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Thank You, Amazon Reviewers! $$$$$

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Reading the comments by reviewers on Amazon can save you a bundle. I’ve learned to look up products that I intend to buy locally just to see what Amazon’s reviewers have to say about them.

Case in point: I took it into my fuzzy little head to purchase a slow cooker with a nonstick surface. Whenever I cook the dogs’ chicken or pork, which I do in a crockpot because it can sit in the garage (keeping the smell out of the house) and because I don’t have to tend to it, some residue always sticks on the ceramic container. No amount of soaking will loosen the baked-on gunk. I always end up standing over the garage utility sink, scrubbing with scouring powder. And scrubbing. And scrubbing. And scrubbing. Getting it clean is an unpleasant nuisance of a job.

So I figure to order this contraption from Amazon, the path of least resistance. And here’s what I learn from the reviewers:

  • Nonstick coating bubbles up and peels off
  • Contrary to advertised claims, can’t brown foods in it first: nonstick coating will bubble up and peel off
  • Contrary to advertised claims, can’t be put in dishwasher
  • Lightweight, cheaply made, flimsy
  • Cover doesn’t fit
  • Cover doesn’t fit
  • Cover doesn’t fit, dammit!
  • Ew! Nonstick gunk flakes off and ends up in the food!

In amongst all this commentary, up pops a message from a woman who says she also found the new products unsatisfactory and so decided to fend for herself. She had a large Le Creuset doufeu. Le Creuset pans are enameled, and that surface is effectively “nonstick.” They’re very easy to clean. Thought she, Why not? She loaded the thing with the same stuff she’d put in a slow cooker, set it in a 200-degree oven, and went away. A few hours later: voilà! A slow-cooked  meal!

doufeuAhem. A 7¼-quart Le Creuset doufeu will set you back $420. Plus shipping, which you can bet will be hefty for a 7-quart cast-iron pot. A 4½-quart number only costs $300.

That of course doesn’t count the cost of the crane you’ll need to move it in and out of the oven, once it’s fully loaded with food. (You’re supposed to put ice or cold water in the strangely shaped lid, to enhance condensation inside the pot. Alternatively, you can cook other foods, such as potatoes or cornbread, in the lid.)

A crock pot typically holds about 6 quarts. And I need that much volume to cook a giant package of Costco chicken or pork.

Plus a friend who’s a truck driver recently gave me 20 pounds of ground turkey, because the packages were “damaged.” The dispatcher told her to throw it out, but she couldn’t stand that. We took most of it over to the local food bank, but I held back two 10-pound rolls of the stuff for the dogs.

As I thought about the commenter’s idea, it occurred to me that I must have something like that, somewhere in the house or the garage.

And yea verily! What should I find but two huge stainless-steel, copper-bottomed stew pots! Vast! The one I pulled out of the back of a cabinet holds 6 quarts.

Loaded 5 pounds of meat into the thing and set the oven for 300 degrees. I normally set the slow-cooker on “high,” which will cook most potsful of meat in three or four hours. So I figured 300 would be better than 200.

Actually, if anything it was too fast: in three hours, I’d say the meat was a little overcooked. Next time I’ll set it on 200, which should slow the process into the crockpot realm.

Once the ground turkey was cooked, there was plenty of room to add some oatmeal, which cooked in 20 minutes atop a burner, and then the food-processed mixed veggies. Let it cool, packed it into containers, and a week’s worth of fresh dog food was in the fridge and freezer.

Yes, stuff stuck to the sides, same as it does in the crockpot. But this was easy to clean off. You can put a stainless-steel pan on a stove burner. So all I had to do was fill it with water, toss in a handful of banking soda, and let it simmer for awhile. After that, any leftover gunk washed right off in a minute or two: no overnight soaking, no pan in the way when I want to run the clothes washer, and no endless scouring!

I wouldn’t have thought of this (rather obvious!) solution if I hadn’t taken time to read Amazon’s customer comments.

If I had read the reviews of the Samsung clothes washer that drives me nuts, I wouldn’t have bought it. That was when I learned to read Amazon reviews before buying anything, locally or online.

