It’s all about the food this week.

New Activity – ENTENMANN’S BAKEOFF

Growing up we always had a kitchen full of baked goods from Entenmann’s. Barbara was totally addicted to their chocolate covered donuts. Before other states carried them, she visited New York and since her friends knew of her “problem,” they gave her a donut for breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and evening snack.  Luckily for her health, the bakery branched out and so her obsession eventually broke its hold over her.

We were excited to find the Entenmann’s Big Book of Baking cookbook so we decided to recreate three of their recipes. The experience was very disappointing. The first recipe was for a lemon loaf but, even though we followed it to the word, it came out very grainy and didn’t rise in the middle. We then tried a chocolate fudge brownie. Fudge wasn’t the word – it was so fudgy that it tasted uncooked and weird. After those two experiments we abandoned the third and the book is getting donated.

New documentary: Just Eat It

Laura: On New Year’s Eve, I decided that my word for 2023 would be “Less” – less weight, less waste, less procrastination. So, watching the documentary “Just Eat It” was first on my list. It’s an eye-opening, jaw dropping yet motivating film about food waste and its impact on people, animals and the environment. I was shocked to learn that more than 40% of the food produced globally is ultimately discarded. Why? Primarily because it’s thrown away in a supermarket when it lacks an “acceptable” look even though it’s perfectly edible and in our homes where it sits on a shelf or in the refrigerator and is either forgotten about, spoils or passes its expiration date. There are several other reasons but my summary wouldn’t do them justice – so I highly recommend you follow along as filmmakers Jenny Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin take you on their six-month journey of eating only food that was discarded or about to be. They had so much to eat but wound up spending less than $200 on food and rescued more than $20,000 of food. I learned a lot from this film and have incorporated their suggestions to store items in the refrigerator that need priority in a container that says “Eat Me First” and to shop more often yet buy less and therefore waste less.

New Restaurant – Edmond’s Burgers

It’s always appealing to find a new place for lunch and what luck that we found Edmond’s Burgers. The restaurant has been open for about three months and we’d never have found it had we not been on the letter E. All of the burgers are two patties so go there hungry! The burgers were delicious and the onion rings were too. The proprietor was a very sweet and friendly lady; next time we go we’ll need to find out more about her and Edmond – who we suspect was the man busily making all the food behind her.