We were shopping the other day and my husband purchased some packaged cookies. The picture above is what the cookies look like on the package. The picture below is what the cookies in the package look like in comparison to the cookies on the package.

Shoot me if I ever create deceptive packaging like that for my products. According to Field Day Organic “We take a less-is-more approach …” I think maybe they are taking this less-is-more approach too seriously. Another value they say they are committed to is “No confusion”. Confusion is exactly what we felt when we opened the package and looked at the cookies inside. Did the cookies shrink somewhere along the way? Maybe we didn’t store them correctly, though I don’t think they would have shrunken so much in just one day.

The packaging does say in small print, “Enlarged to show detail,” but it would be helpful if they indicated the exact cookie size somewhere so you wouldn’t be confused when you opened the package. Looking at the package, I don’t know if it the picture is enlarged 10%, 50%, or 100%.

Well, I’m relieved to know that like so many other companies, they “treasure customers”. I would hate to think how small the cookies would be if they didn’t treasure us.

Here again, there is the cookie as depicted on the box, and what the cookies inside the box actually look like. Less is less, don’t you think?

On a day when it seems like hate triumphs over love, taking a long bicycle ride helps, especially when there are spectacular clouds rolling over the hills. In the end, love will prevail, it always does. Hate ends up snuffing itself out, while love keeps on growing, no matter how many times you cut it down.

The hundreds of snow geese flying in from the north this morning reminds us that it is November. The bright sunshine and warmth feel like April or May. This is the warmest November in Bow that we’ve had in our eleven years here.

This past week, nearly every morning, flocks of snow geese have flown south overhead. You can hear them coming, honking away. Ribbons of snow geese flutter across the morning skies.

Have they been flying all night? Or did they rest along the way? If so, from where and when did they take off this morning? The news reports never cover these important happenings. I’ve yet to hear a single reporter mention that the snow geese and swans are arriving.

This morning’s bread is baked. I can go work outdoors now. You can follow all sorts of recipes, but in the end, you have to develop your own way of baking bread. Each one of our hands is different. The senses in our fingers is different. Through trial and error, you need to let your hands and fingers perfect their own way of baking a perfect loaf of bread.

This morning, while prepping my sourdough starter for tomorrow’s loaf, I made an impromptu lid for the tea cup I decided to use for the starter. It turned out to be an unplanned museum piece. An unmentioned, but vital ingredient to baking a perfect loaf of bread is beauty.

If humans had evolved in the Pacific Northwest instead of Africa, we’d have webbing between our fingers and toes. When it is this wet for this much of the year, humans with webbing in their feet and hands would have survived much better than those without.

Miasa 美朝 and her chicks come looking for me when I am outside, especially if I am headed to the cabin to make tofu. They know that once I’ve wrung the soy milk out of the soybeans, that they are in for a treat. They gobble up any okara, the soybean solids left over after making soy milk, that I give them.

The fall colors keep intensifying. The wind has knocked most of the leaves off the taller trees, but the bushes and small trees are still a riot of color. They are brilliant on sunny days, but rain gives them a special, luscious look too.

The best antidote to dreary, November weather? Go outside! Enjoy life on the wild side.

I was biking home from delivering eggs to Tweets in Edison when I saw someone pointing their camera up at the sky. “What are they photographing?” I wondered. I looked up and slammed on the brakes. Oh, wow! The clouds were in full boil. The gods must be furious. We don’t think such things when we see stormy clouds, but it’s easy to imagine raging deities when you see such awesome clouds.

So go outside on these dark, dreary days. You could probably write an epic imaging what the gods are doing to make the clouds seethe so much.