Coffee heat rising

Consumer Reports: Renew, or not?

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I run hot and cold on Consumer Reports, the organ of Consumers Union, the nonprofit that has appointed itself the guardian of your interests and mine. In general, I do feel supportive of CU, because it has done some remarkable and excellent things for the common good. And since I can’t donate to every worthy cause that comes my way (or even to more than a couple of them), subscribing to CU’s magazine feels like a way of supporting the organization.

But. Though I do enjoy reading Consumer Reportsmost of the time, a number of issues about it bother me. Videlicet:
–A paid subscription to the hard-copy version will not get you into their website. Annoying.
–Once again, I started receiving hysterical “YOUR SUBSCRIPTION IS ABOUT TO EXPIRE” notices four months before the annual bill was due. That particular high-pressure sales tactic is not only annoying, it’s dishonest. It disturbs me to see an alleged guardian of the consumer’s interest engaging in a scheme to get people to pony up more money than they have to, sooner than they have to.
–Sometimes their recommendations are strictly a matter of taste, and that opinion often doesn’t jibe with mine. Because Consumer Reports is so hugely influential, manufacturers will occasionally change products to accommodate something said in one of these opinion pieces. In at least one instance, this led to a change in a favorite shampoo’s formerly mild perfume, so that I quit buying it and had to to find another, more expensive product that met my desiderata (i.e., “doesn’t stink of some industrial chemist’s idea of what the sheep think smells good”).
– Occasionally, their product reviews and advice are just flat wrong.

This month’s issue is unusually heavy on articles that fall into the last two categories.

Take, for example, “Vets Weigh In on Fido’s Food.” Parenthetically, the authors admit that seven of the eight experts in veterinary nutrition interviewed for this article were funded by the pet-food industry. That disclaimer out of the way (way out of the way), they then go on to report these worthies’ statements as gospel. One such statement was that pets are being made ill from homemade pet food, something that has gained popularity since the last episode in which hundreds (possibly thousands) of American household pets were poisoned by adulterants in animal feed.

It certainly is true that if you feed your dog table scraps, you’ll likely make Fido sick. Three reasons for that:
1. Onions (and other plants in the onion family, such as garlic, scallions, and chives) are toxic to dogs. They cause a type of anemia that can, over time, do the animal in. A large dose of onion can make any dog—especially a smaller breed—very sick, indeed. Most human food contains onions and garlic. Read the labels on the processed foods you buy, and you’ll be surprised at how many of your favorites contain onion. And sodium in various permutations. And sugar in many forms.
2.Few humans eat well consistently. We favor junk food that is high in salt, unnecessary fat, and sugar, and even if we cook at home, we’re likely to fry our food and sprinkle on plenty of salt and sugar. These ingredients are no better for other mammals than they are for humans. Of course, if you feed your dog junk food, you will damage its health just as you will damage your own health.
3. Chocolate and alcohol are toxic to dogs. People who feed their animals off the table are likely to let Fido clean up dessert as well as the entrée. A slice of leftover chocolate cake is akin to a meal of rat poison for your dog. And there are fools who think it’s funny to watch Fang quaff a beer. Did you know that “Boozer” is one of the commonest names for cats?

However, there’s a difference between throwing table scraps into the dog’s dish and actually preparing food that is appropriate for dogs to eat. It’s not difficult to prepare healthy dog food in your kitchen. The principle is simple, the same principle that underlies healthy human food: varied sources of starch (such a rice, potatoes, yams, oatmeal), varied sources of vegetables (green and yellow, not to include corn), and varied sources of protein (beef, lamb, venison, pork, fish, chicken, egg, cottage cheese, yoghurt). Meat items should be cooked and, IMHO, free of bones (I know, I know! But unless you enjoy paying for veterinary surgery, spare your dog the bones, especially cooked bones).

