Windows 93

[yogi]

By some strange coincidence my wife used to mail order Chewy dog food for our pooch. She still does on occasion but she mixes it with some other less chewy food which she claims the dog likes better. The mix is something they keep in the fridge at Schnucks and various other stores. It smells good which is probably why the dog likes it.

My wife of many years really likes to play with electronic gizmos, but she is not that well versed in how to do things. Thus she also gets a lot of unsolicited email and notifications simply because she doesn't know how to turn them off. A lot of filtering can be done at the operating system level, but as you point out you have to be careful about global filters. I have discovered that many of the e-stores have a preference page where you can select which if any e-mails you get from them. In some cases you need to have an account with them to shut things off, but that's a small price to pay for eliminating a major nuisance. My Thunderbird client has a marvelous filtering system. You can reject mail based on words in the content or portions of an e-mail return address, for example. I have a folder for all the junk mail from people I have dealt with but could not turn off their stream of junk mail. Thus I only look in there when I'm interested or want to clean up the junk. The ultimate filter is to unsubscribe, which is not always an advisable tactic. Some less than scrupulous sites use that "unsubscribe" link to put you on an active e-mail list and sell it to their buddies. Most companies are not like that.

The discount coupons are part of the adaptive advertising scheme. That's one reason I like using virtual machines. I can get discounts that would not be offered to existing accounts. But, as my story with the olive oil people demonstrates, some of those discounts are not discounts at all. That's the reason I generally have more than one source for items I order frequently. The selling price might be cheaper at one place, but they make up for it with the high shipping and handling charges. They are clever, but hopefully I am smarter than they are. Most of the time.

[Kellemora]

I had a few places I would order pet foods from, whoever was the cheapest and had what I wanted.
Trouble is now, a lot of things are no longer available, or priced ridiculously high.
I'll be damned to pay more for dog food than for a steak dinner for myself.

My wife has a light that is coming on at around 8 am every day, that she says she never set it up to do that.
To get around it coming on. she set a timer to turn it back off again at 8:15 am. Now that timer is working, hi hi.

She got a notice on her phone that the nightlight failed to turn off. OK, she has never set the nightlights to do anything from her phone. So that was a confusing message to get.

Many years ago, I won a near lifetime supply of like Crest Toothpaste. They provided the prize via a huge box of coupons.
I wound up giving about 1/4th of the coupons away to relatives. But then stores quit taking the old style coupons.
I called up the company and they gladly sent me out another huge case of new coupons. I shared about 1/4th of them also.
About the time they changed how coupons worked again, I still had a half case of coupons, so I called them up, expecting them to send me more again. I guess they didn't like me sharing the coupons, so they sent me a single plastic card, like a credit card. I could get one large tube of toothpaste per month. By that time I had dentures so didn't need toothpaste, so gave it to my son who's name is the same as mine, if they checked the card closer than usual.

I did get screwed over on 8 mm movie film one time. It was a gimmick of course. Free Film for Life. But the only way to get a roll of free film was to pay them to process your previous roll. They were higher priced than my normal place, but they did a horrible job in comparison. Nothing is ever free in this world. 8 mm movies were a short fad anyhow.

[yogi]

I think it was Agfa, but it could have been somebody else, who gave you "free" film when you had your photographs processed by them. The problem there was the processing was done in Germany or Belgium and therefore quite expensive. I believe I did it once to see how it all worked and I don't recall being dissatisfied with the end results. There was some talk at that time from Polaroid about giving away "free" cameras. Of course only their film would work in their camera so that you only had one source for film. That turned out to be monopolistic and Polaroid had to make their customers pay for the cameras too. I'm not sure how that made legal sense, but it was an interesting story.

I don't know what to say about the lights in your house. I am VERY suspicious of Amazon and all it's Echo devices. They seem to have the ability to take over all the smart functions in your home. That might be a convenience for many people, but to me it's an invasion of privacy that I don't appreciate. My Echo is still in storage in the closet along with the two light bulbs that came with it. That's how I eliminated any unsolicited messages and notifications from those guys.

It's not too surprising that there is a shortage of dog food and that it's expensive when it is available. The same things are happening with the regular foods I buy. It seems that the problem is really bad at Schnucks for some reason. Other stores also have occasional shortages, or they stopped handling that which I favor, but none are as bad as Schnucks. I can only guess it has to do with the supply chain being different for the various stores. Or at least that is the story they hand out. I'm leaning more toward poor management of the local stores, which is somewhat understandable given the shortage of labor these days.

[Kellemora]

I don't remember who it was, but I did do some photo chemical packaging for Agfa in later years.

Actually Polaroid had several deals where the camera ended up costing you nothing. But they couldn't just give them away for some reason.

