Trying Some New (to me) Things

Good Morning!

It is grey and wet here (again), but very mild.  When I got home yesterday Fletch had NO heat on in the house!  And, bedroom windows were open last night.  It was good to air out the house a bit.

Yesterday saw a few more rows knit on the shawl, but it looks the same, so no updated pictures to show.  Instead I thought I'd talk (write) about a few new (to us) products we have tried.  Some are good, and one we did not really care for.  First up, food items.

Fletch and I are definitely not vegan or even vegetarian - we love a good steak, or a piece of chicken, definitely bacon!!  But, we do have vegetarian meals on a regular basis.  I will often make stuffed (with spinach, onions, some kind of beans, etc.) portabella mushrooms and recently I made a slow cooker "lentil sloppy joe" mix that was really good!  The other week when Colin and Mailing were over for dinner Fletch grilled the  Beyond Meat Beyond Burgers  and they were delicious!  It did not take long to cook them and there were even some leftovers that Fletch had later and said they were still good.  Colin tried cooking some inside in a skillet after that, but said they really were not good done that way - weird texture, etc.  I'm curious to try the Beyond Meat Ground "Meat" and I believe there is a sausage too.

This past weekend when grocery shopping we bought BBQ Jackfruit and neither one of us cared for that.  It was ok, but not something I'd buy again and Fletch said to not bother saving the leftovers for him.

We've been using our own bags at the grocery store for years and we have mesh bags for produce (that I try to remember to use, not always successfully).  I was thinking about all the plastic in our shampoo bottles and decided to try a shampoo bar (like a soap bar) and even a conditioner bar.  I bought both from Educated Earthling and they arrived recently.  The delivery time was slow and I received an annoying number of emails congratulating me on my purchase, etc., etc., but I do like the product.  The shampoo bar lathered up very quickly and rinsed out of my hair quickly too.  I wasn't sure about the conditioner bar, but honestly my hair didn't seem as tangled when I got out of the shower (and my hair is long...way below my bra strap).  So far I've only used them once - I've discovered one of the benefits of aging is that I no longer need to wash my hair daily.  In this dry winter weather, I can get by with washing it only twice a week!  (I've also discovered that I no longer have to shave my legs daily - yay!!!)

That company (Educated Earthling) has a number of other products I'd like to try - bamboo toothbrushes, solid dish soap (!), bamboo utensils that I want for my lunch sack that comes to work with me.

So that wraps up the consumer report from me today.  Have you tried anything new?  Or any of these products?