Did you see the news recently about Wendy’s adding “surge pricing” also called “dynamic pricing” to their menus? It’s an experiment they may start next year.
I can understand if prices go down at quiet times of the day, but will they go up, too? You know that once Wendy’s starts this and then the other food places will follow, and the what’s next – supermarkets? movie theaters? Mass transit?
I know Uber and other car services do this. I’ve actually seen people at the airport keep refreshing their phones in order to get better pricing, which seems to change minute by minute. I’ve never tried that, I just want to get in the car and get to my destination, but I guess if I remember, I may try it on my next Uber trip, but of course the price can go up, so it might be better to just leave well enough alone.
But I’m imagining the menus at Wendy’s changing every few minutes depending on the store traffic. And what about the drive thru – once you are at the window, that’s it, you can’t just sit there and hope for better pricing in the next minute or two. It might make lunch cheaper to eat after lunch time. It could change the whole concept of our day, instead of noon lunch, we might have lunch at 3 pm.
Anyway, it makes for a good cartoon.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I eat an avocado daily. Sometimes the whole thing, sometimes a sliver in a salad or sandwich or something.
One of my friends said that I’m going to turn green from eating all those avocados. That’s where I got the idea for this cartoon.
One of my neighbors has avocado groves, so sometimes he gives me fresh avocados. He always punctuates all of his texts with three avocado emojis.
I eat a lot of things daily – extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), cinnamon, green tea, apple cider vinegar, chia seeds, flax seed, etc. I’m not sure how I fit it all in, but I add a little to my food during the day. When I travel, I don’t have all this stuff – only at home.
When I have the avocado at home, I slice it open, remove the pit and then sprinkle sea salt, black pepper, oregano and EVOO, and I eat it with a spoon.
The green face made me think of this guy who used to have a blue face, Paul Karason. His face was blue due to taking colloidal silver, for medical reasons.
He passed away in 2013, but I remember seeing him on the streets of NYC one time. I think it was on Park Avenue, near Union Square. I was walking downtown and he passed me by. His hue was not really that noticeable unless you looked right at him. What I mean is it wasn’t neon or glowing.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I was at Whole Foods the other day getting lunch at the hot bar. I was at the mixed veggies and there were string beans next to them. In this picture you can see two sets of tongs, but when I was getting the food, only the mixed veggies had the tongs, so I used that for both – I took mixed veggies and some string beans.
Well, a lady who worked there started yelling at me – “Sir! Don’t do that with the tongs, you are causing cross contamination!” And she gave me a second set of tongs.
I was shocked. Not because she yelled at me, but because she spoke English. You see, every time I’ve have a question or complaint in the past they would tell me they don’t speak English and they would quickly walk away. That day they spoke English!
I didn’t say anything to her, but I was thinking the cross contamination comes from all the customers’ hands all over the tongs, and all the people breathing and sneezing all over the food. Not from tongs going from string beans to mixed veggies, which by the way, had string beans in with them. I’m not sure why I was taking them from another bin, I think I was probably taking the shallots that were in with the one batch of string beans.
When I have complained in the past, it was about the empty bins at the height of lunch. It’s not uncommon for 50% of the bins to be empty, you can see that by this one photo below that was taken about 12:30 pm one day. And the bins there have no variety anymore. Nothing new. Same old, same old. It’s like they are trying to save money at the customers’ expense.
The rest of the staff is always nice. I just notice the people with the hot food and salads are moody. I guess they get complaints every day. I only took that photo below with the empty bins because there were a lot of people complaining – not so much to the staff but to each other and just saying things in the air. I mean, you come for lunch and that’s what you are greeted with. And it’s like this almost every time I stop by.
Whole Foods has been going down hill for a couple of years now. There’s a new Sprouts opening in my neighborhood next month. I don’t think I’ll be going back to Whole Foods once Sprouts opens.
Empty food bins at lunchtime at Whole Foods. Almost a daily occurrence.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
Today’s cartoon is about Pumpkin Spice Latte. It’s just August 9, but already Pumpkin Spice Latte is on the menu at many coffee and other places, it’s all over the news. I guess apple cider doughnuts and apple cider doughnuts are out, now, too. It all reminds me of the Hudson Valley where we go pumpkin picking in October and have these things.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever tried Pumpkin Spice anything, I probably did, but it doesn’t seem to be something I would like.
I eat pumpkin seeds almost daily and I love pumpkin pie, it’s second to my favorite, Cherry Pie, but Pumpkin Spice things don’t really have pumpkin in it, I’m told, but it’s all about the spices – fall spices, my favorite season (and seasonings).
Ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves are part of the mix in Pumpkin Spice.I put cinnamon in my coffee daily and I try to use fresh ginger or powdered ginger in my food.
