Text 35593, 214 rader
Skriven 2006-08-01 14:18:47 av Roy Witt (1:1/22)
  Kommentar till text 35530 av Carol Shenkenberger (6:757/1)
Ärende: IQ Test
===============
01 Aug 06 22:19, Carol Shenkenberger wrote to Roy Witt:

 CS>> Well, my rental fellow seems to have decent handymen that do the job
 CS>> for a reasonable price though I could always wish they charged 5$ an
 CS>> hour (grin).
 RW>> Some would argue that you'd get what you pay for. OTH, if a job rate
 RW>> i over-inflated by incompetence, what are you paying for? Union
 RW>> labor be the worst kind of labor one could find, inept labor being
 RW>> next; findin that one individual who is fair and also knows the
 RW>> trade is hard to co by. Going through people who've had the
 RW>> experience before you is a ver reliable source.
 CS> Yes.  Most of my needs have been small stuff and don's friends are
 CS> involved.  Roofer job though?  I wanted to be sure.  Paid the right
 CS> price for a good job.

My needs were small too...a faucet swapped out, the back yard cleaned up
after the painters and roofers got done, etc...I think the yard cleanup
was a rip-off, as it wasn't any better looking than when they started.
That's why I balked at $85/hr to replace one faucet. I would have been
happier with a flat fee and when I didn't get it, I opted to find my own
handyman.

 CS>> Ohh I remember those.  That and VONs.  Not a bad chain overall.

 RW>> We've seen them all and have always gone back to VONs. Even WalMart
 RW>> su stores don't comare with the value for the buck that VONs has.
 RW>> Unfortunately, they're non-existant here. HEB has it's own brands
 RW>> like

 CS> VON's seemed ok.  HEB seemed the same but not so much on the exotic
 CS> things. Harris Teeter (East coast) was better for that.

I think they're all a matter of what sells in the area. The VONs in Mira
Mesa didn't stock a lot of Italian food things, but they stocked a lot of
oriental products. Their clientel were almost all oriental. Meanwhile, in
the 'Italian' neighborhood where Nancy's mom and dad lived, there was very
little oriental and more Italian. There are very few orientals here and
HEB still stocks some oriental products, but it's mostly what Texans eat
outside of their normal diets. Being a German community, there's lot's of
German sausage products, German Cheese products, etc...did I mention that
I 'hate' the German diet? My preference is Mexican and Italian dishes.

 RW>> That's because they get moldy within a few days, while the name
 RW>> brands stay fresh up to two weeks.

 CS> (On bread products).  Thats related to additives.  I like mine
 CS> additive free so freeze things if I cant eat it in a few days.

No room for that. We have frozen biscuits and garlic toast, but that's
about it.

 CS> Normally, I just get less and shop oftener these days.  Then again, I
 CS> make most of our bread in a breadmaker so buying baked goods is very
 CS> rare for me, but warm bread just baked and still so warm you cant
 CS> even slice it well, is a common event here.

Well, I watched Alton Brown make bread last night...you're not supposed to
slice it for at least an hour after it comes out of the oven...of course,
he didn't use a breadmaker, his was made from scratch and he used an oven
to make the dough rise, putting water in a 9x9x2 glass baking dish under
the bread dough, to give it plenty of moisture while the yeast did its
thing. It must have tasted as good as it looked...

 CS>> It's middle-end burdock season here now and just before melon crop
 CS>> time.  Major meekan season (Meekan=Mandarin oranges).

 RW>> We're still waiting for the melon (cantalope) season to get here.
 RW>> When does, the prices drop to within reason. Meanwhile, they're
 RW>> pretty expensive. Been experimenting with Mango instead. There's got
 RW>> to be something one can do with that giant pit, but I haven't found
 RW>> anyone w knows.

 CS> Hell, plant it?  <g>.  Here we have many squashes that double as
 CS> eating melons being almost as sweet and quite flavorful without
 CS> cooking.

I did that with the cantelope rinds and seeds last year. There weren't
very many melons and they didn't get very big...I've always wanted to
plant tomatos in a hanging basket and see how they do and last year, I did
that as well. They started out fine, but couldn't handle the Texas mid-day
sun and croaked before I noticed that they were in distress. It's nice to
have the time to do all of this of course. :o)

 CS>> Domo Arrigato Gozimas Roy-san <g>.  Mine is learned too but once one
 CS>> reaches a certain plateau, the rest gets pretty easy.  I'm not a
 CS>> super-chef but no one will starve in my house.

 RW>> Not here either, but if we depend on Nancy's cooking, all she knows
 RW>> is Italian and a variation of it. She learned it from her father,
 RW>> who was excellent chef in his own right, even if he was a railroad
 RW>> carpenter. cannot live on Italian alone [sigh].

 CS> I learned nothing from my mother really, other than 'TV dinners'
 CS> which she seldom made.  Oh she isnt hopeless and I gather she cooks
 CS> up a storm now, but her food was fairly plain but good for growing up
 CS> on.

Which reminds me of the week that Nancy was in the hospital for an
operation and then recovery. Her mother came over and cooked. Of course
she cooked what she eats, which is steamed veggies, rice and chicken, not
necessarily combined. She's a horrible cook and so I made a crock pot of
chili, which lasted the entire week, as I was the only eating it. Mine's a
bean-less chili, so nobody at work suffered very much...