It’s a good idea to start with the three-star reviews, because those are the ones that are most likely to be objective. Five-star raves are likely to have at least some paid posts among them. And, as it develops, one-star rants are often posted by competitors who are trying to tear down the seller’s product. Most people who post three-star reviews will give the product’s pro’s and cons, and some will allude to problems described in worse reviews, either agreeing that they exist or explaining what the complainer did wrong to get a negative outcome.

I’ll usually read three-star reviews first, then go to the one-star reviews. If I’m not put off the product after that, then I’ll look at five- and four-star reviews. If there’s a “Questions Answered” section, be sure to read those, too.

These days, I read them for things I intend to buy here in town as well as things I order online. It’s almost as good as Consumer Reports!

Bargain Find at Williams-Sonoma!

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Williams-Sonoma was one of my favorite stores back in the day when I was a corporate wife and rarely gave a thought to how much I spent and where. Not the sort of place where you’d expect to find a bargain. But…miracles happen.

Yesterday I had to traipse to the Apple store, located (where else?) in one of the city’s ritziest shopping centers. While I was there, I wandered into the Williams-Sonoma to see if they had some salad plates in the type of pattern I favor. They didn’t — my taste is now royally out of style — but they did have some in a plain navy blue that would do the job.

These plates are for the dogs. The ones I had, from an old set from Pier 1 that looked great in the store but not so great on the table, have been dropped on the floor and chipped so many times, it was getting time to replace them. Both dogs, being corgis, feel compelled to hoover up every molecule of dog food off their plates, which means they vigorously lick their dishes so clean it’s hard to tell the things haven’t been through the dishwasher. So a chipped rim risks slashing a doggle’s tongue.

So anyway, as you can imagine, I was not thrilled at the prospect of spending much on dog dishes.

Williams-Sonoma is having a 20% off sale on everything in sight…including things that are already on sale. In the back of the store, they have a clearance section. Some of the things there, mostly odd items, are quite pretty.

Lo! On the clearance shelf, there were a half-dozen coupe-style salad plates, very handsome and very un-clunky, already marked down to something under six bucks apiece. Though not exactly what I had in mind, they would do the job.

BluePlate

Couldn’t believe it! I got six for $23 and change! That’s less than $4 apiece.  That’s on a par with the similar but much cheesier dishes available at the Fry’s or the Target.

Blue plate specials!

Is Costco “Amazon-proof”?

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Here’s an amusing squib from SFGate, ruminating on a recent report that some analyst has dubbed Costco an “Amazon-proof” entity. Deutsche Bank upgraded Costco’s ratings from “hold” to “buy” and raised its target price from $152 to $200.

SFGate’s Business Insider ruminates on the possible reasons for this, and concludes that “Costco has been able to hold its own because of its membership model and ability to incentivize visits to brick-and-mortar locations.” A vague comparison is made with Target and Walmart, which lag far behind the warehouse giant.

How does one “incentivize” visits to a real-world store when convenience and selection are so much greater at the virtual “store” that is Amazon? Besides the fact that Costco is often (but not always) cheaper than Amazon, Costco has one policy that in fact makes it more convenient than ordering items from the comfort of your keyboard: it lets you return anything without an argument. No wrapping stuff up and returning it to UPS, no deadline (except for some electronic gear), no written explanation of the problem: if you don’t want it, you don’t have to keep it.

And in our parts, Costco underprices just about every other gasoline seller in the city. Often as I’m driving away from Costco’s gas pumps, I’ll see prices at neighboring stations that range from 8 cents to 20 cents(!!) a gallon higher than what I just paid. Where they sell propane, they underprice everybody, too. Obviously, if you have to schlep to Costco to get a good price on fuel, you might as well pop into the store to buy whatever you need — or think you’re about to need.

Costco does not impose arbitrary rules that make it difficult or annoying for customers to shop there (“free shipping” if you buy enough junk you don’t need to rack up a $35 bill, or if you pay an exorbitant annual fee) and difficult for vendors to sell their products through the company’s stores.

