JustWalt's Mental Meanderings

Cheap Bastid Finally Kills Off the Thanksgiving Turkey

2012-01-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

It’s taken me 2 months but that bird is finally gone. Well not completely. We’re having the last of the turkey noodle soup tonight with home made French bread and I’ve got a bunch of turkey stock that will last me several months.

But that damned turkey breast carcass is finally out of the freezer. All that’s left is a small mound of bones which now resides in the garbage.

The weather forecast for the weekend was for rain and blustery winds—which is the closest thing that the San Diego area will ever get to a blizzard. So I decided it was time to finish off the carcass with stock and soup.

You can make your own any time you want. All you need is to keep the carcass of a turkey, turkey breast or chicken with shreds of meat still attached. Do what I did, take out your slow cooker or your stock pot and put in about 6-8 cups of water and put it on slow heat. Now toss in your carcass (I mean I just took mine out of the freezer, pulled it out of the freezer bag and dropped it into the slow cooker).

That’s all you need to do. Except if you’re like me, go check it occasionally, especially after it starts to send off that fantastic aroma. After a couple of hours it’ll start to look like weak broth and a couple hours after that it will look and smell rich and start to taste a bit richer. I’m going for stock here, not broth. Broth is for wusses.

And after 4 or 5 hours you might want to add another cup or so of water. So after 6 to 8 hours I turn off the heat and slide the cooker pot into the fridge overnight. The next morning what I’m going to do is skim any congealed solids off the top and throw it away.

Then, strain the liquid getting out all those meat bits and bones which could cause a problem. After you do that, just pour the liquid into ice cube trays and turn it into “stock-cicles”. Let them freeze solid and then put the cubes into freezer bags for use throughout the year.

But I wasn’t done. I was going to make stock AND soup. I kept about a cup and a half of the stock for “stock-cicles”. And I used the rest—about 2 ½ cups as my soup base. Then I picked through the meat—shredding it and discarding the bones and any remaining skin. What I had left was just about a pound of turkey.

Sample the broth! Add salt and pepper a little bit at a time. I also add garlic powder and cumin (why do I add cumin? Because we like cumin!). Remember, go easy with the spices—you can always add more, but once it’s in, you can’t take it out.

That went into the pot and I let it simmer for several hours. From there, I added a little over a cup each of diced onion, diced carrot, diced celery and diced jalapeno. I let that cook for a couple more hours and added 2 or 3 handsful of frozen corn.

Now about an hour before serving, toss in about half a bag of egg noodles. By now this is going to be smelling so fantastic that you’ll be drooling. Sometimes I make drop dumplings for this soup, but not this time. They’re fantastically easy to make. Instead, I sliced some French bread and lightly toasted it in the oven for dipping into the soup.

Oh man, it was fantastic. Stick to the ribs good. Silky, tasty texture—just enough spices to bring out the full flavor of the soup. And what’s best is that this was really inexpensive.

The Cheap Bastid Test: This started out as an 8 pound turkey breast. We got 3 dinners and several sandwiches from it. And we just got 2 more nights of dinner out of the soup plus multiple meals with a flavor boost from the homemade stock. That’s a bargain. And for the soup, I used the left-over carcass and meat and added about $2.50 worth of vegetables and noodles.

In today’s world, you have to stretch every dollar. It’s even better when the result of the stretching is comfort food this tasty and nourishing.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Warren Buffett Gets it Right Again--He Blames the Tax Code Not Romney

2012-01-23T16:49:00.000-08:00

Bloomberg News just reported on an interview today with Warren Buffett. He echoed his earlier sentiments about how the rich should be paying a higher rate of tax.

While some may take it as a swipe at Mitt Romney, Buffett put himself in the same category. Buffett said that the tax rate that he pays along with Romney comes reflects “poor laws rather than failings by the candidate…”

John Boehner probably classifies Romney and Buffett as “jobs creators” who should pay even less than they are now. But, a guy who can buy and sell Mitt Romney 25 times over says otherwise.

Buffett is kind of like the old fashioned ads from E.F. Hutton. When he talks, people listen.

Here’s the full article from Yahoo News and Bloomberg:

Buffett Blames Congress for Romney's 15% Rate
By Andrew Frye and Andrea Ludtke Bloomberg – 5 hours ago
Warren Buffett, the billionaire calling for more taxes on the rich, said Mitt Romney's U.S. tax rate of about 15 percent reflects poor laws rather than failings by the candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

"It's the wrong policy to have," Buffett told Bloomberg Television's Betty Liu in an interview today. "He's not going to pay more than the law requires, and I don't fault him for that in the least. But I do fault a law that allows him and me earning enormous sums to pay overall federal taxes at a rate that's about half what the average person in my office pays."

Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) , supports Democratic President Barack Obama and said Congress needs to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to close the budget deficit. Romney has agreed to release his 2010 tax return tomorrow, under pressure from Republican opponents, after saying he pays about 15 percent. Romney co- founded Boston-based private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC.

"He makes his money the same way I make my money," Buffett said. "He makes money by moving around big bucks, not by straining his back or going to work and cleaning toilets or whatever it may be. He makes it shoving around money."

"I'm Building A Ship"

2012-01-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, in the later 1980’s, I lived and worked in the small city of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. This town of 9,000 was the county seat of Door County which was, and still is, one of the largest destination tourism areas in the Midwest. I ran the County’s Chamber of Commerce.

There were 3 sizeable shipbuilders in the city—between the 3 employing about 2,000 workers. One, Peterson Builders was the lead contractor for a new series of minesweepers for the U.S. Navy. These are fiberglass sheathed, wooden hulled vessels (you don’t want much steel on a ship which neutralizes mines, many of which have magnetic detonators). Peterson was expert at designing and building these vessels.

It was quite an event whenever one of these ships were launched or commissioned. There would be dignitaries from Washington and Madison in attendance and I was fortunate to participate in several of them.

One of my all time favorite stories though deals with another organization in our community called the Sunshine House. This was a sheltered workshop for adults with developmental and other disabilities. It was an amazing place full of people engaged in work that was both therapeutic and meaningful.

The Chamber contracted with Sunshine House to do quite a bit of our “fulfillment”. We would get thousands and thousands of inquiries from tourists for information on lodging and activities in our area heading up to the busy tourism season. We found that we could contract with Sunshine House to put mailing labels on our “vacation planning guide” and mail them quicker and cheaper than we could do it in-house. We’re talking 100,000 or more pieces of mail over a several month period.

One day I was touring the Sunshine House. They had just picked up a new contract for Peterson Builders. It seems as though the decks of the ships were made of white oak and needed pegs to hold them together—the pegs were about ½ inch by 6 inches. Another company had been making them but their quality wasn’t very good and their price was quite high. So, Sunshine House bid on the contract and received it and started to make the pegs out of scrap white oak from Peterson.

OK, to make this long story short, as I was touring the facility I stopped next to a young man who was sanding one of the pegs. I stopped and watched and then asked him, “so, what are you doing?”

And instantly he answered me, with a light in his eye and a smile, “I’m building a ship.”

I’ve thought of his answer many times over the years. When I was working in economic development I knew that I was “building a community”. When I was a consultant for Ford Motors I knew that I was “building a car company” or “building a car dealership” even though I was helping a dealer do a better job of selling more vehicles. When I sold cars, I thought of myself a “building a dealership” rather than selling cars or just making commissions.

Yeah, “I’m building a ship.” That young man was a professional. And he was right. For building that ship is the sum of all the parts that go into it and his part—a humble white oak peg—was a vital part without which the whole ship would not come together.

Let’s build some ships. Maybe those politicians who constantly bloviate with the new buzz-word “jobs creators” will get the message.

Sleeping Through the "Southland" Premier on TNT 1/17/2012

2012-01-18T09:28:00.001-08:00

My wife and I really enjoy TNT’s “Southland” (formerly on NBC which was stupid enough to cancel this well-written, well-cast, well-directed and well filmed show).

So, we we’ve been anticipating it’s “season premiere” which has been promoted on Facebook and other places for the last couple of months (I don’t “like” too many things on my Facebook page but “Southland” is one of them). It premiered last night at 10 p.m., a little late but we’ll stay up occasionally for something worth watching.

So, here’s what the season premiere was like…including the welcoming of Lucy Liu to the cast.

9:45: Carolyn announces that she’s going to go into the bedroom and watch it in bed. I’m in the living room reading a book (you know, those things with covers and paper with words printed on them). “OK,” I say, “you know that if I come into the bedroom that I’ll just fall asleep and miss it.”

10:05: Carolyn comes out of the bedroom and wakes me up on the couch to tell me that it’s started. Damn. “Why don’t you come in and watch it in bed?” “Naw, I’m fine here,” I respond.

10:06: Cops driving down street. See young street thugs chasing one another with guns. They give chase in car. One kid gets shot. Cops chase the other. Thug runs into school yard chased by 4 cops. Kid is shot but keeps going. They follow blood trail through corridors of school and find kid “bleeding out” on floor of restroom.

10:15: I wake up again. Michael Cudlitz, Officer John Cooper, is working out, lifting weights shirtless going through full range of motion including lower back. He gets done and walks towards showers showing a scar running up back from surgery. “Hmmmm, he got his back fixed. Wonder if it’s OK.”

10:20: I wake up again. They’re in briefing for their “tour”. Michael Cudlitz is assigned to a new partner who wants to drive. New partner is Lucy Liu. Looks a lot different from other roles she’s played like in “Kill Bill” and “Ally McBeal”. Hair’s pulled back, not playing the vixen…

11:10: Carolyn comes out to the living room. Wakes me up. Drags me off to bed. “Did you watch it?” I ask. “Oh yes, but you didn’t”. I crawl in bed and go back to sleep.

Dammit.

How Many Public Works Guys Does It Take to Change a Light?

2012-01-09T10:25:00.000-08:00

About a month ago I did a post on my recent experience serving—albeit briefly—on a redevelopment committee for the City of Vista, CA where I live. It was, to say the least, an interesting, although brief, experience. If you recall, a month after I was appointed, the City disbanded the Committee.

Well, since then I have had a wonderful opportunity to get “re-acquainted” with the machinations of the City of Vista. Here’s my sordid, but true tale. It all started on October 25, 2011.

You see folks, there’s a street light just in front of my apartment building. I mean if the wind is right I can spit on it—that’s how close it is. In mid-0ctober I noticed that it was dark along our street—really dark. Now, the City had been threatening/promising or whatever for months that it would have to turn off most of the residential streetlights as a budget saving measure. But, the light would come on. Then in about 5 minutes it would fizzle out. A few minutes later it would sputter and come back on. It did this all night long—well at least as late as I’ve ever chosen to stay up.

I put up with it for a few nights. When it’s out, it’s dark along our street. Really dark. Dangerous dark—there are always pedestrians going up and down the sidewalks. So I decided to do something about it.

But what to do? I went into the City’s website which is decidedly not “user-friendly”, almost as if the City acknowledges that it has to have a public website but that it would really prefer if no citizen actually used it to get information or contact their local government. I was looking for the Department of Public Works or some other way to contact someone who could do something about my streetlight. Finally, I stumbled on a “feedback” link which let’s someone send a generic message to the “city”.

I sent about a 2 sentence message (I was limited to about 300 characters, which for me is not much) and much to my surprise within an hour I had a response. Not just one response but 2! The second one was from a project assistant in public works who actually read what I had sent and who said she would check it out.

A little while later I got a second e-mail from her telling me that there wasn’t a streetlight out in front of my building but that there was one on the other side of the street about 100 yards away. Hmmmm, no, there’s one in front of the building all right. What to do? I was encountering bureaucracy.

So I took out my camera and took a few pictures showing the light from my balcony and then went across the street to photograph the light with my building and its address in the background. These I attached to a new e-mail. Oops! The city official sent me back a response saying that she would update the city’s map and put in a “work order” which should be taken care of in 6-7 “business days”. OK, 2 weeks.

Two weeks go by. Nothing happens. In fact, on October 30 (the day before Halloween and trick or treating) I sent another e-mail to the person suggesting that it would be nice if the light could be fixed before Halloween and all the extra kids and families who would be walking up and down the street the next night. No response—even though I played the “public safety trump card”.

So I waited some more. Now don’t get me wrong. I didn’t sit out on my balcony all day, every day waiting for a city crew to come by. I kept on with my life but each night, I would grumble and complain while watching the light “bzzzzzt” off and on, off and on all night long.

The positive side of it was that at night when the light was on we could get a much better view of the stars in the dark sky. It was in its own way pleasant—but not really safe.

About the 5th or so of November, I called the Department of Public works and talked to a nice guy who also told me that there was no light in front of my apartment. And then, just as quickly told me that there was (he had just pulled up my original e-mail proving it’s existence). He also pledged that he was updating the map and would schedule the work—apparently it hadn’t happened the first time. And so I waited. And waited. Still nothing.

So, along about mid-November I dug out the big guns. I prepared another e-mail. This one (after doing some more online research) was addressed to the Mayor, City Manager and Director of Public Works. Wow! Even though City Hall is a whopping 3 blocks away, one could almost hear the gears of the system screech and grind as these officials seemed to drop what they were doing and take action.

In less than an hour I had an e-mail from the City Manager AND the Public Works director pledging action the following day. I don’t think I was very snotty to them in my e-mail—OK maybe a bit sarcastic. And maybe it helped that I sent the pictures of the light, along with a new photo of the light at night, burned out.

Anyway, there were e-mails and promises. “Yeah, yeah,” I thought.

Let’s fast forward to the very next morning. It’s 8:10 a.m. I don’t work until 2 p.m. So I’m checking out e-mail and the blogs and the news and drinking coffee—still in my pajamas.

My phone rings. “Walter, this is Jim Howell, the Director of Public Works here in Vista,” a voice tells me.

Now, my first thought is that it’s pretty early for a city employee to be on the phone. The guy’s voice is a bit hard to hear because there’s a diesel truck out in front of the building idling.

“I’m standing out in front of your building and we’re fixing your light now,” he proceeded to tell me. “Do you have a minute so I can explain the situation to you.”

“Hold on just a minute, Jim,” I replied. “Yep, I see you. Tell you what, I’ll come down and we can talk rather than on the phone.”

There’s this tall, professional guy in a shirt and tie and leather jacket standing across the street talking into a cell phone. I went out the door and down the stairs—still in my pajamas.

There’s a boom-truck with several guys right by the streetlight and they’re actually working. OK, so how many city workers does it take to change a light bulb? A total this day of 5—one in the bucket, one to run the controls on the truck, 2 to keep an eye on traffic and the Director of Public Works. Damn! This has got to be a fairly pricey light bulb change!

So I went down and talked to the guy while my wife took my picture in my jammies. He explained to me that they had actually done some work on the light (and showed me a work order) on October 10 but apparently didn’t realize that the ballast was bad.

OK, that’s fine with me. I’m just glad that they’re getting to it. Now, I know that Vista, California is a bigger city than I’ve lived in most of my life and that by California standards at 100,000 it’s not that big but…

Yeah, “but”…I still didn’t think that it should take the better part of a month to fix this and to have to convince people that there is, indeed, a streetlight in front of my address. I can’t help but wonder whether it would have been accomplished any quicker if I lived in a more “upscale” neighborhood—but that’s not fair to the folks at City Hall.

But these guys showed up and didn’t laugh at me out talking to the Director of Public Works in my pajamas. And, start to finish, it only took a month.

I guess I’m just getting too old and grumpy but it was kind of cool seeing that big old truck hoist a guy up in the air to change a light bulb and then hang around watching it for a half hour to make sure that it worked.

Iowa Caucuses--Gotta Know the Territory, Territory, Territory

2012-01-03T09:30:00.000-08:00

Here we are, January 3, 2012. It’s Iowa Caucus night. It’s the night Republican contenders/wannabes/candidates have been anticipating for months now. Regrettably the preening and posturing is just getting into high gear.

Most Americans, I think, wonder why the process of nominating a candidate starts in such an unassuming state like Iowa or New Hampshire. After all, these places really “don’t count”. Or do they?

And, Iowa’s not even a primary. It’s a damned caucus for crying out loud. What’s a caucus anyway? I did the Iowa caucuses 3 times over a 12 year period of living in Iowa. They were a fascinating experience. All 3 of them were as a Republican even though I was almost invariably the most liberal person in the room. (In Iowa a pro-choice Republican is like being a fiscally conservative Democrat).

But wouldn’t it be nice to have some sort of rule that says the candidates can’t even begin to posture and preen and sling manure until after Halloween the year before primary season? If that were the case, the only “losers” would be the media—both “news” and advertising.

Here’s the thing as far as I’m concerned: Meredith Wilson wrote a wonderful musical set in Iowa (he was from Mason City, after-all) called “The Music Man”. Professor Harold Hill gave all traveling salesmen a bad name. Why? Because as the opening number in the musical said, “he doesn’t know the territory, territory, territory.”

But I digress. Yes, indeed Iowa’s caucuses count. I remember the caucus season in 1983 (damn, I’m old, aren’t I?) when I was living and running the local Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Corporation in Algona, Iowa—population 6,000. This was the year that Democrats were trying to wrest the White House from Ronald Reagan who had defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980. Walter Mondale, Carter’s VP, secured the nomination.

One of the things I remember best was John Glenn coming into town to a gathering at the Chrome Country Café—a truck stop at the junction of Highways 169 and 18. There were about 20 people who showed up—mostly older farmers and their families along with a smattering of business types from town. Glenn showed up in a van, with a retinue of maybe 3 people accompanying him. And no media—other than the local reporters from newspaper and radio station.

It was a conversation over coffee. What were people actually thinking? What did they want? How was Glenn going to help provide that? It was a time for a very short “stump speech” and lots of feedback. And that’s what the caucuses are all about—putting a human face on the candidate; expecting the candidate to do this thing called listening.

Now, the expectation is for the candidate to strut their stuff and address their “core” or their “base”. Hell if they want to do something with their core, they should do crunches and planks.

Yeah, Iowa is a largely rural state (unless you live in Des Moines or Waterloo or Cedar Rapids and think the world revolves around your city). And indeed, many in the larger cities started out in small towns. But the caucuses are about interaction. They’ve been bastardized by the changes in the process over the years.

My last caucus was in the late 90’s when “W” was going after the nomination. By then the process had become totally centered on the media and mean-spirited. And it has only gotten worse.

Here’s the thing—Iowans tend to be “what you see is what you get”. They have a fairly low bullshit tolerance. This is a state which has consistently re-elected arguably one of the U.S. Senate’s most liberal members, Tom Harkin and one of it’s most conservative members, Chuck Grassley to term after term.

Why? Because each, in his own way, speaks to the people of this state. Each is passionate about his beliefs and yet shares the root values of the state. The cross-over vote each time one is up for re-election is phenomenal. Republicans routinely vote for Harkin and Democrats for Grassley.

Yeah, Iowa counts. But I don’t think the current crop of contenders really understand the how or why of it. Wouldn’t it be nice if they made an effort to know the “territory, territory, territory.” Maybe then they’d be able to muster the ability to actually do something productive and positive.

Christmas Music--"Ugly Christmas Sweater" It's a Hoot!

2011-12-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

Just for fun today and to nudge you a little further into the spirit of Christmas. If you don’t get a laugh out of this then there’s no hope.

A Tale of Two Veterans

2011-11-11T08:04:00.000-08:00

Many is the time when my wife and I have gotten to talking about our fathers and how interesting it would have been for the two of them to have met. One was Hispanic from Kansas and the other was a farm boy from the hills of Kentucky. Both of them were veterans. More importantly, each of them spent more than 30 years in a military career.

Carolyn’s father, Onofre “Hank” Hernandez, retired as a Master Gunny in the Marine Corps. My father, John R. Blevins, Sr., retired as a Senior Master Sergeant in the Air Force. Both of them started their service in World War II. Carolyn’s father enlisted in the Marines shortly after Pearl Harbor. My father was drafted when he turned 18 in 1943. Carolyn’s dad saw multiple campaigns in the Pacific theater while my father hit the beaches at Normandy on D-Day and spent the next year and a half on the ground in Europe.

Carolyn’s father was about 12 years older than my father. He was a dirt poor underground coal miner in Kansas. In many ways his patriotic act of enlistment was his ticket out of the poverty and prejudice a Mexican man lived with in the 1930s and 40s. My father was self-described “white trash” whose family cash-rented cropland in Kentucky to raise tobacco. He was the second oldest of 11 children.

There wasn’t going to be much of a life for either of them in the environments in which they grew up. The military changed all that. It was a profession of honor and service and, yes, of risk. Carolyn’s father served in combat in WWII, Korea and Viet Nam. My father was only in combat in the Army in WWII. He served throughout the Korean War and Viet Nam. My father earned a Purple Heart in WWII while Carolyn’s father was fortunate to have been in combat far more often but went unscathed.

So, this is Veteran’s Day a day when we remember and honor veterans. The military has long been a profession where men, and increasingly women, from very humble backgrounds can thrive in service to their country.

Here’s what Carolyn had to say about her father: “My dad loved this country. Maybe he didn't agree with the way it was going or its politics, but I have literally never met more of an 'American' than my dad. He believed in this country and the concepts and idelas upon which it was founded, even though - being a poor Mexican and all - they were definitely not written nor intended for the likes of him. Or maybe, in their noblest form, they actually were.”

My Dad never talked of his experiences of combat in World War II other than to say that he had never been so cold or hungry or scared in his life. That was it. It was personal and private, locked in the recesses of memory. Like many veterans he knew that combat was nothing to be bragged about like a fourth grader during “show and tell”. That’s probably something else that he and Gunny Hernandez would have understood about one another.

Carolyn and I joke from time to time about the “military-isms” we grew up with. Lessons like “clean up after yourself—leave the latrine clean for the next guy” were mantras we both heard from the time we were youngsters. In my household, shoeshines were obligatory. But, Sunday mornings sitting in the old high chair while my Dad shined my shoes for church were also times for the old man to have some one-on-one time with his son. Just like when we were throwing the baseball or fishing, they were times when the remoteness of a military father softened to just a couple of guys.

By the time I was a bit older, I was spit shining my own shoes. I remember high school classmates who thought the wing-tips I wore with my choir blazer and slacks were patent leather. Nope, they were just spit-shined in a “thoroughly military manner”.

And in a lot of ways, our respective fathers could be unreasonable hardasses. But that was just the way they were hardwired from their background and by the military.

We always talk about how they would have found that they had far more in common with one another than one would ever assume and we think their conversation would have been fascinating. Both had a background of poverty. Neither was well educated (until later in their careers) but both were articulate. And both grasped the opportunity of service and honor and discipline as a path to a career.

These men took pride in their military professionalism. They had risen much further than they ever imagined from their humble backgrounds. Both of our fathers took pride in the fact that they were in “the service”. That term has stuck with us our entire lives. They served. There is no more noble calling.

Cheap Bastid Chewing on "The Chew" and Blasting Yahoo

2011-11-09T10:50:00.000-08:00

Cheap Bastid has done enough Cheap Bastidly cooking and writing by now to be entitled to express an opinion or two. So that’s what I’m going to do today.

I’m going to take a swipe at ABC’s new food show “The Chew”, a cutsey play on “The View”, and take a swipe at an insipid piece that showed up yesterday on Yahoo finance.

First, “The Chew”. This new show features Karla Hall who was a contestant on Top Chef along with Food Network Iron Chefs Mario Batalli and Michael Symon. It’s been on for a little over a month now. And it’s all right although a bit vapid. They’ve even made some efforts at showing how to cook good food fast and on a budget.

But yesterday they managed to pretty much alienate me with their snarky, almost condescending, take on “Southern Cooking”. Sure, they paid some lip service to the traditions of Southern or country cooking but they also managed to insert a recorded “Yeehaw” everytime they mentioned the theme or took a commercial break.

Hey jackasses, southern or country cooking is the epitome of making food dollars stretch. It’s not fancy but its inexpensive and filling and good and, most importantly, is usually made with more pinches of love than the paid shills manage to add.

