Weekly Menu

Happy Labor Day!  The unofficial end of summer when school starts up, pools close (at least in Ohio), and you start bringing out your sweaters and jackets.  It's also time for Fashion Week in NYC where designers show off their latest designs for Spring... so Labor Day is kind of the launch of Spring depending how you look at it!  :)

Outside of those couple unofficial things, I wasn't really sure what Labor Day was really celebrating.  We get a day off work for a holiday that sounds like we should be laboring away working on something.  So I looked it up... gotta love the Information Age... which, on a side note, I just read that we created 5 exabytes of information between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days according to Google's former CEO, Eric Schmidt.  Craziness.  Any way, back to Labor Day... we are actually celebrating the eight hour work day (or really, the 40 hour work week).  Before 1886, Americans would work 10-12 hours six days a week to make a living wage and keep their jobs.  After some legislation, some rioting, and then more legislation we now have "eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!".  So it is interesting the fast food minimum wage protest is making headlines right now.  Not sure where I stand on the minimum wage issue since I understand where both sides are coming from.  If you raise minimum wage across the board, which labor is every companies largest expense, prices will have to increase to maintain margins and profitability (if the company isn't profitable, it can't employ workers).  On the other hand, if someone working in the fast food industry has to maintain at least one additional job and still live paycheck to paycheck... well that it awful and makes me appreciate what I have.

On to less serious topics... after my post last week about easy ways to preserve summer's bounty, I spent some of this weekend doing just that.  Canned a bunch of tomatoes, froze some peeled and chopped peaches, froze some corn on the cob and off the cob, and made some lemon ice cubes... perfect for adding to a drink or using in a recipe.  My freezer and pantry are getting rather full!

Now it is time to plan another menu for the week.  It's going to be an easy one because it is a short week with a couple nights of on-the-go eating.  And even though a lot of people rioted almost 240 years ago for my right to only work 40 hours a week... my project at work goes live this weekend, so there will be a few late nights where my work day will definitely be over eight hours.

turkey burgers and crispy roast potatoes
ravioli
ginger soy salmon filet and green beans
pizza