However, I think the corporation’s greatest strength over its competition is that Costco has human beings. Ask them, and you’ll find most of them actually LIKE working at Costco. Then consider the recent NY Times article about the miseries of working at Amazon.  Look around inside a Walmart and ask yourself if you’d really want to work there: in our parts, 99 percent of the stores are dingy, depressing, and inhabited by real-world “Walmart People,” who are less funny when you’re elbow-to-elbow with them than they are when you’re watching them on YouTube. Walmart employees, if you can find one, act like they don’t care whether you live or die; Amazon employees, if you can find one, behave like rule-bound automatons. Costco’s employees are always pleasant and usually helpful.

Is Amazon hard to beat? Sure. But is it invulnerable? I doubt it.

Whole Foods Underprices Safeway

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As I mentioned in my last, having cut back on routine Costco shopping seems to be saving a ton of money. To give you a clue of how many tons, consider the fact that I’ve been doing most of my grocery shopping at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Sprouts, and September’s bills came in at about 2/3 of budget.

Whole Foods is not cheap. But…its reputation as “Whole Paycheck” is suspect.

Couple of days ago, I stopped by the Safeway on the way to Whole Foods, figuring to pick up a couple of low-brow items that can’t be had in those more politically correct and environmentally self-conscious pastures. While I was there, I spotted the SAME baggies of red seedless grapes that WF sells. Thought, Might as well grab those here, because Safeway is bound to be cheaper than Whole Foods.

Well. No.

Paid $2.99 at Safeway. The very same product in the very same bags in the very same size was $2.69 at Whole Foods.

It’s not the first time I’ve found Whole Foods can have pretty good prices compared to other retailers. The only store that underprices WF on the prepared dog food I had to give the beasts when I was too sick to  make real food for them is Fry’s, a decidedly downscale chain. Whole Foods’ price for the same product is about half that of Petsmart.

On the same trip, I spotted a few other items priced the same as or more than Safeway’s cost. The only thing at WF that’s consistently higher than Safeway is the meat. But Whole Foods’ meat is undeniably superior to Safeway’s. Usually the wines are higher, but WF always has a sale on something in the $8 to $10 range that’s not the usual California plonk. Veggies are all organic and so appear to be higher, until you compare the prices of Safeway’s bug-sprayed products with the prices of the organic produce in the same store.

So. Maybe shopping at Whole Foods is not bound to drive one to bankruptcy, after all.

 

w00t! Out with Costco, Out with the Big Amex Bill!

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Last month’s Costco AMEX bill showed up a couple day’s ago. It was only $660!!!! That’s about 2/3 of its budgeted figure, and probably the smallest AMEX bill I’ve ever had!

The reason for this miracle, I think, is that ever since the last of the endless round of surgeries, I’ve lost interest in eating well and lost interest in shopping at Costco.

Any trip to Costco is likely to turn into an impulse-buy carnival. Whenever I’m in that store, I’m tempted (and usually cave to temptation) to buy 18 times more stuff than I need at the time and three or four things that are just too, TOO neat to pass by. Because, after all, we know they’ll be gone by the next time we get to Costco, eh?

Instead, I’ve been buying at grocery stores, Walgreen’s, and Target, and only buying as much as I need at any given time. Whereas you’d think that buying in bulk would represent a cost savings, apparently it doesn’t. At least not in the short run. It might, if you only bought things that are cost-effective in bulk — the paper towels and the toilet-paper, for example. But Costco’s meat (for another example) is no cheaper than grocery-store meat, and most of the other stuff, while appealing, isn’t something that you just have to have.

A second, probably lesser reason is that I’ve taken to occasionally paying for things with a debit card, so as to get a few dollars back in walking-around cash. Without the teaching job, I have no reason to traipse to the credit union to deposit checks twice a month (after the District gave away all our private information to hackers, forcing me to close my checking account and get a new one with a new account number and to put a freeze on all my credit-bureau accounts, I canceled the direct-deposit). So a debit payment works to provide a little cash now and again.