To stand up in front of America spewing fake southern/country/Texas accents in the cause of entertainment demeans what they do and disrespects the food that they’re supposed to be extolling.

Certainly it’s entertainment but there are people from all over watching—not just foodies from the East coast. I thought it was offensive. Oh, and remember when earlier I said the show was all right? Too bad, because their audience (including me, at least for now) deserves something better than “all right”.

Now on to Yahoo. There was an article yesterday in Yahoo Finance—Financially Fit titled “How to Feed a Family on $15 a Day”. OK, not bad. It got my attention—I’m the Cheap Bastid. Fifteen bucks seems a bit generous, but it’s for a family of 4.

The article rubbed me the wrong way with its lead which said that the “average family of four” spends upwards of $1200 a month on groceries. Say what? The author was citing data from the USDA on monthly food costs—the $1200 a month comes from the column titled “Liberal Plan”. Even the “Thrifty Plan” at $615 per month struck me as high.

More particularly, the author was interviewing some expert who had “stopped by her kitchen” to share some advice. This expert, Allison Fishman, contributing editor to “Cooking Light”. Fishman was right when she said the important thing is to plan menus and plan shopping. I started doing that when my kids were little. Planning a menu prior to shopping was the key to making sure that ingredients were on hand and, even better, it had the result of significantly reducing the total grocery bill.

But Fishman was also suggesting that meat be used “almost like a condiment” rather than as the main feature of a meal. Huh? Meat, a condiment? She suggested that beef at $5.99 a pound and chicken breast at $5 per pound was out of reach for many to be able to provide other than a sampling of it in a meal.

That’s all well and good. But where the hell is she buying her boneless, skinless chicken breast? I pay $1.97 a pound for it. The same with beef. I now buy “lesser” cuts such as bottom round (London Broil). I can get ground beef for about $2.50 a pound by having my grocer’s meat department grind it for me when chuck or round is on special. And maybe Southern California (or at least my neighborhood) isn’t as expensive as someplace like New York City but it’s still plenty expensive.

The way this expert was presenting herself, I kind of got the impression that she was trying to educate the ignorant masses to eat a diet based on beans and squash and legumes along with using the same chicken bone for a couple of weeks to flavor the meager soups.

The “average family” spends far less than $1200 a month on food. The average family spends less than $600 a month on food. Who are they kidding. And this kind of advice does little, if anything, to enlighten or encourage or educate. What it does instead is frustrate and infuriate.

And Cheap Bastid sees that as a disservice not as being helpful.

SOAP

2011-11-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

A while back I wrote about one of my “big scores” at Costco—a year’s supply of Irish Spring. Now, I was going to say “dirt cheap” but that’s just too cheesy a pun to put into the context of shower soap, so I won’t say it.

Anyway, it’s been great not having to remember to put this nectar of the shower on the shopping list for months at a time knowing that I’m always going to have a goodly supply of the fresh smelling, clean feeling soap that used to be advertised as “Manly yes, but I like it too,” by a winsome young Irish lass with light red hair and freckles inhaling the aroma next to a stream on the Emerald Isle.

But I digress.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I have a bar of Irish Spring in the soap dish on the bathtub. If I count all the bottles, tubes, brushes and razors belonging to my wife and step-daughter in and around the edges of the tub, it numbers somewhere north of 20. It’s tough to pull back the shower curtain and step over the lip of the tub without knocking something on the floor or into the tub and have to precariously bend over, pick it up and put it somewhere where it can be found and where it no longer presents a hazard.

But I digress again.

(Note: Under of threat of punishment from my wife, I am compelled to notify the reader that this is NOT our bathtub but is one that I found on Google).

So for the last few mornings I’ve noticed that my green bar of soap is rapidly shrinking to sliver status. I’ve been telling myself for the last few days, “Self, you need to replace it.” I’ve even gone so far as to confirm that there isn’t another bar handy in the bathroom. But, by the time I think about it each morning I’m already wet in the shower and I’m not going to climb back out and open the bathroom door to go to the linen closet to retrieve a couple of bars to last me a while. So I’ve been making do with a sliver.

Besides, I keep having this mental image of me, stepping out of the shower in my birthday suit and bending over the shelf in the linen closet where we keep extra soap, room freshener, toothbrushes, etc. and have my step-daughter come out of her bedroom three feet behind me and being introduced to my “full moon”. Noooooooooo way. Carolyn would kill me.

Well, this morning the sliver disappeared in my hands. It’s no fun showering when you know you’ve got just a tiny bit of soap to wash your face and pits and between each of your toes, not to mention your rungi-schmelli and “nether regions” (that’s probably TMI but I’m sure most know the drill in the shower at least as well as I do). So, which parts do I skip? Hmmmm, well, I’m going to use deodorant so pits you just get a water scrub. And I’m going to put on clean socks, so toes I’m just going to rub you good and you’re going to be on your own.

Crap, this is just way too much decision making for early in the morning. Now, I wouldn’t have this problem is I left a bit more time each day. But, I usually head for the bathroom about 20 minutes before I have to leave for work—after 3 cups of coffee (one to function, one to wake up and one to soften things up--if you know what I mean). And after sitting and “reading” for a bit, I’m ready to hit the shower, then shave (yes, I have a beard but I still shave every morning) then clean my glasses, brush my teeth and head into the bedroom to get dressed for work.

With a “schedule” like that, there’s just no time left for Irish Spring inventory control unless I’m forced into it. So like a good boy I got done in the bathroom, went to the linen closet and took 3 fresh bars out, opened one and put it in the soap dish and put the other 2 in the drawer next to the tub. Now I’m good to go. Until the next time I run out. Damn.

There will be those who say to me “why don’t you just leave more time in the morning?” And to those I say, “Yes dear, you’re right”. But for me showering and then dressing and then heading out the door is like a matador or a knight getting ready for the bull-ring or the jousting arena. I’m transitioning from home to work and getting my “game face” on.

What ever happened to “soap on a rope” anyway? Tomorrow morning…the glory of a virgin bar of Irish Spring. I can’t wait.

I Just Made Up a New Term: Assholitics

2011-10-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

“So why,” you might ask, “have you come up with such a derogatory term?”
“It’s simple”, would be my response. “I just came across the most assholey piece of political crap that I’ve ever seen and I’m sick and tired of it.”

Or, the articulate political scientist in me would say, “I take extreme umbrage to the tone and tenor of the survey recently sent to my wife by the Republican National Committee.”

Yes, indeed folks, my wife is a registered Republican—but I love her anyway. I’m not sure if I forgive her for being a Republican but I love her. She puts up with my uber-liberal rants and even agrees with me some of the time.

Yep, my wife received a survey in the mail recently. On the outside of the envelope it says “2011 Obama Agenda Survey” and Republican National Committee. The 4 page letter inside “explaining” the survey and asking for donations is signed by Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus.

This diatribe is an absolute classic of every devious propaganda technique we learned in Dr. Tomasek’s “Political Propaganda” class way back in 1972. Hyberbole, reversal, half-truths run rampant both in terms of the description of Obama and Democrats and in reverence to the Holy Grail that is all things Republican. Good Lord, how can anyone with a measurable IQ buy into this crap?

And the “survey” itself. This is a classic of a “push poll” taken to the “nth degree”. It’s laughable. Here are some examples of questions in this “survey”:

Do you believe that Barack Obama deserves a second term as President?
(OK, not bad. A fair question although it smacks in the face for those who don’t believe he should have had a first term or for those for whom the word ‘deserve’ is a red flag).

Do you believe that Barack Obama’s nominees for federal courts should be immediately and unquestionably approved for their lifetime appointments by the U.S. Senate?
(OK, this is just wrong on so many levels. For some people if it were George Bush’s nominees then they would be fine with it. For others it’s the idea of a Democrat making nominations to the Federal bench. For still others the words “immediately and unquestionably” is a huge red flag. I’ve even got problems with that! And still others have issues with “lifetime” but that’s what the Constitution of the U.S. allows.)

Are you confident that new medicines and medical treatments will continue to be developed if the federal government controls prescription drug prices and sets profit margins for research and pharmaceutical companies?
(Huh? Confident? The evil federal government controlling drug prices and telling private companies how much money they can make? This is asking whether you think the “boogie man” will finally stay hidden under your bed and not jump out and scare you.)

There are a total of 16 questions in this “survey”. Yeah, I know that it’s only a pretense of a survey and really a pitch for donations especially since the bottom is a half page that is a “Contribution Reply”. Maybe this was written by someone who got their start doing mailers for a televangelist.

And I would imagine that it will appeal to only about 5% of those who receive it. Once upon a time I identified myself as a liberal to moderate Republican (socially liberal, fiscally moderate). But the organization turned mean-spirited in the mid-90’s. I can only hope that those who consider themselves “moderate Republicans” will read this and be appalled and turn away from those who would try to position their party in this way.

That’s why as soon I read through this I thought to myself, “Self, this is asshole politics”. And thusly a new term was coined “Assholitics”. We’re in for another 13 months of this and it’s only going to get worse.

I’ve always been naïve about politics—despite having both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Political Science. I believe it should be about issues and fairness (sheesh, how naïve is that!). I believe candidates should run “for” something rather than “against” someone. When I have been actively involved in campaigns I always strived to have the campaign focused in this way and was even successful in doing that several times.

But apparently Assholitics is now the way of American politics. I reject it and reject those who practice it. You know, if we all did that maybe we could get things to start changing just a bit.

You Just Gotta Love Those Folks in Gubmint

2011-10-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

Remember the old saying “Think global; act local”. I’ve always been a believer in that. Take a look at what the world needs and then do something in your little corner of the world to make it happen. Touch the lives of people who are your neighbors. If we could, or would, do that, we could change this big old world in no time flat.

So, when an opportunity presented itself here in Vista, California, I volunteered. Here’s my tale of adventure and woe.

I live in an apartment with my wife on the edge of an area known as the Townsite Neighborhood. Whenever the local newspaper prints a story about something happening in our neighborhood, it invariably uses the description “hardscrabble Townsite Neighborhood”.

Redevelopment in an area like this is a good thing. When the City extended its redevelopment district boundaries 3 years ago, it had to form a “Project Area Committee” to provide advice and feedback to the City Council about the area and improvement projects—known as Redevelopment Community Improvement Projects.

In late June I was looking for the dates of a particular community celebration and happened into the City’s website. While there I came across a listing for a vacancy on the Project Area Committee (PAC). It was a seat specified for a “residential tenant”. In other words, a renter. Hey that’s me! I’d love to do that.

You see, I spent over 15 years doing this type of work—community and economic development. I’ve done redevelopment planning. I’ve set up TIF districts—especially in industrial parks to create new manufacturing jobs. I have huge empathy for the people who live in my neighborhood and would like to see our local government do a better job of serving their interests. I was a natural.

So I filled out the application. And I was accepted (actually I think I was the only person who volunteered—let’s be honest here). I was invited to the committee’s July meeting (They meet every other month for an hour and a half. That should have been a red flag).

The committee meets in a meeting room in the City's 1-year old $55 million City Hall right on the edge of our "hardscrabble" neighborhood. We call it the Taj Mahal. It was financed by a local sales tax imposed by the City.

I sat through the entire meeting, listening (not my greatest skill) to the discussion and keeping my mouth shut (again not one of my greatest skills). I sat next to a man who had taken to time to go out into our neighborhood and photograph areas that have no sidewalks and streets that have crumbling asphalt. Yeah, there’s a chunk of this area that’s run-down and neglected.

And I’m thinking to myself, “Self, this could be interesting”. Then it came time to introduce me (the very last item on the agenda) and tell a little bit about myself. I told the members of the committee—property owners, renters, Chamber of Commerce members all from this neighborhood—a bit about myself and a tongue in cheek summary of some of the things I had done in the City in the 6+ years I’ve lived here.

I managed to get a stripe painted on a street (what I asked for was a street light at a dangerously dark corner). I managed to get the fences fixed at the nearby athletic fields of a junior high school so people couldn’t trespass (what I asked for was for the gates to be left open so people could continue to use the football field for pick-up soccer games). And I’ve managed to get a half dozen higher end cars towed from our street at a community festival earlier this summer and then a “no parking anytime” sign posted. When all I wanted was to get the cars ticketed for hindering traffic. Heads bobbed up and down—hmmm they’ve heard of me. In fact, one of the committee members commented, “oh, so you’re the guy…” Yep, that’s me.

They vote me onto the committee and I have to stand up and take an oath of office pledging to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. OK fine, it’s a bit odd but I’ll do it—yep I just renewed my social contract, this time officially.

So, I’m waiting for the next meeting. Hmmmm, there’s no follow-up generated from the previous meeting. There’s no communication from city staff. What kind of committee is this? Well, it’s a city committee. It fulfills a legal requirement. Does the City really want it to actually DO something? The notion that it meets for an hour and a half every two months should have been a hint.

Well, about a week before the next meeting—I still haven’t received minutes of the previous meeting or an agenda for the coming meeting—I got a call from the Redevelopment and Housing Director of the City. He’s calling to inform me that the required 3 year term of this committee expires at the end of the month and that the coming meeting would likely be the final meeting of the committee. What?!? I just got on the damn committee. I’m just getting going.

He told me that the City Council could, at its discretion, extend the PAC for an additional year. “OK,” I thought, “we can just get the council to do that.” But, the Director told me, staff is recommending that it not be extended in order to save money.

“And why not,” I asked.
“Cost saving in the budget,” I am told.

Rather than belaboring this further, let’s advance to the next, and final, meeting of the PAC. As they say in government, “discussion ensued”. The 2 staff members from the City re-iterated their recommendation that the PAC be allowed to “just fade away”. And they renewed their reasoning that the statutory requirement had been met and that it was a cost saving measure.

Ever the skeptic, I asked these 2 gentlemen just how much would be saved from the budget by the demise of this group. They didn’t know.

“Wait a minute,” I started up—starting to head toward righteous indignation. “You’re both professional staff members of this department (actually the top 2 guys) and you’re saying that the reason for eliminating this group is for budget savings but you don’t know how much you’ll save? It would seem to me that if you’re making this argument that you would have run at least a rudimentary time and motion analysis to be able to estimate how much it’s costing.”

The 2 guys looked at each other. Their lips got tight. They had no response. I managed to keep my mouth shut as other discussion ensued.

The long and short of it was that eventually I made a motion to recommend that the City Council extend the committee for a year. The committee delegated to me the task of communicating the committee’s position to the Council. I wrote a short, impassioned letter about volunteers volunteering for additional service.

The Council vote was unanimous. The Project Area Committee was allowed to sink into the oblivion of its 3 year term. Of course, the City’s motion thanked us for our service.

Service? What service? I was only on it for one entire meeting and the last 5 minutes of another. Crap.

Just as I was getting over it, a large flat envelope arrived in the mail from the City. The cynic in me said, “looks like a certificate”. This morning I opened it. It was a form. The form was accompanied by a letter. The letter said that the form was a Statement of Economic Interests Form 700 from the California Fair Political Practices Commission. I have to fill it out. And supposedly list all financial interests I have including stocks and 401k, etc. It is a required form when someone “leaves office”.

Office? I didn’t have an office. I was on a committee. And I served for 2 months.

Here I was, expecting a certificate of appreciation and service. What I got was a state form to make sure that I didn’t profit from my long service on the committee. Remember the scene from “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie gets his secret decoder ring along with a certificate conferring “honors and benefits”. When he discovers that the “secret message” is really a commercial for Ovaltine he says “son of a bitch”!

I had hopeful expectations about being able to, in some small way, do some good for my neighborhood and community. “Son of a bitch.”

Cheap Bastid Does Sonoran Hot Dogs

2011-10-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

I love Coney Dogs—a hot dog swimming in an ooze of chili. And I love Chicago Dogs—a concoction that’s a salad on a dog complete with iridescent green relish. But now, I lust after Sonoran Dogs.

What makes them so different from other “Dogs”? One word: bacon. Yes, bacon. Visualize a hot dog wrapped in crispy bacon, just waiting to be slathered with a host of toppings that will create a fiesta in your tastebuds. Wow! You’re going to like these.

The Tucson Citizen described Sonoran Hot Dogs as being “like a chili dog on steroids”. I disagree. I think they’re more like a Chicago Dog in afterburner.

Now, I don’t know where I came across these, but Sonoran Hot Dogs rule in Tucson and Phoenix and they’re making inroads here in San Diego and in L.A. They first appeared in the Sonoran capital of Hermosillo in the 60’s and erupted across the border in the 80’s. Now, they’re a staple of lunch-time and bar-closing time in the Southwest.

I’m doing the Cheap Bastid version of this recipe and find that I can get 90% of the taste for 60% of the cost. I’ll throw in the elements that make it pricier and more “up-scale” later.

So on Saturday Mrs. CB got a text from Miss Meggie that she wouldn’t be having dinner with us so we figured we were on our own with my newest concoction until she pulled up in the driveway and into the apartment at 6.

“So are you home for dinner?” Mrs. CB asked.
“What are you fixing?” Miss Meggie asked me (she knows who the cook is).
“Well, I doing Sonoran Hot Dogs. They’ve got salsa and beans and…” but she had quit listening, like 22 year olds do to old folks. “…and they’re hot dogs wrapped in bacon…”

Her eyes lit up at those 3 key words—hot dogs bacon. That was enough for her to become a willing participant in Cheap Bastid’s latest experiment. How about you? Here it is:

Cheap Bastid’s Sonoran Hot Dogs
Ingredients
• 1 package hot dogs
• 8 slices thin cut bacon
• 1 package hot dog buns
• 1 can refried beans
• 1 recipe Cheap Bastid’s Pico de Gallo
• ½ cup Mayonnaise or “salad dressing”
• Chipotle or cayenne
• Mustard
• Shredded cheese (your choice—jack, cheddar, mozzarella, blend, etc.)

Directions
Take out a skillet and put on the stove. Wrap the bacon around each hot dog (use shorter dogs so the slice of bacon thoroughly wraps around it). Take the mayo and add the chipotle/cayenne to it and mix thoroughly. How much chipotle or cayenne? Enough! To taste! Bear in mind, that as it sits, it’ll get hotter so start with a little, sample, add more, stir again, sample, etc. until it’s the way you want it.

Open the can of refried beans, put into a microwave dish and zap on high for 2- 2 ½ minutes until it’s hot—or put it in a sauce pan on the stove.

Get everything arranged for fixing the dogs—plates, bowls of pico de gallo, cheese, etc. so people can fix their own. Now turn the stove on to medium and put the dogs in the pan (see, do all this other stuff first because you’re going to want to pay attention to the bacon wrapped dogs as it cooks and keep giving them quarter turns so they brown and cook evenly.

When done, remove the dogs from the pan and put on a platter with a doubled over paper towel on it to absorb the bacon fat.

Assemble: Take bun and slather some beans on the bottom. Then drop the dog in. Put a line of mustard on the side and then top with the mayo mix, pico de gallo and cheese. Now you’re ready to really enjoy a taste treat.

Imagine, biting through this concoction! The flavors and textures explode in your mouth! There’s crunch from the fresh pico de gallo, there’s softness from the cheese, there’s tang from the mayo and heat from the spices. Then there’s more crunch of bacon followed by the meat of the dog with the taste and texture of the refried beans putting the finishing touches on the bite you just took. Oh man! This is good!

Now, you’ve just had the Cheap Bastid version. There’s other versions of this as well. Some call for freshly cooked pinto beans, others for a can of rinsed pinto beans. I used my Cheap Bastid “ends and pieces” bacon—which didn’t work as well because it’s thick cut. You might want to go with thin sliced bacon. And, most recipes called for “all beef” hot dogs. My problem with that is if I’m going to spend $4-$5 a pound on beef, it’s not going to be a hot dog! That’s how much all-beef dogs cost now.

Some people add guacamole which is fine but CB just isn’t a guacamole lover. And I left out the mustard the other night and a hint of mustard on these would make a big difference—with that hint of vinegary tang to add to the dog and re-frieds. Plus you can also add a fresh-roasted or even jarred pepper to the side (just like on a Chicago dog) for extra taste and texture.
Bolillo rolls are often used for these, adding authenticity and a more upscale taste and texture. If you want to do that, slice a “pocket” in them—don’t cut end to end like a hot dog bun. This will take the Sonoran Dog up a notch. And last but not least—next time I’ll use toothpicks at each end of the dog to hold the bacon in place while it cooks and then pull them out when I finish the dogs.

The Cheap Bastid Test: So how’d I do? Let’s see, the dogs were bought on sale at $.75 a package. The Pico de Gallo cost me about $1.50 and I used half a recipe so it was $.75. The re-fried beans were on special for $.89 a can. The buns were $1 at the dollar store. And I spent $2 on a pound of bacon and used, let’s say ¾ lb so the cost was $1.50. What’s the total for 6 Sonoran Dogs that provide dinner for 3? If my arithmetic is right: $4.89 or $.81 per dog. That’s pretty cheap!

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

It's Repelling that the Media Can't Spell Rappelling

2011-09-28T11:32:00.001-07:00

OK, so maybe this isn’t the most grave and compelling thing happening in the world right now. But it gripes my butt.

What the hell has happened with our ability to spell? Have we gotten that lazy that we 1) don’t KNOW how to spell or 2) don’t bother to run spell check—even though spell check doesn’t correct every error?

It’s bad enough when you or I do it. It’s even worse when the media does it so conspicuously as was seen yesterday all over the internet, TV and print media. And when it comes to the media, whatever became of editors or even interns who double check this stuff?

So just what the hell am I ranting about? Yesterday, inspectors crawled out of a tiny “hatch” at the top of the Washington Monument in order to begin inspecting the entire structure. They are going to work their way down the monument by rappelling.

NOT REPELLING!!

They’re two entirely different things. TV stations got it wrong. Newspapers got it wrong. Bloggers got it wrong. And, in all likelihood, the poor schmuck who wrote the press-release got it wrong and everybody else just copied him or her in their collective ignorance.

Apparently it takes an anal retentive like me to spot it and take umbrage.

Here’s what they’re doing—rappelling

Here’s what they’re not doing—repelling (as in “repel all boarders”)

And it's certainly not this kind of repel:

No wonder most of the adults look so dufus on “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?”

Cheap Bastid Brings Home the Bacon

2011-09-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

Today, let’s talk a bit about bacon.

Let’s talk about how damned expensive it’s gotten. In the last year or so, it’s doubled. Now I find this kind of interesting because other pork prices haven’t doubled. Is that because there’s just a lot more demand for bacon and the producers charge anywhere from $4 to $6 a pound now because they can?

But geez, I’ve been thinking not just twice but three times before buying bacon. We’ve gone from cooking up a pound for BLTs or breakfast to a half pound (Wow! Talk about sacrifice!) We’ve gone from having 2 or 3 pounds in the freezer to a pound.

Crap, I don’t like that. There’s got to be a better way. Well, thanks to the meat manager at my local Stater Brothers grocery store, I came up with a solution. I was chatting with him one day and mentioned how bacon had taken a big jump. He agreed and told me what he buys—“ends and pieces”.

And I thought to myself, “Self, those are going to be little bitty 2 or 3 inch pieces of bacon and they’re just not going to be the same.” I was wrong.

Usually, the ends and pieces are mostly slices that weren’t as uniform as the other slices that went into the meat display case or they’re half slices with just a few “pieces”. Take a look:

Here’s the package:

Here’s what was in it:

And here’s the best part. This bacon is $4 a pound in the display case. The “ends and pieces” are $1.99 a pound. I can do that math. And all I have to do when I get it home is take it out of the package, separate the full slices from the half slices from the pieces and repackage it for the freezer. That takes about 5 minutes. And I’ve got 5 minutes to save half the price of the bacon.

The slices and half slices get fried up just like any other bacon and the pieces end up in something like Spaghetti Carbonara.

If your grocer has “ends and pieces” for cheap, then check it out and see if you can save some money. Give it a try.

