It’s Time to Fall Back!

Daylight savings time is over!

This is just a reminder to set your clocks back 1 hour tonight. No reason to be an hour early to anything on Sunday or to miss out on an extra hours sleep!

Hope your weekend is fantastic!

Weekly Wanderings

Weekly Wanderings

Here are some great things I found in the blogosphere this week.

Be Focused but Well-Rounded in Course Selection – from The Noisy Library, a new blog by a new librarian

Another Swipe at Google – Points of Reference’s take on the new Blekko search engine

Monster Cupcakes – too late for Halloween, but how cute are these?!  The always creative Annie of Annie’s Eats does it again.

Productivity, Frugal Girl Style | Get thee to bed! – the start of a new series from one of my favorite bloggers, The Frugal Girl

How to Build a Solid Time Management Foundation – Laura from I’m an Organizing Junkie guest posts at Life…Your Way

Photo Credit

Food Waste Friday: The Terrible Edition

This was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. 

In terms of food waste, that is.  My week was fairly good otherwise.  How was yours?

Anyway, I don’t have a picture to show what we wasted so my description will just have to suffice.  This week we wasted:

• 1 pound of beef tips
• 2 beef tenderloin steaks
• About 1 cup of parmesan cheese

Why did we waste all of this amazing food? 

The meat was a complete accident.  Intending to make beef stew on Sunday, we took some beef tips and the steaks out of the freezer and put them on the counter to defrost for a little while before returning to the fridge overnight.  Well, being the smart people that we are, the whole family went to bed without realizing the meat was still on the counter.  In the morning the beef was room temperature and had been sitting out for almost 12 hours.  Instead of chancing salmonella and e. coli, the beef went into the trash.  I hate wasting meat!!  We buy all of our beef at our local grocery store’s warehouse sale and get excellent deals on it, but that doesn’t lessen the pain of throwing away lovely, wonderful, delicious meat!  Big sigh.

The cheese had been in its container for so long it had started to mold.  We tried to pick out the moldy sections, but it was all mixed in and too difficult to weed out the little moldy bits.  Into the trash it went.

A terrible food waste week.  Fingers crossed for a (much) better week next week!  How did you do this week?

This post is linked to Food Waste Friday.

Photo Credit

No-Heat Challenge Update

I made it through October with no heat!

This past weekend was very chilly (for us at least!); it dropped down into the low 40s. It was the first time we've seen temperatures that low this fall and the first time I even considered moving the thermostat from AC to heat. The temperature upstairs, where my room is, was 63 when I woke up and hovered around 65 all day on Saturday. I was so tempted to turn on the heat, but I bundled up and survived.

So far I haven't turned on the heat at all this month, but it's been fairly warm. The temperature has been dropping all day and we are expected to have a light frost Friday night/Saturday morning. I'm thinking that I'm going to be turning the heat on this weekend! I plan to flip the switch from AC to heat, but set it to only run if it gets below 64. I figure if I can survive 63, then 64 should be plenty warm.

As of today, the no-heat challenge has been very easy. Now it's going to be all about making it to the weekend before turning on the heat and then adjusting to a winter of cooler temperatures and many layers.

Are you participating in the no-heat challenge? How are you doing?

Photo Credit

Academic Library = Student Center?

I wrote and published this post in September 2009 on my old library school student blog.  I still think it is relevant, so I’m sharing it with you today.

Not a day goes by where I don't read (or hear) about how the academic library is outdated.  No matter how many coffee shops, group study rooms, and laptop computers you have available for check out, it's still a library, and apparently that's outdated.  That's certainly how the president of Goucher College in Baltimore, MD saw it.

When the old library was due for renovation, he scratched that and set up plans to build a multi-million dollar student center, with a library in it.  The new library, now called The Athenaeum, so named for the ancient Greek central gathering point where people came for a variety of purposes, houses a restaurant, workout room, bathroom complete with shower, commuter lounge with a full kitchen, an art gallery, classrooms, a forum, and a library.  All classic library features including circulation and reference desks, open stacks, and quiet study areas are included; however, the president felt that students needed a student center more than they needed a serious separate library.

On one level, I find that this makes a lot of sense. From what I can gather, Goucher College is a small school with a large chunk of commuting students.  Commuting students often have trouble fitting in to a campus community and creating a more student-friendly space where they can hang out as well as study does make sense.  Goucher College is also very small and it is doubtful that much major research takes place there, lessening the need for a major library.

However, I feel like lumping a library in with a student center lessens the library's importance.  Academic libraries have been undergoing major transformations over the last decade from traditional book warehouses to more technology-friendly "information centers", but this is the first time I've ever heard of adding work-out equipment and a restaurant to a library.  It appears to me that the president of Goucher College does not appreciate nor understand what truly happens in an academic library. Yes, the library should be a central gathering place on campus for students, so it should have amenities to make spending large quantities of time there better, but it's main focus should be academic not social.

Did Goucher College taking the concept of a comfortable library a little too far? Should the academic library and the student center be merged? And when does the library cease being a library and just become a mere room in the student center?

Recipe: Beef Stew

As I mentioned yesterday, it's finally turning (and staying) cooler around here. While I love soups and stews, I find them very hard to eat when it's about 70° outside. Our Halloween night was pleasantly cool, so we decided to celebrate by eating a bowl of delicious beef stew.

Beef Stew – Makes 8-10 servings

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 pounds stew meat, cut into 1 inch pieces

1 large onion, chopped

3-4 garlic cloves, minced

1 pouch beef stew seasoning (such as McCormick's)

4 cups beef broth, divided

1 cup water

4 Idaho baking potatoes, peeled and cubed

4 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces

3 stalks celery, cut into ½ inch pieces

Heat oil in large soup pot over medium high heat and begin browning the stew meat. When meat begins to brown, add in onions and sauté 5 minutes or until meat is browned and onions have softened. Drain fat from meat. Add in garlic and seasoning packet and cook 1-2 minutes. Add 2 cups of beef broth and 1 cup of water to pot. Bring the contents to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer at least 1 hour.

Add potatoes, carrots, celery, and remaining 2 cups beef broth and return to a boil. Lower heat to low and cook for 45 minutes or until vegetables are soft, but not falling apart. Serve hot with cornbread. 

This post is linked to Tasty Tuesday and Works for Me Wednesday.

Menu Plan Monday

Wow! Can you believe it's November already? How was your Halloween? Did you have any great costumes come to your door?

November means it's time to start thinking about Christmas shopping, preparing for Thanksgiving, and my personal favorite, holiday baking. It also means the fall weather is really and truly here to stay. We had a very warm October and I'm welcoming the (finally!) cool weather with some warm and cozy foods on our menu plan.

Sunday: Beef Stew (recipe coming tomorrow!), corn bread, pumpkin cobbler

Monday: Wine braised lentils over rice

Tuesday: Sweet potato and vegetable tien, rotisserie chicken

Wednesday: Leftovers

Thursday: Pasta with Butternut Squash and Sage*

Are you adding fall recipes to your menu?

This post is linked to Menu Plan Monday.

*If you can't access this recipe, but are interested in having it, email me at lizy1285 (at) gmail (dot) com.