Thursday, November 13, 2014

Plus Points, Comet Landing.

Our grocery store awards Plus Points on certain grocery items – different ones each week. I generally try and make sure that the items we want are only bought with Plus Points, of course that Plus Points carddoesn’t always work out. The allocation of items for these points is supposed to be based on what we normally shop for. In some cases they obviously aren’t and items I wouldn’t buy because we don’t have kids for instance, get points and are offered to us. I never buy stuff we don’t want/use even though it carries points. 100,000 gets you $100 of free grocery. I often buy a few things and use them but Matt gets mad and wants to save them for a full shop. Well, he got his wish this morning and bought $110 worth of groceries for $10. We still have quite a few points to start building up again. Good system. Same thing with our Visa. We get cash back once a year with the result that we use Visa for practically everything.

The Rosetta Mission involving landing a spacecraft on a comet has turned out successfully. philae-robotic-lander-lands-on-comet-67pchuryumovgerasimenko-5668009628663808-hp
I was impressed that Google got this doodle up so fast to celebrate this landing. We heard about the actual landing of the Philae Lander at 11:03 Wednesday morning and it didn’t take Google long to have this doodle up at all. This was achieved by the European Space Agency. There is a video on the page as well as an interesting article about the whole mission.

We used to make appetizers like this all the time, haven’t done so in years though. This one came from Food.com

Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts


By Merlot
Even though this is a very old recipe, I thought it might be something new to the "young whipper-snappers" who are unfamiliar with this recipe.
Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts. Photo by Delicious as it Looks

Ingredients:


Yield 16

 

Directions:

  1. Marinate the water chestnuts in soy sauce for 1 hour.
  2. Drain.
  3. Roll each chestnut in the brown sugar.
  4. Wrap each chestnut with a piece of bacon.5
  5. Secure with a toothpick.6
  6. Arrange on a cake rack in a shallow baking pan.7
  7. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.8
  8. Drain on paper towels.9
  9. NOTE: This can be prepared ahead of time and stored in refrigerator until ready to bake.
Have a great day
Jo_thumb[2]

19 comments:

  1. Hi Jo - that's good you're saving points for a value shop at some stage - $110 for $10 seems a good deal. The Philae has been a 10 year journey, and another ten years of engineering-scientific brilliance to get it as far as today ... I hope they can achieve a fair amount of science from it ... though it seems to be bouncing around a little .. love the Google doodle ...

    These bacon wrapped water chestnuts sound a good alternative .. cheers Hilary

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    1. Yes, and it doesn't take too long to accumulate that many points either.

      Saw a programme about it last night. Pity after all that effort if they don't get the info they need.

      They are good I can promise you.

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  2. A hundred bucks in free groceries is good!

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    1. I certainly think so. I guess I won't spend any more in dribs and drabs but save the points as Matt says.

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  3. That recipe sounds really good. :)

    I bet Google had the graphic ready to go, just in case. ;)

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    1. It is good.

      You are probably right Melissa.

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  4. Saving up point for big payouts must be a man thing. My husband does the same. We have a credit card that gets cash back, so we use it for everything and pay it off at the end of the month. Little bits add up!

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    1. No not really Liz, we are both involved. I get an email every week telling me what points are available on what products. Matt doesn't use computers. We also do the same with the credit card, this November we have over $300 coming in cashback. Better in our pockets than theirs.

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  5. Oh that landing on a comet was real? I saw it going around on Facebook and thought it was a movie or something. I don't watch the news. Our grocery store has points too but they are allotted towards gas fill ups at participating stations. For every 100 points you get 10 cents off a gallon. I had 400 points and my gas was $2.55 a gallon the other day. Pretty sweet.

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    1. Yes it was real JoJo and quite a remarkable achievement. Actually I grocery store does that too, you get a few cents off gas depending on what you spend - we just take the grocery bill to the gas station. It varies as to what you spend, like this week was only 4 cents but a few weeks back we spent enough to get 10 cents.

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  6. Excellent deal! One of the places I shop offers gasoline points. I'm up to $9.00 and may cash it in before gas prices increase again.
    I read about the Rosetta just yesterday at a site called, "Gad about town," excellent wordpress blog.
    I'm not much water chestnuts but have never eaten them spiced. Might give this one a try. Thank you very much Jo.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. As I said above, we get cents off gasoline through the grocery store too.

      It really was quite an achievement to land on a comet.

      I am not that keen on water chestnuts but this way, the whole thing is delicious.

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  7. Hi Jo,

    All major supermarkets in the UK are doing similar things. In fact, every time I go into a supermarket, they are trying to get me to sign up to all sorts of deals. They are a bit of fun and yes, a reduction in our gigantic petrol prices is most welcome over here.

    Unbelievable what precision that landing on the comet took. Twenty five years of planning and a ten year journey. Quite amazing to land on something that looks like a duck :)

    Bacon-wrapped water chestnuts. Oh yeah!

    Gary

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  8. Hi Gary. Getting a week's groceries for nothing can't be bad at any time. What are you paying for petrol these days? Today it was $1.14 a litre round here.

    I didn't realise it was 25 years planning. Very admirable. Hope they can get it working OK.

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  9. I know I'm being paranoid but I've never liked those point system things. I think they're just collecting information about us. The same with the quizzes on Facebook. It's Big Brother collecting our personal details. The comet landing is wonderful. I heard one of the scientists speaking when it actually landed and she was thrilled beyond belief!

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    1. Doesn't worry me Pinky. Everyone can get information about anyone if they really want/need to and I have nothing to hide. The quizzes are boring anyway, in fact I find a lot of FB is boring.

      Yes, they were excited weren't they?

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  10. Replies
    1. And I guess, I can't spell it, either. Oy.

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    2. LOL. I love chesetnuts. What was always so nice in London (and in Portugal) vendors would sell roasted chestnuts on the street corners and you could much them as you walked along. I think the best ones come from Spain.

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