 CS>   A truely lovely woman who raised us 3 on her own back inthe 60's
 CS> when that was harder to do than it is today.  The skills she did
 CS> teach me are good ones, but cooking wasnt one of them.

I recall you saying that she moved ya'll around quite a bit.

 CS>> not ersatz add a pinnaple bit and it's called Hawaiian).
 RW>> I do that, but it's just on pizza.
 CS> Blech.  Pinapple on pizza is nasty.  Then again, who am I to talk?  I
 CS> put squid tentacles and fish sauce on my rice.

That's also a blech! When my daughter from a previous marriage came to
visit us, we went out for pizza. Since she's also a veggie, all she wanted
on her pizza was fresh tomato. Neither I nor Nancy could see putting
tomatoes on top of tomato sauce, but to each their own. Nancy won't abide
pinapple on pizza either, so we have to split one when we go out.
Otherwise, the pizza I make at home is all for me if I put pinapple on it.
;O)

 CS>> our fill of them.  Delicious...
 RW>> They shouldn't, but grapes go to waste here. We buy them and then
 RW>> eith forget we did or 'save' them for something later.
 CS> I make jelly of them when stateside.  Small batches in those little
 CS> canning jars and give them away as gifts to friends as we make more
 CS> than we can eat. Since they come back asking for more, I guess it's
 CS> good stuff.

Grape jelly is probably the most popular jelly in the world. You see it
everywhere you go for breakfast which is used on toast as well as muffins.
I always put some on my 'sunny-side' up eggs.

But I prefer orange marmalade when it comes right down to it.

 CS>> Jufran Banana sauce (one N on the label on the bottle) is the one i
 CS>> have just now. Suspend your disbelief for a moment.  It doesnt taste
 CS>> at all like bannanas. No tomato in there but is a decent sub for
 CS>> ketchup.  Lasts forever in the fridge so a worthy thing to have
 CS>> about.
 RW>> Hmmm, I'll have to look for that. Might go good with hamburgers.
 CS> It would.
 RW>> Nancy might like that 'ramen' stuff, she's the only one who eats
 RW>> noodl in soup. I'd eat it without the noodles though, if it hadn't
 RW>> been cook with the pig, however. :o)
 CS> Oh we have so many variations here!  I cant post about them well as
 CS> there is no english on the labels so I dont know what to call them.
 CS> On the pig, I forget if it's you being largely meat-low eater or
 CS> religious factor. Doesnt matter though, you just arent into pork
 CS> broth. You'd have not liked tonight's dinner as it was pork broth
 CS> with udon, and at the side spinach and oranges.

I would have had the spinach and oranges and left the rest to ya'll. It's
not so much a religious thing as it is a 'know what you're eating' kind of
thing. Pork is one of those things I don't eat because of what it is. The
same as squid and shell fish, etc, - they're scavengers. i.e. you eat what
they've eaten and that could be very bad. I know, pig is a farm animal and
doesn't eat scavenged animals, but you really don't know that unless
you've raised and fed them yourself.

 RW>> That cholesterol problem runs in my family, but my parents and
 RW>> sibling suffer from it more than I do. I attribute my lower levels
 RW>> to my own d which doesn't allow the fat content in food that they
 RW>> do. I've noticed over the years that they eat midwestern corn fed
 RW>> beef, pig and whateve including the fat. Mine was California beef
 RW>> and I've never eaten any pig and I hate chicken.  They never trim
 RW>> the fat off of anything. I tr every bit of it when it's on my plate.
 RW>> Their cholesterol was in the 60 900 range when mine was less than
 RW>> 220. Oh, and they salted food after hit their plate, before they
 RW>> tasted it. The only salt on my food was w came naturally. Nancy nor
 RW>> I add salt to our cooking or if we do, it's little just to get a
 RW>> different taste.
 CS> WOW, 900's?!!!  They freaked when I was running 450's but at last, it
 CS> is down stable (diet changes only) to the 150's.

That's what their doctors did too. A change in their diet and meds brought
them down to my level.

 CS> Most days i still have 'meat' but 'meat' to me includes fish and all
 CS> seafoods.  I have non-seafood based meat 2 times a week for the most
 CS> part unless at sea (not much chouice there, eat what they are serving
 CS> that day or starve).

I've watched over the shoulders of the orientals taking their own blood
pressure tests at Sav-on there in Mira Mesa. I thought mine was right at
120/65, but theirs is lower, 70-95/45-60...due to their diet, no doubt.
And my heart rate is proportianately higher, around 70, while theirs is
less than 60...odd that.

 CS>>  and Don has salt-reactive high blood pressure.  You can eat really
 CS>> good even sugar-free, fat-low, and salt-low if you make it yourself.
 RW>> Yes, you can.
 CS>> prepared things though, dont work well.
 RW>> You mean the boxed or canned stuff on the shelves...right.

 CS> Yup.  Found out by shopping right, you can even have soy sauce.
 CS> Filipeno brands are way-low.  Enough low that on a 2,000MG a day
 CS> diet, you can use them.

Yeup...

 RW>> We do the opposite, we add a salt substitute at the table if there
 RW>> isn't a taste of it in the food already...

 CS> We normally skip it entirely but have some MS Dash stuff for when it
 CS> seems right.
 CS>                                        xxcarol


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