine. I really am contemplating doing more bulk cooking. This will probably be doubleplusgood when the new computer gets here since nightly cooking tends to break into my most productive work hours. I’m on a roll between 4 and 6 — in that hyperfocused zone, you know?

Video Game Themed Cakes, Cookies and Whatnot

I’m totally into those Kirby cookies.

This is not a post about cats.

When it comes to food dehydrators. Mine came with 4 trays. This handled two bunches of grapes, 3 pears and 3 apples.

I still have two pomegranates, 2 mangoes, 1 papaya, 4 bananaanananananas, 2 pineapples and some meat left. I think I might also go and buy some salmon and dry it. Debbie Downer boyfriend thinks that will make the trays permanently smell like fish, though. I don’t think it works that way, but I could be wrong.

I’m going to need about 40 more trays, please.

Maybe I need to get one of these bad boys. I’m sure I can find $10k laying around here somewhere.

Of course, then I wouldn’t be able to afford to put anything in it. We’d have to live inside of it or put wheels on it and drive it around.

I’m so excited now I can barely contain myself. I will have to remember that the majority of this food should be reserved for my son. Especially since I have been doing more than a little cheating on the nights that he is with his dad.

Like yesterday when I had a corn dog and a cherry limeade from Sonic. I really don’t know what the hell came over me, especially since I’d just left Sprout’s where I could have gotten any number of healthy food items to eat on the way home.

But instead, I had a corn dog.

I don’t even know what is in a corn dog. More ingredients than I care to think of, I’m sure.

To show how little I think sometimes… I mixed cream of tartar with sugar to make powdered sugar. In my blender. I was going to use tapioca starch, but I couldn’t find it. I know I did buy some, however.

At any rate, the frosting came out tasting rather… tart. Is that why it’s Tart-ar?

I have no idea, but you’d think there was some sort of lingual connection there, no?

It’s not a bad tart, I don’t think… but it’s definitely there. Almost a lemony taste.

The sugar did not become near as powdered as I wanted. This is because my blender sucks. I want a BlendTec, dammit.

I’ve figured that there are a few pieces of equipment that will be important to Jacob when he is out on his own or if/when he goes off to college. He’ll never be able to have a meal plan, you know?

So, he’s going to need a blender to make nut, rice and soy milk. Powdered sugar possibly… Nut butters. But the milk stuff is really the big one. I’m using the blender almost every day now.

A food dehydrator. Because he loves fruit. And fruit is expensive. It’s not subsidized like corn, after all. And he loves dried fruit, but they always add stuff to it that doesn’t match our days. Oils. Sugars. Whatnot. We could make our own and buy it when it’s in season, local, cheap… and then if I need to add any oils or sweeteners, I can do that according to the rotation. It’s also easier to send dried fruit to school with him. I can’t send apples because they brown and get gross, the outsides are waxed with corn crap or they’re washed in citric acid from corn. But I can send some dried apples. So on and so forth. The only reliable dried fruit that we find around here is pineapple.

A juicer maybe. I’m entertaining the idea of this… Juices are expensive. Especially the ones that we get that are a bit “off” for the mainstream. Mango and whatnot. I’m thinking it might be easier to do this with juices or smoothies I make at home. Then I can get some greens in them as well and make it even better. And there’s the transport issue again. School lunches are just a bitch sometimes.

Food saver system. I will probably just pass mine on to him if the damn thing is still working. It has been a blessing in so many ways. Mason jars are great for holding flours and such and I can stretch them even further with the vacuum sealer. More on that later. I use that thing so much it’s on my counter now. I used to only use it when I’d buy the occasional giant pack of meat.

Have to run. Need to shower before frosting this cake and heading to the party.

Some of you have been reading me since Jacob was just a wee tot… Can you believe that he’s going to be 12 years old????? Tux, when I started reading you, you were just 4 or 5 years older than he is now, right? Such a crazy world. It kind of freaks me out how time is passing so quickly.

(sigh)

In other news, I am missing the hell out of my boyfriend. He has been out of town for like… ever. I have played a lot of Animal Crossing. I have like 800,000 bells in the bank if that tells ya anything.

Boyfriend, I wish you didn’t have to be away from me right now. I miss you. I hope you have an Internet connection long enough to read this. MMMmmmmmmwaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!1

Well, I start to feel a little better during the day, but then I do a bunch of stuff and feel like crap again, or I lay down and all the sinus stuff just pools up in one place making my head feel like it’s going to explode.