And here’s a couple of Cheap Bastid bacon recipes you might want to check out:

http://just-walt.blogspot.com/2010/03/cheap-bastids-classic-spaghetti.html

http://just-walt.blogspot.com/2009/06/cheap-bastids-foodie-tuesday-chocolate.html

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Cheap Bastids Lights Out Pico de Gallo

2011-09-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

Well, it’s been a while since Cheap Bastid came up with a recipe to share. I’ve been too busy trying to eke out a living selling cars to affluent people who are cheaper bastids than Cheap Bastid. Plus there’s been a lot of stuff going on with our family that’s finally starting to wind down. And, I just haven’t felt like coming up with new recipes and writing about them.

But I’ve got something simple and cheap today. And it all started last Thursday. It was my day off and we hit our grocery store, Stater Brothers. While there we had the bright idea of making some homemade salsa which I haven’t done in a while. It’s actually “pico de gallo” which translates from Spanish as “rooster’s beak”. So we picked up some extra tomatoes and a bunch of fresh cilantro along with a bag of chips that was discounted.

We got home and put the groceries away and I set about chopping the ingredients and letting them macerate.

Now up until now it wasn’t any big deal. It was a hot day and that was the reason for the salsa. It’s something that has some zing and zip from the tomatoes and acid and spiciness. So, along about 3:40 in the afternoon I’m sitting in the living room with some mind numbing drivel on the tube, reading a book—just kicking back on my day off. And zap! The power went off.

Now apparently not too many folks elsewhere in the country really knew that a major power outage occurred that effected the extreme southwest corner of the country for more than 12 hours last Thursday. The power blackout stretched from Tijuana through San Diego and into Orange County and from the Pacific Ocean all the way across California and into Arizona. Several million people all at one time without power. Thank goodness I was at home. I live 15 minutes from work and one guy I work with lives near me. It took him 2 ½ hours to get home.

Oh well. Like I said, it was hot and our apartment isn’t air conditioned. But in a blackout, it wouldn’t work anyway. Our cell phones weren’t working. And obviously we had had no internet because our modem wireless network are powered by electricity. There wasn’t any cable TV. We managed to find some batteries for a small radio and there was one station that was on because it has an emergency generator and does 24/7 news. At least we were able to keep track of what was or wasn’t going on.

I had planned on cooking chops on the grill anyway so dinner was grilled pork chops, grilled summer squash planks and fresh salsa and chips. Think about it…pico de gallo is made from fresh tomatoes, onion and jalapeno. That’s both tasty and actually pretty healthy. So we ate pretty good, by candlelight on a powerless Thursday night. And that’s why I call it “Lights Out” Pico de Gallo.

So, before this gets too long, here’s the simple recipe. Try making it yourself. It’s tasty and a whole lot cheaper than buying something in a jar or in the deli section of your grocery store.

Cheap Bastid’s Lights Out Pico de Gallo

Ingredients:
• 4 Roma tomatoes
• 1 baseball size white onion (about 2/3 or so cup worth)
• 1 jalapeno
• 1 orange—navel or Valencia
• ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
• Salt, garlic powder, chipotle or cayenne

Directions:
This is really simple. Most of what you’re going to be doing is chopping and cutting so get out your cutting board and good knife along with the bowl for your salsa.

First though, take your jalapeno and roast it. You can use your grill, you can use a burner on your stove or you can put it in the oven at 450. It’s going to take 5 to 10 minutes. If you haven’t done this before, what you’re doing is putting a char on the outside of the pepper and you’re literally steaming it from the inside. When it’s done put it on a plate on top of a paper towel or napkin to cool.

Start dicing your ingredients and putting them in the bowl. You’re going to chop and juice the orange too. I love the flavor that the orange puts into the salsa along with the extra juice that’s both sweet and acidy. When you get all this into the bowl, add a healthy dose of salt—but don’t overdo it. One of the reasons for the salt is to pull the juices from the tomatoes and get the liquid mixed into your salsa.

Now, back to the jalapeno. When cooled, use the paper towel to rub the skin off the surface of the jalapeno. When it’s all peeled off, cut off the top and the cut the jalapeno lengthwise in half. Remove the membrane and seeds and toss them out (this is where the heat is, so quite frankly, you can leave them in if you want your pico de gallo hotter). Chop the jalapeno into about ¼ inch pieces and add to the bowl.

Now, taste your salsa! Add some garlic powder to taste and then add some chipotle or cayenne a little bit at a time until you get the right amount of heat. Then put it in the fridge. Serve it later with tortilla chips or do what we did—we used it as a topping for tostadas tonight.

So, what to do when you’ve got “Lights Out”, you’re hungry and you’re hot. Pull some freshly made Pico de Gallo out of the fridge (be quick going in and out of the fridge if the power’s out!), dig out some tortilla chips, scoop up the salsa and enjoy! That’s what we did. And we like it spicy!

Cheap Bastid Test: This is really inexpensive, especially this time of year. The tomatoes cost about a dollar, the onion was about a quarter, the jalapeno was about a quarter and the orange about 35 cents. Less than 2 bucks! This made the equivalent of 2 jars of salsa. Those 2 jars would cost $6-$7 at the grocery store. And this is a lot fresher and a lot tastier!

The lights were back on the next morning and it all ended up as one of those little adventures that really aren’t all that bad. Except that it really does let you know just how addicted we are to technology.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Fifty-Five and Five

2011-08-25T12:12:00.001-07:00

Well Monday was my 60th birthday--6 decades, 3-score years. Dayem.

When I got home from work Monday night, my wife had a "special" cake waiting.

See, we have this thing which has now taken on a life of its own. We don't like to go out and buy those big number candles that a lot of people put on their cakes. We like to "make do"--one time we even cut the top off a "7" to make an extra "1". Now, Carolyn wasn't about to load up a cake with 60 candles. But she didn't have any big "6's". So, she got creative. Here's what she came up with:

(By the way, the chunk of flame between the 2nd and 3rd "5" was a "plus" sign made out of 2 regular birthday candles).

And now, back to doing research on all those places where I can get a "Senior"discount. We already know that you have to be 62 to get a Senior Discount at Kohl's. Carolyn has promised to take extra good care of me at least for the next 2 years.

Cheap Bastid's Mac & Cheese

2011-08-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

It seems like every time there’s some cooking show on or one of the chef’s competitions like Top Chef or Next Food Network Star, someone always does Macaroni and Cheese.

If you check out recipes like I do, you’ll find a whole bunch of different recipes for Mac & Cheese. And there’s a lot of “foo-fooing” going on. Exotic cheeses, different ingredients—even truffles!

It’s always seemed to me that Mac & Cheese is a family dish. It’s supposed to be a simple dish—and it’s evolved to one which is most usually prepared out of a box. (I’ve had it many times out of a box and never thought twice about it). And, it’s associated with “soul food” which is usually home cooked, inexpensive cooking that has 2 main elements—it tastes great and it’s inexpensive.

So, Cheap Bastid set out to make Mac & Cheese that will fulfill these 2 critical “soul food” criteria. To make it taste great and to make it as inexpensively as possible. (Notice I didn’t say cheap. I quickly discovered that this isn’t necessarily a cheap dish at all). And, if I were going to do it, I vowed to use that most American of cheeses—Velveeta.

So here’s what I came up with. It’s simple, but it takes a bit of time to prep and make. It’s reasonable, but by no means “cheap”. And it’s thoroughly customizable.

Cheap Bastid’s Mac & Cheese

• 1 lb elbow macaroni
• 1 lb Velveeta Cheese
• 1 8 oz. bag shredded cheddar (or whatever shredded is on hand or that you like)
• ½ lb bacon cooked
• 2 tbsp chopped jarred jalapeno peppers
• 1/3-1/2 cup milk (skim, 1%, 2%, whole—it doesn’t matter)
• 4 slices bread (white, wheat—whatever)

First of all, notice that some of these ingredients are based on what you have on hand or what you prefer. That’s the way cooking is. Cook what you like. Substitute for what’s in the pantry—for example if you don’t have any bread, use saltines or Ritz or even hamburger or hot dog buns. This ain’t rocket science.

If you don’t want to use bacon, leave it out. If you don’t have any but want a bit of meat use spam or ham or bologna or hot dogs. Like the homegirls say: “Whatevah”.

So, let’s cook. Prep first! Get out your pasta pot, a small skillet, a casserole dish, cheese grater (don’t have a cheese grater? Just cut the cheese into small cubes), 1 gallon freezer bag, rolling pin (or meat tenderizing mallet or the bottom of a sauce pan), a big mixing bowl, a medium bowl, cutting board and a small baking sheet.

Turn the oven on to 250. Put the 4 slices of bread on the baking sheet and then put it in the oven for about ½ hour.

Put the skillet on a burner turned to medium and put the bacon in it to cook. Start grating the Velveeta into the mixing bowl.

Remember to check the bvacon while it’s cooking—don’t get too focused on grating the Velveeta. We’re multi-tasking here! When the bacon is browned, put it on a plate covered with a paper towel to cool. When cool, chop it into about ½ inch or smaller bits.

Put about a gallon of water into the pasta pot and put it on the stove turned to high. Bring to a boil, add a tablespoon of salt and add the pasta. Cook for about 8 minutes. Keep grating that Velveeta! Cook about 8 minutes—just a bit “al dente”. Pour the cooked pasta into a colander and shock with cold water to both stop the cooking and cool it down. And if you’re an anal retentive foo-foo foodie who would say that rinsing the pasta removes the starches, just go ahead an have an ice bath set up an put the drained pot full of pasta into a bowl and then into the ice bath.

When the bread has been in the oven long enough to thoroughly dry-out, take the pan from the oven and let it cool When it’s cooled you’re going to put it 2 slices at a time into the freezer bag and then use the rolling pin to turn it into crumbs—if you’ve got a bit of hostility to release, feel free to use the bottom of a sauce pan and whomp it into submission and crumbs. (When my wife does that I know without asking who she is metaphorically “whomping” if you get my drift).

Put the bread crumbs into a medium bowl and mix them up with a generous handful of shredded bagged cheddar (or other cheese) and then sprinkle about 1 ½-2 tbsp of your favorite green herb (parsley, cilantro or basil—and if you use another “medicinal” herb add an extra tbsp, but I don’t want to know about it).

OK, so now all the prep work has been done. Pasta’s cooked. Bacon’s cooked and chopped. Jalapenos are chopped. Cheese is grated. And the oven should be pre-heating to 350.

Take all the ingredients (pasta, bacon, jalapenos, rest of shredded bagged cheese and grated Velveeta) and dump them in the big mixing bowl. Add the milk. Stir everything together in the casserole dish. Smooth it out and then evenly spread the bread crumb mixture over the top.

Pop this into the oven at 350 for about a half hour. Take a peek—has the top browned up? If not, turn your broiler on for about 2 minutes (do NOT leave the room when the broiler’s on!), then take another peek and see if it’s browned. But remember, under the broiler anything in the oven can go from toasty golden to charcoal in about 14 seconds if you’re not paying attention. If it’s starting to brown at 2 minutes, turn the oven off and just leave the casserole in the oven for about another minute. Then remove. Let it cool for about 10 minutes and then dish it up and enjoy!

The Cheap Bastid Test: So how’d I do? Well, the pasta was the cheapest part. It cost me fifty cents (on special at the grocer). The bacon was about a third of a pound at $1.99 per pound for a total of $.67. The jalapeno was out of an open jar in the fridge and I used a couple of tablespoons that cost maybe a quarter. The cheese, that’s the big ticket.

I used a pound of Velveeta which cost me $4.50 and about 1/3 bag of shredded cheese (that’s all I had) which cost about $.80. So the total if my math is right is about $6.75 (I had to add a bit for the milk and 4 slices of bread). We got about 8 servings which means that they cost $.84 apiece. The bottom line is that’s not bad! Not bad at all for 2 dinners for 3 and a couple of lunches.

Next Time: We went to Fraiser’s Farms the other day and checked out the cheeses. I really want to get under $4 a pound for cheese. I can get a 2 lb block of mild cheddar for $3.29 a pound and Mozzarella for $3.99 or real American (not the crappy stuff that’s individually wrapped) for $3.79 a pound. So, next time I think it’ll be Cheddar and American mixed together.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Makin' Whoopee

2011-08-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

There’s no instruction manual for raising kids. And there’s definitely no instruction manual for when your 21 year old (in my case step-daughter) moves in.

Now, we’re smart enough to know that when Megan moved in with us (in our small 2-bedroom apartment) last November to leave her alone and pretty much let her come and go as she please. She works full time and she also takes classes on a part-time basis. Her work schedule will vary from day to day. Some days from 1 to 10 p.m., others from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. It keeps her hopping.

We know that on Wednesday nights she likes to go out for hot wings with a bunch of friends—what she calls the “Wing Nuts”. That’s cool. And she’s good about e-mailing her work schedule to her mom each week. And that’s cool too.

Where things get a bit iffy is whether or not she’s going to be home for dinner—so I get a better idea of what and how much to cook. And sometimes she gets off work and goes to the gym or comes home for a bit and then goes to the gym.

So it’s not the easiest thing in the world to predict when she’ll be home, how long she’ll be home, etc. But that’s all right. Mostly.

The hard thing is…OK, so how do I put this delicately? The hard thing is, well, it’s “makin’ whoopee”.

Look, some people might consider me an old fart at 60 and some might even consider my bride “old” at 49. And most assuredly, the young woman my wife gave birth to just doesn’t want to even “go there”—you know think about her Mom “making whoopee”.

It’s scheduling. My work schedule is a bit goofy too. And trying to coordinate with Meg’s comings and goings makes it trickier.

And, well just figure that we’re of an age when going to bed at night pretty much means it’s time to go to sleep. We get tired. A 21 year old can get up at 4 to go to work and come home at 2 and then go out half the night knowing that she’s off until the next afternoon and then crash and burn a couple of days later when she’s got a day off. We can’t do that. We gotta go to sleep at night.

So, we wait until we know she’s gone. Gone all day, gone all day when I’m home from work. We put off other things waiting in anticipation. Waiting until after her lunch time to make sure she’s not going to pop in during her break.

And then…..oh yeah! And then. “Afternoon Delight”.

Cheap Bastid's When McDonald's Becomes Comfort Food

2011-08-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday night, I had promised to make spaghetti with home-made meatballs—and believe me, I can make some wicked good meatballs. Well, when I got home from work, Carolyn and I got talking.

She’d had kind of a bummer of a day. She was still trying to get things done with her Mother’s house and that afternoon we took care of the 2 cars that were occupying the garage, selling them to a guy I know who owns an auto repair shop who offered to take them off our hands. And the day before, Carolyn had taken Stucco, the dog, to the ASPCA shelter. So she was a bit bummed by the finality of things—and the house which now lacked occupants or life.

So, with just a minimum of whining, I let her talk me into a treat for dinner for her. For Cheap Bastid, a treat for dinner is a trip to McDonald’s for some McDoubles. I was dispatched to get a half dozen McDoubles off the dollar menu for the 2 of us and step-daughter Meg along with fries. OK, not bad. It’s reasonably inexpensive.

I got home with them while they were still hot. OK, they were warm—what passes for hot at the “golden arches”.

We dug in. Oh man, it was a burger orgy. Now I make a pretty mean burger either in a skillet or on the grill. But every once in a while you just get a jones on for a “gut bomb”. You taste the grease—beef fat—and you taste some salt as you chomp into the brownish-grey blob of meat. As the meaty fat hits your palate you get a hit from the pickle and mustard and then a dollop of sweet from the ketchup. And you feel guilty. You know this isn’t “good food”. It would make a true foo-foo foodie barf—but they don’t know what they’re missing while they’re chomping their $30 Wagu beef burger on a fresh-made "artisan" roll.

Then after a bite or 2 you dive into the fries. They’re perfectly golden—you can never get that perfect shade of yellow-gold at home. Salty. A hint of crisp on the outside and tender ‘tater on the inside. These are heaven. It’s no wonder that McDonald’s has a reputation for making the best “fast-food” joint fries.

Oh, and by the way, why is it called “fast-food”? It took 6 minutes from the time I placed the order for 6 McDoubles and 3 large fries for them to appear in a sack in my hand. I don’t call that “fast food”. I remember as a kid ordering them at a walk-up window at McDonalds. A dime for a burger and twelve cents for a cheeseburger. The person in the window processed the order, took the money, turned around, grabbed the grub, flipped in a bag and handed it to you. All in about 15 seconds. That’s fast food, Bubba.

But what would a Cheap Bastid piece be without some sort of rant? A double-cheeseburger is still a “value” at $1. And, if I were smart, I would have opted for the $1 small fries. But no, I wanted lots of fries and ordered 3 large fries, one for each of us. They’re $2.50 apiece! Damn!

I can get 10 lbs of potatoes for $2.99! $2.50 for a large fry? They’ve got to be making at least 2 bucks for each order. Holy crap! Two-fifty! My six bucks for the double-cheeses ended up being right at $15 by the time I was done. How damn stupid am I? And I didn’t even order sodas—no way, I’ve got soda at home. Cans for the “girls” and my 2 liter bottle of Vernor’s for me.
Yeah, I know, they’re good! But, I just Googled the calorie count in a large order of fries from MickeyD’s. 570. That’s a lot. Damn, they’re good. But that’s a lot. And there’s 30g of fat. And there’s 390 calories in each McDouble. That’s 1350 calories. And I wonder why I’ve been gaining weight.

But…Yeah, here comes the but…they’re good. An occasional binge on McDoubles and fries isn’t all that bad. Or is it?

But, (here’s the real but), when your wife needs a special comfort food—like McDoubles and fries—because she’s bummed from losing her mother and is having to take care of a lot of stuff from the estate, it’s worth it.

And...have you ever noticed that all the pictures in ads for McDonald's fries show the fries over-flowing the container? And when you fish your fries out of the bag they don't even get up to the front lip? Are we getting hosed? Oh yeah, a two-fifty hosing!

So, do you think we overdid it with the bowls of ice cream an hour later? Naw, me either.

And that’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful.

Uh-Oh, The Feds Are After Me

2011-08-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

A rare advantage of posting my blogs on Blogspot is that I have it linked to “Sitemeter” which lets me see the number of visits, what post was seen, the ISP of the visitor and often the city of the visitor. OK, don’t get bored and move on…hopefully this will get just a little bit better.

Unfortunately, far too many of the “hits” to this site are for people looking for pictures of Giada DeLaurentiis’ cleavage, Joy Hickey, banana hammocks, the V-22 Osprey, used car salesman cartoons and Sarah Palin as a Zombie (actually I’m kind of proud of the Sarah Palin/zombie connection). Oh yeah, and Buckwheat.

Yep, Buckwheat. You know, the cute little African-American kid from “The Little Rascals". The one who Eddie Murphy parodied on “SNL” and in his shows. That Buckwheat. The one who’s brought me to the attention of the Feds.

The Feds. As in Federal Government. As in Department of Justice. As in Drug Enforcement Administration.

You see, I wrote a blog post in September of 2010 featuring Buckwheat and how my wife and I like to talk in his unique language that we call “Buhweet”. Like, “Otay Buhweet”.

This particular blog post was inspired by a newspaper article I read which said that the Atlanta DEA office was looking to hire translators—in Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Farsi and…are you ready?...Ebonics. So that got my imagination going and I made the connection to Buckwheat. And I wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog post. Here’s a link:

http://open.salon.com/blog/just-walt/2010/09/14/the_dea_ebonics_and_buckwheat--whassup

So how does that bring me to the attention of the DOJ and DEA? Well, in the interest of interesting illustration, I did a Google Image search and included a DEA logo in the blog post. And, the other day (see this is where Sitemeter comes in handy) I noticed that someone had spent the better part of 6 minutes in my Blogspot blog. Hmmmmm, I wonder who? The ISP was “US Dept of Justice” and the ISP is “usdoj.gov”. The search was for "DEA Logo". To quote Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”: “Oh fuuuuuddddggggge.”

And I asked myself, “Self, do these guys have a sense of humor?” And, of course, the answer is, “Hell no.”

Anytime now I expect to hear the sound of doors slamming on several Crown Vics, the sound of multiple feet thumping up the flight of stairs right outside our door and then the crash of a sledgehammer on the door as they come after this serious miscreant. Half a dozen guys in jumpsuits and bullet proof vests and helmets wearing windbreakers that say “DEA” on the back.

Will they Mace me? Will they tackle me and kneel on my back (hey guys I’ve got some pretty bad arthritis in my right shoulder so take it easy when you cuff me, OK?).

The music from “Dragnet” is going through my brain. “Dum, dee dum dum. Dum, dee dum dum, dum!” “Just the facts, ma’am,” they’ll tell my wife.

And it’s all DEA’s fault for stepping on my funny bone about hiring Ebonics translators. If they hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have had my brain-fart about Buckwheat. I wouldn’t have started writing. I wouldn’t have uploaded their damn logo into a blog post.

But that’s OK. I know they have to do their job of protecting the American public. From no-good-niks like me. At least there’s no one at DOJ.gov checking out Giada DiLaurentiis’ cleavage.

And if I have to go to the slammer all I have to say to my wife is, “I wubbu”.

A Tale of Momma Stella, Stucco and WillBear

2011-08-04T22:46:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long summer in our little corner of Southern California. I never realized that so much crap could come oozing along to upset our merry little daily routine of just getting by. Up until the third week of April we were comfortable in our routines and happy in our little apartment in a not-so-good neighborhood here in Vista.

All that changed when we got a call at 6:30 a.m. from Carolyn’s mother. Momma Stella said she had just called 911 because she thought her son was dead. Her son, who was 45, lived with her in her home in a neighboring city. We quickly threw some clothes on and dashed over kind of hoping that she was the kind of wrong that a little old lady can be sometimes but at the same time afraid that wouldn’t be the case.

We got there to find 2 police cars in front of the house. Yes, the ambulance had already been there and left. Now we were waiting for the Medical Examiner to show up, make the official pronouncement of death and take the body away for autopsy. He had died in his sleep and they needed to find a cause. Turns out he went to sleep, had a heart attack and never woke up.

So we were faced with taking care of arrangements and working with Momma Stella to help her get set up and totally on her own at age 71. You don’t need to know all the details but her son had been in and out of jail for several years for drug possession, addiction and other various and sundry offenses that the addicted commit while under the influence or while trying to get under the influence.

Things were going along fine for about 6 weeks. Momma Stella was getting along fine and lo-and-behold her money was starting to stretch out and last the whole month. Until a morning in June when we got a call. It was Momma Stella. She was dizzy and disoriented; feeling really sick. Carolyn sent me off to work thinking it was just a bug or something and then went over to her mother’s house. By the time she got there, it was obvious that an ambulance needed to be called.

And it all deteriorated from there. Five weeks later this 71-year old lady was dead of ovarian cancer. We watched her deteriorate day by day. She managed to take one treatment of chemotherapy and her condition worsened too much to ever take another. Within 2 weeks of her diagnosis she was no longer ambulatory and had to go back into the hospital, then to a nursing home for several days to gain some strength and eventually when her condition continued to deteriorate to in-home hospice where my wife, Carolyn provided the 24/7 care.

Stucco the dog, was confused. She didn’t seem to understand the change in her routine. She was “banished” outdoors. She’s a happy dog and loves to roughhouse. She loves to chase a tennis ball around the yard just as long as I would play tug-of-war with her to get her to let go of it and throw it again. I just love tossing around a slimy tennis ball!

We’d make sure she had plenty of water and a full food bowl along with some babbling to her about what a good dog she is. And then she’d give off a goofy doggie grin and want to wrestle some more.

All through this I witnessed a level of tenderness and care provided by Carolyn that was in its own way a beautiful thing to behold. The loving way she cared for her mother and the ways she tolerated the natural cantankerousness of her dying mother were moving each and every day. They would occasionally fuss with each other but they knew that it was the natural relationship of a mother and daughter and within a couple of minutes tempers would be sheathed and everything would be OK.

Before the in-home hospice, Carolyn would load Momma Stella into the car for doctor’s appointments. It only took a couple of weeks before Carolyn bought her Mom her very own transport wheelchair with a bright red seat and back which Momma Stella loved. All too soon though even that was over because she came home from the nursing home bedridden. She never got up again.