Maybe I’ll give it a try soon, but still, it seems like we are rushing autumn, but then again, in autumn, usually in early September, we start seeing Christmas commercials on tv, and I haven’t been to Home Depot or Target lately, but I’m betting Christmas decorations maybe up already – not sure – but just a guess.
For years I was in the newspaper and publishing business and we would be doing a lot of Christmas stuff starting in summer and early fall. By the time Christmas actually came, we had experienced it already for that year, so we basically had two. Same with other holidays – always two – the early publication material and the actual holiday.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
Let me start by saying I don’t even boil water. I can, of course, but I don’t. Except to make tea. But I do love watching cooking shows. I guess it’s the same as DYI home shows, I don’t plan on renovating any time soon, or house hunting, yet I enjoy these shows, too. I find them relaxing. There’s not much thinking involved. Although I guess if you’re following the recipes, there is thinking. But since I’m not following the recipes, I don’t have to think.
Right now I have four favorite tv cooks/chefs – Ina Garten, Christina Pirello, Rory O’connell and Mary Ann Esposito.
Ina has her regular cooking show, Barefoot Contessa and her Be My Guest with Ina Garten, which I love. It’s a show where she has a famous person come to her East Hampton home and she interviews them and cooks with them. I found this show while on a plane.
The first half hour is a sit down interview where they sit at Ina’s kitchen table and talk. The best part, I think. The second half is them in the kitchen cooking and chatting, but I prefer the first part where you learn a lot about people and how they got their starts, their philosophies, etc. But now the Food Network screwed up the whole thing by having only the half hour cooking segment, and for the whole hour, you have to subscribe to a streaming service. So you now have to pay for the best part.
I read a reader’s comment somewhere that says the celebs are bubbleheads and this person who left the comment didn’t care what these “bubbleheads” had to say. He felt the cooking segment was the best part, but I feel the opposite and I don’t find Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, Marcus Samuelsson, Nathan Lane and Julianna Margulies, bubbleheads, quite the opposite. They all have very interesting stories about their lives and how they got to where they are now in life.
And one more show I like, which is sort of a travel/cooking show is Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy show on CNN. It’s excellent and knowing that Stanley grew up in Calabria, Italy, makes it more interesting. The first street I lived on as an adult was Calabria (in Coral Gables, FL), so it comes full circle in a way.
Anyway, on with my favorite cooks – Christina Pirello, hosts Christina Cooks, a half hour cooking show, where she prepares what she calls Macroterranean food. – it’s vegan Italian/Mediterranean food. No meat, no butter, sugar, etc. All natural. I mostly love her personality, she reminds me of so many people I know from the Northeast – Staten Island, New Jersey, etc. Christina is based in Philadelphia.
One thing we disagree with is that she calls Italian sauce “gravy” but we always grew up with it being called “sauce,” and she insists it’s her way, but I disagree. How many times did my mother call me up and say, “I’m making sauce tonight, you wanna come over?” By sauce she meant pasta, meatballs, whatever was made with the sauce (not gravy). Gravy is brown stuff you use on meats!
It’s funny because at Christmas, one of my nieces, a vegan, made some sort of pasta that I loved. I said to her, it’s so light, the cheese not so overpowering. She said it was vegan. I said, “Oh right, I know of this Italian cook (Christina) who uses white miso instead of parmigiana cheese and it tastes the same, only lighter.” And my niece told me that that’s where she got the recipe – from Christina and it was white miso instead of cheese in this dish!
Rory likes to use a lot of wild greens and flowers in his dishes.
Next up, Rory O’Connell. He has a half hour cooking show, How to Cook Well from County Cork farmhouse, in Ireland. He has a thick Irish accent and I love to listen to him talk. He uses such great expressions, things we wouldn’t say in the U.S.
Rory uses a lot of plants and flowers in his cooking. He sometimes goes overboard and finishes a dish covering it with so many edible flowers, that you can’t see what the main dish is below all those blooms. But I like him a lot and find him entertaining.
Mary Ann Esposito has the longest running cooking show on tv called Cia Italia. She’s messy in her cooking, very homey and friendly and cooks in her own home kitchen in New Hampshire, where she lives.
Three of the four live in places I love – Ina lives in East Hampton, NY, Mary Ann lives in New Hampshire and Rory lives in Ireland. Christina lives in Philadelphia, meh, not my fav, but I still like her.
All of the shows I watch on PBS and Ina is on the Food Network and Discovery Plus for the full hour episodes.
And as Lydia Bastianich, another favorite cook says, “Tutti a tavola a mangiare!
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
Still lots of things going on this season. I missed the Lake Worth Chalk Festival last weekend and a few other art events, but managed to get to this past weekend’s Gifford Lane Art Stroll, which is a block party in our village. It’s a yearly thing – 25th year, this year and it brings out the whole village. It’s like a tv show where the full cast shows up for an event and they are all in one scene.