I don't trust the LoT devices either. But at least the plugs can't snoop on you, hi hi.

Our little local grocer has better stock than most of the larger chains around here. Sorta surprising!

[yogi]

There is a small grocery in town called Fresh Thyme. They are a franchise but I've not seen too many of those shops in my experiences. They specialize in organic foods, and by far the majority of their stock is their own brand. Most of the national brands are not available in that store which limits the selection of goods. I've not found that to be a problem because I don't do my regular shopping at Fresh Thyme, but I am amazed at the full availability of everything they sell. If any items are in short supply, I've not seen that empty space on their shelves. No doubt the "supply chain" thy use is much more compact and less complicated that the bigger stores. That might account for the well stocked shelves, but the fact that the variety of stock is limited probably is the main reason they have full shelves. One of the main reasons I go to that store is their bacon. They sell three versions of thick cut bacon that is actually thicker than anything I can get prepackaged. To be fair the delis at Schnucks and Diergergs have slab bacon that is thick, but it's not like what I can get at Fresh Thyme. I'm guessing your Mom and Pop shops are benefiting from the compressed supply chain in much the same way as is Fresh Thyme. Unfortunately those small shops are noticeably more expensive.

[Kellemora]

We have a few organic food stores here, one has been around for decades called Three Rivers Market. They are never out of anything. I used to do a lot of shopping there when I first moved down here, but not so much anymore.

Our little local grocer gets much of their stuff locally, and from overstock, so they don't always have the same line of staples, but always have fresh Black Angus beef and produce. Naturally in the winter the produce comes in from out of state, but in the summer months it is all locally grown produce.
We like them because they are cheap, half the price of Kroger, and 1/3rd less than WalMart on nearly everything. They even have things that WalMart is usually out of, hi hi.

[yogi]

There is a lot to be said for local grown and organic food. I believe it is advertised to be more healthy than it actually is, plus there are no strict controls about how organic a farmer has to be. While it doesn't affect the nutrition or the quality of the food, those home grown veggies are not as pretty to look at as their commercially processed counterparts. Some blemishes and discoloration is to be expected with organic fruits and vegetables which means there is more waste, and effectively increases the cost. The most compelling reason I go to the Fresh Thyme store is that they actually have the fruits and vegetables I am interested in, including some exotic ones. While I've never found fresh horseradish there I have seen fresh parsnip. I can get parsnip, sometimes, at Schnucks but it's often older looking than me. Ginger is the same way. Places like Schnucks buy what Fresh Thyme tosses in the dumpster, or that is what it appears to be at times.

Back home near Chicago Black Angus was available on rare occasion. Down here that is all you can get at times. The focus on Angus beef down here seems as little weird because the shops that sell it are not the pricey gourmet stores that sold it up north. My favorite butcher shop offers it but at a higher price, generally $1-$2 per pound more than non-Angus. One day I bought two sirloin steaks from those guys. One was aged Angus while the other was their run of the mill beef. I prepared them both the same way and could not tell the difference. So, Angus must be better in theory only. LOL

[Kellemora]

Not saying this to be funny, but there is a lot you don't know about the farming industry.
What you see for sale in the stores from commercial farms is usually their grade A or B products.
We drive out to Grainger County to buy tomatoes by the case. We are usually buying grade C or D products for ourselves.
It is interesting to sit and watch the tomatoes go through the grading process, where they are separated and packaged.
They also have a very special packaging for the super grade A tomatoes, where the cases have paper mache trays with tissue each tomato sets in each cell of the tray. Fancy looking. These tomatoes fetch top dollar for sure. Probably go to stores like Straub's, a very high end grocer.
Tomato grades below D go directly to the canneries. These are the ugly of the ugliest tomatoes, hi hi.

I think I was raised on Longhorn beef, or white face beef. Angus is a new comer to the market place, but it too comes in different grades, and some of it can be as tough as shoe leather too.

[yogi]

All I know about farming is what I learned from you. LOL Well, maybe a few other tid bits as well. I know about grading of foods and that there are standards issued by the government for meeting those grades. While all that is interesting, I only get to see and deal with the end results at the grocery store. How they get what they are selling is never revealed, nor is the grade of the product, but the difference is clear and obvious on the store shelves. I also am well aware that there are regulations regarding what can and cannot be called organic. To me it's all a gimmick, but there too it is clear and obvious when the organic sellers have things not found in the regular stores. I do believe how and where a vegetable determines it's taste and not what grade it happens to be. That's one argument in favor of supporting local farmers. They usually, but not always, have better tasting produce.

