good 'n planty

Over my Thanksgiving vacation, I spent a good amount of time reading this book*:

The couple who wrote the book spent time with 30 families from 24 countries and photographed them with a weeks worth of groceries. The profiles show how much the families spend on groceries,  statistics of their countries, personal stories and recipes. It was inspiring to see how people make the best use out of what's available to them- it's left a huge impression on me and I know it will continue to stay with my once I have a family of my own.

One thing I've taken from the book is how lucky I am to have nearby access to fresh food. One mother walks several miles downhill to trade for groceries in a village, then has to tote the food back uphill on foot. Even beyond that, I feel truly blessed that my basic needs are so well provided for. Certainly puts the rest of life into perspective.

*thanks to my sister Katie for bringing along to Thanksgiving. 

I'm happy to report that Zicam really seemed to work. My cold started Sunday and I feel about 90% normal right now, so that wasn't bad at all. Best of all, I needed to be at work after Thanksgiving vacation, and I didn't want anything that would knock me out too much. I have to warn you though, Zicam is not ideal for those with weak gag reflexes- if you're lucky, you won't be able to taste anyways, but letting zinc melt in your mouth is not entirely easy when you already feel rotten. There's all kinds of ways to ingest the stuff on their site- so maybe next time I'll try another method. But for now, hurrah! I've never been so happy to breathe through my nose.

also enjoyed during this cold:

 tea, balm, drops.
 

I was going to post about this site a few weeks ago, but I wasn't completely sure it was legit. Since then, I've got my entire office distracted and seen the site mentioned several other places, including Amanda's blog.

So here it is: freerice.org is an interactive vocab quiz that simultaneously collects donations of rice from sponsors. Really cool, check it out.  

As you may have noticed, I have failed nablopomo miserably. I couldn't login to my blog from Kentucky, where I spent my Thanksgiving vacation so the last week (!) my blog has been a ghost town.

Here's a recap:

Wednesday: drove to Kentucky. Made myself sick reading in the car.

Thursday: ate tons of food and squeezed nephews all day.

Friday: thrifted with my sisters, kissed nephews all day.

Saturday: thrifted again, hit the .10 rack hard.  kissed nephews goodbye.

Sunday: drove home, nursed oncoming cold (anyone have good luck with zicam?)

I'm at a show at Radio City Music Hall. The lights are low and a spotlight shines on the greasy haired singer. He steps up to the mic: "This is an organic song...there's no high fructose corn syrup in this song." Proceeds to play "True Blue."