Condescendingly, CR tells us that “if you insist on making your own pet food,” you should go to websites certified by the American College of Veterinary Nutrition. Go there, click on “homemade foods,” and you’re directed to two sites where you have to pay to get pet food recipes. Understand: these are pay-per-recipe enterprises! The proposition is that you will pay someone to tell you to mix various combinations of three sources of starch, vegetables, and protein about 1/3:1/3:1/3!

Consumer-friendly, that ain’t.

This month’s matter-of-taste piece is a squib on coffee, in which the researchers tell us you don’t have to pay for Gloria Jean’s or Peet’s to get a decent cup of java, especially if (surprise surprise!) you dilute the stuff with milk and sugar. Peet’s is described as tasting “burnt and bitter” (might they accidentally have brewed up some Starbuck’s?). They do report that Dunkin’ Donuts, which IMHO offers up the best coffee of any fast-food joint, has a good decaf (though they fail to note the oxymoron). But they fail to discover that Costco’s dark roast coffee is the best buy on the brick-and-mortar market, with beans that are almost as good as the expensive “gourmet” variety at very reasonable prices.

And speaking of matters of opinion, we’re invited to peruse the latest and greatest in televisions, since after all we’re about to lose our analog signal and so this might be an opportunity to replace the old 90-pound clunker parked on a table in the living room. Under “Budget Buyer,” we’re told that “low-priced sets from major labels can be good buys.” Of these bargains, the cheapest “smart choice” is a Vizio 32-inch LCD set for $450. A sharp 42-inch LCD qualifies as “low priced,” too, at $1,100.

Four hundred and fifty bucks is low-priced? Get freaking real! If this is low-priced, then I am effectively priced out of the television market. I already know I can’t replace the handy little TV that sits atop the fridge, and so when digital finally arrives with a vengeance, the PBS News Hour will be history at my house. But evidently once the second-hand set I have in the TV room wears out (that would be the one that periodically tells me PBS, NBC, CBS, Fox, or ABC has “no signal”), I won’t be watching any television that can’t be downloaded for free from the Internet.

Then, by coincidence, we find one of my perennial sources of CR irritation, this year’s rehash of their vacuum cleaner ratings. As usual, Hoover and Kenmore are way up there.

Hoover used to make a great vacuum cleaner. Some years ago, however, the company was purchased by Whirlpool, which promptly junked up the product. So, of late the things are unreliable and inefficient. The changeover came about the time SDXB found a Hoover that was THE top-rated model, on sale at a smokin’ price at the Luke AFB Base Exchange. In fact, staff there had accidentally put the wrong price on it. But because SDXB found the thing with that price, they sold it to him…and sold him two more units at the same absurd discount, one for me and one for his daughter.

Minutes after the limited warranty expired, all three vacuums crapped out. They all died of the same flaw, and they all died within a week of each other.

Hoover, we understood, had taken planned obsolescence to the level of high art.

Interestingly, in this month’s issue, Hoover vacuum cleaners appear as second only to Simplicity as most unreliable among upright models, and third in the race to unreliability among canisters, after Electrolux and Miele. If these things are unreliable junk, then why are two Hoover uprights flagged as “recommended” and two canisters as “best buys”?

After the Hoover hat trick, SDXB and I each bought the highest-rated (expensive!) Kenmores. I hated my Kenmore. It was clumsy, difficult to use, given to falling over and whacking me on the foot, and generally a nuisance. Because my house had all hard floors, before long I took the thing back to Sears and then trotted over to Fry’s Electronics, where I bought the cheapest Panasonic on the shelf. The thing did all I needed it to and then some, and, years later, it still runs. SDXB, whose house was mostly carpeted, kept the Kenmore but was no happier with his than I was with the one I returned.

All these ruminations over the current issue lead me to ask myself: Why am I paying to have this magazine delivered to my house?

I think the answer is about to be I’m not.

Layoff Poker: Will the bosses tip their hand?

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Here’s a development: The brand-new director of our sister program, who hasn’t a clue but who does have a six-figure salary and commensurate clout, e-mailed to ask what our office could provide by way of assistantships or internships for her graduate students. What openings, she inquired, would be available over the summer and next fall?

