So the time change really has me messed up. We were in P for P's family Christmas this weekend (his mum and grandma go to FL) and my eating schedule gets off coupled with the time change really wrecks havoc on my blood sugar and thus what I ate. Tomorrow as part of my > 30 days of wheat-eating-I-need-a-biopsy-to-diagnose-celiac I will start eating wheat. I am going to start with a piece of gourmet bread that I have in my freezer. I'll keep you posted.

As P's grandma gets older (she is now 85) the family dinners get less good. Did you ever notice a tendency for old people to be reluctant to throw things away and/or keep things that SHOULD be thrown away?? My grandmother was like that big time. She would buy two liters of soda at Christmas, the store brand of course, and then keep it in the fridge half consumed and offer us some again say ... the next September. Yuck! Routinely we are at P's house and his Grandma has crap in her cupboards that expired say.... 3 years ago? For instance, P's brother wanted a shake earlier in the summer and I found the malted powder in the cupboard. It was a hard dried up rock. I turned it over and the expiration date said "1999" and it clearly was unusable. She thought it was fine and proceeded to try and use it until I stepped in. Then she got angry and defensive. She does go to Florida for half the year which may be why things don't get used and left. They aren't open, so what is the problem (ranch salad dressing, expired 06/2003)? I agree while they most likely won't kill anybody, they are not super fresh and taste that way. She served a caramel apple pie that someone had given her from Sam's Club that had been frozen for over two years. I took a tiny bit of caramel and it tasted like freezer burn. She gave us two pieces to take home because "no one ate it".

When I was a kid, I routinely had old neighbors that would generously give me a bag of candy to take home. The Candy bars were so hard you could use them to pound nails. They promptly went into the trash. My grandma used to freeze milk and then just thaw what she needed. She loved the microwave because she could quickly thaw all of her frozen stuff that had been frozen for years and 'it was a good as fresh'. No grandma, it wasn't. P's grandma had a half bag of unsalted (yuck) tortilla chips on the counter with a 'best by date of August 07". Um Grandma, it's November 4th. Plus you know they were purchased well beyond the sell by date... so those chips are in high school in freshness years.

I definitely think this is an old lady thing. Am I going to be offering flat grocery store soda, stale M & M, and have a kitchen full of rotting bananas? Frankly, I'm a little bit worried. I don't think these ladies see, hear, smell or taste the best and coupled with surviving the depression causes this I-am-offering-you-spoiled-food-syndrome.

You are now warned. Oh.. anyone want a two year old piece of caramel apple pie?