I was over there on many days to say hello to my mother-in-law, check on how she was doing and to give my wife some hugs and a few kisses to let her know how much she was missed at home and how much she was appreciated.

I was also there to take my turn from time to time so Carolyn could go and run some errands. And also so she could just get away for a bit to relax, breathe deep and, if need be, have a good cry.

The last week, when Carolyn was able to slip home for an hour I encouraged her to take her Christmas Guardian bear WillBear with her for company late at night when she was alone with Momma Stella and she was lonely and scared.

WillBear is this cuddly stuffed teddybear that Santa brought Carolyn for Christmas. His job is to watch out for Carolyn and take care of her when she needs it. He usually spends his days sitting on our bed at home, the keeper of the TV remote and his nights perched across the room so he can keep his eye on things.

WillBear made it a point to stay by Carolyn’s side during that long, stressful last week. He slept in her arms every night when she was lonely and scared. He reassured her when she had to start using morphine to help ease the pain. And he was there with her when Momma Stella drew her last breath, watching over Carolyn and Momma Stella and Stucco letting them know that they had all done the right thing.

Momma Stella is gone now. Seventy-one years. And she never really seemed to get the chance to enjoy many of them. But she’s at rest. She’s no longer in pain from the cancer which ate at her in her last days. Stucco will unfortunately probably end up with the ASPCA for adoption. We can’t keep an 80 pound moose of a dog in a small second floor apartment. I hope she finds a happy home with some folks who will love her and wrestle with her and make her part of their family.

Carolyn is home now. She misses her Mom and still wants to give her a phone call each day. She’s trying to figure out the best way to handle giving the house back to the bank because the mortgage is seriously “underwater”. Otherwise the house on Hilldale is empty of people and pretty forlorn. Stucco’s looking after things for a few days and we stop by each day to feed her and “rassle”.

WillBear is home now, back on duty. Except now he sits in the living room in his own small rocker—keeping an eye out on all the goings on in our modest home.

There’s a hero in this story and that’s Carolyn. Her compassion and patience and love and dedication were a shining light to her mother. She’s still pretty sad, but she’s had a lot to contend with these past 3 months. Carolyn’s buddy WillBear is looking out for her and that’s good too. Stucco will be all right, someone’s going to get to adopt one terrific dog. But that Carolyn, she’s quite a lady.

Momma Stella’s not around anymore—but in her own way, she still is.

Politics and the Debt Ceiling--Shamey on You, Goddammit

2011-08-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, the worst thing my father could ever say was when he would bend over and look right in my face, lower his voice and say “Shamey on you.” It didn’t matter if the offense were slight or perceived rather than real or if, later on, it was something that was just a matter of a difference in opinion. Shame was the weapon of choice, the weapon of mass destruction.

I’ve been thinking about that recently in those times when I allow myself to think about what has been going on in our Congress and in the White House and in the relationship of the “governed” to the “government”. I don’t let myself think on this very much because it’s just too infuriating. Debt ceiling talks, war, the economy, health care coverage debacles…the never ending litany of contentiousness never lets up.

The biggest reason I don’t let myself think much on these things is the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that I feel day in and day out when it comes to things in my government.

And lately something else has dawned on me—I’m ashamed.

I’m ashamed of my government. I’m ashamed of those who represent me at the local, county, state and federal level. I’m ashamed of America.

None of this crap over the last several weeks about debt limits had to happen. It’s all been about power and posturing and positioning. (Notice that neither the word “govern” nor any of its permutations appeared there). And I’m sick and tired of it. I’m ashamed of my government which means that I should probably be ashamed of myself because of the “of the people, by the people, for the people” bull-crap.

I’m ashamed of the “teabaggers” who, even though they are actively engaged, have an agenda which, to me anyway, is both selfish and racist. I’m more ashamed of liberals like me who weep and wail and shout out “no fair” like petulant whiners on a playground when not given a turn at being the server in four-square.

And I’m ashamed of the whole stinking, lousy system which has degenerated into one where the only concern is power for the sake of power and money for the sake of money. For all intents and purposes we have devolved into an affluent (for now) 3rd world nation.

And when I really think about it, I’m mostly ashamed right now of our Congress. It’s seems to be all about power and contentiousness with not a lick of concern for governance. Not a lick of concern about “the consent of the governed”.

I don’t have to go any further than my own “backyard”—except I don’t have a backyard. My Congressman is Darrell Issa. He lives in my city. His business is in my city. He rarely, if ever, shows up in my city and especially not in my neighborhood which is largely made up of lower-income Hispanic families. He doesn’t care about this part of his district because there’s no money here. No money.

But he’ll show up occasionally on the other side of the highway in the gated communities. Where all the white folks are. Where the teabaggers live.

That’s what we have to put up with today.

And yes indeed, I am also ashamed of our President. In this whole debt limit debacle he never, ever came up with his own plan or proposal. That’s not leadership. He reminded me more of the “Great Appeaser” Neville Chamberlin than of a president of the United States. His “audacity” disappeared a while ago. Now I wonder if there’s any more “hope.

Lastly, here’s a video clip from YouTube. It’s one of my all-time favorite movie scenes—Al Pacino in “And Justice for All” for which he received a Best Actor Academy Award nomination in 1979. There are 3 statements in here that to me are incredibly moving and important: “Don’t you care?” “They’re people.” And the pain and frustration driven, “Goddammit”.

To all you Washington politicians from the Congress to the President on down: “Shamey on you”

Tina Finally Puts Out for Cheap Bastid

2011-07-28T15:32:00.000-07:00

OK so this post is more than 13 months in the making. On June 15, 2010 I wrote a post called “Tina’s a Bitch”. It was all about being excessively frugal at the grocery store. It went on at length about Tina’s Burritos and how the regular price is 3 for $1 but that they had been on sale for 4 for $1 and even 5 for $1. When they went back up to 3 for $1 I quit buying them. I sure showed the bitch. Here’s the link:
http://just-walt.blogspot.com/2010/06/cheap-bastid-says-tinas-bitch.html

Funny thing is that I noticed that a lot of people quit buying them when the sale price was done. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that I am one of the few non-Hispanic customers at our Stater Brothers grocery store.

So every week for the past 13 months I stroll past the freezer with the Tina’s Burritos (it’s just down from where we pick up our weekly frozen pizza—Stater Bros. store brand for $3.99—as good as DiGiorno’s but a couple of bucks cheaper). I check the price. Yep 3 for $1 again. And then I flip the finger at the freezer just to be ornery. I’m sure that there have been a few raised eyebrows and laughs in the room where the security cameras are watched but what the hell.

So I am here to loudly proclaim that this week, yes folks this week, Tina’s Burritos are 4 for $1. I spotted it in the weekly ad flyer that I check out online each Wednesday—and Tina’s is something I always check for.

We just got back from the store. I spent $5 on Tina’s Burritos—most of it on the “Red Hot Beef” which isn’t red hot and may or may not be actual beef. But they’re frozen, they come out of the microwave pretty good and a couple of them make a decent lunch. From the look of the freezer case it seems as though quite a few other customers have had the same idea.

Hot damn! We’ve got enough to last a while—unless step-daughter Meg suddenly develops a Jones for Tina’s, and pretty soon I can go back to flipping off the display again. It’s just one of my ways of protesting the “high” price of food. And yeah, I know that the difference between 3 for $1 and 4 for $1 is 8 cents apiece. But a quarter each is my value point.

So I’m going to close this and pull a couple of Tina’s out of the freezer for an afternoon snack. Then I’ll look around for my Tums.

Crapperhead Gets His Pout On at Giants Game

2011-07-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had your kid get a good pout on? Arms crossed, lower lip jutting out, glowering.

Here's a kid who managed to do all this on TV while at a major league baseball game with his Dad. It all started with a foul ball hit into the stands. Seems like the guy sitting in front of him managed to knock the ball down and the lady next to him dove for the ball. The kid got furious.

In fact, it kind of reminds me of so many people and their sense of entitlement and their destructive pouts when they don't get their way (tea partiers or Republicans anyone?).

Anyway the TV announcers had a good time with it as the video clip shows. And they even sent a couple of balls down for the kid, who brightened up noticeably when they arrived. Kind of like a kid who throws a tantrum in a store over not getting a toy until Mom or Dad gives in.

Why call the kid a "crapperhead"? Hell, if I had a nickel for every time my Dad called me or my brother a crapperhead when I was growing up, I'd be long sense retired.

Like the time we were playing catch in the back yard and my Dad points to an open crank-out window, "Now, don't either of you two crapperheads throw the ball into that window," the old man admonished. Yep, you guessed it, after about 3 throws who winds up and smacks the window breaking it? Well, Dad of course. But we knew better than to laugh! Much.

And, this kid's a crapperhead!

Here's the video from Major League Baseball:

Penises, Vibrators and Cars

2011-07-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

The other night, while sitting out on the balcony with my wife talking about our day, we got in a bit of a discussion about my job as a car salesman.

Seems like she wasn’t too fond of my description that a 50’ish female customer I was working with was driving a $37,000 “vibrator”. (Actually, she has a 7-year old Nissan 350Z convertible).

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re getting irked at the notion that this woman bought a car 4 years ago and has admitted that it was her ‘bright and shiny toy’ that she ‘just had to have’ to indulge her late middle age desire for a ‘go-fast convertible’.”

“But let me ask you something…you don’t have any problems describing a guy that age who has a Corvette as owning a $40,000 penis do you?”

“Well, no,” my bride replied.

“It’s the same thing,” was my response.

Yeah, it was the same thing. Men have been doing that for years with ‘Vettes and Mustang Cobras and Mitsubishi Evo’s and Dodge Challengers and big, bad-ass, jacked-up trucks. Women do it too. It has to do with our image of our masculinity or femininity or the idea that we’re 40 plus and want to feel young.

And yeah, somehow or another these vehicles are tied into our sexuality—our attractiveness, our desirability. I’ve never had the cash to indulge that fantasy, nor the inclination.

So what’s this all about? Well, I had this customer the other day. 50’ish, female and wanting to buy a new, sporty car. No problem. Until she told me later in the day over the phone that she had a trade-in. OK, still no problem. An ‘07 350Z convertible. Still no problem. $8000 “upside-down”. Potential problem. Only $2000 available for a down payment. Yep, potential problem.

To make the long story short, when I was finally able to get her to come in so we could appraise her car. In actuality, she was nearly $10,000 upside down. Oops.

Now, a car dealer can do some legerdemain sometimes with how to assemble a deal structure so that it works for a customer with substantial negative equity. It’s a lot harder today than it was 3 or 4 years ago, thank goodness. Things tightened up with car loans at the same time they did with home mortgages—and for the same reasons.

Turns out, she still owed over $19,000 on a vehicle she bought 4 years ago that’s worth less than $10K. And there’s still 3 years to go on the loan. Oops! Great big Oops!

You know what bugs my butt though? This person bought a middle-aged ego-booster. She’s tired of it. It’s not big enough. But lady, it’s not my fault! It’s not my fault that you screwed yourself by agreeing to a 7 year loan and that you paid new-car price for a car which was 3 years old when you bought it. It ain’t my fault! Yeah, when I had to give her bad news, she got mad. At me!

She got mad at me when I told her that she had a 7 year loan (she thought it was only a 6 year loan—but hmmmm, I can do that math…she’s made 49 payments and has 35 to go, yep that’s 7 years). She didn’t believe me. “Well ma’am,” I said, “that’s what it shows on both Experian and TransUnion so what I’d suggest is that you check your original contract to make sure.”

But that’s OK, you need to be miffed at someone and there’s only so much that you can beat yourself up and you have to do that privately rather than in my office. And, I’m not the first guy that you’ve tried to do this with. I imagine that the other dealers you’ve gone to have told you the same thing. I mean, we can do it. We can get you out of the car, but it’s going to take more like $6000 down. But your payment will be over $100 lower. And she got mad at that. But that’s OK. That’s the nature of the business.

Hey, if you’ve got a testosterone toy or an estrogen machine, that’s cool. Make sure that you set yourself up to succeed when you’re tired of driving it. And, although you may have gotten screwed without getting kissed, you were a willing participant. Plus, I’m not the guy who did it to you. I’m the guy who’s trying to help you get out of it!

Just remember—it’s a car! It’s not proof that you’re a hottie or a stud. It’s transportation. There’s no status that’s conveyed to you by the car you drive.

Here’s a YouTube of one of my favorite all time car commercials—give it a watch, it’s funny.

Cheap Bastids Green Chili Pork Chop Taco

2011-06-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

So it’s been a while since Cheap Bastid posted a recipe. Mainly because life has been frantic and goofy and Cheap Bastid hasn’t had a whole lot of inspiration. I’ve been cooking a lot but not working much on new recipes.

But, Sunday came and it’s been really busy. I spent most of the day doing yardwork at my Mama Stella’s house. Mrs. CB has only been home 2 or 3 nights the last couple of weeks. She’s been staying a lot at Mama Stella’s who was recently diagnosed with a serious, systemic cancer.

Anyway, I was home alone and hungry. And I wanted something easy. I took out a pork chop with the intent of making sweet and sour pork. Then I thought to myself, “Self, let’s do up some tacos with the pork chop.” So I did. What I wanted was something with some crispiness to it and with some flavor. And I managed to get it.

Now I didn’t take any pictures last night. I was tired and hungry and not thinking of a Cheap Bastid post. But, I managed to click a few tonight when I made leftovers. And tonight I used some left over flatbread rather than tortillas (especially since the tortillas I used last night had been frozen so long that they were kind of tough and crumbly). So here’s what I did:

Cheap Bastid’s Green Chili Pork Chop Taco
• ½ lb pork chop (I used a boneless sirloin chop)
• 1 cup Lettuce
• 1 tomato diced
• ½ cup diced onion
• Tortillas or flat bread
• Juice from 1 lime
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• Chipotle or cayenne
• Chili powder
• Salt
• Salsa Verde or Chili Verde (I used canned because it’s what I had)

Tenderize the porkchop in a plastic bag (whomp on it with a sauce pan or meat tenderizer until it’s about ½ inch thick). Cut the pork chop into ½ inch cubes. Put the cubes of meat in a bowl and add the lime juice, chipotle/cayenne, chili powder and salt along with a good squirt of vegetable oil (a tablespoon or 2). Stir to coat and then add the cornstarch and stir it up again. Let this sit for a bit.

Next cut up your veggies. Dice the tomato and onion and cut or tear the lettuce into strips.

Put a sauté pan on the stove over medium high heat. Add a couple of tablespoons of oil and let the pan get hot. Then add the meat. Stir it so that the individual cubes separate. You want a bit of heat so that the cornstarch helps the meat to get nice and crispy. This will take 5-7 minutes to cook. When done, remove the pan from the stove and you’re ready to build your tacos.

Heat the tortillas or flatbread in the microwave for about 20-30 seconds on high to get them warm and pliable. The lay down some meat, lettuce, tomato, and onion. On top of this, add some salsa verde or chili verde. Now if you want a bit more heat, go ahead and add some hot sauce or more cayenne or whatever floats your boat. These were good with a hint of heat and a hint of acid from the lime. You can even add shredded cheese if you want.

This was just something I made up and threw together. It was actually really, really tasty. And really, really cheap. This made a half dozen tacos—enough for a dinner for 2 (actually for dinner last night and a good mini-meal when I got home from work Monday night.

The Cheap Bastid Test: Well, the chop was a half pound and I bought it for about $2.50 a pound, so it cost $1.25. The can of salsa verde was $.89, the tomato cost about $.35 and the onion was about $.20. And let’s just say that the tortillas cost about $.75. So what was the total? If my arithmetic is correct, it was $3.49. Not bad. These would have cost about 2 bucks each at our favorite taco joint or $8. And I definitely liked the way the lime and seasonings and salsa verde played with each other and the meat to create a terrific taste.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good, Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Basic Musings--Austerity, Presumptive Old Farts

2011-06-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, the things you hear on NPR. It’s been my favorite radio station for a number of years. Our local affiliate here in San Diego recently changed some of its programming so that it’s all talk and news now (translate that to mean no more classical music after 8 p.m.). That means that I can listen to news at night when I’m driving home after 9. I live 11 miles from work and it takes me about 20 minutes to make the drive.

So this last weekend I heard a term a couple of times that got me to thinking. It was during BBC news broadcasts—whichever always seem to be much more civilized than our news but perhaps its in the presentation, you know little inflection but filled with the educated British accent that lends more credence to the reports.

The story each time dealt with demonstrations in Greece concerning that governments fiscal crisis and the reactions of Greek citizens to new proposals for an “austerity budget”. There it is. Austerity. I got thinking about that word. Is that word simply the term of the “news reader”? Or is it some sort of official or quasi-official codeword. Or is it a euphemism for “belt-tightening”? Whatever it is, it sounds much more appropriate in its description of what type of budget needs to be assembled for government to weather the fiscal crisis that it currently faces.

Austerity. How come no one in America ever uses that word? Austerity. Merriam Webster defines it as simple or unadorned. Think about it. American politicians complain about “tax and spend” or about cutting this or cutting that. They talk about increasing taxes or decreasing taxes. But I like that word austerity. It implies that we’ve got to take a good hard look at just what government needs to be doing and needs to be spending money on—and cutting it to the bone. Austerity. Sounds to me like something that is needed at the Federal level, State level and local level. But, then again, that just makes to much sense doesn’t it.

And here’s another word: Presumptive. As in, Mitt Romney is the “presumptive front runner" among GOP Presidential candidates. Huh? The story on NPR talked about how Romney had just announced and was showing up well in the polls. And it said that he is the “presumptive front runner” until the next round of polls come out (presumably to anoint him the front runner). What a stupid, contrived term. He is or he isn’t. It’s been measured or it hasn’t. So, I guess that’s consistent with Merriam Webster which defines presume as “to suppose to be true without proof”. Hell, that’s most of what goes on in politics in this or any other country, isn’t it?

And then last but not least on my commute home was a fairly new full size Dodge Ram pick-up this last week which cut me off without benefit of using its turn signal in order to do a ramp dive to the exit I was taking. I did a mental “Grrrr” at the inconsiderate driver. Pulling up next to him, I noticed a gray-haired guy driving the truck, oblivious to what he had just pulled off. And I thought, “that old fart”. And then I had another quick thought—“damn, I’m an old fart too.”

Just some observations today.

Cheap Bastid's Tomato Crop

2011-06-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Well, like I mentioned a while ago, I put 4 pots of tomato plants out on my balcony a couple of months ago. And I’ve been salivating at the idea of fresh, deep red, juicy Romas and grape tomatoes.

I don't have much of a green thumb. I tend to “love” the plants too much, puttzing around and over-watering. I guess that’s why the lower leaves turned yellow and dropped off. I was giving them an inch of water about once a week. Of course, here in SoCal we don’t get an inch of rain between Easter and Thanksgiving so that was a bit much. I quit watering them for a week and they perked up. And now, I’m giving them sips every 3 days or so and I added some nitrogen fertilizer. They seem to be doing better.

So, the first tomato turned a gorgeous deep red and had just the right firmness hinting at the acidy-sweet deliciousness inside. I lovingly harvested it and took it inside to the kitchen, rinsed it off in a bath of cool refreshing water and placed it on my cutting board.

Taking out my sharpest knife, I cut it into perfect, round, succulent slices watching as each one separated and leaned against its neighbor.

Next I prepped some lettuce for a green salad with tomatoes. Then I sliced bread, cheese and salami for the perfect sandwich.

Assembly completed, I paused to admire the simplicity of my gastronomic handiwork. A perfect sandwich accompanied by a perfect salad. Flavors balanced. A bit of bread and cheese and meat complimented by the earthy goodness of the freshly harvested fruit of my gardening.

And, now for the reality of my tomatoey lunch:

Sometimes when you eat what you harvest, it’s not a very big meal. But homegrown, freshly harvested tomatoes are always the best. And there’s a whole bunch more just about ready to pick, this time enough for a “real” salad and sandwich.

Hopefully, I gotcha and you enjoyed this little bit of fun.

Cheap Bastid’s Foodie Tuesday Skillets, Pasta & Rice Flour

2011-06-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

Well it’s been a while since the Cheap Bastid took to the keyboard to write about good food and saving money. The biggest reason has been that while I’ve been cooking a lot, I haven’t been working on new recipes.

And when it comes to finding cheap food, it’s been getting harder and harder. You see, my brain works a bit funny. I don’t see an increase in the price of bottom round from $1.99/lb to $2.49 a pound as a 50 cent increase. I see it as a 25% increase. And that bugs me.

I’ve even gone so far as to do all the anal retentive mental math on milk. You see, I’m the only one around here who drinks milk. I drink about ¾ of a gallon a week. So, I have to do a couple of things. First, I have to take a close look at expiration dates. Nothing’s worse than slurping up that first bite of Fake Cheerios with sour milk. Talk about a taste experience! And I don’t mean that in a good sense.

So, the question is whether I should buy a gallon of milk or a half gallon and a quart. At the grocery store, a half gallon is now about $2.29 and a quart is $1.79—that’s “store” brand milk, “brand” name is even higher. OK, so that puts me at $4.08 for a half gallon and a quart. But, I can buy a full gallon for $2.99 of “value time” milk. Now, I hate to waste food and I know that most of the time I’ll end up dumping some of the gallon down the drain as it goes “bad”. But, hell-o-Pete, I can do that simple math. Do I spend $2.99 or over $4?

Yeah, I know that some of the “goodie two shoes” out there will say to freeze the left over before it goes bad. Good idea, but my freezer is full. Damn full. Mrs. CB thought it was a good idea to stock up on $1 packages of pepperoni at the dollar store. We’ve got $14 worth occupying a big chunk of available space.

So here’s something I came across recently—in the “International Foods” section of our local Stater Brothers I came across pasta made in Mexico. It’s 3 for $.99 and comes in a 7 ounce bag. Regular “store” brand pasta is $1 for a 16 ounce bag and Barilla is about $1.50 for 16 ounces. Well, I can do that math. $1 for 21 ounces.

And there’s another one too. I stumbled across “Harina de Arroz” made by Tres Estrellas. It’s Rice Flour from Mexico. 17.6 ounces for $1.49. The “regular stuff, made in Japan is $2.49 for 16 ounces. And I can do that math too. Now, I don’t use rice flour all that often but occasionally we like to do a “tempura night” or it’s also pretty good when added to regular flour for fried fish or even chicken fried steak.

So look around, I bet you can find some good deals like this too.

So how about a little cooking? On days when I’m home in the morning we’ll often do a late morning “skillet” breakfast. These are really good—you know, kind of like the skillets you get at cafes or “Denny’s”—except cheaper.

Yep, this is country food. It's plebian. It's proletarian. It's the kind of food I like to eat. If it's not pretentious enough for you, then that's too bad because you'll be missing out on something good.

Here’s how I do it:

Cheap Bastid’s Skillet Breakfast

4-6 ounces sausage links
2 medium potatoes
3 eggs (stirred)
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 chopped fresh jalapeno pepper
1 chopped Roma tomato
Handful of shredded cheese

Directions:
First do your prep work (fancy cooks call this “mis en place”). You can either cut the potatoes into about ¼ inch cubes or do like I do and quarter each potato and then cut them into about 1/8” thick slices (Mrs. CB and I have this debate every once in a while & the cut of the ‘tater makes not difference to cooking it, it’s just a matter of cook’s preference). Dice the onion, jalapeno and tomato—I also did a small handful of fresh cilantro that I had in the fridge. Leave the sausage frozen and cut it into 1/8 inch thick “coins” (or just throw in whole into the skillet when you add it and break it up as it cooks.

Put a medium skillet on the stove turned up to medium high (about 4 o’clock on the dial). Add a squirt of oil (actually I add about a tablespoon of bacon grease that I keep in a jar in the fridge). Then toss the potatoes into the pan and spread them out in one layer.

Let these cook up for 5-8 minutes flipping them over at least once. Then add the onions, jalapenos and sausage “coins”. Get these cooking too. Add some salt, pepper and garlic powder. When they’re all browned up, turn the heat down to 6 o’clock. Now add the tomatoes and stir. Give ‘em a minute or 2 and then add the eggs. Stir, stir, stir to set the eggs and then toss in that handful of shredded cheese. What kind of cheese? Any kind you want. Whatever you have. Or none at all if you don’t want to.