{cackle!}

Well, o’course the answer to that is Heaven only knows, ’cause no one on this earthly plane does. But the realpolitick response was what a choice opportunity!

So naturally (oh, so naturally), I forwarded her query to Her Deanship with a disingenuous inquiry of my own: If all three of our research assistants stay through the summer and one stays on in the fall, may we hire two new RAs in the fall? If not, may we hire one new RA in the fall?

I love it! This foists the untoward question onto the new kid. And, well…New Kid being who and what she is, such a question coming from her pretty much demands an answer. It’s even within the realm of possibility (just within it) that she could command a straight answer. More or less.

E-mail forwarded to Deanship under a cover note, I rare back and watch.

Pretty quick, along comes a fine nonanswer: “I’ll check.”

This means Her Deanship will confer with her boss, His Vicepresidentship. One of three answers will issue forth. Here’s what they are, and here’s what they mean:

“We don’t know” (possibly phrased as “that decision has yet to be made” or “we’re still trying to figure it out”): This means “Don’t hire anyone, because you ain’t likely to be here much longer.”

“We can’t keep the present RAs over the summer but will (or probably will) hire one or two new RAs in the fall”: That one translates to “we are flat broke and we hope the students to whom we committed ourselves for 12-month contracts are not the litigious type; however, we expect your office will be in business after federal funds start to come in. Assuming any such funds do in fact materialize.”

“We will commit unequivocally to hiring new RAs in the fall”: This unlikely response will mean “your office assuredly will continue to exist despite the layoffs.”

Now. None of these means that the office necessarily will continue in business with me in charge of it. There is, after all, a classified position of managing editor, for which any number of graduates of our sister program would be eminently qualified. Starting salary for such a being: about half of what I earn. However, given the nature of institutional inertia, it’s probable that as long as the office survives, my job will survive.

Heh heh heh heh heh… Watch this space!

The grocery pool

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The pooling scheme I came up with for budgeting has worked exceptionally well. In short, all inflowing cash goes into a single checking account at the credit union. From there, the amount needed to cover recurring monthly expenditures, such as utility and insurance bills, goes into an account from which EFTs are drawn, automatically paying my various creditors. Another amount, currently budgeted at $1,200, goes to a money market checking account, where it is held to pay the monthly American Express bill; I charge all expenditures other than regular bills on this card and pay it off at the end of each billing cycle. Three hundred dollars goes from the “pool” into an escrow account each month, to pay annual property tax, car insurance, and homeowner’s insurance. And finally, $400 a month (soon to drop to around $100, thanks to the furloughs) is transferred to savings.

The upshot of this is that there is always enough to pay the bills. And then some: because the de facto pay cut created by the switch to bimonthly pay forced me to live on $220 a month less than I used to have, the two so-called “extra” checks this system presses on us go unspent. Over the course of a year, the equivalent of two net paychecks has ended up in savings.

Here’s where I’m going with this: Why couldn’t you do something similar with grocery and household supplies?

Suppose you took a chunk of savings, as I did when I originally bankrolled the “pool” account, and used it to buy a full month’s worth of groceries and cleaning supplies. Wouldn’t that have the same effect as “pooling” your income? Over time, it would create a fair amount of savings. Here’s how:
1. Given that the original month’s grocery stash would include a lot of staples (things like flour, salt, sugar), you probably wouldn’t use it all during a month. So, if you repeated your first stash run at the beginning of the second month, by the start of the third month you would always be way ahead of yourself. In other words, after the first two months, instead of buying a whole month’s worth of goods at a time, all you’d be doing is restocking, and you would never drop below a month of supplies in your stash. Over time, you likely would find yourself having to restock less and less.
2. Because you rarely would be in any hurry to restock—this assumes you keep an eye on what you have and become aware that you will need x or y before you run out—you could wait to make purchases until you found the items on sale or until you had time to drive across the city to retailers with better prices than those available at closer-in stores.
3. Three weeks of every four, you would stay out of grocery stores! We’ve already seen that simply not going into stores saves a surprising amount of cash.
4. It would force you to plan and to write lists; once you arrived at a store, you would be very focused on acquiring only the things you needed, and so you would be less tempted to make impulse buys. As commenter Anne reported, research by the supermarket industry has shown that a list is one of your most powerful money-saving tools at the grocery store.
5. Think of the amount of time it would save! I dunno about you, but I spend half of Saturday or Sunday driving around to grocery stores, searching for products, and standing in line at check-out counters. That doesn’t count the time spent stopping by a store on the way home to pick up things I’ve run low on or forgotten during the weekend expeditions. Shopping is far from my favorite pastime. Imagine having your entire weekend free to do what you want to do!

