Can I Just Get a Good Bowl of Soup?

I don't know about you, but the thing I miss most when I'm traveling is home cooking. Specifically, I miss MY cooking. I'm no gourmet but I'm a pretty decent cook, and enjoy spending time looking for new recipes and trying them out.

When I eat out it's fun to try new cuisines and "foodie" places, but after a few days all I really want is home cooking. And when it comes to home cooking, I usually want soup. Good soup. A bowl full of love that was made from scratch and simmered on the stove for a couple of hours.

Alas, good soup was not to be found on our last roadtrip. The best soup I ate was at Olive Garden and say what you will, but this doesn't fall into the "made from scratch" category in my opinion. I ate vegetable soup that looked promising but was watery and tasted like a can. The tomato soup in Boone, NC was homemade but was vegan and seemed to have tempeh in it - not that tempeh is bad, but it wasn't what I craved. I could have opted for bisque or chowder in Charleston, SC, but those options seemed to heavy for 90-degree temps and oppressive humidity.

Now that we're home I'm going to tackle the situation head-on. Tomorrow is soup day. Chicken tortilla soup, made from scratch. It's going to be delicious - I can't wait!

Photo by R. Young

My family just returned from an eight-day roadtrip during which we drove nearly 2,000 miles. With that much driving, we visited plenty of restrooms at truck stops, gas stations and fast food joints, always hoping that a tidy appearance on the building exterior would mean similar results in the bathroom. Sadly, that was rarely the case.

Sanitation aside, my
biggest beef was the lack of hooks or shelves where I could place my purse. After all, God only knows what was on those floors, especially the really filthy ones.

Are men still designing all the restrooms in the US? Equal numbers of stalls for both genders, plus guys get urinals - how ridiculous is that? But nowhere to put your purse? That's plain thoughtless.

Perhaps it's too much to hope that business owners will clean their restrooms. I don't expect miracles. But could they at least provide a hook or clean shelf for purses? I'd be very grateful.

Photo by Lisandra Barros Mendonça

Getting Into the Halloween Spirit

Pumpkin Teeth!

That's right - some nice fangs that will easily add a bit of fright to your Jack O'Lantern. It's pretty difficult to carve spiky teeth in the pumpkin - the sharper and thinner the teeth, the more likely they are to break.

To use Pumpkin Teeth all you have to do is carve a wide smile into the pumpkin and insert the plastic "teeth," which are white and glow in the dark. They come in three sizes and can be re-used year after year. Best of all, a pack will only run you $2.50. What's not to love?

If fangs aren't your thing, you can opt for the buckteeth - in my opinion, those buckteeth are screaming for braces.

I discovered these yesterday and have already placed my order. It's the easiest way I can think of to add some fun to Halloween this year.

With the Rising Cost of Groceries, It's Cheaper to Eat Fast Food

I could save money if I fed my family nothing but fast food. How pathetic is that?

Over the past two or three months, it seems that the price of just about everything at the grocery store has risen. Things that have been the same price for years - scallions, for example - now cost more. Even the little bunches of flowers that I sometimes splurge on are pricier. And don't even get me started on the rest of the produce and dairy and meat products.

I'm not a buy-the-kit-and-make-it kind of cook. Experts say that to have a healthier diet you should shop the perimeter of the store for produce, meat and dairy, and skip the salt-laden, sugary, preservative-filled packaged food items in the center aisles. On average our family of three spends about $140 - $160 per week at the grocery store. Our groceries aren't organic or free-range, either. But when you can buy a value meal for less than $4 at times, fast food looks pretty affordable. If pressed to eat fast food, I'll often go for a kid's meal, which is even cheaper.

So, eating fast food looks good from an economic perspective, but it's terribly unhealthy. Morgan Spurlock discovered first-hand in his 2004 documentary Supersize Me, which chronicled his fast food-only diet for one month, that the impact on your health can be devastating. After 30 days - or 90 consecutive meals - of McDonald's food, here's what happened:

* Spurlock gained nearly 25 pounds (it took him more than a year to lose the weight)

* his cholesterol rose 65 points

* significantly increased his risk of heart disease

* experienced negative effects on his liver, blood pressure and libido

I suppose it's only cheaper to eat fast food if you have excellent, generous medical insurance because in the long run, you'll be paying doctors and hospitals that treat the myriad medical conditions caused by eating such lousy food.

We'll stick to buying and eating more healthily. By purchasing produce that's in season, bulk purchases of staples and meat, and searching for budget-conscious recipes, I can save money. I do it now, but I can do more - and it will keep me out of the drive-thrus.

Photo by André Menegatti