Add toast or biscuits and you’ve got a pretty good breakfast feast. Now this doesn't make for a gorgeous plate--that's for the "foo-foo foodies"--but's it's sure tasty and that's all that matters.

This will stick to your ribs and get you a good old country one skillet breakfast from start to finish in about 30 minutes.

The Cheap Bastid Test: How cheap is this? Pretty cheap. Let’s see I used about 50 to 75 cents worth of sausage—let’s call it $.75. The potatoes cost about $.35, the jalapeno cost about a dime and the onion was another dime. The tomato about $.35. Three eggs cost $.30 and the cheese about $.50. So let’s add it all up and we’ll come up with $2.45 for 2 people (and it can stretch to 3) for a big hearty breakfast, early lunch or even “brinner”. These are about $7 at a restaurant. Breakfast is almost always a bit labor intensive, but to me cooking is always a great way to relax and think about something other than all the other crap going on in the world for a little bit.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

How Men of a Certain Age Watch "Men of a Certain Age"

2011-06-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

We’ve been eagerly anticipating the new season of “Men of A Certain Age” for a couple of months. Of all the shows on TV this is arguably our favorite.

If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s the ongoing story of 3 fiftyish men. That’s about as simple as it gets. It’s not the old classic “show about nothing” that was Seinfeld but rather it’s about life—the quasi-success and quasi-failure on a personal and professional level that defines each and every one of us. It’s about the highs and lows and how we cope with them.

It’s 3 guys—Joe (Ray Romano), Terry (Scott Bakula) and Owen (Andre Braugher) who have been friends since junior high school. It’s about love—about how men can love one another with more honesty than love of spouse or children or self, unabashedly and honestly.

Why do I love it? Well, because I’m a “man of a certain age” getting ready to turn 60 in 3 months. The show mirrors the life of most men of my age and what we see is that “it’s all right”. It’s all right to be less than a stellar success. All right? Hell, that’s the norm and it is, indeed, all right. It has to be because that’s what we’ve got.

But that’s not what this is about. How does a “man of a certain age” watch “Men of A Certain Age”? I look at the TV schedule, carefully adjusting my bifocals so that the tiny print is large enough to decipher. I know when it’s on and what channel it’s on, but I look anyway.

“Hmmm, 10 o’clock. P.M. At night. OK. Now, they use some “earthy” language in this—like men of a certain age do. Words like “shit”. No “f-bombs”. Guess that means it has to be on late. But that’s OK.

Can I make it? A couple of years ago, the question was “can I make it to 11 when it’s over?” Now the question is more, “can I make it until 10 when it starts?”

Should I take a nap? Glad I have the day off on Thursday because I stayed up late. Damn.

Well, I managed to make it to 10. And I managed to make it to 11. I snoozed from 10:15 to 10:30 but that means I saw 75% of the first episode.

Yeah, someone’s going to say that I need to Tivo or DVR it. And I’ve got a couple of things to say about that. 1) I can’t afford it and 2) I don’t have a 12 year old around to set it up for me. I’m too old for kids that age and too young for grandkids that age. So I’m just screwed. Yeah, I could probably watch it here on my computer whenever I want but this is a 15.6 inch screen with crappy speakers compared to a 42 inch screen with semi-good speakers.

I was out in the living room on the couch. Carolyn “watched” it in the bedroom. When I go into the bedroom to watch something, I crawl into bed next to her, start watching and then roll onto my side to get more comfortable. Next thing I know it’s 3 a.m. and she’s elbowing me to get me to roll over and stop snoring in her ear.

You would think that with all that effort that I’d hate being a “man of a certain age” (do you think we should start using the acronym “MOCA”?—just a stray thought). But I don’t. I rather like it. Actually, I’m rather looking forward to graduating from “MOCA” to “GOF”—“grouchy old fart”. I’m getting lots of practice.

Anyway, this is TV at its almost best. TV could be a lot better. And it would be if there were more shows like this, at an earlier time, to watch and enjoy.

Santana Throws A High Hard One at Georgia and Arizona

2011-05-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

Crash Davis said, “Baseball is a simple game. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains.”

Well it wasn’t raining yesterday in Atlanta where the Braves played the Philadelphia Phillies in the Civil Rights Game but I’m guessing that there were a few who wish that it had been a rain-out. If it had, then the awards presentation wouldn’t have been held, guitar legend Carlos Santana wouldn’t have received a Civil Rights award and he wouldn’t have righteously unloaded on the states of Georgia and Alabama for their stances on immigration.

Santana was livid about a bill signed into law by Georgia’s Governor on Friday. The law will require all Georgia employers with more than 10 employees to use “E-Verify” by 2015, phasing it in based on number of employees starting in 2012. This bill and similar bills passed in Arizona were what Santana was talking about when he said that Georgia and Arizona “should be ashamed”.

He was pointed in his criticism saying:

“I represent the human race. The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

You know, there’s a big chunk of me that thinks that baseball and others who were part of honoring Santana were opening themselves up to this type of blunt speaking when they presented an award for Civil Rights advocacy to the Mexican born rock icon. I mean, go figure, he’s an outspoken advocate for immigrants both legal and illegal and he was presented a forum. I’m guessing he saw more than a little hypocrisy in the location of the event as well as the timing of the signing of the bill.

Here’s some of his other comments:

"It’s an anti-American law. It’s a cruel law, actually," Santana said. "If you all remember what it was like here with Martin Luther King and the dogs and the hoses, it’s the same thing, only it’s high tech. So let’s change it.”

“This is about fear, that people are going to steal my job,” Santana said of the law. “No we ain’t. You don’t clean toilets and clean sheets, stop shucking and jiving.”

“I would invite all Latin people to do nothing for about two weeks so you can see who really, really is running the economy,” Santana said. “Who cleans the sheets? Who cleans the toilets? Who babysits? I am here to give voice to the invisible. By god’s grace, I represent the invisible ones. It’s a shame that those in charge would pass a law like those in Arizona. The sound that comes to my heart and my fingers is that we are in this together, that we don’t leave anyone out.”

“This is the United States. This is the land of the free. If people want the immigration laws to keep passing, then everybody should get out and leave the American Indians here.”

And then they went out and played baseball. Will anything change because of this? So far it seems to be a somewhat obscure story getting play in Atlanta, perhaps a bit of play on ESPN and there was an article in this morning’s USA Today.

I guess my reaction to it is “good for Santana”. He’s calling it like it is. Santana has spent a career as a maestro of the guitar. Sounds to me like he’s just as passionate about people, especially immigrants. Seems to me that’s what he was being honored for at the Civil Rights Game.

And, maybe if Jose Feliciano were to play the National Anthem at a baseball game today, he could play it like this and not be so villified for it.

Zombies, A Question of Ethics? Or Maybe Political Paranoia

2011-05-13T10:49:00.001-07:00

I had a good time writing a post the other day on Zombie Awareness Month. There’s a political angle to it too with “Zombie aficionados” occasionally suggesting that the Zombie take-over may have already occurred in politics. I have to admit that it would certainly explain a lot of things here and around the world.

But this is about something else, though related.

I also wrote a blogpost a couple of weeks ago expressing outrage over a Southern California Republican party official, Marilyn Davenport, who e-mailed a decidedly unflattering and racist (at least by “liberal” consensus) photograph of Pres. Obama as simian to friends and Republican colleagues and claimed that it was innocent humor. You remember the photo, right? Here it is again:

So what’s the connection here? Well, my slightly demented brain suggested to me that zombies and politics might be related. (Wouldn’t that be a more than plausible explanation for the “Tea Baggers”?)

So I thought to myself, “Self, maybe there’s some faked zombie pictures out there of politicians. Wouldn’t it be funny to find a zombie photo of Sarah Palin?” (See, I talk to myself when I try to write).

And guess what, there are a bunch of zombie photos of Sarah Palin. And maybe it’s my liberal side coming out but I didn’t think that they were as “mean-spirited” or racially themed as the zombie photos of Barak Obama (are you surprised at all that there are zombie photos of Obama? Naw, I didn’t think you’d be surprised). And hell, there are even Osama Bin Laden zombie photos.

So I pulled one off Google Images and inserted it into my blogpost. It wasn’t the most ghoulish but it satisfied my inner smartass. Here’s the photo:

I thought it was really funny—especially located just after a Zombie Uncle Sam photo.

And then I got to thinking (contrary to what my wife or employer would say, yes indeed, I do think occasionally).

I thought, “wait a minute here Walt, you were outraged over a photo showing Obama as a simian. Isn’t this the same thing? Does it make a difference that you respect Obama and don’t respect Palin? Hmmmm?”

And I thought again, “who gives a rat’s behind, this is freedom of expression and humor or satire.” So I dropped the photo into my blogpost, giggling to myself as I did it. “I’m so clever; this is funny,” I thought to myself.

And then another thought crossed my mind which created a scenario compelling enough to convince me to eliminate the Sarah Palin zombie picture. I thought to myself, “Self, this person is a politician probably running for President. She’s a ‘whacko’. You could end up like this:”

This was because the last piece of “art” was a poster which said this:

“Self, Palin is enough of a whacko that this could easily be considered as a threat or a suggestion that someone shoot her in the head to destroy her brain. She’s a (shudder to think of it) ‘national political figure’. You could be detained, interrogated and arrested.” I got images of waterboarding and Guantanamo. I saw myself being questioned by Lenny and Green until I confessed—confessed to what I don’t know.

So, I pulled it out of the post. I found a “poster” of Obama, Biden, McCain and Palin as zombies. Hooray for me! Equal opportunity Zombies!

OK, so now I know. The “simian” photo of Obama was offensive. Arguably the zombie photo of Palin is offensive too (as are zombie photos of Obama). But, a zombie photo of Obama, Biden, McCain and Palin…now that’s funny. And it’s different from the others. That’s poking fun at politicians and the process not at the individual. I’m glad I found it.

Self-censorship is one thing. Censorship because you’re worried that the FBI or Secret Service might come and break down your door is something else. It’s a bit scary. And, even though I call Palin a whacko, there are enough super whacky-whackos out there that some idiot might have taken it literally. And that’s doubly scary.

Hold On To Your Brains--It's Zombie Awareness Month

2011-05-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

I don’t remember where I first came across this online but I remember that my reaction to it was (and this is a direct quote), “Hmmmmpf.” And I proceeded to check it out in a little more detail.

It seems like there’s a special month in the calendar for just about everything. Here’s the list just for May (source McGraw/Hill Professional). Oh, it's a long list so just listen to the music and scroll through:

May
• Allergy/Asthma Awareness Month, Natl
• Arthritis Month, Natl
• Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month
• Awareness of Medical Orphans Month
• Barbecue Month, Natl
• Better Hearing and Speech Month
• Bike Month, Natl
• Business Image Improvement Month, Intl
• Civility Month, Intl
• Creative Beginnings Month
• Ecodriving Month
• Egg Month, Natl
• Family Wellness Month
• Fibromyalgia Education and Awareness Month
• Freedom Shrine Month
• Get Caught Reading Month
• Gifts From the Garden Month
• Good Car-Keeping Month, Natl
• Haitian Heritage Month
• Hamburger Month, Natl
• Heal the Children Month
• Healthy Vision Month
• Hepatitis Awareness Month, Natl
• Huntington's Disease Awareness Month
• Internal Audit Awareness Month, Intl
• Jewish American Heritage Month
• Latino Books Month
• Meditation Month, Natl
• Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention Month
• Mental Health Month, Natl
• Military Appreciation Month, Natl
• Motorcycle Safety Month
• Moving Month, Natl
• Older Americans Month
• Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month
• Personal History Month
• Photo Month, Natl
• Physical Fitness and Sports Month, Natl
• Preservation Month, Natl
• REACT Month
• Revise Your Work Schedule Month
• Salad Month, Natl
• Salsa Month, Natl
• Smile Month, Natl
• Strike Out Strokes Month
• Stroke Awareness Month, Natl
• Sweet Vidalia Onion Month, Natl
• Teen CEO Month
• Teen Self-Esteem Month

• Tennis Month
• Ultraviolet Awareness Month
• Victorious Woman Month, Intl
• Vinegar Month, Natl
• Women's Health Care Month
• Young Achievers/Leaders of Tomorrow Month

Now that’s a lot of stuff for just one month. And I noticed that there is a conspicuous absence—the “awareness month” I stumbled across.

Zombie Awareness Month
To quote Dave Barry, “I’m not making this up.”

Zombie Awareness Month is sponsored by the Zombie Research Society. They urge people to wear a gray ribbon “to signify the undead shadows that lurk behind our modern light of day.” Here’s a summary from their website (www.zombieresearch.org):

Founded in 2007, the Zombie Research Society (ZRS) is dedicated to raising the level of zombie scholarship in the Arts and Sciences. ZRS Members represent diverse backgrounds, interests, and theories, but are unified in their support of the Society's three foundational principles:

• A zombie is a biologically definable, animated being occupying a human corpse.
• The zombie pandemic is coming. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when.
• Enthusiastic debate about zombies is essential to the survival of the human race.

Additional research that I did turned up a number of helpful sites to combat the predicted scurge of Zombies. Here’s a hint from the UK:

Now, I’m assuming that this is all tongue in cheek. Or maybe I’m hoping it is. But geez when you start Googling zombies and zombie research and zombie appreciation you come up with a lot of stuff that can keep you reading and zooming around the internet for hours.

And there’s even a rationale for having Zombie Awareness Month in May. Most would assume that a month to raise awareness of zombies would be in October because of Halloween. But the Zombie Research Society has determined (somehow) that most Zombie movies are set in May so this is the month they selected.

You can find helpful hints on identifying Zombies:

And some of the information is motivational—you know, like those dumb-ass posters that bosses still like to hang up and then congratulate themselves on how enlightened they are (I have one in my office right behind my desk).

And interestingly, some of the information is political. I have seen articles which suggest that Zombies are some sort of global political and economic conspiracy and also suggestions that some Zombies are cleverly disguised and much more insidious in their quest to consume the human race. But, quite frankly, I discounted those “suggestions” as the unrealistic fantasies of someone who has just seen too many Zombie movies over the years. Until…well, look for yourself:

Anyway, Happy Zombie Awareness Month. Get out your gray ribbons and wear them daily. And just remember:

SoCal Racist Republican--This Isn't Just Racist, It's Obscene

2011-04-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

You know, it gets hard to fight one’s instincts sometimes. Part of me wants to condemn an entire group of people because of the actions of one. Part of me wants to consciously “be charitable” which is how I try to behave towards others when their behavior might be suspect or when I may vehemently disagree with an action or perspective.

But at some point you just have to say “Enough!”. At some point you have to loudly proclaim that there’s just no excuse for a person or their perspective as manifested through their actions and then extend that to the entire group of individuals that they represent.

But this morning when watching the news on KTLA (an independent channel in L.A. which has arguably the best morning show on all of TV) I was appalled, aghast and incensed by the action of an official of the Orange County Republicans who over the weekend apparently thought that it was innocent fun to post via e-mail a photo and caption of Pres. Barak Obama which is totally, 100% racist. The person then had the temerity to try to excuse herself by claiming that it was done as a joke and was not racist.

Here’s the picture sent out by Orange County Republican Committee member Marilyn Davenport:

The e-mail was captioned, “Now you know why—no birth certificate!”

And here is what Ms. Davenport had to say about it:

“I’m sorry if my email offended anyone, I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth,” said Davenport. “In no way did I even consider the fact he’s half black when I sent out the email. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race.” (LA Times)

Forty or fifty years ago, a U.S. Supreme Court justice said of pornography that he didn't know how to define it but sure knew it when he saw it. Well, I might not necessarily be able to define racism but I sure know it when I see it or hear it. And this is about the most blatant example of racism I've seen in years. I hope Republicans everyone are ashamed of what one of their members has done. (That was one of the worst things my Dad would ever say when we had done something wrong as a kid--"Shamey on you."

Yes, Marilyn Davenport, "Shamey on you." Unfortunately, in your smug superiority you never learned that basic lesson. You have shamed yourself and the entire organization you represent. "Shamey on you."

So, according to her own words she’s either bigoted, ignorant or just plain old stupid. And, by extension, what does that make Republicans in general? I guess I’ve seen more and more of this in the last couple of years from the so-called “Tea-Baggers” and from “mainstream” Republicans.

So, enough! This morning I was going through some old Jimmy Buffett music. Perhaps this lyric is applicable to Ms. Davenport: “Were you born an asshole or did you work at it your whole life?”

I haven’t conferred this award for a while but Marilyn Davenport earned it and deserved it. So here’s to you, Ms. Davenport, the not-coveted “Caput in Recto” Award:

The Sioux in The Frozen Four--Time for a Nickname Change?

2011-04-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

The Final Four is done. Everyone knows what it is and there’s more money bet on it both legally and illegally than any other sporting event in the nation. Now it’s time for the fun tourney—the Frozen Four, which is the NCAA Hockey championships.

See, I went to a small college which plays big time hockey—the University of North Dakota. They’ve been national champs 8 times and are the favorite again this year as the highest seeded team to advance through the Regionals.

What I’ve always liked is that UND is a small school with 14,000 students. When I graduated in 1973 there were only about 8,000. And yet it goes up against the “big boys” playing in the same conference as Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio State.

Now, this year’s Frozen Four is being held in Minneapolis about 300 miles Southeast of Grand Forks, North Dakota where UND is located. The other teams in the Frozen Four are Michigan, Notre Dame and Minnesota-Duluth. And I really, really hope the Fighting Sioux from UND kick some serious butt and win a national championship.

Hockey is a tradition at UND. When I was an undergraduate in the early 70’s we played in a huge old Quonset building that was unheated. If it was 30 below zero outside, it would be about 20 below inside. And the colder it was, the more the building rocked. Talk about a home rink advantage.

But, do you know what I also hope? I hope that they take the championship home and then finally retire the name Fighting Sioux. I know that won’t sit too well with a bunch of people in North Dakota and who graduated from there but it’s time. The NCAA has been after UND to do that for a number of years and the school is the only university in the nation which has not complied with an NCAA request and directive to eliminate nicknames which are considered to be racially derogatory. It’s time.

This controversy has been going on at UND for 40 years (I remember it rearing its head in the early 70’s during the height of Native American activism to the extent that UND went for a couple of years with the seal of the University as the logo on its hockey jerseys rather than the Indian head that had been the image for years and years).

A few years back, a major benefactor of UND donated $100 million to build a new hockey arena festooning it with thousands of Fighting Sioux logos which would cost millions to remove. This was done intentionally to keep the name and image of the university the same. There was even a major story/expose of this in Sports Illustrated and other articles in newspapers across the nation and on major TV news networks.

There has even been legislation passed this year in North Dakota and duly signed by the Governor defying the NCAA and requiring that the name “Fighting Sioux” be retained. A rationale has been presented claiming that the worst that could happen would be that UND couldn’t host any NCAA play-off games or wear their “Fighting Sioux” jerseys on TV. Come on, that’s not the point.

But it’s time. Time to move on. I recall moving to a small city in Iowa in 1992 that has a small Methodist affiliated college, Simpson College. I got to know the President of the school quite well and he told me the story of how the college had changed from a nickname of “Redmen” to “Storm” shortly after he became the President. He said that it was pushed through at the request of the NCAA and also because it just wasn’t consistent with the school’s Methodist heritage. And he also said that within 4 or 5 years by the time a new crop of freshmen had gone through the school that the new name would be part of the ongoing culture of the campus. And, interestingly, this was accomplished and alumni donations neither dried up nor went down.

I’ve always been proud to have attended college at the University of North Dakota. I’ve always been proud of the “Fighting Sioux” name and logo. But now, I’m actually getting a bit ashamed of it because of the never-ending controversy. I still have a “Fighting Sioux” license plate bracket on my car but will change it to a generic UND bracket. Here’s my bottom line:

I graduated from UND in 1973—38 years ago. I have never told anyone that I am a graduate of the University of Fighting Sioux. I’m a graduate of the University of North Dakota. It’s time to do the “right thing”.

Until then, here’s hoping UND goes on the ice tonight and kicks some serious University of Michigan ass.

Finally on American Idol...A Guy Who "Sounds off Likes He's Got..."

2011-04-06T06:51:00.000-07:00

Finally.

Finally there’s a guy singing on American Idol who can…

Sound Off Like You Got A Pair!!

I’ve been hoping this would happen for years.

I’m not looking for Barry White. He wasn’t really a singer anyway. More like a romantic rapper. A cross between Snoop Dog and Rod McKuen. But a voice from deep down in the well.

I always thought it would be a guy with “tats” and a “goat”. But instead we got baby-faced Scottie McCreery. This kid’s only 16. He’s giving up his high school baseball season to be on American Idol.

And he sings bass. Cool.

He sings country. What? You can’t sing bass and sing “pop” songs anymore? Last night he tried to sing MoTown. Country style. It kind of worked.

Do you think this young guy has practiced in front of a mirror—mugging to get that note out of the side of his mouth with his “impish” expression? Kind of reminiscent of McCauley Culkin slapping aftershave on in “Home Alone”.

But this guy’s fun. He can sing a low note. Recently, Randy Jackson said, “Dude, that’s a young lady killer note.” Yep, a well sung low note can do more “lady killing” than screeching out a high note in falsetto. That’s what I call “sounding off like you got a pair.” And from a musical perspective, it’s harder to do. It actually takes more practice, better control of the diaphragm and more control to sing low than high. Ask any alto because it’s the same with female voices.

What I’m hoping he’ll do is channel his inner Tennessee Ernie Ford as he keeps going with his country style. Remember him? He was big in the 50’s and 60’s in country music.

But, this young man is going to need more than that if he’s going to be the next “American Idol” (and quite frankly I don’t see that happening). So maybe he’ll check out some of the best low voices over the years. Unfortunately there haven’t been too many in the last 20 or so years. How about my favorite and my favorite song of his? Lou Rawls. “Lady Love”. Now that’s singing some soul—low and romantic.

Cheap Bastid Finds Affordable Fish!

2011-04-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

Way back in the long, long ago one of my favorite things was to go out for Friday night fish-fry. It was always 3 or 4 couples and we’d go to a place called Scharner’s On the Shore just north of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

At this part restaurant/part-tavern we would enjoy the freshest, tastiest perch in the world. As owner Willie Schartner was fond of saying, “so fresh, it was swimming this morning.” And it was true. The waters of Sturgeon Bay and Green Bay teemed with perch. At the time, the daily limit for sports fishermen was 100.

Oh but man, could Schartner’s make some tasty perch. The place would be packed. Friday night fish fry is a long term tradition in Wisconsin and anyplace close to the Great Lakes. You’d get 2 butterflied perch, slaw and fries for $6. Or you could get double perch for $8 or even triple perch for the princely sum of $10. I was usually good for double perch and occasionally I’d choke down a triple.

We’d talk about the week just ended and the weekend just starting, about what was going on with our kids and neighbors and the politics of Sturgeon Bay—population 9,000. I haven’t been able to do that in about 20 years now, ever since leaving the Wisconsin in 1992.

Even worse, I haven’t had a fish dinner in about 3 years. The price of fish has gotten just too damned high. I used to buy salmon every once in a while but that’s gotten up to $11-$12 a pound. Even catfish is now $7.99 a pound. And you’ll never, ever find fresh perch in Southern California—they never heard of it.

And I’ve fantasized about it. I drool every time Bobby Flay or Guy Fieri go someplace that serves catfish “po-boys” or fried catfish with hush puppies.

Then last week I saw an ad in our Stater Brothers weekly flyer. Some fish called “Swai”. It was $2.99 a pound. And I asked myself, “Self, I wonder what Swai is?”