I’m going to try it.

Here’s my plan:

First, use some of the savings I’ve stashed over the past few months to buy a freezer ($200 at Costco).

Next, clean off some shelves in the storage room and in the garage to make space for dry goods, cleaning supplies, and personal items (such as shampoo, contact lens solutions, soap).

Third, compile a well thought out list of all the stuff I need over the course of a month.

Fourth, buy some airtight containers for grain products, such as flour, cornmeal, and oatmeal (or make room in the freezer for them).

Fifth, buy some wire baskets to organize goods in the freezer.

Sixth, reallocate the AMEX budget, which currently is divided into four equal “chunks” allowing about $300 a week for food, gasoline, household and yard goods, pool supplies, pet costs, and incidental expenses. Front-load the budget to allow about $500 in the first week (this will cover gasoline and a few other items in addition to a month’s worth of groceries), and cut the amount available in the other three weeks.

Seventh, download or clip coupons to assist in getting better buys.

Eighth, on February 21, which is the first day of the billing cycle (the food & incidental budget runs on the AMEX billing cycle, not from the first to the last of each month), spend the entire darned day running around buying enough to stock the first one-month stash. Package and store things so they will keep and can be accessed from the oldest stuff to the newest.

Ninth, keep a running list of items that need to be replenished. Try to refrain from buying these things until the next shopping expedition.

Tenth, on March 21, make a second run on the stores. In addition to replenishing things that have run low, purchase a second full month’s worth of stash goods. This will enlarge the stash so that at any given time it should contain well over a month of food and household goods.

Freaking brilliant, isn’t it? Sometimes I amaze me.

It has several golden advantages.

1. Over the long run, it should save a lot of money on groceries.

2. It forms a kind of “emergency fund,” in kind instead of in cash. Should I lose my job (a prospect that looks less unlikely as the days pass), I’ll have enough food in the house to last for several weeks. During that time, I should be able to earn enough to get a grip on making ends meet. Not having to buy groceries for a month will make that challenge a lot easier.

3. It saves a phenomenal amount of time and, three weeks out of each month, relieves me of a tedious chore.

4.Over time, the stash may accrue, just as money in the “pool” checking account accrues. In a year or so (assuming I keep my job and so can continue the monthly purchasing), this strategy could result in my having a lot of food, household supplies, and personal goods stored in the house. Effectively, it will grubstake retirement. When I do retire and see my income drop drastically, I will not have to worry about where my next meal will come from.

Place-holder: More food!

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Long day. Lots of scheming while shopping, wherefrom hangs a new story, which I’ll tell tomorrow. For the nonce: three sheets to the wind, having consumed all of 1.5 bourbons & water. Do your drinking while you’re young, ye pups…’cause when you get to be an Old Bat or Buzzard, your boozing days will be over. 😉

The bourbon and the water were guzzled while the guzzler was a-waiting for this dinner to percolate to fruition:

Lemon Chicken

You need (approximately):

dcp_2353-Some pieces of chicken of the sort you most enjoy
-One or two lemons, sliced
-Fresh thyme (several sprigs, leaves removed and lightly chopped) or about 1/4 tsp. dried; or combination thereof
-1/2 onion, chopped
-One or two cloves garlic
-Chicken broth, white wine, or combination thereof (enough to come about 1/2 way up the chicken pieces, once they’re ensconced in a frying pan)
-More chicken broth, more white wine, a slug of Marsala or sherry, or even (gasp!) water
-About a tablespoon of flour
-Some chopped parsley, fresh or dried
-A little olive oil
-Salt & pepper to taste
-A decent frying pan
-A plate
-A mug or measuring cup

Skim the bottom of said frying pan with some olive oil. Cook the chopped onion gently in the olive oil until the onion is tender, translucent, and starting to brown a bit. When the onion is cooked, remove it from the oil and set it aside on a plate.

Now brown the chicken in the onion-flavored oil. No hurry—you can accomplish this over medium or medium-low heat without splattering the stove and countertop with grease. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, as desired.

When the chicken looks pleasingly browned, add the garlic and thyme. Return the onion to the pan and nestle it around the chicken pieces. Pour the liquid of your choice (broth, wine, water…whatEVER) into the pan, so that it comes about 1/2-way up the sides of the chicken pieces. Place a lemon slice on top of each piece of chicken. Drop any remaining slices into the broth. Cover. Simmer. Go away for about 20 minutes (white meat) or 30 minutes (dark meat).

dcp_2355

Shortly before the meat is done, cook some noodles or rice (well…if you’re cooking rice, you ‘d best set it to simmer about the same time as you leave the chicken to finish cooking, since rice will take some 25 minutes).

Remove the lemon slices from the chicken and the chicken broth. Discard. Lift the chicken out of the broth.

In a container such as a coffee mug, combine the flour with chicken broth or wine and a little water. Whap together well, using a fork, to eliminate any lumps.

Turn the heat up under the chicken broth. Pour in the flour & liquid; mix together briskly, and allow to bubble away at a fast simmer for several minutes, until gravy thickens. Add parsley to give a little color and zing.

Serve the chicken and incredible gravy over pasta or rice.

B-a-a-a-d Human Greens

Here’s how you take something nutritious and use it to destroy your body. Pick some greens out of your garden, or scrounge some from the grocery store. (I used beet greens; spinach would do well, as will chard or collard greens.)

Bring the water for pasta to a boil. Place the washed greens in the colander in which you intend to drain the pasta. When the pasta water comes to a rolling boil, set the colander with the greens into the hot water. Allow to cook until the leaves turn bright green. If you’re using tougher greens such as collards, you may want to let them cook until pretty well softened.

dcp_23581

Melt a fine slug of butter in a small frying pan. With tongs, lift the colander out of the kettle and put it in the sink. Run some cold water over the greens to stop the cooking. Drain well. Put the drained, blanched greens into the melted butter in the pan. Cover and allow to braise while you’re finishing with the rest of the food. If desired, sprinkle a little nutmeg over the greens before serving.

Got a freezer? Now’s the time to stock up

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beansIt looks like this is the time to hoard up some food, if you havesomeplace to store it anda few extra bucks. CBS MarketWatch reports that deflationary pressures have pushed prices about as low as they’re likely to go. Everything from soup & nuts to automobiles is marked down.

Earlier this week I found some very nice seven-bone chuck roasts at the Safeway: $1.47 a pound, a buck less than hamburger. I bought two and had them ground into burger (I’m not nuts about stewed beef; and I can feed hamburger to the dog as well as to myself).

If you have some money or some credit, now is the time to buy a car or a house. I sure can’t afford that and don’t know anyone who can…but somewhere there must be a retired banker or two who could manage it.

Seriously: As the piper comes around asking to be paid for all the rescues the taxpayer is subsidizing and for all the money the government is minting to engineer those subsidies, we’re likely to see some serious inflation. If prices go up and none of us can get work, we’re all going to be in deep trouble. Helle’s Belles: if prices go way up—or, to put it another way, if the value of the dollar goes bust—it won’t make much difference if we are working, because our wages won’t buy us a heck of a lot more than unemployment benefits will.

