Didn’t ponder on the porch today. Too cold and windy! Walked Penelope this morning and it was trying to sleet. I could feel the thick drops on my face. Just a degree or two lower and we’d have snow. The sky just looks like it wants to snow. But I’m not getting my hopes up. It’s really blustery. I’m watching a pair of cardinals out my bedroom window. They’re just sitting on a leafless branch riding it as the wind blows. Makes me think of a carnival ride.

I’m sitting here eating peanut butter and crackers and wondering who thought up this combination. And who thought to put ketchup on French fires. Can’t imagine a hamburger without ketchup, either. My McMurray family is addicted to ketchup. Heinz ketchup sells 650 million bottles each year! Everyone in my family always has an extra bottle in their pantry.

Ketchup originated in China where it was made from fish entrails. Yuck, and no thanks! Sounds like it was kinda a soy sauce and recipes called for the sauce to be made from lots of different things including oysters and mushrooms and walnuts.

In 1812 John Mease developed a ketchup recipe using tomatoes. The rest is history. Heinz brought their ketchup to market in 1876, selling their ketchup in glass bottles so customers could see what they were buying. Chief always said things tasted better when they came in glass bottles. The pizza sauce we purchased in our pick up grocery order this week was packaged in plastic. Guess we’ll live in a plastic world soon.

Coca colas in the little glass bottles are so good! They just cost too much, now. Just not fun to put a pack of salted peanuts in your Coke if it’s in a plastic bottle. Every Christmas when I was a child, daddy would bring home a case of glass bottle Cokes. They came in a wooden crate and he always sat the crate of Cokes on the kitchen hearth. The Cokes were a Christmas gift to our family from one of his friends.

We used to save the Aunt Jemima glass syrup bottles. Chief always said they’d be plastic one day. I’ve misplaced them in our moving. And Aunt Jemima is gone. Chief saved everything specially things that weren’t compostable. He’d save used plastic mechanical pencils and bread ties. Said he didn’t want his grandchildren to live in a polluted world. After he died and we packed up to move to Roanoke, I found some of his stashes. Pringle cans! But they were full of garden seeds. So he put them to good use.

He was a great recycler, too! Always rinsed out the soft drink cans before he stepped on the can to crush it. We kept our water bottles and drink cans separated and he’d take them to the recycling plant. I feel guilty every time I chunk a can or water bottle in the trash. Stew and I need to get back to recycling.

Bye, bye!