I spent all morning cooking. Chicken soup. Had to cut up potatoes, carrot and celery for that and get those veggies tender so that I just plop some cooked chicken in it tonight. Luckily I’d made the broth last week. Washing, cutting, bagging. Strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe. Making hashbrowns, which I’ve never done without using an egg and an onion. That was weird. I used some psyllium seed husk and a little bit of buckwheat flour and water. They look kind of odd, but taste fine.

And baking a cake. An eggless chocolate cake. And I just looked in the oven and it might just work out. It’s actually rising and looking normal. Go figure. I hope so. It would be nice to make Jacob a birthday cake. I could top it with whipped cream and strawberries.

Who needs all that shortening frosting anyway?

Or I could pulverize some sugar and sift some on top in the style of powdered sugar, which he can’t have any more.

My head is killing me and I feel so loopy. I’m not even on any cold medicine and I feel like I’m out of my mind. I really dislike being sick. Much much much. More than just about anything I can think of, I hate this feeling.

I hope this cake is moist. How great would that be?

—

Update… cake. Pretty delicious. Quite moist. Could have cooked it about 5 minutes less… but turned out great. At least by my standards. We shall see when the “real” tester gets home today how he likes it.

Why do people say that? Are dogs frequently sick? I’m going to have to look that one up.

I’m feeling like crap. Sore throat. Stuffy head. Ears feel like I’m in the mountains. Headache. Tired. Very very tired. Even after taking nyquil and trying hard to last through an episode of Top Gear, I fell asleep somewhere around way too early for me. 9:30? And I woke up at 9am, still tired.

I’m also getting close to my period so I’m super cranky.

I guess I shouldn’t complain. It’s been a long time since I was sick, now that I think about it. Since well before the accident, which was at the end of April. That’s saying something. Usually I catch every single bug that comes within a hundred yards of me. Guess it was just my time. I should have listened when boyfriend said all his people at work are getting sick and he started taking echinacea. It just didn’t dawn on me that he was actually feeling crappy. I thought he was just taking preemptive measures.

Yesterday I took 3 echinaceas and 3 vitamin Cs. Hopefully that will help kick me into bug fighting gear.

Meanwhile, I’m making these collard greens in the crockpot and they are just the shit. I hope this batch turns out like last time. I didn’t get a ham hock, but I still used bacon so it ought to turn out fine… Just without the little shredded bits. I’m serving it with a pork roast, so I think that ought to be enough pig for anyone.

I’m going to take some more nyquil and lay down and hopefully tomorrow this will be over.

10/19

Dinner:
Turkey burgers
Spinach

Breakfast:
Cashews, mango juice, coconut, apple

Lunch:
Tuna pack
Jicama chips
Apple
Black olives

Snacks:
Jicama chips, pistachios

Shopping:
Tuna packs
Black olives

10/18

Dinner:
Spring rolls (shrimp, rice paper, rice vermicelli, avocado, snow peas)

Breakfast:
Almond milk
Rice
Honey

Lunch:
Rice crackers
Peanut butter
honey
Pineapple

Snacks:
Peaches, oranges, grapefruit, peanuts

Shopping:
Rice vermicelli
Shrimp (small, about 18)
Snow peas
Almonds (1/2 cup to 2 cups water)
Rice crackers

10/17

Dinner:
Fried chicken
Mashed potatoes
Salad

Breakfast:
Hashed Browns
Cantaloupe

Lunch:
Chicken soup
Red grapes

Snacks:
Walnuts, raisins, celery, sunflower butter

Shopping:
Chicken pieces
Red grapes

10/16

Dinner:
Pork Roast
Collard Greens
Wheat Rolls

Breakfast:
Strawberries and blueberries with sugar

Lunch:
Ham sandwich
Cheese sticks
Milk (J buy milk at school)

Snacks:
Bread, cheese, banana, brazil nuts

Shopping:
Pork roast
collards

Rewards are fun. Yay.

So after all my mistakes with cooking this week, I step on the scale to find that I’ve lost 10 pounds. I knew I was on track the other day when I’d lost 4, but what a shock today! I thought maybe I’d eeked out a pound more at the most. So, kind of a nice reward to counter all the bleakness with this diet.

I think I’m going to go to Minyard and see what I can find there. Or maybe to Carnival to see if they’ve got better meat.

Dinner:
Turkey thighs with gravy
Jimaca fries
Spinach

Breakfast:
Pears
Quinoa flakes
Date syrup

Lunch:
Leftover from dinner

Snacks:
Apples, coconut, cashews, pistachios, hazlenuts

Shopping:
Cashews (CM?)
Pears (w*m)
Spinach
Jimaca
Turkey thighs (Target)