thoughts

Summer in Ann Arbor

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Ann Arbor exhales as U-Haul trucks and packed SUVs jump curbs out of town. The students who make up a quarter of the city’s population leave town for the summer. Just when restaurants begin opening up patios, they find their usual customer has an internship in D.C.

After the exodus, those left behind get to stretch out.

Huron River

Island Park on the Huron River.

The Way I Wish Recipes Were Written

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I’m fine with the listing the ingredients.  I use that list to make sure I have sufficient amounts of all ingredients needed (or suitable substitutes, like one cup butter in place of a tablespoon butter).

My problem is with the directions.  When reading the directions, I always have to look back up at the ingredient list to search through it to find whatever ingredient they are referencing just to find out the amount of that ingredient.  How hard would it be to put the amount needed of an ingredient right in the directions too?  A sample:

Toast
Ingredients:
– 2 slices bread
– 2 tsp. butter
– 2 tbsp. strawberry rhubarb jam

Directions:
1. Toast bread (2 slices).
2. Remove bread from toaster, spread butter (2 tsp.) and jam (2 tbsp.) on each slice of bread equally.

Eh?  Eh?  So much easier!  No rereading the ingredient list to find out how much butter or jam!  It’s all right there!  No going back and forth from directions to ingredients! Someone please write some computer code to automatically change online recipes to display this way.

“I Don’t Need a Bag.”

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How many times do you actually need a plastic or paper bag when buying something?  Take for example, a sub from Subway or hamburger from Wendy’s.  Or, when you are just buying some cheese from the grocery store.  Or, one or two items from any store.  The only time I can think of is if you get french fries, because apparently our fry-containing technology has not progressed since 1950.

If companies defaulted to not bagging instead of automatically bagging for one item, both business owners and environmentalists could be happy.  How much money could companies save if they didn’t have to give a bag away for each single-item purchases?  How many bags could be saved if we didn’t use them to carry single-item purchases?

It’d be an easy way for companies to claim ‘greenness’, and save me from having to ask not to have my item bagged every time.  Because isn’t that what we’re all working toward?  Not having to talk to anyone anymore in daily transactions?