I was a meat cutter for one whole summer between college semesters. Thus I have some first hand experience about what goes on behind the scenes. Some hamburger, for example, might contain filet Mignon that didn't sell right away and discolored. It was perfectly edible but didn't look salable. All the chain stores apparently are beholden to their corporate bosses. I don't think they have much choice in what kind of meat they sell because the entire chain is sourced by the same people. Local butcher shops are preferred because they are not beholden to any corporate dictates. The down side of local butchers is the price. I can get some high quality meats and poultry, but I also am paying a high price for it. As I said before, at least I have a choice of what I buy from the local shops. When shopping the chains you can only get what their buyers found on sale that week.

[Kellemora]

USDA Certified Organic is actually a JOKE on the American People.
A true Organic farmer would never use the things the government allows and still be called Organic.
Which is also a DUMB NAME to call things that are Organic to start with, hi hi.

And yes I agree, you can have Grade A produce that tastes like crap.

Not all meats are good either, no matter how fresh they may be. Or aged if that is the case.
Some meats from some butchers taste great, while the same cuts from another butcher might taste bad or tough, whatever.

My late wife's father was a butcher, so she always knew exactly what meats and what cuts to buy.
Me, I just take what I can get, because I don't know any better, hi hi.

[yogi]

I tried to grow organic vegetables for several years but came to the conclusion it is not worth the effort. At least 30% if not 50% of organically grown vegetables in the wild is not suitable for eating. The bugs and whatever fungus happens to be prominent during a given week will destroy crops that are not protected by heavy duty chemicals. In my case with a home garden sharing the crop yields with the local critters was no big deal, but if you are a farmer depending on that crop for income, you are dead in the water. Thus I think I have a fair understanding of what organic gardening is all about, and it's simply not worth it in a practical sense. The only glory in it all is that you can brag about it being "organic" which isn't saying much.

Meat varies in quality at least as much as does produce. I think the main groceries here in O'Fallon get their chickens from Tyson, Purdue, or Brand-X. That Brand-X stuff is edible if you know how to prepare it just right. It always amazed me to see chickens that were consistently the same size. How did they accomplish that? LOL Growth hormones, obviously. I've come to the conclusion that the poultry at least around here is a product of some chemistry experiment in a corporate laboratory somewhere in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas. When I discovered the small butcher shops I like to patronize the reality of quality in meats and poultry became glaringly obvious. I don't know where the butchers get their chickens, for example, but it's not the same factory that produces those WalMart specials. The butcher shop chicken breasts almost always approach two pounds in weight. Some smaller ones will be a pound and a half. But the real difference is in how the chickens taste after they are baked, broiled, or fried. So I don't know from where they get their fowl, but I'm guessing it's from a farm you can drive to in a couple hours or less. The same has to be true for beef, although I must say I have picked up some excellent Angus beef at the likes of Dierbergs or Schnucks. It's not trimmed or cut like the butcher would do it, but then the price isn't out of sight either. The bottom line in meat seems to be the breed of the stock and what the farmers feed those critters. It does make a difference.

[Kellemora]

All I can say is, I'm mighty glad my days of farming and horticulture are long behind me now.
I raised quite a few crops after I moved down here, even built a greenhouse for summer months, and dug out the crawl space for starting plants year round down there.
Then I got over it, hi hi.

Yes, what animals are fed does make a big difference in their texture, tenderness, and flavor.

My grandparents on my mom's side knew how to prepare nearly any chicken so it tasted like a million bucks.
But then they were big chicken eaters too. So learned just how to prepare each type and age of chicken.
Even the old ones would come out great the way they were prepared.

[yogi]

I have experimented with chicken cooking but it is not my favorite food. It is a favorite of my wife, however. I have a couple go-to recipes for chicken but one for baking a chicken breast is reliably good. It took a couple years to figure out how to make perfect chicken and it all has to do with internal temperature of the meat. There is literally a sweet spot (temperature) for baked chicken and it has very little tolerance. Because of that sweet spot I learned that the quality of the chicken is critical. Those cheaper chickens that are factory produced have very little tolerance for error. Nothing tastes worse than under cooked chicken and if you cook it too long it vulcanizes just like rubber does. The butcher shop chickens allow for more error, plus the big advantage is they can be reheated for left overs the next day. Not many of those rubber chickens can be cooked twice. So, baked chicken is how I make it most of the time these days. The only other way chicken comes out palatable is when put it into something like Jambalaya. But that's a whole different kind of eating.

I do have one regret about chicken. Mom used to make world class chicken soup. She did not leave a recipe behind and all I recall is that she used a whole chicken in the process. She also made her own noodles for the soup. THAT I can do. One thing mom did that I would never attempt is cook the giblets and then eat them like an appetizer. I'm not sure you can even get giblets of chicken anywhere these days.