It was also “305 Day,” on Sunday, which is the area code for Miami and on March 5 (3/05).
The hit of the block party is cucumber punch which is delicious on a hot day, which always seems to be the case for this event each year – it’s been a cool winter, but Sunday was totally hot.
The first year I went, 20 years back, I didn’t know the cucumber punch had gin in it, and I really had my fill, I was feeling no pain. Now that I know the ingredients, I take it easy.
They used to serve the gin at a friend’s house where everyone lined up outside his green door and he and his wife and friends would serve it up to thousands. I guess after 23 years they felt enough was enough with the non-stop traffic through their house, so they have it out in someone else’s driveway now. So last year, I went to the driveway for the first time and got some punch and people started talking to me. But the homeowner was not having it, she started yelling, “Tom, you have your punch, now get out of here!” I couldn’t argue with her, because she is 97 years old! She’s a spry 97, but still.
This year while it was outside her house, she wasn’t around. She’s an avid bike rider at her age, so maybe she was out bike riding!
Anyway, it was a great day, I think I saw everyone I know there which is always nice. There’s a lot of food, live music and kibitzing. A perfect day for a small village.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
This cartoon was published Friday. I wasn’t sure if I should use it or not. Originally it was a simple one, where the snowman with the broken carrot nose says, “Carl is in a mood today.” And that was that. But I changed it to the parsnip not being orange enough and I wanted to see it people would get it. I don’t think most did. I don’t want to say it flopped, but it wasn’t as popular as others.
I don’t even know if I’ve ever had a parsnip and I think I only know what a parsnip is because I watch cooking and food shows, even though I don’t cook. But as I’ve said in the past, I find cooking shows very relaxing, so I watch a lot of them, yet I am never struck with the idea of actually cooking something other than in the microwave or air fryer.
Parsnips
Parsnips look like white carrots, and possibly when ordering in or eating out, they might have come as a side dish along with carrots and other veggies, so possibly I’ve tasted one, but I don’t think so. I might have thought they were overcooked carrots that turned white, the way broccoli does when it’s overcooked.
Roasted carrots and parsnips.
I try everything, so it’s not liked I deliberately turned down parsnips when I had the chance to taste them. I’ve had bison burgers and ostrich burgers and liked them. I’ve had duck and goat and liked them. I’ve had Korean food and all sorts of Asian food from Thai to Indian and being in Miami I’ve had Haitian food. I just don’t think I’ve ever had parsnips.
Once I was in NYC with a friend and we were looking for a place for lunch. As we walked through the city he would suggest places. My friend is a snob and as we looked at places, mostly exotic types, and he would suggest places, I would say “no, not that one,” and we would keep walking and then he finally said, “What does your sensitive American tastes want, a hamburger?”
I had to explain to my snobby friend, who was from out of town and didn’t get it, that I was turning down places that were empty at lunch time – they didn’t have one customer eating there which is not a good sign, and the rating on the front had a “C” not an “A” which is what you look for in NYC and other cities that have ratings on restaurants. My friend wasn’t wise enough to realize that, he thought I was being an ugly American, when I was trying to be a wise/safe eater.
We ended up at a wonderful Korean BBQ restaurant somewhere in Midtown Manhattan, you know, one of those places where you cook your own food at a fire or possibly it was a stone, in the center of the table. Not sure if they use parsnips. Probably not. But one day I’ll try one and report back.
UPDATE: I just tried a parsnip! A few hours after writing this blog post I was at Whole Foods. I went to the hot bar to get lunch and there were carrots and parsnips. Only the dish was called “Carrots with turmeric,” and if I hadn’t written this post, I would have thought the white carrots were just discolored from the turmeric! But I realized they were parsnips and I bought some and know what – they taste like carrots. White carrots. And since I don’t really like carrots, I probably won’t be eating them again anytime soon. 🙂
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I don’t like to cook, I barely boil water. Oh, I can cook, I just don’t like to.
But the other day I made Air Fryer Chickpeas (Garbanzo beans). A friend posted a photo on Facebook of the ones she made and I had it on my mind. So I bought a couple of cans of the chickpeas and went at it.
The recipe I read had to be adjusted because as they started frying, they started popping, so I lowered the temperature and the time and they came out perfect – crunchy and delicious.
I washed the chickpeas to get all the salt off and let them dry in the air on paper towels – about an hour. If you let them dry, they’ll come out crunchy.
After that, I put them in the air fryer and air fried them for about 10 to 12 minutes at 360 degrees F. Some recipes call for a higher temp and a little longer time, but as I said, this worked out better for me.
As they were frying, I juggled them a bit every few minutes, to move them around.
