Cracker holes, bean salad, & 12 ounce pounds

When all else runs out in our pantry, sometimes a nice saltine cracker (usually reserved for tomato soup), takes the edge of our snacking urge in this house. I’m partial to them plain but my husband likes to smear them with plain butter, peanut butter, or melt a little cheese on a plate full. A guilty pleasure that satisfies my sweet and salty craving is to smear a little jelly on top. What I’ve noticed lately though is that the cracker holes are way bigger than they used to be. It seems like they used to be just pricks, kind of decorative, across the top, just barely making indentations to catch the spreadable. You can’t do that anymore. What you are spreading will smoosh through or worse, leak all over. It’s not just off brand either, Premium themselves are big of holes. Is this a vast conspiracy to provide the same size but less cracker? Methinks, yes.

I picked up a couple of cans of Mexican Bean Salad thinking they would go nicely with my Fiesta Layer Bake the other night. The picture on the label was rather pleasant and tasty looking and I’m a big fan of the bean salad. But this, this was more like bean soup and in fact the directions say to heat it in the microwave. This seems incongruous in my mind. I didn’t serve it. I stashed my opened salad in a plastic container in the frig and I’m trying to think of somewhere I can dump it to make use of the protein. Probably in a beans and rice kind of way. I looked it up online and the maker says use it like a hot bean dip or a sauce on burritos or drizzle on a taco. I think the word drizzle is key there. That’s not salad, that’s a sauce. I think if you say Bean Salad, you should mean Bean Salad. I’ll show you bean salad…TRY THIS ONE but I use pinto beans instead of the cannellini beans. I also like to shred some lettuce and mix that in just before serving.

If you are old like me, you know that so many former 1 pound containers are now 11-12 ounces only. In fact, I’ve become so used to it, I caught myself calculating a measurement based on a 12 ounce pound but 1/4 th of a pound is not 3, it’s 4 ounces. That would have been wrong. Am I the only one who misses 16 ounce containers?

I think about this kind of stuff when I’m waiting. It’s odd where your mind can go if left to wander. I’m normally really good at waiting. I can, NOT wonder for a very long time, so much so, it has driven a few people crazy. I’m gifted in waiting. Usually. This week I had to wait for phone calls, wait for computer stuff, wait for answers to instructions, and wait for my freelance client to get his act together. I’m also waiting for the results of an interview I did…hoping I get hired! I got a lot of praying done. I found plenty to pray about in my Twitter feed alone. I think I was given waiting this week for the purpose of praying in fact. And just when I got a bit impatient, I had to wait more. I think the Lord is a giver like that. Who am I to question the purpose of my waiting? So I think, and I pray.

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But those who wait on the LORD

Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:31