It can be hard to keep up with the expiration dates on the coupons. I try to use them every time I go to the store. But sometimes I don’t catch the expiration date in time to use it. That makes me feel bad, as I could have saved the money if I had paid more attention and redeemed the coupon quicker.

But last month I drove up to Wendy’s to order that for lunch and they didn’t have it any more. Now they have a selection of designer salads.

That upset me, as I really liked that salad and now there is nothing like it on the Wendy’s menu and not anywhere else that I can find, not even a full service sit down restaurant.

Shopping at Wal-Mart today, something on the end of an aisle caught my eye. There were huge cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other and a hole was cut from the front of a couple of them. Inside the boxes were bags of marshmallows.

I didn’t give that much notice until a second glance and I realized that these were new, HUGE marshmallows. The plastic bags were extra large and the marshmallows inside were as big as lemons or maybe plums. I have never seen marshmallows this big! I don’t know that I could even eat one whole one – they have to be nothing but sugar.

Well, I’m the last one to take a lunch/dinner break, so during my break I went to Domino’s Pizza across the street and bought four pizzas and brought them back to the store. I offered pizza to everyone there, declaring it was my treat in honor of A’s last day. I just couldn’t see letting him go off to college feeling unappreciated by the crew at the store! One of the young ladies that works there DID bring in a couple of cakes, and we all signed a good-bye card. I also gave him a duct tape wallet that I made as a good-bye gift. He’s a sweetie-pie and I’m going to miss his smiling face at work! I wish him the best of luck and hope he stays in touch.

I like the spray salad dressing that they have available. You can really control the amount of the dressing this way. There is nothing worse that putting way too much dressing on your salad and then it becomes a soggy mess. A nice find spray is perfect!

There are many shows that my family likes to watch but one that we never miss and actually make a family event of is the Food Network’s Chopped. This is one of the most creative and challenging shows to come onto direct TV in a very long time. What, aside from the challenge of the competitions, is so unique about this show?

For my family the biggest draw of this show is the challenge of trying to come up with something uniquely delicious that will satisfy the panel of three expert culinary judges. The catch to the challenge is the mystery basket of ingredients that each chef is given. The mystery basket doesn’t contain your ordinary, run of the mill ingredients, it contains unusual items such as ostrich eggs and kiwis. The chefs have 30 minutes to come up with three courses with the ingredients off the top of their heads, and to make them delicious to the judges.

The shows name is derived from the show’s theme that after each course the contestant who didn’t quite measure up in the opinions of the judges is eliminated or “Chopped”, from the competition. One aspect that entertains my family so thorougly is that we like to try and come up with dishes from the basket of unusual ingredients as well as trying to predict the winner.