Ain’t Google grand? I was able to find out what this fish is and actually get a whopping helping of TMI. According to ConsumerReports.org and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, swai is a fish native to Southeast Asia and is typically farmed. It’s related to catfish and is part of the Pangasius family. “Swai is a white-flesh fish (typically available in fillet form) with a sweet mild, taste and light flaky texture that can be broiled, grilled, or coating with bread crumbs and fried…”

And that’s what I wanted to do—fry it. And yep, it was good. Really good. Partly because it was cheap and affordable and partly because it’s clean, white and very light tasting. There’s almost no “fishy” taste and in fact, very little taste at all. Of course that means that it needs seasoning or sauce or something to give it flavor.

So, I picked up about 5 filets at Stater’s—about 3 lbs worth. And yep, it’s white, firm with very little fish odor. Perfect for my plans which was to fry it with a flour and corn meal coating. Here’s the simple recipe for it:

Cheap Bastid’s Pan-Fried Swai

• 1 ½ filets of Swai per person (about 12 oz of fish)

• 1 cup flour

• 1 cup corn meal

• 1 cup milk

• Seasoning to taste (salt & pepper or Cajun or Southwest)

Cheap Bastid’s Summer Slaw

• ½ head green cabbage

• Red onion

• 1 roma tomato

• ¼ cup lime juice (appx 2 limes worth)

• Salt & pepper

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• ¼ cup (appx) canola oil

First, prep your slaw. Cut the cabbage into strips about 1 inch by ¼ inch. Chop up about ½ cup red onion into short strips and chop the roma. You can also add some fresh jalapeno pepper or cucumber or even apple—whatever you have and want to throw in. Put it all in a bowl. Squeeze the lime juice into the mix, add some salt & pepper and put in the sugar. Stir it all up and put in the fridge for the flavors to meld together while you do the fish.

Rinse and blot the fish to make sure it’s clean. Lay it out and season it—be somewhat liberal with the seasoning (I like to season the food not the flour mix). Put the milk in a flat container and mix the corn meal and flour together in another flat container.

Turn burner onto medium (about 5 o’clock) and add the oil—enough to thoroughly coat the bottom of the pan. Immerse each filet in the milk and turn over then dredge through the corn meal/flour mix making sure it’s well coated. Shake it off over the mix so there’s not too much excess. Then lay each filet in the oil.

You can do about 3 at a time in a medium skillet. Don’t get them too crowded or you’ll do more steaming than frying. Check the bottom after 4-5 minutes and flip the filet when’s it’s golden. Cook another 4-5 minutes then put onto a plate covered in 2 layers of paper towels to drain.

Serve it all up and enjoy. (By the way, what to do with the left over corn meal/flour and milk? Pour the milk into the corn meal/flour and add an egg, stir it all together. Add more oil to your pan and make hush puppies).

Cheap Bastid Test: Well, how’d I do? I spent about $5 on fish for this meal (and have another 2 filets at $3.50 in the freezer—we’re going to do fish tacos next week). The slaw cost less than $1 (head of cabbage $.79 and I used half). Add the milk and flour, corn meal and oil and the total for the dinner was about $7. Not too bad. It’s a bit pricey but the cheapest “fresh” fish you’re going to come across.

The next time I do it, it’ll be in the oven with lemon/butter and herb. This fish has very little flavor. So it needs to be seasoned. Oh, and by the way we use “seafood cocktail” sauce—except we didn’t have any. But we always have ketchup and prepared horseradish—and we like it spicy.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Little Boys, Grasshoppers and Rocks

2011-04-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

This morning was gardening time. It’s not easy to “garden” on the balcony of an apartment. But, we bought some tomato plants a week and a half ago at the local farmers market and it was time to transplant them into bigger pots.

The reason, of course, that it’s not that easy to grow a garden on a balcony is that space is really limited when you have to get your hands dirty mixing soil and transplanting the plants. Balconies are also a bit limited in making sure that the plants are sited so they get optimal sunlight, but we try to make do. Plus, I hate the thought that anytime you grow anything here in Southern California you have to go out and buy dirt.

We’re going to try to get a bit of a crop this year. I’ve got 2 pots with Roma tomatoes in them—a total of 6 plants which might need transplanting yet again—and I’ve got 2 pots with a “grape” tomato called Juliet. So we’ve got romantic tomatoes in Roma and Juliet (hey, I know it’s a bad pun but that’s our sense of humor). Last time we grew tomatoes, the “crop” was so meager that we not only named the plants but we named the individual tomatoes too. I think that “crop” ultimately cost about $20 a pound to grow.

So I got done gardening and needed to take out the garbage that was created. I bundled everything up and went down the stairs to the dumpster. I heard a little kid talking and what sounded like rocks bouncing off the building. It was a kid who lives in our 4 unit building. He’s about 5 and he was throwing rocks at the ground, peering intently and then throwing more rocks.

I tossed the garbage sack in the dumpster and turned around to look. He was throwing rocks at and trying to kill a 3-inch grasshopper. Every time he’d toss a rock, the grasshopper would, well he’d do what grasshoppers do, he’d hop a few feet. I looked at him and said, “Hey, are you trying to kill that grasshopper?” He shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head.

I don’t know but maybe I was thinking about karma or something but the older I get, the less inclined I am to kill critters—unless I’m going to eat them. “That grasshopper didn’t do anything to you did it? It’s not nice to kill defenseless animals.”

He’s looking at me like I’m the typical old fart bossing him around. So I said, “why don’t you watch him and what he does? Grasshoppers are cool.”

No wonder he was looking at me that way. I sounded like Earl Pickles—the quintessential old fart. But I walked away back to the stairs and our apartment. As I got to the stairs, I looked over my shoulder.

There he was, squatting down head cocked over looking at the grasshopper. And I thought to myself, “You done good. Look at that little boy, fascinated by that grasshopper. He’s enjoying it now.”

Then I saw the rock. The kid pushed the rock down on top of the grasshopper and shmooshed it.

There are a couple of morals to this story.

• A grasshopper has a pretty good chance of survival when someone’s throwing rocks at it. It ain’t got a chance when someone’s shmooshing it.

• Little kids haven’t changed. They still like to amuse themselves by whacking grasshoppers (I hope he doesn’t come across a wasp’s nest next).

• And, I have descended solidly into old fartdom. And now I’m heading towards curmudgeon.

Ain’t gardening grand.

Since When is Our Dining Room Table a Nexus?

2011-03-22T06:42:00.000-07:00

Nexus—a level of commercial activity within a legal jurisdiction that is sufficient to require a business to meet the jurisdiction’s tax regulations, including the collection and remittance of a sales tax.
The American Heritage Dictionary of Business Terms.

It’s all my wife’s fault. She created a website for heart shaped rings (www.heart-rings.net). That site provides photos and descriptions of heart-shaped rings from sellers such as Amazon and Kohls and Target and others.

Shoppers do web searches and come across her site. If they click on one of her listings they get taken to the site where the item is actually for sale. If they purchase the item Carolyn gets a “commission”. Not bad. She’s got hundreds of hours invested in creating the site. She makes a little bit from sales.

The State of California wants to declare our dining room table a “nexus” or a place of business. That’s where my wife’s laptop sits and where she does her work—except for when she moves her laptop over to the couch to work on the computer and get her daily “Criminal Minds” or “Lenny” fix. What California is trying to do is come up with a way to require online retailers like Amazon and Overstock to collect sales tax on its sales. And they’re using Carolyn to try to do it. Good luck.

Amazon says that if California does that then they will terminate their arrangement with all “affiliates” in California.

Oops, a tug of war between Amazon and California centered over the activities that go on at our dining room table.

Now I know that the state of California is just about broke and is doing everything and anything it can to scare up a few billion bucks. But this is ridiculous. Right now Carolyn is putzing around on her computer 5 feet away from me at the other end of the dining room table, hair pulled back, in a blue bath robe and pajamas, reading glasses halfway down her nose. Yep, she’s a retail dynamo. And by the way, the few hundred dollars she’ll make this year from her site will be duly reported on our income taxes.

That’s how ridiculous this is. Amazon has already terminated affiliates in a few states which have declared affiliates to constitute a “nexus” in order to require sales tax collection. California’s legislation will be moot about 5 minutes after Gov. Brown would sign the bill. That’s how long it’ll take Amazon to terminate affiliates and negate any tax benefit California would derive.

Now I can’t fault the state of California or any other state from wanting to see sales taxes collected and remitted. If a product is being purchased online and used at the point of delivery then sales taxes should be paid. If there’s any real greed or tax avoidance going on here it’s on the part of Amazon and Overstock and other online only retailers. My problem comes in the manner in which California and other states are attempting to define as a nexus.

The world of business has changed markedly in the last decade. There is now a tremendous volume of retail activity on the internet. There needs to be a different and better definition. The old definition of “nexus” is at best obsolete in online retail buying and selling. State government efforts which would define our dining room table as a nexus are legislative legerdemain and throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. It’s also harder to define what constitutes “interstate commerce” as subject to regulation by the federal government.

How about this then? Rather than the tenuous nexus of our dining room table that California would like to see, how about approaching it on a federal level. It doesn’t matter where a seller of goods on the internet has an actual location. Amazon has no retail locations (unlike WalMart or Target or thousands of other retailers who also engage in internet sales and collect sales taxes). Amazon by its very nature is an online enterprise.

What that means is that the “nexus” for Amazon starts with a buyer accessing Amazon.com through whatever portal, affiliate or search engine that person is using. That is the point of sale. It proceeds to the placing of an order and ends when the merchandise is received by the buyer. As far as I’m concerned, that is the nexus and the point of sale is essentially the address to which the product is going to be delivered. That is the presumed point of use. Amazon should collect the appropriate sales tax on that transaction and then remit it to the appropriate state.

The remedy is Federal not state. It concerns the interstate commerce provisions in Article I Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Let’s acknowledge that this is an issue never envisioned by the framers of the Constitution and regulate it properly.

Interestingly, Amazon claims that this is an onerous burden fraught with complexities between the various taxing bodies (i.e. states). Isn’t that amazing for a company which employs hundreds, if not thousands of programmers. In fact, an article on a website called “The New Rules Project” entitled “Internet Sales Tax Fairness” had the following comment:

“Today, software has largely eliminated the difficulty of calculating and remitting sales taxes for the country's many state and local jurisdictions. Indeed, Amazon.com, which opposes extending sales tax to online retailers on the grounds that it would be "horrendously complicated," collects sales taxes nationwide for Target as part of its management of the chain's online business.”

Come on Amazon, get real. Come on California, get real and stay out of my dining room. My wife isn’t a nexus and neither are the 10,000 other Amazon affiliates in California. We’re just going to be the losers in the state’s tug-of-war over sales taxes.

Cheap Bastid's What to Feed A Hungry Kid

2011-03-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

Megan’s no kid though. She’s 21, as tall as I am at 5’8” and ain’t no anorexic stick girl. She works and works out and could probably whup my fanny. She also likes to eat. Fortunately she likes Cheap Bastid’s cooking. It’s hearty and there’s plenty of it.

Anyway, I was off this last weekend and that means it’s time to cook. There was a prediction of bad weather, which finally rolled in on Sunday but I made plans to cook up a batch of lasagna Saturday. Now lasagna’s not hard to make. It takes just a little bit of prep and assembly. It’s also not the cheapest dish around, but it makes a lot of food and when all is said and done it’s really reasonable at about 75¢ per serving.

So I made it a point to pick up the necessary cheeses at the grocery store Saturday morning and double checked to be sure that I had the other ingredients. OK, I didn’t photograph the entire process. In fact, I thought to take pictures only after dinner. We got hungry. Meggie really tore into it. Here’s what was left of a 9 x 13 pan after the 3 of us got done:

Everybody’s got a recipe for lasagna I would imagine. For years I just did the recipe on the back of the box. Now I pretty much do it out of my head. I don’t try to get fancy. And this isn’t a recipe that my Great Grandma used to cook in Sicily or Naples or anything like that. It’s just good old basic Lasagna with 3 cheeses and uses canned sauce.

Yes, canned sauce. Have I ever explained why I use canned sauce rather than making it from scratch? It’s simple. Making it from scratch is delicious. It takes the better part of a whole day, or longer, to simmer properly and get the full, rich flavor. But I quit making it from scratch (which I used to do all the time) about 25 years ago when I discovered one thing.

What was the one thing? My kids couldn’t have cared less that it was homemade sauce. Dinners with little kids needed to be cooked quickly and served just as quickly before the little ragamuffins starved to death right before my eyes. So I went to prepared sauce.

Then it took me about another 17 years to figure out that the canned stuff was not only 1/3 the price of the jarred stuff but that I liked the way it tastes a lot better—more like real tomato sauce with just a bit of acid still in it rather than the over-sweetened stuff in a jar. There are only so many glass jars that I can stuff in my cupboards for future use anyway. Besides, the canned stuff I buy was on special for 75¢ for a 26.5 oz. can this week anyway. I bought 6 cans.

So if that’s too plebian for your taste that’s all right with me. Because I’m the Cheap Bastid. If you want to foo-foo your lasagna with all sorts of stuff, that’s OK too. Have at it. Use more expensive and better quality cheeses. Do a gourmet sauce. All that’s fine. Mine tastes good and sticks to your ribs. Plus it’s cheap.

Cheap Bastid’s Lasagna
Ingredients
• 1 lb ground meat (I used ¾ ground beef and ¼ ground pork) or Italian sausage
• 1 package lasagna noodles
• 1 can/jar prepared pasta sauce
• 1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
• 8 oz shredded mozzarella
• 4 oz grated parmesan cheese
• 1 16 oz container cottage cheese (4% fat preferred)
• 1 egg
• Spices: I use crushed red chili, cumin, dried parsley, dried basil, garlic, thyme, fennel seeds and oregano

Directions:
Get out a 9 x 13 pan and grease it. Take out a large mixing bowl. Take out a medium sauté pan and your pasta pot.

Fill your pasta pot with about a half gallon of water (more or less—you know your pot). Put it on the stove turned to medium high and put the sauté pan on the stove turned to medium. Put the ground meat into the sauté pan to brown. Season the meat with salt, pepper, crushed red chili, fennel seed, garlic and cumin. (I know cumin is more of a Mexican seasoning but I like it!) How much spices? Enough! Do it to taste. Remember though, go a bit light. You can always add more but once it’s in you can’t take it out.

Keep stirring the meat up to brown it evenly. When pasta water comes to a boil, put the lasagna noodles in it. You’re going to par-boil it—really “as dente”. And stir it a couple of times to make sure the noodles don’t stick together. When the meat is done, scoop it into your large mixing bowl—fat drippings and all. Open the sauce and pour it in the bowl. Add the 8 oz can of tomato sauce. Sample and season it to taste. Stir it up really good.

When the pasta is al dente—about 8-10 minutes remove from the stove and drain into a colander. Now take the cottage cheese and put it into a medium bowl. Then add the parmesan, egg and about 2 tablespoons of dried parsley. Mix it all up together really good.

Take out your shredded mozzarella. Reserve a good handful for the final layer on top.

Now you’re going to build your lasagna. If your oven’s not on, then pre-heat it to 375.

Start with about a cup and a half of sauce on the bottom of the dish. Then add your first layer of noodles—running lengthways down the dish. Next put a layer of the cottage cheese mix on top of the noodles (about 1/2 of it) and then put a layer of sauce on top of that followed by another layer of noodles. Next sprinkle a layer of mozzarella (half of it) and some more sauce with a another layer of noodles. Keep building it. There should 2 layers of the cottage cheese mix and 2 layers of the mozzarella with each layer having sauce. The final layer is the last of the sauce with the reserved mozzarella and a final shake of parmesan cheese. One thing I like to do also is to put a couple of the noodle layers cross ways—fold the noodle or snip it off to length.

Cover the dish in foil and put it into the oven for a total of about 45 minutes. At 30 minutes remove the foil to let the top brown a bit.

Make yourself up a really great salad and some garlic bread or garlic toast. This isn’t “true” Italian cooking but it’s a good American version of an Italian classic that will feed a whole family, stick to your ribs and have you wanting seconds—or even thirds. It’ll easily feed six.

So, Meggie got fed. She came home from work starving, smelled the lasagna baking and her eyes lit up. I think it hit just the right spot because she managed to down 3 big hunks of it. I love it when people gobble up something I’ve cooked. Makes me feel good all over.

The Cheap Bastid Test: As I just said this dish will feed 6. It costs about $8 to make in my “Cheap Bastid” version. If you want you can get the price up there all the way to $20 or more if you go pricey on cheeses and sauce and meat. And $8 for a dinner that easily feeds 4 adults with left-overs is price effective in this ever more expensive world of ours.

So, there it is Cheap Bastid’s Lasagna. Other people will have their own versions and some will have versions that are far better. But that’s OK because I’m the Cheap Bastid. I’m looking for the best bang for the buck. And this will do it.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Opinions are Like A-Holes...Wisconsin, Unions & Politics

2011-03-10T18:50:00.000-08:00

Well, the controversy sparked by the Governor of Wisconsin and by Republicans Senators in that state’s legislature has been going on now for the better part of 2 weeks. Is it over yet? Not by a long shot.

But this set of issues has galvanized millions. It has caused Americans to take to the streets (especially around the Wisconsin state capital) almost like in Cairo, Egypt. I’m confused because it’s not a good guys in the white hats and bad guys in the black hats kind of issue—with the exception of the actions of Wisconsin Senate Republicans . And efforts to make it that way only confuse things more.

I’ve tried to read up on what the elements of this conflict are and it’s tough to get a handle on it. There are those who have oversimplified it to be a battle between unions and politics. Others say that it’s simply about money. I think there’s a whole lot more to it than that.

This may have become the focal point of a couple of different important things in our nation and economy. For one it’s about public money. For another it’s about the widening schism between the far right of the political spectrum and, seemingly, everybody else.

A third aspect, which to me is every bit as important as the others, is the role that public employees play within the various governmental entities they serve. And, to me anyway, the key word in that sentence is “serve”.

I personally don’t think it unreasonable for public employees to have to pay 1/8th the cost of their health insurance (with pre-tax dollars) as was proposed in Wisconsin. Neither do I think it unreasonable for those same employees to pay nearly 6% of their salary (pre-tax) into their retirement fund. Those in the private sector are used to paying that much and more for both health insurance and retirement. To suggest that this is unreasonable or a burden borders on the ludicrous.

I start to depart with the proposals made in Wisconsin when it comes to bargaining units and union membership and certification. The Governor’s proposal is just taking it too far. However, I do have a lot of problems (especially living in California where this is rampant) with the overt political activities of public employee unions.

I’m getting up there in age. I come from a time when public employees served, did not make policy (developed, recommended and implemented it but didn’t make!) yet negotiated and bargained for remuneration.

Here in California municipalities, counties and the state are all teetering on the edge of insolvency. Much of it can be put at the feet of overly generous and woefully underfunded pension programs. That’s not all of it, but it’s a great big chunk especially here in the San Diego area. Public employees often make more money than their contemporaries in the private sector and almost universally enjoy better fringe benefits. (I have health insurance but it’s pricey and I’m petrified of actually getting sick). There are governments in California actively considering bankruptcy to be able to get out from underneath pension costs.

And every election at the local or state level, voters are inundated with money spent by public employee unions—teachers, police, fire fighters—on ads, endorsements and veiled blackmail in favor or opposed to this or that candidate. Typically the effort is to seat school board members, city councilors, county supervisors, legislators and a governor who are “friendly” to education or public safety and will assure that the payroll funding is ever more generous. And I get to the point where I really resent it.

Should we return to the “old days” when public employees were precluded from “organized” political activity? There’s a part of me that says yes. Public employee unions, like all unions, have a big job of protecting the employment interests of their members in terms of salary and benefits and working conditions. And they should be free to do that job on behalf of their members. But the members have to do their jobs on behalf of the public first and foremost. I don’t know the answer to that question.

There’s a big chunk of me that thinks public employees should be restricted from influencing public policy or elections which affect their employment. There’s another chunk that thinks that these unions ought to enjoy the same freedom the PACs and “corporate individuals” enjoy. If I were to be pressed into a “forced choice” I would have to opt for enjoying the same level of expression as any other labor group. But I don’t have to like it. In fact, if a public workers union wants me to vote against “their” candidate or position, all they have to do is try to influence me with slick flyers or media advertising. I’ll go the opposite way every single time.

I fully expect yesterday’s actions of the Wisconsin Senate to end up in court if the bill is ever passed and signed by the Governor. And if it does, I have a hard time thinking that any rational court would uphold either the law or the dastardly way in which it was rammed through.

But that doesn’t change my attitude that public servants must be precisely that. Anything less and they should be fired. More particularly there’s a message out there that teachers, cops, firefighters and other public employees need to listen to. “Start being part of the solution.” Saying that this conflict is not about the money is false. It may be more about the ability to be part of a bargaining unit than the money, but it’s about making sure that the money’s there too. And any honest introspection yields that conclusion.

Things aren’t going to get better anytime soon. It’s like after a flood crests and all kinds of effort have been expended on sandbags. What’s left is a stinking mess that takes a long time to clean up.

And, like the title of this piece says: Opinions are like a-holes. Everybody has one. This is mine.

Cheap Bastids "As the Cinnamon Roll Turns" redux

2011-03-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

Sunday dawns. My day off. I always do laundry on Sunday starting at about 6 a.m., read the paper, watch CBS Sunday Morning and drink coffee. Carolyn sleeps late and I’ve got the world kind of to myself except for the squabbling of the early morning hummingbirds at our feeder.

So, this will be the morning of the great cinnamon roll experiment, part 2. What could be better than fresh laundry, Sunday morning and freshly baked cinnamon rolls. (Remember a couple of weeks ago when I baked some up using recipes for biscuit dough—well today I’m going to try again with slightly different technique and see how well I can do).

So I get out my ingredients—noticing that I need to add lard to the shopping list and start whipping up a batch of dough. I pay attention to how I roll out the dough, and rather than use brown sugar I use plain old cinnamon sugar.

What am I going to do different? Well, roll out the dough a bit thinner and then roll the “log” tighter. Also I’m going to bake these at 375 rather than the 425 I used last time and I’m going to do them for about 15 minutes using a cookie sheet rather than glass 13x13 pan. So let’s see how they come out.

Plus, I did an egg yolk wash on half of them to see what difference it would make.

The results? Well, they weren’t as photogenic. But they were definitely better tasting. I noticed that the bottoms were just about a perfect golden brown but starting to get a bit crisp (presumably from the melting margarine and sugar).

The upshot is that these were good. Better than last time. But, no matter what all the recipes say these aren’t as good as using yeast dough. They’re still biscuits rolled up with cinnamon sugar and margarine. They’re not the “real deal”—you know, gooey, soft goodness so sweet it’ll give you a sugar high for half the day.

OK, so I give. These aren’t worth the effort so my next Sunday off (or maybe this Thursday if I go and get some lard) I’m going to try a rising yeast dough and do it the old fashioned way. Who knows maybe Cheap Bastid will even go out and get a beat up old bundt pan at the thrift store for a buck and try Monkey Bread.

As the Cheap Bastid, I’ve already gritted my teeth and invested in yeast for my next experiment. They packets cost $.50 each which just about doubles the price of the rolls. I hope the “investment” is worth it. Stay tuned for the next installment of your favorite soap opera, “As the Cinnamon Roll Turns”.

But here’s the bottom line—there’s nothing better than sharing a cup of coffee and a couple of cinnamon rolls with your best girl on Sunday morning which is what Carolyn and I did when they came out of the oven. Even if they aren’t the world’s best cinnamon rolls. But I’m working on it.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Is it Fresh Cut Fish or Freshly Cut Fish?

2011-03-02T10:52:00.000-08:00

I guess it’s just my anal nature but lately a TV ad has been making me nuts. Have you ever had one of those times when a word or little bit of grammar trips a switch in your mind and you wonder about it. Incessantly. Maybe that’s good advertising.

OK, here’s what I’m getting at…Sizzler, a chain of steakhouse type of restaurants mostly in the West, has a new advertising campaign—Fresh Cut Fish.