But I don’t think I’ve paid more than about $150 or $200 that way. Even if I put $200 on the debit card, that’s still only about $860: way under the $1100 budget.

Telling, eh?

Publishing: Proceeding Apace. Decluttering: Ditto.

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 Holy mackerel! It’s been TWO DAYS since I last posted here. How two days passed in an hour and a half escapes me…  Just now I’m engaged in preparing and preposting two months’ worth of bookoids for the Publishing Empire. {heh…maybe that’s what I should’ve called the current enterprise!} That is a much larger job than it seems.

It entails creating covers for 16 books (plus boxed sets, which just now are on-the-side jobs); obtaining ISBNs for each one (a truly time-consuming nuisance: you’re doing well if you can get one ISBN registered in under ten minutes); reviewing, correcting, and updating copy for each book; and posting cover image and contents for each book to Amazon.

I’ve learned you can enhance efficiency and reduce distraction by doing all of these tasks for a bunch of books in one sitting (actually, it’s going to take about three or four days…), rather than breaking in to whatever you’re doing to jump through the endless hoops for one book at a time. And you can post the completed MS and cover art at Amazon and “save as draft.” If you’ve done every step but the last one (and done each step right…), all you have to do on the scheduled “publication” date is go back into your Amazon “bookshelf” and click “publish,” thereby saving yourself a lot of time-consuming hassle on that date, when you might want to be doing something else with your time.

So, here’s an OPINION POLL:

Which of these do you prefer: the one with the black Roberta Stuart byline, or the one with the red?

Draft cover Daniela 2 LO RES

Draft cover Daniela 3 LO RES

The question is, which “Roberta Stuart” byline would be most visible in an Amazon thumbnail? Black? or Red?

Demonstrate the POWER OF THE HIVE MIND and cast your vote for one or the t’other! Tell me in the comments to this post which one you think is more effective.

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You’ll recall the last time I visited these precincts, I was considering whether to get rid of the fancy Christofle silverware in favor of some stainless flatware that can go in the dishwasher. Well, my friends, the deed is done. And, after traipsing all over the Web and all over the city, I finally found a set that’s not too cheesy and not too expensive at…so obvious, why didn’t I think of it before this morning?…Williams-Sonoma!!

I did indeed go over to Sur la Table. Total wasted trip. The one set that looked like it might be OK when viewed online had all the heft of plastic. Just junk. And they way they had their flatware displayed — jammed upright into random containers — confirmed that the proprietors regarded the stuff as junk, too.

Revisit Crate and Barrel’s: unappealing, lightweight, not so very junky, but junk.

Across the city, driving driving driving… Arrived in another mall that hosts a Williams-Sonoma and a Pottery Barn. At the Williams-Sonoma, in addition to scoring a couple of tasty snacks, I found two sets that appealed. One — the coolest of them — had heavy handles that unfortunately were made of pewter: “hand-washing recommended.” Saleslady said that translates as “handwash, period.” Defeats the purpose. The other was this brushed steel retro design reminiscent of the set my ex- and I bought shortly after we were married, yea verily way back in 19 and ought-67. It was moderately weighty and not displeasing in appearance.

And marked down 20 percent.

Just in case, it was over to Pottery Barn to check out their wares.

Forthwith, BACK TO WILLIAMS-SONOMA. Pottery Barn had a couple of attractive designs but they were…oh yes. Silver plate. Purpose defeated again.

So I purchased the following:

P1030611

Not too awful, eh? These little gems can go straight into the dishwasher. And, although they’re not as elegant as a set of fine Christofle, they have a decent heft to them and they’re distinctive without being obtrusive.

Kind of interesting, this flatware safari. If I’d ordered the stuff online that appealed to me, from Sur la Table, I’d have been very unhappy and probably would have ended up traipsing to Scottsdale to return the junk. Overall, I went to five brick-&-mortar retailers plus an unknown number of online sellers before finding a design resembling what I wanted. And really…I don’t think I’m that picky! There’s nothing extraordinary about these pieces. Well…except insofar as they display a modicum (and I do mean modicum) of quality.

Think of that.