Bake It

A good piece from The Simple Dollar on baking your own bread. Why? Here's one good reason -- look at the ingredients in store-bought:

Enriched wheat flour (flour, barley malt, ferrous sulfate (iron), “B” vitamins (niacin, thaimine mononitrate (B1), riboflavin (B2), folic acid)), water, sweetener (high fructose corn syrup or sugar), yeast, wheat bran, whole wheat flour, wheat gluten, molasses. Contains 2% or less of: soybean oil, salt, sweet dairy whey, butter (cream, salt, enzymes), maltodextrin, honey, corn syrup, calcium sulfate, soy flur, dough conditioners (may contain: dicalcium phosphate, calcium dioxide, sodium stearoyl lactylate, ethoxylated mono and diglycerides, mono and diglycerides, and/or datem), yeast nutrients (may contain: ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, calcium carbonate, monocalcium phosphate, and/or ammonium phosphate), cornstarch, wheat starch, vinegar, natural flavor, beta carotene (color), enzymes, calcium propionate (to retain freshness), soy lecithin.

It's sometimes a pain in the butt, and it's always time-consuming. But it's worth it. We do pretty much all our own bread; sometimes, buying hamburger buns, or as a treat, potato bread for the kids. But for day-to-day stuff, we do all our own. The kids snack like fiends on it.

It also, of course, takes fewer calories to produce.

So I'm looking at the "all-new Chrysler Town and Country minivan" while reading about a new game: "Peak Oil Shock Me."

An increasingly popular parlor game among peak oil activists is to see who can serve up the most shocking morsel of peak oil news at any one sitting. There are now plenty of morsels to choose from on an almost daily basis. Here are some recent samples:

A former Saudi Aramco executive said he believes the world has peaked.

Production at the large international oil companies appears to be dropping like a stone. (Recent reports on Shell, BP and Exxon tell the story.)

Greenland's offshore undiscovered reserves are estimated to be far less than previously thought.

Persistent new highs in the oil price of late only add to the end-times quality of the game.

Just a bit of cognitive dissonance going on ...

Speaking of which, the price dropped a bit today. Be entertaining (if that's the right word) to see what happens on Wednesday when the next inventory report comes out. Seems as though lately it drops on Monday and Tuesday, then goes up midweek.