Things that are Awesome

I've made many changes over the past year or so. Some are hard, some are easy, some are easy to stick with, and others.... well.... others I have flaked out on. Here's what's awesome:

• maple syrup. 'nuff said. I realized that my brother (Gato Negro) has the real deal at his house. I asked him when he started buying it. He told me "when I started buying my own syrup". Take that gradgreen!
• sugar. Why was I using Splenda? I was obviously brainwashed by Weight Watchers.
• weight loss without lots of artificial foods
• giving stuff to Goodwill -- I now have a permanent Goodwill box in the closet.
• crayons (As you know, I have 3 little kids. Crayons are my favorite art supply. Why do markers even exist? Oh... to destroy my house... right...)
• homemade pizza -- I got a bread machine and it has been worth it for the pizza dough alone
• line drying clothes (this is C's department. Thank you!)
• Murphy's oil soap for cleaning wood furniture -- bye bye Pledge.
  
• cloth napkins
• hankies
• Craig's List
  
• cloth diapers (I've been a total failure with nighttime cloth diapers, but I am convinced that cloth diapers made my little one potty train at two years old ... a whole year earlier than my other two children)
• less/no TV -- we still use the TV to watch movies, but now we don't have any cable, which keeps us nice and commercial free :)
• ceiling fans -- since we have moved to a place with fans in every room, we are able to keep the AC set at a higher temperature and be very comfy.
• Wrap-n-mat to wrap sandwiches in for sack lunch. Very cute, creates its own placemat, and quite a conversation starter.
  

What hasn't worked out so well?

• CSA -- It just didn't seem worth it and the food was rotting.
• worm composting -- they freaked me out a little, and we killed them. Sorry wormies!
• going car free/ car light -- very very hard with three little kids. The basic problem here is that I can't spend long periods of time on public transportation because I have to get home and pick up/ take care of my children.
  

Maple Syrup

A while ago I bought my first ever bottle of real maple syrup. It just ran out. So..... I went and bought another bottle. I am officially converted. Real maple syrup is awesome and the stuff I grew up on freaks me out. I can't believe I didn't realize that I was slurping down maple flavored high fructose corn syrup.

Real maple syrup, on the other hand, comes from trees. There are no other ingredients. Pretty cool. I bought 8 oz. for about 5.50. It came in a glass bottle. The same company sells 16 oz. in a cute plastic bottle for around 15.00. Now, I'm not a math genius (actually, I'm pretty good at math, but still...not a genius) but clearly the 8 oz. in glass is a better deal. Tricky evil marketers.

The syrup is grade A. I wondered what that meant, so I looked it up here. Apparently there are no differences in quality of syrup. It is graded accorded to the "robustness" of the maple flavor, as follows:
Grade A light amber: delicate maple flavor
Grade A medium amber: mild maple flavor
Grade A dark ": robust maple flav.
Grade B: strong robust maple flavor
Commercial: very strong maple flavor

Organic maple syrup costs a lot more. Since maple syrup is already pretty pricey for me, I wondered, "what is organic syrup?" Isn't all syrup organic? According to the people at tropical traditions, there IS a difference. There are 3 main points:
Organic maple forests are not sprayed with pesticides.
No formaldehyde is used in tree tapping.
The number of taps per tree is limited, ensuring the health of the forests.

It can take up to 40 years for a tree to get big enough to tap. I wonder if the forests have been organic that whole time....