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Good morning all. I’m back for two days in a row. Woohoo. I’m going to try to keep my streak alive, but who knows.

So yesterday was a busy day and I didn’t get my run in after work. That was disappointing, but I decided not to let it get me down and instead I went home and had a veggie-fest for dinner. I was really craving veggies, but didn’t want the typical salad. So I made this:

A nice big bowl of cucumbers, grape tomatoes, carrots and cheese. It still shocks me that I used really dislike both cucumbers and all kinds of tomatoes. Now I could live off of them. I did add some balsamic vinegar, a sprinkle of salt and dash of pepper as well though.

Then for dessert I made a blueberry and granola mash-up.

I microwaved a few blueberries into liquid, then added granola and more blueberries on top. It was like a mini blueberry pie and fulfilled my sweet craving.

As you can tell, with our gas still being kaput, my dinners have become a little bit all over the place and not exactly traditional. It was kind of nice to have a “raw” meal last night.

What are some of the non-traditional or no-cook meals you’ve made and enjoyed?

I don’t expect that our gas will be fixed for potentially a few weeks, so I’m looking for new ideas. We do have a hot plate now, but I have yet to use it.

The second part of my post today is about false advertising. At my last job, false advertising was something the organization I worked for cracked down on, so I’ve become a little more aware of deceptive ads in my everyday life. Yesterday, I found one that really made me mad.

Have you ever purchased Dawn and seen the ad on the bottle that says $1 goes toward saving wildlife? I always felt so great when I saw that and thought – wow Dawn is a really admirable company, they are doing it right. Well guess what – $1 isn’t actually donated until you go online and enter in the code from the bottle you purchased.

Here I am thinking I’ve been helping to save wildlife for quite some time now, when in fact nothing was going to the animals at all because I didn’t read the fine print just below it. Also, there is $500,000 limit on the donation amount from Dawn. I can’t recall how long this marketing gimmick has been going on, but it’s feels like a long time in my book and so I logged onto their website and saw that they haven’t reached $500,000 yet.

I was mad. I know it sounds stupid, but I felt duped. I think we’ve purchased at least 5-6 of those bottles without me ever realizing I had to go online to actually donate any money. Sure $6 isn’t a lot, but it’s something. And maybe it’s my fault for not reading the tiny, tiny print below the $1 slogan, but do you really think that most people do? Well, I mean at least some people must have since the donation total is above $400,000, but still – how many bottles did those people buy before they actually read the print?!

And why stop at $500,000? I think now would be an especially appropriate time to ramp up your donation efforts for the animals – hello giant oil catastrophe. I mean doesn’t the Dawn detergent help with that cleaning process? They should be all over this – donating like crazy. And maybe they are…but the fine print and the limit still really irk me.

So my advice is to make darn sure that you put in that code on their website or else you haven’t donated at all! You have to go to www.dawnsaveswildlife.com to activate your code. And I’m really curious to see what happens when they hit $500,000, since I am sure there will still be bottles on the shelves with the donation language and imagery. I will say the choice of imagery was pretty genius. Who wouldn’t pick up a bottle to save this little guy:

source

I’m a sucker for the cute or sad-looking animals. I have to leave the room now when the darn ASPCA commercial with Sara McLachlan’s “Angel” song and the poor little abused animals comes on. Why? Because once when it came on and Hubby was in the kitchen, he came out into the living room to find me balling hysterically and providing my credit card information to a representative over the phone. He just shook his head and walked back into the kitchen. And now they call me every few months and try to guilt me into more – they know a sucker when they see one alright.

But I digress – my point is that if companies are going to tout their humanitarian efforts there should never be fine print or an extra step that the consumer needs to take. Consumers are lazy and I’m sure that’s what the company was banking on. We’re soo lazy and have such a short attention span, that the chances we’ll actually read that fine print and go that extras step are pretty slim.

I say shame on you Dawn for using what I feel to be a deceptive approach in your advertising – I think they should continue the donations even if they surpass $500,000 and institute an automatic donation when you simply buy a bottle.

Okay – that’s my little rant for the day. I bet anyone who still does read my blog is wishing I would take another hiatus. 🙂 Hope you all have a good day – and don’t forget to activate your donation code!