No problem, right? “Fresh Cut Fish”. Here’s what’s going through my mind though—does anyone really believe that Sizzler is serving “fresh” fish? To me “fresh fish” is fish that was just caught and hasn’t been frozen. I doubt that they’ve got someone down at the local pond or river tossing in lures and bait for fresh salmon and trout. My assumption is that it’s frozen. And I doubt that there's some guy in the back merrily filleting trout that were flown in fresh from Montana or Alaska streams this morning.

Most restaurants, especially lower end restaurants, use predominately frozen ingredients. Or at minimum, from my days long, long ago cooking at the grill of a now defunct steak chain, it comes refrigerated and vacuum packed in individual portions.

So what is “fresh cut fish”? Is it fresh fish that’s been cut to portion size? Or is it fish that has been freshly cut--cut when it comes off the broiler or out of the oven hence earning the title of "fresh cut"?

(From Sizzler's website)

And it’s driving me nuts.

Why should I care? I’m not going to go there and try the “fresh cut fish”. But I’m curious as to what exactly it is. How much did Sizzler have to pay for some 21st century Don Draper clone to come up with this snazzy twist of phrase? They also advertise “fresh cut tri-tip” by the way. If I cook fish or tri-tip and then cut it, it’s now “fresh cut”, right?

But there are just some things that drive me nuts. And this is one of them.

Now this is about as nonsensical and trite of a blogpost that could conceivably be written (although I’ve come across far worse examples). It kind of lends the truth to this poster, doesn’t it?

(from Despair.com)

Cheap Bastid's Cinnamon Roll Debacle

2011-02-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

It took the better part of an hour of mixing dough, mixing cinnamon and sugar, rolling dough into a “jelly roll” and baking to get the photogenic results of my cinnamon rolls.

And it only took one bite to come to the conclusion that something had gone fundamentally wrong. I’m still scratching my head over it but I think I’ve figured out what went wrong—for the next time.

If you’ve read any of my recent Cheap Bastid posts you’ll know that recently I went from baking biscuits to baking yeast risen pretzels. My most recent biscuit baking (Friday morning) was fantastic—everything worked and they were perfect. So I said to myself, “Self, there’s got to be a way to do cinnamon rolls with regular biscuit dough.”

Well, self was right. There are plenty of recipes and photos online about using ordinary baking powder biscuit dough to make cinnamon rolls. The techniques are by and large the same from recipe to recipe so I said to myself, “Self, let’s give it a try Sunday morning.”

It wasn’t that hard to do. The main thing was rolling out the dough, spreading some margarine down on the rolled dough and then covering it with a layer of cinnamon and brown sugar. They looked good. I even came up with a way of making my own powdered sugar in order to do the icing on top of the rolls.

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it. They looked good too. Looked good all slathered with cinnamon sugar. Looked good rolled up. Looked good in the pan going into the oven. And looked really good coming out of the oven.

Except for one thing.

They tasted crappy.

Now I’m sure that top foo-foo foodie chefs mess up often enough. They might even mess up spectacularly. I know I rarely make anything that I would consider to be a “perfect” dish. There’s always something I could do better. But this was a “crash and burn”. Let’s put it this way, I don’t think that cinnamon rolls are supposed to be crunchy.

So, what did I do wrong? Not much. I overbaked them. My mind was telling me golden brown when it should have been telling me “hint of color”. Golden brown is the color of cinnamon rolls that are fried like donuts. And by the time these got golden brown, they also got to the consistency of burned toast. You almost had to gnaw on them. So what I did wrong was baking them too long at too high a temperature. Easy enough.

So, I’ve got to try again. And I will. Maybe. Pretty soon. I think. Then I can write the recipe.

But the pictures turned out purty!

That's the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good, Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Cheap Bastid’s Foodie Tuesday—Soft Pretzels and Capt Ron

2011-02-14T19:54:00.000-08:00

Well, another Valentine’s Day is in the books. And when I put my mind to it, there are actually a lot more fantastic women in my life than I tend to think about day in and day out.

There’s my incredible wife Carolyn along with my daughter Susan and step-daughter Miss Meggie. Then there are my granddaughters, Raegan and Emma (MissChif and Spike) and their mom Katie. Oops and I almost forgot my mother-in-law, Mamma Stella. And then there’s my Mom, who just turned 80 and is still “take no prisoners feisty”. That’s a terrific line-up. I love ‘em all.

Not too long ago, after one of my mornings baking fresh baking powder and lard biscuits, Mrs. CB (my gorgeous wife) had a request. In that semi-sexy way that wives get from time to time she suggested that now that I was getting pretty good at biscuits that it would be even better if I tried soft pretzels. This being delivered with a bit of a “come hither” look and that flirty way guaranteeing that you’re going to do anything she suggests.

So I started to do a bit of research online (how did we get along before Google?). There’s lots of recipes out there and I kind of “hybrided” three of them together to come up with one that I thought had the best shot of succeeding given my limited talents and basic “cheap bastidliness”.

I also consulted Capt. Ron. Now Capt. Ron isn’t really a captain. He lives on a sailboat in Oceanside harbor and likes to refer to himself as Capt. Ron. So I indulge him. He’s a fount of information on baking having worked for 20 years as a commercial baker. He’s also my boss—he’s my sales manager at the car dealership where I work. But he knows his stuff. The first sample biscuit I took him he looked at it and said “pretty good first effort.” He took a bite and said “not enough fat and you worked the dough too much.” He’s good. So I consulted him—and got some pretty good advice. He even explained why the pretzels are boiled briefly before baking—it’s what let’s them come out of the oven with that “pretzelly” outside and chewing inside.

So, armed with all that information, I set out last Thursday to try my hand at making pretzels. Now, bear in mind that this is a recipe and the photos are the results of my first ever effort at making them. It actually wasn’t difficult but, like most other baking, it’s a matter of technique. I actually made pretzels that looked, smelled and tasted like pretzels. And next time, they’ll be even better because I made a couple of basic mistakes.

So here’s the recipe and directions along with some photos:

Cheap Bastid’s Soft Pretzels
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 2 ounces melted butter or margarine
• 1 cup warm water (hot tap water is fine)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 pkg active dry yeast
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp baking soda
• 4-6 cups water
• 1 beaten egg
• Kosher salt

Directions:
Combine water, sugar and salt in a bowl then sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow it to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam. Get out a good sized mixing bowl and put the flour in it. Then add the butter/margarine and pour in the yeast mixture. Mix all this together until it is well combined. Keep mixing until the dough starts to come together. Then reach in and start to knead it (if the dough is “tacky” you can remove to your floured pastry board, or to the floured counter and knead it—the dusting of flour will pull the “tackiness” out of the dough and let you work it. Knead for several minutes until the dough begins to get smooth and satiny.

Clean out the bowl, dry it and rub a thin skim of oil onto its surface (use vegetable oil or margarine on a paper towel or napkin). Put the dough in the bowl and cover it with a towel or plastic wrap for about 45 minutes.

Now is time to take out your baking sheets and put a thin skim of oil on it. Turn your oven on to pre-heat to 425. Put a good sized pot of water on the stove and turn the heat to medium-high. Add the baking soda. Bring to a rolling boil.

While the oven is pre-heating and the pan is coming to a boil, take out your dough and break it into 8 equal sized chunks. Roll each of these, by hand, into a “rope” about the thickness of your finger or a cigar and about 20 inches long. Then make a “horseshoe shape” with the dough rope. Take the ends and cross them. Then gently press the ends into the opposite side of the pretzel. Put them on the cookie sheet. (I stacked them on my pastry board. And they stuck together and I had to roll and shape the pretzels again. Don’t do that!).

Now, your baking soda water is bubbling merrily away. Take the raw pretzels over to the stove and using a slotted spatula or big slotted spoon dunk the pretzels in the water one at a time for no more than 30 seconds each. Keep the spatula under the pretzel and at the count of 15 Mississippi flip it over. At 30 Mississippi take it out and put it back on the sheet. Then do another one.

Lastly, brush a bit of the eggwash lightly on each pretzel and then put a light sprinkle of kosher salt on the top of each.

Pop the cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until a nice golden brown color. I should have used a cooling rack but didn’t. Next time I will. It’s good to get the pretzels off the hot cookie sheet right away.

Let your pretzels cool down and eat them while they’re still warm. Smear a bit of mustard on them. Pop a brewski or just bite into them plain. These are good.

Damn, these were tasty! Now these were my first ever effort. They weren’t the prettiest pretzels you ever saw but next time I’ll do a lot better. We bit into them and they tasted fantastic, just like a fat, warm, soft pretzel is supposed to taste like and smell.

I took a couple to work the next day and gave one to Capt. Ron. He took one bite. It was still chewy and pronounced—“Hmmm, you didn’t let your yeast rise enough.” I was surprised that he could diagnose the pretzels that quickly. “Well,” I replied, “that’s because the yeast was pretty much ‘dead’. The package expired last October and didn’t really foam up.” So, that’s two more lessons. First, make sure that you’ve got “live” yeast. And know that Capt. Ron will be able to figure out what you need to do differently almost instantly.

The Cheap Bastid Test: The main expense in making these pretzels is time. It’s going to take close to a couple of hours. We’re talking total expenses of maybe a dollar for a the flour and yeast, some sugar and an egg. Pretty reasonable.

What I liked best though was a couple of hours on a day off to putz around in the kitchen, concentrating on something different and relaxing with the effort to creates something cheap and tasty.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!

Cheap Bastid's Kindle My Fanny

2011-02-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

I love to read. I read a couple of newspapers every day. I constantly have at least one book that I’m working my way through. I read magazines (although I cancelled my subscription to Newsweek—they keep sending it). And I like to peruse my growing collection of cookbooks (Mrs. CB got me Vol. 1&2 of Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” books for Christmas).

I enjoy thrillers and mysteries; historical novels and what my daughter has always referred to as “bomb books”—war novels. Plus, I like biographies of historical figures—but rarely “biographies” of current politicians, although I read both of Obama’s books. Gerald Ford’s “Write it After I’m Gone” was really good. And I recently read a really good book about the U.S. Supreme Court called “The Nine”—kind of catching us up 30 years after Robert Woodward’s “The Brethren”.

By now, you might be wondering: “What’s his point?” Don’t worry I’ve got one. It has nothing to do with the sorry state of reading skills of our nation’s youngsters. It has to do with that other persona of mine—Cheap Bastid. It has to do with technology. Uh ohh, here it comes.

Yep, I’m taking a swipe at the “Kindle” and the “Nook”.

I can go and buy books at Barnes and Noble for about ten bucks (paperbacks of course—hardcover kills too many trees. Bullcrap, hardcovers cost too damn much for this Cheap Bastid). I can get them for a lot cheaper at Costco (assuming they have a title I want to read—seems like they’ve been skewing towards Beck and Palin and Bush43. Does that tell you something about their demographic?). And I can go to a neighborhood used bookstore and get lots of books for $1 each.

But that’s apparently not good enough anymore. I’m supposed to go out and spend $139 for a Kindle or Nook ($249 for color) so that I can read a book on a plastic, computerized machine. And…and…and I guess I’m supposed to keep on paying $9.99 per book for the privilege of loading it onto my nifty-keen plastic machine so that I can read it anywhere/anytime.

Am I missing something here? Does this seem odd? Why can’t I just keep on buying books at Barnes and Noble on Amazon at the used book store or even checking them out at the library without having to get some new damn gadget?

Am I some sort of anti-technology dinosaur? Is Guttenburg rolling over in his grave? Hell no, I just like reading and I’m a Cheap Bastid.

For the life of me I can’t see the sense in some $140 gadget. TV commercials are showing people sitting on lounge chairs at a pool comparing readers. What if I’m sitting by the pool reading and want to go jump in the pool? Odds are no one gives enough of a rat’s behind to swipe my paperback novel. But they might want to swipe my Nook or Kindle. So I’ve got a security issue.

And what if I’m on a plane? I’ve inadvertently left books behind on airplanes. No big deal, I can replace it for about ten bucks. What if I leave my Kindle behind? Good luck! I’m not getting it back and now I’m out a hundred and forty bucks, plus the ten bucks for the book.

And it just seems wrong to me to go into the bathroom to sit on the stool and “read” for 10 or 15 minutes, elbows on knees using Nook. I don’t know why but that’s just wrong. A magazine’s OK, a book’s OK but a gadget? Naw, not for this Cheap Bastid. It ain’t manly or something.

Lest I forget, now you can get your newspaper on a Kindle. Rupert Murdoch has even announced a new electronic only newspaper available only on i-Pad. Good for him. Give me my newspaper exactly the way the name implies—NEWS on Paper! So it’s awkward. It’s always been like that. I just can’t see reading the paperless electronic paper on a Kindle in one hand with either a cup of coffee or a cigarette in the other while I’m out on my balcony in the morning. If I drop the paper over the balcony I just go down and retrieve it, some what embarrassed. If I drop the Nook, it’s going to explode when it hits the pavement. And what if I “forget” and let the battery run down like what happens occasionally to my cell phone?

And, don’t try to tell me about the convenience of it. That all I have to do is go online and download the book to my Kindle or Nook. That would be all right if I were agoraphobic. Every once in a while you need to browse the offerings to see all those books and mingle with the people who are doing the same thing you are.

This is just freaking technology run amok. It’s another way to get ever deeper into our pockets. I saw on Google a listing for Kindle books. “Over 2 million titles available,” it said. “Thousands are free,” it concluded. Whoopdee-dingo-crap.

It seems to me that what’s been going on the last several years with computers and phones and HDTVs, etc. is just refinements to technology, cleverly marketed to get ever deeper into our pockets. And don’t get me started (yet) on cell phone programs and “bundled” cable service—that’s a different rant altogether.

I condescend to read some news online and to read blogposts, etc. But after a few hours of that it feels like my eyes are being sucked out of my head.

Just watch, I’ve ranted about this now and within 2 years will probably be like the rest of the world, dragged into the world of reading on a Kindle or Nook. I may end up doing it. But, I’m not going to like it. Everyone in my family knows that if they want to give me a gift I’ll use and appreciate, make it a giftcard to Barnes and Noble.

And there will be those who sanctimoniously point out to me the convenience of these devices. They’ll suggest that new technology is designed to improve our lives. Maybe. But I’m not convinced that this is anything other than the next thing out there to lighten our wallets without providing a tangible value. The value of the words and ideas are the same. The entertainment value is the same. It’s just that I’m going to end up paying more. And that doesn’t make sense to this old Cheap Bastid.

So, until I have to, I ain’t going to use something like a Kindle or Nook. The only “reader” I need is something with a cover and pages of paper with squiggles of ink on it that make up the words and ideas.

Cheap Bastid Green Bay Chili--The Real Cheesehead Deal

2011-02-02T11:11:00.000-08:00

In case anyone out there hasn’t noticed, this is “Super Bowl Week”. And while I normally couldn’t care less, I’m making an exception because the Packers are playing.

I lived 35 miles from Green Bay for 7 years in a city of 9,000 called Sturgeon Bay. Now, living in Northeast Wisconsin makes it obligatory to be a Packer fan. They’re “blue collar”. They’re the “home team”. Back in those days, the mid- to late 80’s, they were really lousy. Those were the Forrest Gregg, pre-Bret Favre days. Tickets at Lambeau were $17 and sometimes you could get into the green-painted, Quonset hut corrugated metal skinned stadium for a pittance. It was fun to go to the stadium on game day and see how cheaply you could buy a ticket—I once scored them for $4 apiece.

But you had to love “da Pack”. They were totally blue-collar. Last week’s playoff game against Chicago was a prime example. You always have 2 favorite teams living in Wisconsin—the Packers and whoever’s playing “da Bearz”. Now, I’m not much of an NFL fan—especially with my “hometeam” as the Chargers. But, in Wisconsin you don’t have to be an NFL fan—just as long as you’re a Packers fan. And that’s always been the case.

Now, Open Salon did a big deal chili recipe thing this last week. And that’s cool—“foodies” making a “foo-foo” version of chili. But chili is like Green Bay and the Packers. It’s proletarian. There’s more versions of chili than you can shake a stick at. The biggest ever chili debates are beans or no-beans and ground meat or chunk meat. Then there’s the how hot to make it debate. Chili implies chili peppers which implies spicy. But there’s a difference between spicy and hot.

There’s a Green Bay version of chili too. And it’s good. Now, I’m not going to go through a whole litany of ingredients and cooking times for chili. Instead what I’m going to do is let you use your favorite recipe and make just a few changes which convert it to “Green Bay Chili”. I’ve also heard it called “Canoe Paddle Chili” too but that’s for when you’re having a bunch of people over and you have to use a pot so big to make it that the only way to stir it is with a canoe paddle. It’s a hoot!

So, what differentiates “Green Bay Chili” from regular chili? It’s pretty simple.

• Make up a big ole pot of your favorite chili.
• Leave out the beans.
• Set up a “buffet” line with the pot of chili as the 2nd to last thing.
• The next to last thing would be a couple of bottles of hot-sauce, a shaker of cayenne, a shaker of chipotle or other hot spices.
• Cook up a pound or two of spaghetti (depending on how many are eating).
• Dice up a bowl of onions
• Drain 2-3 cans of kidney beans and put them in a bowl.
• Put out a bowl filled with shredded cheddar cheese (the only kind to serve in Wisconsin) and put that as the last thing.

That’s it. You have now made “Green Bay Chili”. It’s a great party dish and game day buffet. Use big bowls or even plates. You start with some spaghetti (optional) then add beans and onions—as much or little as you want. Then you smother it with the chili, toss in a bit more heat (as much or as little as you want) and finish it off with shredded cheese which turns the whole thing into gooey goodness.

And finally, a tub of beer and soft-drinks. Now you’ve got a Green Bay-style party. You can eat and slurp your way through this delicious buffet, then watch the second half. By the end of the game you’ll be belching and other things. It’s going to be a fun game and party.

Finally, the old Cheap Bastid gets to pull out his Packer apparel this weekend in honor of the occasion. Couple of problems though. It’s been a while since they’ve been in the Super Bowl. It’s been 19 years since I lived in Wisconsin. The stuff is getting just a bit ratty. The shirt is from their 1996 Super Bowl win. I’ll be wearing it and the rest of the stuff on Sunday. Here’s my “fashion” palate for Super Bowl Sunday:

Packer boxer shorts and hat

1996 Super Bowl XXXI ratty long-sleeved t-shirt

I'll be Mr. High Fashion Cheap Bastid on Sunday.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good, Eat Cheap, Be Grateful!

*first 3 photos from Google images. Last 2 from my camera

Cheap Bastid's Savory Salisbury Steak

2011-02-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

Remember mystery meat? Brown, rubbery, almost tasteless gunk sitting on the bottom of the main dish aluminum section of the “Hungryman” Swanson’s TV dinners you buy when you’re starved and want something which at least resembles meat but you don’t want to cook.

Or the stuff that found its way onto your school lunch tray with a heap of bad mashed potatoes on the side glopped with deep brown goo and a side of corn that was boiled to death by the denizens of the lunchroom kitchen. Both versions of the dish would typically feature bits of “pencil eraser”—cooked canned mushrooms which somehow have become rubbery.

Yep, that’s Salisbury Steak. It’s a venerable dish which, thanks to the TV dinner industry has been sorely abused. We’ve all had it. It fills our belly and satisfies a primal urge for beef but usually in a form that only technically qualifies as a meal.

I’ve eaten it as a “treat”—something to “reward” an evening of independence from kids and the duties of a household. I’ve eaten it when I didn’t want to cook but wanted something to fill me up—a default pretend feast of gargantuan proportions fresh from the freezer section of the grocery store.

Now, I have come up with a way to make it a “stick to your ribs celebration of flavor and comfort food.” And it’s good. Flavorful, savory, aromatic.

It’s not hard to make, but there are several steps and start to finish it takes about 2 hours. And sometimes good comfort food takes a bit of time to come together. It’s worth the wait and you’ll be rewarded with some terrific aromas while it’s cooking.

Cheap Bastid’s Salisbury Steak

• 1 ½ lbs. 85% ground beef
• 1 cup diced onion
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cup bread or cracker crumbs
• 2 cups sliced mushrooms
• ½ cup diced mushrooms
• 2 tbsp flour
• 16 oz beef or veal stock

Directions
First do all your prep. Dice the onions, clean and slice the mushrooms, dice the ½ cup of mushrooms. Prep the crumbs. Get out your eggs, flour and stock. Be ready to cook. Get out a medium mixing bowl for the meat mixture, a large sauté pan and a good size baking dish.

Put a large sauté pan on the stove over medium high heat and add a couple of tablespoons of oil or butter. Add ¾ of the diced onion and the minced garlic. Give it a stir to get going then add the ½ cup of diced mushrooms. Cook until onion is translucent. Remove from heat and scrape contents into the mixing bowl. (Don’t rinse or clean the pan yet). Give it about 5 minutes to cool back to room temperature.

When cool, add the meat then add the eggs and crumbs. (I used cracker crumbs because I didn’t have any bread crumbs and I like the slightly different flavor the cracker crumbs give). Mix all this up really well. (I used a blend of 12 oz. ground round, 6 oz. ground chuck and 2 oz. pork sausage.) Form the meat into patties about ½ inch thick and about 6 oz. each (just eyeball it).

Now, put the pan back on the stove, turn the heat to medium-high and add 2-3 tablespoons of oil. Put the patties down in the pan and brown on each side (it’ll take 2-3 minutes per side). Remove and put the patties in a single layer in a baking dish.

OK, so the meat is ready. Now on to the gravy. (See what I mean, this is just a little bit involved, but it’s worth it!).

Add a bit of oil/butter to the pan you used to sauté the onions and mushrooms and brown the meat (about 3 tablespoons total). Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of flour into the oil and whisk it into a roux. This is a “quick roux” and will only take a couple of minutes to come together. Add the stock about a third at a time and keep whisking/stirring. Make sure there are no lumps. Add the rest of the mushrooms and simmer for 20-30 minutes until it thickens.

Preheat the oven to 375. This is when the kitchen is going to really start smelling great with the richness of the beef stock and the earthiness of the mushrooms.

Pour the gravy over the browned meat patties. Cover the dish with foil and put into the oven for about 45 minutes.

Now is the time to make a pot of mashed potatoes and start anticipating the goodness that’s going to come out of the oven.

When done, serve it up. Slather some of the gravy over the mashed potatoes and a bit more on the meat and enjoy.

The meat will me moist and flavorful. The aroma will make your mouth water in anticipation. This ain’t no TV dinner! It’s the real deal. But you can eat it in front of the TV anyway.

The Cheap Bastid Test: This isn’t the cheapest recipe Cheap Bastid has ever done but it’s reasonable. The total for the meat (about 1 ½ lbs) was $3. The stock cost $1 for a 32 oz. box plus I used stock ice cubes that I make myself and freeze. There’s maybe $.50 worth of onion. The priciest item is the mushrooms which were $2.79/lb. and I used about ¾ lb. or $2.10 worth. So the total for this meal for 3 (at our home anyway) was $6.60 but let’s call it $7.00 with stuff like garlic and crumbs added. For 3 servings, that comes to $2.33 each—less than a Hungry Man TV dinner and a lot better. The downside is it takes 2 hours plus to make—but it’s worth it.

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good, Eat Cheap, Be Grateful!

If you liked this and want to read more Cheap Bastid recipes click this link to my new Cheap Bastid Cooks website: http://www.cheap-bastid-cooks.com/

Cougars at Costco

2011-01-21T17:35:00.000-08:00

Costco is a place where it helps to go early in the day. It opens at 10 a.m. and it’s usually best to be there just about 5 after. Today was my day off and Carolyn and I decided to head on out to Costco to pick up some stuff and use a couple of coupons.

All the close in parking spots were taken and no one was leaving because it was only ten twenty and no one was coming out of the store shoving overflowing carts yet. But that’s OK. Sometimes you have to be patient.

One of our favorite meat items is boneless loin chops which just happen to have a $4.50 off coupon. That gets the price pretty reasonable so we were going to pick up a package. We moseyed through the store stopping at the display of toddler Easter dresses—just the thing to get a Grandpa’s attention and then we made a stop at the book section. Every once in a while I score a new paperback at the $5.59 Costco price instead of the $9.99 Barnes and Noble price.

