Cookie Trees

Cookie Trees

Originally uploaded by srcleaves.

The last treat of the season for Sara’s co-workers. These cookie trees are made of 10 molasses star-shaped cookies (2 of each size star) held together with butter frosting. Both recipes came from Betty Crocker’s Cooky [sic] Book.

MacGourmet 2 Public Beta

Michael has made the first public beta of MacGourmet 2 available. Lots of good stuff in this release. Check it out!

Last Day of Caffeine

Today was my last day of any form of caffeine in my morning routine, the completion of a process I started in September. Aside from a few headaches which may or may not have been due to the caffeine reduction the entire process has gone quite smoothly. You too can quit the addiction if you want to. But remember Yoda’s wisdom, “Do or do not. There is no try”.

New Routine Update

The first week of my system for quitting caffeine has passed. It has gone very well and this morning while I enjoy my hot water and honey (no lemon because I forgot to buy them at the store) I am not missing the second dose of caffeine at all. In fact hot water and honey is quite good and I can see why people like honey in their tea. One more week with a mug of a coffee and then coffee will no longer be a part of my daily life.

A New Routine

This morning as I was beginning my second mug of coffee it finally struck me that I really don’t enjoy drinking it. I’ve been consuming coffee since my second year of college, which probably makes me a bit of a late bloomer, but the fact remains that 17 years is a lot of coffee through the gut. I’ve known for quite a while that coffee isn’t good for me. I take a Prilosec OTC pill every morning because I have acid reflux and yet I continue to drink two mugs (not cups, mugs) of coffee each day. (Coffee is one of the catalysts for acid reflux.) If simply knowing that something was bad for you or those around was enough to get people to stop engaging in certain behaviors we’d live in a very different world. Sometimes you’ve just got to come to it on your own.

My father smoked a pipe during my entire childhood. Smoking wasn’t unusual in the 70s and I never really thought anything about it. My younger sister did though and she tried to get him to quit but it never worked. The story goes that one day he was cleaning out his pipe and some liquid residue in the stem dripped onto his hand and so disgusted him that he quit right then and there. Even if we permit my dad some artistic license it was still something he came to on his own and once he had he was empowered and in control.

I won’t say that coffee so disgusts me that I’m going to quit cold turkey. I know what I feel like on a day without it. (And what I’m like to be around.) Instead I’m going to use a phased approach that is a slight modification of one I found via a Google search. Three weeks from now I won’t be drinking coffee every morning and in four weeks I won’t be having caffeine in the morning. Here’s the plan:

• Week one: 1 mug of coffee (around 8oz), 1 mug of green tea
• Week two: 1 mug of coffee, 1 mug of hot water with honey and lemon
• Week three: 1 mug of green tea, 1 mug of hot water with honey and lemon
• Week four: 2 mugs of hot water with honey and lemon

Whether I continue to have the hot water mixture after that is up to me, there is something to be said for a warm mug of something in the morning. This doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy coffee now and again but it does mean I won’t be a slave to it. The motions of my new morning routine might not be that different, but I bet I’ll feel a lot better.

As an aside, I have long been bothered by the unsustainable nature of coffee. While we do buy organic coffee from a local roaster it is still getting shipped here. It is also quite a pricey habit. We go through a pound of beans a week at $13.95 per pound. Cha-ching.