Monday, September 22, 2008

Happy Lions Trash Bag Day


Joy #2 and I got up early Saturday morning to do a little community service. Our city gives trash bags twice a year to it's residents. Some smartie who worked for the city and was a member of the Lions club approached the city and proposed to have the Lions club deliver trash bags as community service and a fund raiser. We (the Lions club) deliver all the bags in one day for the city. The city in return doesn't have to pay their crews overtime to get the bags delivered or add additional duties to the already busy city workers. It used to take them 3 weeks. And since they all go out on the same day it is easy to determine if someone got overlooked or their bags taken. The city pays us around $4,000 a delivery ( we deliver around 16,000 bags) and they are still saving money. It's a big job and we were short on teams but our team delivered 1,075 bags between 7 am & 1:30 pm. It is a fun project and you get to see parts of Leavenworth that you don't normally see. It is satisfying helping the city and making a large chunk of change for the club.
The rest of the weekend I found myself lost in this cookbook.
I read a review of it on Soulemama and ordered it immediately. Something I don't normally do sight unseen. I'm so glad I did. The book focuses on real food, from scratch but not hard. The authors assume that you are using all fresh ingredients and nothing from a can or box, yet all the recipes are so simple. They also had their own families cook all these meals together and the photography is of what the food really looked like with all those hands in it. Not staged and perfect. I am reading it cover to cover. Chapter 1 was flour. They discuss the process from plant to mill and then expand on all kinds of recipes. I made tortillas for the first time in my life using their recipe. It was awesome, took a little bit of time but not very much and it was so satisfying. In addition to the tortillas I baked some apples from the farm using their simple recipe and we ate them for lunch. Joy #1 & I ate our tortillas separate from the apple but Joy #2 chopped up his apple and made a roll up.
This cookbook is just down our alley since we have been trying to cook from scratch and avoid the pantry items. If you too have been moving away from boxed food and ingredients I highly recommend this book!

4 comments:

leah said...

Sounds like a super book! Thanks for passing on the info about it!

Tracy Batchelder said...

I never heard of a city issuing trash bags. Is that a common practice in communities where you live?

The cookbook sounds wonderful. I'm hungry for a tortillas and baked apples now.

Debbie said...

I too was curious about the trash bag issuing? Sounds like a fun day though.

Thanks for the tip on the cookbook, we're trying to avoid the boxes and processed food as much as possible too. I picked up the "Cooking for the rushed" books...my favourite is the healthy family one, still some bottled sauces and stuff though. Maybe I'll have to check out your too!

cinnamongirl93 said...

Hmmm, Your cookbook looks really interesting. I need to check out your link. I mostly cook from scratch. Some nights I have to do a hurry up meal!
In my small town we don't have anything like the bag day. Sounds like a good idea for your area.