We wandered toward the back. We needed eggs today and wanted to score the chops—especially since I had already promised a dinner of grilled chops in an orange/chipotle sauce with sweet potatoes. We got to the meat counter. I took a peak at the sirloin pork chops at $1.99 a pound. A lady stepped up next to me also looking at the sirloin chops.

I heard Carolyn call to me that she had found the loin chops and I turned to go to that cooler case and started rummaging through the plastic wrapped packages looking for just the perfect one. A few seconds went by and I heard, “Excuse me.” It was the lady who had been looking at the sirloin chops. She was holding the coupon in her hand. “Is this the right meat?” she asked.

“Sure it is,” I replied.

“Oh,” she said, “I was wondering because of the label.” She pointed to the Armour logo on the coupon.

“These are the right ones,” I repeated. “They’re really good. I’d rather have one of these than a steak.”

Another lady had stepped up to the other side of me. I was looking around a bit to try to spot my wife who had moved out of the way.

“You’re so right,” she quipped, trying to catch my eye, letting her arm brush against mine. “I used to fix these for my late husband all the time.”

By now there’s a third lady sticking her head and arm over my right shoulder brushing up against me ostensibly to get at the chops.

I looked side to side and slowly started to extricate myself from the now crowded case of loin chops. It wasn’t until I was back to my wife, who was laughing that I found out how oblivious I still am even at the advanced age of 59. It appears as though these ladies were more interested in my loins than in the chops.

“Didn’t you notice what those women were up to,” she asked.

“Well, no,” was my typically dunderheaded response.

“They were hitting on you like a bunch of groupies,” she informed me.

“Nawwww,” said I, ever Mr. Gallant, always the naïve innocent.

“Oh yeah. She knew about those chops and followed you over there,” Carolyn retorted.

“You mean they’re Cougars,” I asked? “And they think I’m a ‘Cub’?” I mentally and physically shivered and started to skulk out of the meat section, carrying my package of chops.

“But, they’re close to my Mom’s age,” I commented as we walked towards the eggs. I stopped to score a mini sample of pizza and looked back over my shoulder to see if any of my “groupies” were still around and following. A blob of sausage and sauce tumbled from the slice and onto my shirt. How’s that for debonair?

Hey, maybe Costco should hire me to do Cheap Bastid cooking demonstrations in their meat department? It could be Cheap Bastid cooking for one—or two if you get lucky.

But we managed to wend our way through the checkout, back to the car and head home. Wow, no one’s tried to pick me up in a long, long time. I mean, look at my picture. I’m nearly 60. I’m bald. I have gray hair and a white beard.

But apparently I’ve still got “it”. Whatever “it” is.

Baseball is a Simple Game...But it's too damned Expensive

2011-01-19T11:07:00.000-08:00

I think Crash Davis would agree with me. Baseball is, indeed, a simple game.

“You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose; sometimes it rains.”

I was all set to write something humorous about baseball and kids and the equipment you need to play the game. But everything came out sarcastic, whiney and trite. So what I thought I’d do is just revert to umbrage.

Last spring a high school pitcher in Northern California got hit in the head by a batted ball coming off the barrel of an exotic material bat designed to create a “trampoline effect” of acceleration. He nearly died. A bill was introduced in the legislature to ban all but wooden bats until the California Interscholastic Federation agreed to a rule requiring non-wood bats to meet the “Batted Ball Coefficient of Restitution” standard which measures the “liveliness of the ball off the bat”.

New bats that meet these specifications cost between $200 and $400. Each. Teams are trying to figure out how to afford this equipment.

An article last week in the San Diego Union Tribune discussed the new bat rules

One coach at an upscale high school here in the San Diego area said, “obviously it was passed for safety reasons…but the new bats are so bad that it’s going to take away from the game of baseball at our level. There’s just no pop. The offense of high school baseball is going to totally change.”

Awwwww, gee that’s just too bad. What do you mean, coach? That you’re going to have to teach your kids how to bunt and how to put the ball in play and make contact? How to hit and run? How to be aggressive and stretch a single into a double? You mean—let the kids have the enjoyment of baseball beyond just hitting “dingers” or “taters”?

Another coach said, “It’s going to allow for a better game. It’s going to bring a little more balance back into the game instead of just everybody sitting back and trying to hit a three-run jack.”

And, a player for a high school nearby said “I don’t think it’s that bad. The only main difference is the ball really doesn’t get into that second gear and just take off,” he said. “It’s just going to be more true baseball. People are going to have to play the game right.”

These 2 seem to have the right attitude. For years, high school and college players who have realistic expectations of playing baseball professionally have played in summer leagues to learn how to hit with wooden bats. Their whole approach to batting has to change. They can no longer hit a double off the handle of the bat. The ball doesn’t leap off the bat and go into orbit. Their mechanics have to improve dramatically and for many, so does their approach to hitting.

OK, so I’m jealous. In 5 years of playing American Legion and some college ball I hit all of 1 home run. It felt good. But not as good as all the at bats I had where I got a single or double, ran the bases aggressively and made something happen. That was a lot more fun.

But what’s bugging my butt the most is that baseball is now an incredibly expensive sport. It’s rarely, if ever played just for fun. You seldom see kids out throwing the ball around (or kids and dads) or out playing some version of baseball just for fun and something to do on a sunny day.

High school players don’t need $400 bats and Little Leaguers don’t need $200 bats.

That’s the joy of the game. Yeah, I played organized ball from the time I was about 9 years old. But I played a lot more baseball in the backyard and on vacant lots as a kid than I ever did at the practice field or Little League field.

You can still get a wooden baseball bat for $25. And yeah, you can get them for over $100 too. Take the game back to wood. Otherwise it’s all about the money. The only good thing about the “BBCOR” bats is that the “ping” sound is replaced by something closer to the old fashioned “crack” of a wooden bat. If schools and coaches and leagues are concerned about breaking wooden bats, well then teach the kids to bat properly and breakage will be diminished. In my American Legion days, I saved my money and spend about $10 to buy a pro-model Louisville Slugger, Nellie Fox bat and it never broke. I took care of it. And by the way, I was a .300 plus hitter.

This sport is pricing itself out of the range for way too many kids—just like football has done. It’s gotten away from being a game and is purely an “organized” sport anymore.

And that’s too bad. Because baseball is a simple game…

quotes from San Diego Union Tribune article 1/10/2011 by P.K. Daniel

The Cheap Bastid Way--My "Philosophy" on Food and Cooking

2011-01-17T16:10:00.000-08:00

I have Open Salon to thank for Cheap Bastid. Shortly after joining the site I discovered this thing called “Foodie Tuesday”. So I posted a couple of recipes. Now, my recipes aren’t fancy. They are neither as complex nor elegant nor photogenic as many of the “Foodie Tuesday” posts. But I liked them. I think my first one was titled “They Call Me Mr. Gravy”.

At the time I was unemployed and we were living out of our meager savings. So, frugality was a necessity. My wife and I shared some laughs over this. We’d see recipes by “foodies” and talk about how it wasn’t really something that someone on a limited budget could or would do. My own cooking was changing to reflect our more modest lifestyle. And as it changed Carolyn would tease me for being such a “Cheap Bastid”—of course oftentimes the teasing would come while eating something delicious, but inexpensive.

My first “inspiration” was from “Sam the Cooking Guy”, Sam Zien here in San Diego. He would take limited ordinary ingredients and make quick and tasty dishes. But I had 2 differences with Sam—one, he would use too many “convenience” ingredients such as pre-cooked bacon that raised the cost of the meal and two, he became all about his “quirky” personality and less about the food.

So with her encouragement, I started to think and write as the “Cheap Bastid”. And what I discovered that it was fun to adapt dishes for absolute frugality. It was fun to resurrect some of the meals from my childhood and from when I was cooking for my kids every evening and show how they could be used to stretch a dollar into gossamer threads of taffy.

Here’s a few rules or “philosophical” tidbits that I follow as the “Cheap Bastid”:

• It’s a lot cheaper to cook and eat at home than to go out, drive thru or get carry-out.

• It’s a lot healthier to cook and eat at home than to go out, drive thru or get carry-out.

• Eating at home is all about the food AND all about family

• 15 minutes of planning before shopping will save you a lot of money. Make a list. Stick to it.

• Buy fresh produce and use it!

• When stuff is on sale—stock up!

• Buy your meat in quantity and then “break it down” into smaller packages for the freezer.

• Use your slow cooker and your grill. Make a big enough roast for a couple of different meals—not just reheated dried-out left-overs.

• Have a pantry well stocked with “staples” and a spice cupboard well stocked with spices.

• Don’t buy pre-mixed spice blends. They’re too pricey and have way too much salt.

• Get creative. Research various recipes and come up with your own versions.

• Teach yourself to do some baking. Cake mixes are cheap but pre-made pie crust and filling is expensive. Homemade bisquits are cheap and good.

• Prep first, then cook. Always! That’s what Tom Colicchio calls “mis en place”.

• A corollary to prep first, then cook is—clean as you go! Don’t turn the kitchen into a disaster area.

• Food is for eating not for looking at so you don’t have to make it “foo-foo” pretty. “Foo-foo” foodie food isn’t supposed to go up onto the side of the plate. Cheap Bastid food does.

• Be like “Gunny Highway”—Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

• Being frugal—a Cheap Bastid—becomes addictive and fun! Or is that obsessive? I’m not sure.

• And, last but not least—don’t forget the most important ingredient of all—a little pinch of love.

That’s it. This can help you save money and enjoy cooking as much as you enjoy eating. Now, some of you will be able to be like “the Neeley’s” and make cooking together a seductive, sensuous adventure. Carolyn and I have a hard time sharing the kitchen together—we’re both too territorial. We’ll pitch-in if the other needs an extra hand for something but then we kind of back out and cede the territory back to the one in the kitchen. It keeps the peace.

And of course there’s one last thing to say:

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful.

The Cheap Bastid Stripe--How the City Out-Cheap Bastided Me

2011-01-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

OK, it’s been a year or so since the City of Vista, California did this service “just for me”. You see, I have my very own stripe. It was given to me by the City.

Of course, I asked the City for a street light at the corner of Citrus and Eucalyptus a couple of blocks South of where I live. That intersection is dark at night. Pitch dark. And dangerous. It’s especially dangerous if you’re heading east and turning onto Citrus. The right hand turn is downhill and blind. It’s blind during the day and you have to know what you’re doing and it’s worse at night when the fall away is pitch black—even if you know that it’s there.

So I sent a letter to the City—the Mayor and City Manager specifically. I got an e-mail from the City’s traffic engineer. In it I was informed that there was no budget for a streetlight but that if I wanted to I could have one installed by SDG&E (San Diego Gas and Electric) and pay for it myself. “Say, what?” I don’t have that kind of money and I was referring to a matter of public safety.

So I sent that message back to the guy. His response was that they would paint a stripe along the side of the street so that it would be more visible in the dark. Now, I didn’t think that this was much of a solution. But it was better than nothing. And about 3 weeks later, the stripe magically appeared. It’s still dangerous. Eucalyptus street is still built up with a minimum of 6 inches of asphalt higher than the gravel shoulder with full grown 3 foot diameter eucalyptus trees within 3 or 4 feet of the pavement but, hey there’s a budget crisis! The City just finished a new $55 million Taj Mahal city hall 2 blocks from that spot and it’s being paid for by a half cent sales tax over the next 40 years that’s not generating enough revenue to retire the bonds. Go figure.

But, I’ve got a stripe. Perhaps it’s just as good because now Vista is proposing turning off half the streetlights in the city in order to save money. Too bad they didn’t spring for “reflective paint” on my stripe.

And, as further proof that no good deed goes unpunished, I also managed to get the fences repaired at the charter junior high school that’s right next to “my” stripe. The junior high has got a huge field of about 4 or 5 acres that has a football field and track plus a baseball field and practice back stop.

It’s also home to both the city’s “Pop Warner” football league and to a local “Babe Ruth” baseball league. That’s good. Both of those organizations pay money to the school district for use of the property.

Now, before I go any further, let me just say that my goal wasn’t for the fence to be fixed. Rather it was that the gates be left open.

Weeknight evenings and weekends would often find people walking or running around the track. Mothers would push strollers in a gaggle, exercising and visiting. Joggers of all ages, genders and ethnicities would run. And, especially on weekends, there would typically be a constant “pick-up” soccer game going on. Young Hispanic men from our neighborhood would be running, kicking and enjoying themselves.

Never, ever did we ever see any tempers flare or gang activity or anything else. Just people enjoying themselves, the outdoors and being active.

We used to go down to the track fairly often for a different kind of workout. Carolyn and I would start out together running a warm-up half mile or mile then she would keep on chugging while I would do a series of “ladders”—pushing my heartrate from resting, to aerobic to anaerobic, recuperating and then starting over again.

Then, we started to encounter the gates being locked more often. One Sunday we were looking for an open gate and came across a young guy just on the other side of the fence. “How’d you get in,” we asked? “We crawled under the fence over there,” the young man pointed. We went to where he pointed and proceeded to pull the bottom of the fence up from where it was curled and leaving a gap and easily got through the fence in a crouch.

Later we discovered a 3 foot tall hole in the fence which was even easier to use although it required climbing over another shorter fence. But it was actually easier.

This was also kind of tough for some of the little kids, strollers and Moms who would come down to the field to enjoy being outdoors.

So, “good citizen” that I am, I sent an e-mail to the Vista Superintendent of Schools requesting that they find a way to leave the fields accessible and that this was a terrific asset to the community.

My response came from the Assistant Superintendent for Facilities (quite a title, huh?) who told me in true PHD’ese that there were concerns about vandalism and gang activity and trespassing and littering.

Our observation had been that there was never any graffiti sprayed on buildings, etc. We never saw any gang colors or anything remotely close. But this is a level of government and they’ve got their bureaucracy.

To make a long story short(er), the school district sent maintenance people on a jaunt around the fence of the school to anchor the bottom of the cyclone fencing firmly to the ground and they found the hole in the fence (which had been there for at least 6 months) and fixed that.

The end result, my attempt to do something good resulted in a totally abandoned field of dreams except for those who “pay to play”. Too bad. I always thought that recreation was supposed to be free. I always thought that large fields like this were meant to be enjoyed by all, and respected by all. I always thought that in a community where there is a lot of poverty, where there is a plurality of Hispanic citizens, where there is crime, etc. that having a field like this available for casual use was a good thing.

Now the football field, track and ball field look lonely and forlorn. Nobody’s there using it for the joy of use. Pop Warner and Babe Ruth are just too “organized” and too expensive for most of the people in this neighborhood.

It’s a shame. One of these days though…I’m going to win the lottery and buy the fields then tear down the fence and open it up to everybody—not just those who pay. I have been sorely tempted to sneak to the fence some dark night with wire cutters and open it up but have this fantasy of calling my wife from jail late at night to come bail me out.

I thought I was doing a “good deed” and ended up getting fenced out.

Cheap Bastid's BATV and Food Porn

2011-01-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

So, I went out and did it. After 4 or more years of dutifully checking each week’s ad flyers from Best Buy, Fry’s, Target, WalMart, etc. I finally got myself a BATV for Christmas.

In case you’re wondering, BATV is a Big Ass TV, also known as an HDTV. I like BATV better for my 42”, 1080p, 120hz Sanyo now occupying most of the living room wall space. Over the years I have patiently waited for the prices to drop. They really haven’t. The only thing that has changed is the technology. There have been multiple incarnations of these TVs and each time it seems as though the price is ready to plummet, new technology comes out. Regular old HDTV to plasma to LCD to LED, etc. Mine is LCD. They’ve never gotten to my magic, secret, inner price point where I can both afford and am willing to pay the price though.

Of course, it doesn’t help that my expectations steadily progressed from 32 inch to 37 inch to 40 inch. Maybe that has something to do with my eyesight but I’m not sure. All these past 6 years I have been content with my 20” set that weighs a ton and requires a 6 foot “wingspread” to be able to pick up that I bought at Target on sale for $88 in 2004.

And in true Cheap Bastid fashion. I managed to get this 42” behemoth at a price that might charitably be considered the same price as the 20-incher plus reasonable inflation. Total out of pocket: $120.

You see, I sell cars for a “living”. (Living is in quotes because it’s not much of one either economically or in the sense that you’re making the world a better place for peace, love and rock and roll). The first of December, our dealer principal (that’s the guy whose name is over the door and who owns the place) announced at our monthly sales meeting that we would be doing a “Letter to Santa” contest. Fill out the letter at the bottom with a Santa gift that we wanted up to $500 and if we sold 8 cars by the 21st of the month we would get that prize. I asked for a 40”, 1080 p, 120hz HDTV.

The good news is that I was both motivated and just a bit lucky and put out a total of 9 ½ units in that time period. So, now I’ve got this BATV for only $120 out of pocket (it cost more than $500)—although it’ll be more than that because Uncle Sam and the State of California is going to hit me up for income tax.

I sat down to watch my new BATV after getting it set up and quickly popped it over to FoodTV. WOW! First thing I saw was a close up of food. Delectable, delicious food in 42” of hi-def glory. Food porn! It was glorious and had me drooling. Suddenly I was starving. I kept watching as more food was shown in a sauté pan juices flowing, caramelizing, steam wafting making me want to leap into the fridge and satiate my craving for protein.

And then the camera cut to a close up of Giada Delaurentis. Her enormous head filled the drive-in movie sized screen—rather like when your parents first took you to see “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman”. I don’t watch Giada because it just seems to me that she works too hard to make sure that her meager, push-up bra enhanced cleavage is the star of the show rather than the food. But my BATV put these attributes into their proper comedic perspective.

So now, I’m going to go over and watch the masters of food porn—the Neeley’s—as they wilt collard greens and turn it into an true exercise in epicurean erotica.

Christmas--It's All About the Music

2010-12-22T11:24:00.000-08:00

It’s still a couple of days before Christmas and like many others, I am by now extremely weary of the incessant clang of that which passes for “Christmas music” assaulting my ears. Each year a local radio station goes to 24/7 Christmas music just after Thanksgiving.

Sometimes I think if I have to hear Andy Williams or Burl Ives one more time that I’ll go ballistic. I can take about 2 hours of it at work—unfortunately a lot of days at work are 12 hours long.

But, to me, Christmas has always been, more than anything else, about music. Over the years I have performed Christmas music in school choirs, church choirs, in informal groups, in quartets, solo in my car along to favorite recordings and sometimes out of either loneliness or a desire to express what’s hiding deep inside yearning to come out.

I’ve sung fun, silly Christmas songs to my children. I’ve listened as a child to my Dad singing snatches of his favorite Gene Autry Christmas music. I’ve sung solos before church congregations as part of a Cantata. I’ve sung as a member of a congregation in a boisterous basso or a haunting tenor depending on the carol being sung.

It’s hard to describe in writing how the music has moved me and been part of me over the decades of my life. Twenty years ago, I was working in the Detroit area as a business executive. My family had yet to join me and still lived in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Our office closed as usual on Christmas Eve and I was driving the 500 miles back to Wisconsin to spend Christmas and New Years with my family. I had done the drive previously and knew to go to my apartment after work, take a nap and start the drive about 9 or 10 p.m. and drive through the night. That way I would miss the traffic of both Detroit and Chicago.

It was about 1 a.m. and I was driving across the short stretch of Indiana that leads into the southern portion of Chicago. It seemed as though mine was the only vehicle on the interstate highway—there weren’t even any semis rolling along.

The radio was on and playing Christmas music. The next selection came up. “For Unto Us A Child Is Born” from Handel’s “Messiah”. This is my absolute favorite piece of music from the “Messiah”—especially at Christmas. The purity of the opening phrase from the Sopranos always moves me. Done well, it’s a sound like crystal.

I slowed my car. Then I pulled over onto the shoulder. I cranked up the stereo as loud as it would go. The night was pitch dark out in the Indiana countryside—glowing with stars. I got out of the car and stood on the shoulder, the radio blaring and I sang. I sang from my heart and soul. Better than the many times that I had performed this piece of music from a church choir loft. I was amazed that I remembered the bass part without the benefit of the sheet music and I let my voice soar tears streaming down my face.

When it was over, I got back in my car and finished my drive arriving home at about 7 a.m. to a house filled with Christmas and children and love.

I miss singing at Christmas. Interesting but a couple of years ago, I happened across a CD that refreshed and made Christmas music new again. It’s the Bare Naked Ladies Christmas album. Here’s a song from it.

I guess as long as we have the music in our hearts, we'll have Christmas.

Cheap Bastids Ultimate Triumph

2010-12-15T07:07:00.000-08:00

I can’t take all the credit for this. I had lots of help from Mrs. CB (interesting that just happens to be her real initials too). But, I have out done myself. I have set the bar to new heights of “cheap bastidliness”. And it was glorious.

We just managed to “score” 4 London Broils, 6 chicken breasts, 3 pounds of bacon and 2 pounds of sausage. For a total of $1.80 at Albertsons. That’s about $87 worth of meat at “full retail”.

So how’d we do it? Well, first and foremost, Mrs. CB is at least as frugal as I am. OK, she makes me look like a “big spender” especially when it comes to Christmas. So, not too long ago she came across a “special” at Albertson’s. “Spend $100 on Gift Cards and get a $20 discount coupon.” (With exclusions for booze and cigs and deli, of course). That’s 20% “off” the price of the Gift Cards for those of you doing the math. Well, we went to Albertson’s for the Gift Cards on our list—and spent $200 which was a big, big chunk of our Christmas giving because kids and kids-in-law and grandkids, mothers, mothers-in-law and brothers would rather have a Gift Card.

And that's pretty good because I hate Gift Cards. Know why? Because you have to pay the full price. I like giving $50 gifts that I buy for $30 or even less. But a $50 Gift Card costs $50. The damn stores want you to do that! But, this was essentially 20% off the cost of the Gift Card (OK, so it was a bonus, but we go

t $20 worth of stuff for free and we managed to leverage it even better than that!).

So now we’ve got 2 coupons from Albertson’s for $20 each. Mrs. CB went out shopping with her Mom today and scored 2 London Broils (bottom round) and a couple of packages of chicken breasts which she had Mama Stella take home with her. Total “out-of-pocket” was 60 cents.

So we just made a “run” to Albertson’s for stuff for ourselves. Now normally we don’t shop at Albertsons. Why? It’s just too damned expensive. And some of their specials are a rip-off. Here’s a “case in point”. They had a 2 for 1 special on Tri-Tip. Hey that’s pretty good. Except for one thing. It was marked at $5 a pound for the “select”. The “choice” was $6 a pound. I only buy it when it’s on special at my usual grocery store (Stater Bros.) for $1.99 a pound. So, the per pound price was marked up but it was buy-one/get-one free. Naw, you’re paying for both of them—which means you’re getting hosed.

So we did just a bit of planning. Their thick sliced, smoked bacon was $2.99 a pound which is about half a buck off. And their London Broil was $1.99. Cool. I want a couple of chunks—one for Swiss Steak and one for Chinese Steak and bottom round will work just fine, especially for the braising in Swiss Steak and as for Chinese Steak, I’m going to pound the crap out of it anyway.

And then I picked up a couple of pounds of bulk “country sausage” which was $1.99 a pound—a buck less than at Staters. This I’ll use to make sausage patties to go with homemade biscuits or to augment with a bit of fennel and red chili flakes and make pork “burgers”.

So that’s it. The second trip cost of $1.20 out of pocket. And we’ll get a minimum of 7 meals out of it.

Why am I writing about this. First to brag. Second to say, if you put just a bit of planning into meals and the food you buy you can save money. This was a case in the extreme. But, it was sure a lot of fun going through the checkout line and seeing the look on the cashier’s face.

Well, maybe that’s because, when she said $1.20 I said something like, “What? That’s not right, it should be less than that.” Leave it to a Cheap Bastid to not be satisfied with 98% off! But I apologized for not seeing the “computer” take the discounts. Hey, I’m not Scrooge, I’m Cheap Bastid!