This weekend I think I’ll see if I can find a small freezer that will go through the door to the spare bedroom I’ve devoted to storage. It wouldn’t take a lot of extra freezer space to hold at least a couple months of food for me and the Corgi. Then as food comes on sale, I’m going to start buying, wrapping, and storing.

It looks like I’m going to need a new washer one of these days—have you seen the prices on the frontloaders at Costco? They even have one of those top-loading high-efficiency washers with no agitator at an almost affordable price (good-bye wadded up sheets and ripped shirts!).

The problem with buying a big-ticket item before one really needs it is that in these uncertain times it feels like a real bad idea to part with whatever cash you’ve managed to sock away in savings. And you can be darned sure racking up debt to take advantage of rock-bottom prices is a bad idea. But…if things get as bad as they could get, a freezer would pay for itself. So would some “futures” in rice, beans, and canned goods.

Creepy, creepy night

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Three in the morning, how I hate it.

Woke up an hour ago. Night noises. The house creaks, snaps, pops, and crackles all night long, especially when temperatures drop sharply at night. The beams in the attic make bright snapping sounds, and the ductwork grumbles to itself. I’ve lived in houses that made settling sounds, of course. But this one takes the cake in that department. You’d think after 38 years the place would have done all the settling it’s going to do.

Then up pops a real unusual sound: like someone rapping on the door. Three distinct taps: knock knock knock. The dog heard it. Her head shot up, ears erect. She didn’t bark, though; and she is a barker. I figured if anybody tried seriously to get in, she’d fly into one of her yapfests.

Further noises were ambiguous: could’ve been settling sounds. The dog perked up to listen a couple of other times but still kept quiet. By now I was wide awake and listening for every freaking creak, groan, and whisper.

Twenty minutes, half an hour later, along comes the cop helicopter.

He buzzed the alley and yards on this end of the street for about 15 minutes. So, evidently someone else thought somebody was out there.

Charming.

The back door has a single-cylinder deadbolt and a doorknob lock—both highly vulnerable because the door has French-door style lights, pretty easy to knock in. I refuse to have a double-cylinder deadbolt on a kitchen door; it’s unsafe. The door is alarmed, so if anyone breaks in while I’m here, he’ll wake me and the dog and give himself a healthy shot of adrenalin.

The damned sliding doors are old, tired, and broken. Though they also are all alarmed, one of them doesn’t latch at all; another latches but doesn’t lock. They’re “secured” (such as it is) with sticks in the runners.

And of course, the back window: oh, the lovely back window. Whatever possessed developers to install aluminum junk like that? It also is a sliding affair with a flimsy latch—nothing resembling a lock. You can drop a stick in the runner and be damned. The glass is held in place with rubber weather stripping. All you have to do is slip a little slot screwdriver under the weatherstripping, quietly pull it out, and voilà! The glass pane will lift right out. In the wee hours of one morning, SDXB found a couple guys coming in his front window, they having gained entry that way. You wonder why he moved to Sun City?

{sigh} I probably should have security doors installed in back, and get Chip at Freelite to install a new, more secure—and double-paned!—window back there. His last newsletter showed he’s carrying some fairly snazzy-looking security doors with a Prairie School look to them. I really dislike security doors: I feel the bad guys belong behind bars, not us. But if I can find something that doesn’t look like a prison door, well…

Well, indeed…don’t even ask how much such a thing costs. A somewhat nonugly security door for a single opening is amazing. For the double-sized door you’d have to get to go over an Arcadia…OMG! This house has three Arcadias plus the kitchen door. And by the time I’ve spent myself stupid on security doors, I’ll still have the cheesy old single-pane tinfoil door the developer put in and the cheap double-paned Arcadia door Satan installed, a thing for which “low-E” is not an operative term.

It would be cheaper to wait until I’m canned and just take myself out to Sun City. Ugh.

I need to get a shotgun.