When they were done, while still hot, I drizzled them with olive oil and then added sea salt, pepper, turmeric, powdered ginger and powdered garlic. I added rosemary, too, at another time. That really was delicious. They came out delicious. You can actually add whatever you like to them. Add nothing, or add everything. But if adding stuff, do it after they are done frying. Not before or during.
I never liked chickpeas even though I know they are very healthy and full of protein. I try to eat hummus, but never really like it either. There’s a chocolate hummus now, which I bought, but it’s still sitting in the fridge. But now that this new crunchy method is so easy to make and delicious, I may just start eating them, in this form.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I was watching something on tv about people being polite to waitstaff at restaurants. Not sure why that is even a question, shouldn’t everyone be nice to each other all the time?
I’m always polite to the staff but I do one thing that I think is annoying and I have to try to stop. I ask the waiter what is their favorite thing or what they would order out of two choices. I did it the other day. I’m sure they just say anything and who is to say their tastes are the same as mine. But I do it all the time anyway.
I was with a friend and was going to order the steak sandwich. I don’t eat much red meat, but this looked good. But my friend sort of was questioning the fact that he wanted the same thing and should we both order the same thing. It was a strange request since we don’t share food, so what’s the difference? It’s not like we were going to sample from each other’s plate and needed to order two separate things.
Anyway, I also seemed to like the eggplant parmesan , even though I don’t like eggplant, but for some reason, it seemed good.
So as not to get my friend all in a twist, I asked the waiter, which he preferred, basically, which was a better dish. He said to me, “Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not much of a . . . ” and I thought, oh, he’s not much of a meat eater. He’s vegan. But he said, “I’m not much of a vegetable eater.” Which was the strangest thing. For one thing, he was a guy in his low 20s, maybe 22 years old, don’t most 22 year olds eat healthy?
So in spite of his not eating veggies, I ordered the eggplant parmesan so as not to upset my dining companion. It ended up being good.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here / if you do already, maybe a friend might if you tell them?
The freak out is about the awkwardness of it all. At the airport recently I came upon this where when you pay with a credit card, you have to go through a process of tipping or not tipping before you scan your card.
This is now a thing everywhere – in person at the register and also on apps where you order food or drink.
I’ve seen this at ice cream stores, sub shops, fast take-away places and of course sit down restaurants. You order and then when it’s time to pay, the tip portion comes up. And you’re not even in the store when you order on apps and you are tipping before you even receive service, or even enter the store at most instances. Tip first, ask questions later.
And a new thing at many restaurants is where they use this new scanning device at the table; they don’t take the credit card away to process it anymore, which is a good thing, but the waitstaff now stands over you waiting for you to tip and pay for the order, You don’t really have time to think.
Last week I split a bill with a friend, we both gave a credit card and split it in half and we both tipped 20% and left. We didn’t get a receipt and we asked each other, “Do you even know how much the bill was?” Neither of us did.
In NYC recently I was at a diner with another friend, an expensive diner (diner, not dinner), and the waiter was quite pushy. He was an older guy and I guess worked as a waiter most of his life, so he knew the ins and outs.
He handed me the black box to pay and then said, “Put your card in this way,” and “Here is the tip section, I’ll push the 20% button for you here,” and he did. He pushed the tip button himself.
One thing about that tip thing – I think they are losing out because I usually give more than 20% tip and most times I’ll round up the tip to a higher figure. Like if the tip is $17 or $18, I make it $20. So if their 20% button gives them $17.25, if they left me to my own devices, I would have left them $20.00 and sometimes even more if I liked the waiter or waitress, or if I know them personally.
There is one Starbucks I frequent in NYC daily, it’s a convenient location for me. But they are terrible. They are slow, they ignore orders placed on the app, they once made me break a $20 bill for a 5 cent bag (they charge you for shopping bags in all NY stores now) and they are not tip-worthy. But if you don’t leave the tip ahead of time when placing the order, you worry about the treatment you will get. But now that I think about it, could it be any worse than the service you get now?
At the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was staying home, I used Instacart and had things delivered from the supermarket. You would tip in advance there, too. I usually gave $5, but at that time, they were so overwhelmed, they literally would take up to four days to deliver the products. Now it’s two hours, but then it literally was days, they would tell you on the app, “We’ll be there next Thursday, between 2 and 4 pm.” It was a mess.
But I read that if you gave a big tip, you would get faster delivery times, so I started giving $20 and it worked; I was prioritized and received my delivery on the same day. So it seems as if on these apps and such we are now paying to get a fast and decent order before we even get the fast and decent orders and it’s almost a bribe to get the fast and decent order.
I heard that people don’t tip Uber drivers much. I always do. I used to give them a cash tip, but now I put it on the app. It’s easier. As I exit the car I tell them, “I’ll put the tip on the app.” I don’t know if they believe me, but I always do add it later.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
