Reducing Snacking Waste

 

A stainless steel specialized pan for popping corn is one of the best investments we've made recently. 

We had got in the habit of purchasing bags of pre-popped corn. First of all, plastic bag bad. Secondly, there was the cost. $4 a sack, typically. 

This was nuts. The pan cost $35. The popcorn for the pan (1/2 cup & 3 tbsp. of olive oil a batch) costs pennies in comparison. We can get the popcorn in a cardboard carton. 

All in all, this is a great thing. A tasty snack, cheaper & better for you. 

When I mentioned this to my dad, he said that his father & mother-in-law used to make their popcorn this way, just about every night "even after microwave popcorn came out."

"Oh dear," I thought. 

"So, Dad," I queried, "have you heard of 'popcorn lung?" bronchiolitis obliterans - so called because it was discovered in factory workers in microwave popcorn packaging factories where the chemical diacetyl was floating around. Apparently this garbage is still found in some vaping products. It's an irreversible scaring of the lung tissue. It's not something I want to be responsible for. 

Other than that, winter has settled in. It's cold. Yesterday involved pulling snow off of the solar panels. 

The panels themselves seem to be working, but you wouldn't know it from the rubbish software, "Enphase Enlighten" that's hooked up to it. The system went in October 13, and the stupid software fails regularly. The latest outage has lasted two days. When I look up what might have happened on our internet, the "troubleshooting" page says that the most likely cause is that we are experiencing an internet outage. Wait. What's wrong with this sentence? Our internet is fine. The solution, they say, is to go out, find the stupid little fragile reporting box, push a bunch of buttons in some particular sequence, and hope. If not, "call your internet service provider." I'm not interested in dealing with another customer service fiasco. These panels had best pay for themselves quickly as we turn to spring, or the incredible hassle it has been. The endless wait for All Energy Solar to put them up with NO communication all summer, the instantaneous selling of my loan from the first company to some two-bit credit union full of hucksters in Alabama, "All In Credit Union" which so far is not honoring the interest rate that we agreed to with our original loan company. It's been war, and it looks like it is about to get bloodier. 

Anyway, at least we have reduced our snack waste. Always look on the bright side of life.