[Kellemora]

I'm not a big fan of chicken either, but I do like a good broasted chicken breast from time to time. In lieu of that, I settle for fried chicken.
I do eat a lot of chicken noodle soup, but usually give the chunks of chicken to the pooches, hi hi.

My mom also made an awesome variety of soups. I have the recipe for two of them, but no one can seem to make them come out like she did. I think she left out things on the recipe, hi hi.

[yogi]

My oldest daughter took it upon herself at one time to document some of mom's recipes. I have a few cookie recipes from that documentation and they do in fact seem close to what I recall of mom's baking. When Thanksgiving came around mom's stuffing was the highlight of the show. Nobody documented mom's method by observation, but my daughter did ask her how she assembles it. Well, I have the list of ingredients but no amounts for them nor cooking times. I've tried duplicating it for a few Thanksgiving dinners, but now the family no longer asks me to give it a shot. LOL The thing is mom watched her mom do it and learned by observation. None of those old time recipes ever got written down.

Broasted chicken is pretty good stuff, but I believe it's an invented form of cooking that does not exist in household kitchens. LOL You can see those chickens being "broasted" on a rotisserie in the store which seems to use infra red lamps or something to do the cooking. But I never saw a home kitchen with that kind of appliance. I have seen turkeys baked and then broiled to finish it off, but it's not the same.

[Kellemora]

I remember watching my grandmother, and my mom, make a lot of things, there was no recipe, they just kept a batch going and added to it what they though it needed, hi hi. I'm surprised that it didn't kill us, some of those ingredients still in the bowl could have been 20 years old, hi hi.

There are a couple of types of broasted chicken. One I don't like at all, and another I just love to pieces. Trouble is, it is like catch as catch can when you see broasted chicken advertised.
We have a rotisserie here in our kitchen. It does a lot of things, but rarely gets used because of how long it takes to clean it after you cook something in it.
But around a holiday, when they were fixing many things in it, then it got used a lot.

[yogi]

As I recall mom had a stock pot but it didn't sit around for twenty years. She did what you describe and just added stuff she thought needed to be added. I think it was basically for soup but a lot of other things were cooked in it too. That worked out well for the three of us when I lived at home but I don't see a need for making big meals for myself and my wife of many years. Once in a while I'll go fancy, just because I can and found all the ingredients at Schnucks that week. Usually the challenge is to make something the two of us will devour in one or two meals. That's not as easy as it sounds and we have a freezer full of my miscalculations. LOL

We have an agreement of sorts in our kitchen. I do the cooking and my wife does the dishes. To my surprise she takes that chore way more seriously than I expected. She will in fact interrupt me on occasion when I decide it's expedient to wash the pots and pans as I use them. Then, too, she favors using the dish washing machine. If I had my druthers it would be removed and replace with a small freezer or something useful. I guess the arthritis in her hands don't like scrubbing cookware, but that dishwasher holds some of my favorite cooking utensils captive for days at a time. I can't tell you how many times I had to go fishing around inside it to get something I needed to make a meal.

[Kellemora]

The 20 years I was married to my late wife Ruth, I was the chief cook, bottle washer, laundry, you name it, I handled it all. She did a lot of things herself too, up until her 5 bypass surgery, then all she could do was sit in her wheelchair.

It is sorta nice now that Debi loves to be a little Suzie homemaker and takes care of the cooking, washing, and laundry.
I have a housekeeper who comes in twice a month to do the harder housekeeping chores. It was my gift to her, and as long as I can keep the housekeeper I will do so.

Now I'm the one who is stuck sitting in a chair hooked up to medical machines.

[yogi]

On rare occasion my wife will get fed up with housework and decide to hire somebody to do the things she hates doing. We had a couple barely English speaking gals come in once a week at the old house for a few months. They did a pretty good job but one thing they did really took me by surprise. We had a gas range for cooking back there and the grating had never been properly cleaned. Thus many years of burned on grease had accumulated onto the grates upon which the pots sat while cooking. It's not that I didn't try to clean them. It just proved impossible without a grinder of some sort that won't clog up with grease. Well these two gals had some green goo in a plastic squeeze bottle. I didn't see what they did exactly, but they used this goo to clean all the grease off the gratings. I was shocked and awed and asked them what that stuff was. All they could tell me is they get it at the office from a big jug. I'm certain it was a degreaser of some sort, but I tried some of that to no avail. It did work well on the car engine, however.

[Kellemora]

There is a product named "Carbon Off" the liquid not the spray stuff. It cleans nearly everything with burned on carbon.
If I recall, it costs about 25 bucks a can too.
I don't remember the color of it, since it's been over 20 since I used any.