Haley McLeod

Lately I’ve noticed that I am buying dried fruits and bypassing the fresh fruits in the grocery stores. I usually like to have a small assortment of fresh fruit on the table for snacking, but over the past several weeks I have not had a taste for any of the fresh fruit and it ends up getting over ripe or spoiled and I have to throw it away. Of course, you can use over ripe bananas for banana bread or banana muffins, but hoestly, how much banana bread can one person eat? I don’t want banana bread every day!

If I buy the small packages of dried fruits then I can take a pack with me when I leave the house and have it handy while I’m out and about town. Or I can open a small pack at night while watching TV and not fill up on the unhealthy foods like ice cream, pudding, cookies, etc.

So I’m becoming a connoisseur of the dried fruits. I especially like the little packages of Welch’s. They have a big box of assorted flavors. My favorite is the “Tropical Sensation” that has bits of mangos, pineapple and papaya. It is a nice little snack and the only ingredient that I don’t like is all the sodium in it. But I imagine that’s how they preserve the fruits to keep them from rotting in the pack.

I just love Levon Helm. He is an amazing songwriter, musician and entertainer. He has a wonderful way of telling stories with his songs. His songs make you listen to the words and go along with him to whatever southern or western town he’s singing about and care about the people in them. He used to be with the group, The Band.

Now he has his own ensemble, including his very talented daughter. His album, “Dirt Farmer” won a Grammy last year and he very much deserves it. I listen to the album often and find myself singing along.

Call me crazy, but today I decided to bake cookies. I don’t know why this baking project took center stage -I had a ton of other thigns to do. But I saw the bag of Toll House chocolate chips and I was immediately commited to baking 4 dozen chocolate chip cookies. It isn’t hard if you follow the directions on the bag. It took about an hour to mix them up and bake them all. I guarantee an entire dozen disappeared within the first ten minutes they were out of the oven! After that I threatended everyone with the spatula and I was able to get about 3 dozen into the cookie jar.

This weekend is crazy with important football games. That is all that guys are talking about now. The football team at the University of Tenneessee can’t seem to win a game for anything and there are a lot of people criticizing Coach Fulmer for these failures. He is a highly paid Coach with a good reputation overall, but the last two years have been a huge disappointment with so many losses and poor performance by the players.

On the other hand, Vanderbilt University has a team that can do no wrong. They have been on a great winning streak and were even features on TV’s ESPN “Game of the Week” on Saturday when they beat Alabama’s Auburn University.

Today the Titans take on Baltimore and have their winning streak on the line. I hope they can end this important game with another win. Our second string quarterback has doen an outstanding job covering the position for our injured Vince Young. I hope Coach Fisher lets Collins continue to play as starting quaterback and makes Vince Young earn his spot back when he wants to reutrn to the field.