What-What?! Week of March 2nd

Last Saturday, when I told my daughter that she could do as much homework as she wanted, little did I know that I had released a ravenous monster.  In two days, she did about 20 pages of language arts homework, which confirmed what I'd been thinking for some time now; she's probably beyond first grade in reading.  The current plan is to let her finish zooming through the first grade work, then go on to the second grade book (which I need to pick up soon).

Cooking:  Lemon Butter via Tasty Kitchen

This is the second time I've posted about this delicious lemon butter.  It is so wonderfully fresh, especially during this drab time of the year.  I decided to live on the wild side, and opted not to use a double boiler, instead cooking it over low heat and stirring constantly.  It came out just fine, and was a lot less finicky to make than last time.  If you are going to make this lemon butter, though, do invest in a microplane of some sort -- it will make zesting the lemons immensely easier!

News:  Safeway in Discussion for Possible Sale via Progressive Grocer

This past year has been pretty rough for Safeway;  last year, the company divested itself of 72 stores in the Chicago area, some of which have been picked up by competitors like Whole Foods.  Even with those underperforming stores gone, the company's 2013 sales hadn't grown at all compared to 2012 numbers, and any same-store increases in sales were eaten up by decreasing fuel sales.  Basically, Safeway is going nowhere, and in the highly competitive grocery industry, that's bad news.  Getting rid of underperforming stores is generally speaking a good thing for short-term performance, but the affects of backing out of entire geographic areas may come back to bite them.  With all this going on, Safeway has announced that it is in talks to be bought out by a private investment firm of some sort.  According to this article, the firm is Cerberus Capital Management (though this fact isn't officially confirmed), which has some pretty significant
 experience in the grocery industry all ready, so all in all, the sale might be a good move for Safeway.

This Computer Game Lets You Stomp Peasants with the Famous Monty Python Foot via Yahoo! Tech

For those Monty Python fans, a bit of light amusement.  You play the giant foot from Monty Python, squashing peasants and knights.  This is a simple, though entertaining, game.  Go play it!
(imgs via Wikipedia, Yahoo! Tech)

What-What?! Week of January 27th

This last week has been busy; my husband had his wisdom teeth taken out, and school started for me.  Most of this week, I didn't cook real dinners, opting instead to have things like sandwiches, eggs, macaroni and cheese, and so on.  I made spaghetti once.  I need to plan better for next week.

On Writing: Squidoo and School

I had some happenings with Squidoo this week; a few new articles, some squid-likes and comments.  My lowest ranked article is at about #124,000ish, which is a far cry from the 20,000 ranking that is my goal (that's when the money happens), but much better than many of my others, which are in the 300,000 range.

I'll be doing a lot more writing in general now that school has started, but I'm hoping that some of the assignments will lend well to incorporating onto Squidoo.

Food:  Lemon Butter via Tasty Kitchen

This I did do.  I don't have a real double-broiler, so I had a pot of water with a bowl over it, and that worked out okay.  It still came out amazing!  So delicious!

Osric’s Birthday:  Hot Air Balloon Ideas

After making cake bites last week, I decided to go looking for other hot air balloon birthday ideas.  Here's some of what I found:



I found these brilliant woven paper hot air balloons.  They are so cute!  The pattern doesn't look that hard, so I might try them sometime.



This hot air balloon cake is a pretty blah by itself, but I think the idea has potential.  I could see maybe doing a group of them, maybe creating some kind of scene?  Marshmallow clouds could work.


These little cake pop guys on the left have some potential as well. (if you follow that link, beware the million pictures).

News:  Tips for Getting Your Product in Big Box Stores via Entrepreneur
Not much by way of news this week, but I thought this article was worth a read.  It's pretty fantastic that small businesses can get stocked at large chains, but her discussion of the required infastructure you need to have ready is somewhat staggering.  What she doesn't talk about are all the services that help you with that infastructure; you don't have to develop a national warehouse system or worry about shipping your items to stores, because businesses like UPS will do that for you.

Well, that's it for this week.  Hopefully next week I'll something a bit more substantial.