An Eclectic Mind

Don’t sacrifice when you can shop smart and save.

Wow, does that tag like look like something written up by a marketing guy for a discount store or what? But that’s not what this is all about. It’s about really shopping smart and taking advantage of sales to buy the things you want and need.

Where I’m Coming From

First, I need to make something clear: I’m not a shopper. I don’t read newspaper ads, looking for the best deals on this and that. I don’t spend hours every week hopping from store to store to save a few bucks. I don’t clip coupons. I don’t have the time or patience for any of that.

And I should also point out that Mike and I are a family of two with just two pets. No kids, no huge meals. Although we might spend as much on food as a family of four, it’s because we like good food. We tend to lean toward quality and the things we really like rather than quantity and settling for second best.

We’re not broke — we’re both still gainfully employed in this f’ed up economy. But like many smart people out there, we’ve seen the writing on the wall. Who knows what could come next? Who knows whether Mike’s company can stay afloat in these troubled times? Or whether people will still be interested in treating themselves to helicopter tours. I’ve already seen a sharp drop in book sales — the real source of my income.

That said, it really irks me to pay more than I have to for the grocery items I like or need. I’m talking about everyday staples, like paper products (toilet paper, paper towels, tissues), coffee, milk, butter, etc.

What I’ve been doing for years now is buying the items I need in quantity when they’re on sale or when I find them somewhere else at a really good price. Here are some examples.

Coffee

I like Eight O’Clock Coffee. It’s an Arabica bean with a light roast. It’s more robust than Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, which I liked before I left New Jersey and could no longer get here in Arizona. (It’s now available in Arizona; I tried it again and was disappointed.) But it’s mellower than Starbucks or any of the other boutique coffee brands — although I’ll take Starbucks Breakfast Blend in a pinch. I buy it as whole beans and grind it at home as part of my coffee-making ritual. Nothing like a good cup of coffee first thing in the morning, huh?

My local supermarket sells a 12-0z bag (whatever happened to a “pound” of coffee?) of Eight O’Clock coffee beans for $7.59. I think that’s outrageous. But every once in a while, it goes on sale for $4.99. That’s more like it. I buy enough to last until the next sale, saving about $2.60/bag or 21¢ per ounce. Not bad. But recently, they’ve been having these really kick butt sales on the coffee, selling it for $3.89 per bag. That’s about half price. Each time I find it at that price, I buy eight or ten bags.

One of the nice things about coffee is that it’s sold in the kind of airtight containers designed to keep it fresh. While coffee doesn’t have an unlimited shelf life, if stored properly, it should stay fresh for at least half a year. So why not buy it at that low price and stock up? Just make sure you rotate your stock so you’re always using up the older stuff before the new.

And while I’m talking about coffee, it also makes sense t talk about coffee filters. I make my coffee in a Black and Decker single cup coffee maker. I’m the only coffee drinker and I like my coffee brewed just before I drink it. I don’t like coffee that’s been sitting on a pot on a burner for more than maybe 5 minutes. After that, it starts getting stale and I really can’t drink it.

My coffee maker comes with one of those “gold” filters. It’s a washable thing that’s supposedly better for brewing coffee because it helps the oils of the beans meld together or some such bull. Whatever. What I find is that using the reusable filter guarantees bitter bean residue at the bottom of my cup. I’ll stick to paper filters. The coffee maker takes a #2 cone filter. I don’t buy Melita brand or unbleached or any such nonsense. I buy the cheapest ones I can find — they do the job perfect well. My supermarket sells them in packs of 50 or 100. At my rate of 2+ cups per day, that’s enough filters for one or two months. But over the past summer, I discovered that Wal-Mart sells off-brand paper filters like the ones I use in packs of 250 for less than what I pay for 100 at my local supermarket. So when I go to Wal-Mart — which isn’t very often, thank heaven — I buy two or three packs. Stock up and save.

Oh, and if you’re a coffee aficionado reading this and want to “educate” me about brewing and drinking coffee, save it for another blog. I’m tired of people telling me about how my coffee should be. I make it the way I like it, thank you. My point is not how I brew or drink coffee. It’s how I buy what I like and stock up when it’s at a good price.

Other Products

My husband and I don’t go grocery shopping. We go to the store when we need something and buy what we need, along with a few other things. You’ll never see us in the supermarket with a cart full of groceries. We’re usually able to check out on the 15-items-or-less line. It’s been that way for years, since the days in New Jersey when we’d walk to our local grocery store/meat market after work each day and buy dinner right before we cooked it.

You might think that this kind of shopping is less conducive to saving money. It isn’t really — at least not for us. (Again, remember that we don’t have a family to feed.) We’re still walking many of the aisles of the supermarket. And we’re still keeping an eye out for bargains. When butter goes on sale, we buy two or three pounds and freeze what we don’t immediately need. The same goes (without the freezer) for canned items such as chicken broth and soups. (We don’t eat much canned food.) Pasta, pasta sauce, salad dressing — we buy it all on sale before we need it. We pay close attention to the “Best by” dates and don’t buy anything that we don’t think we’ll use before it “expires.”

What we don’t do is buy things we don’t like or won’t need just because it’s on sale. Mike’s a good example — often, I can buy a gallon of milk for just a bit more than I’d pay for a quart. But there’s no way I’ll use a gallon of milk before it goes bad and I’m not interested in freezing it (as some people do). I also don’t believe in throwing food away. If you buy something you don’t like or don’t use, you’re throwing your money away.

The Lure of Costco and Sam’s Club

Ever notice that if you go into a Costco or Sam’s Club you’re lucky to get out of there without spending at least $200? Ever wonder about that? Ever wonder if you’re really saving money?

I’ve been avoiding these places unless I know for sure that there’s something there I need that’s cheaper there than anywhere else. I firmly believe that I can get better prices on an item in my local supermarket when it’s on sale than I can in a Costco. Best of all, I don’t have to buy a case of it.

My husband — well, he’s still sucked in. He buys cases of canned corn and canned chicken broth. He buys huge plastic jars of nuts and garlic powder and peppercorns. He buys buffet plates full of smoked salmon and styrofoam trays of flank steaks. He buys a lot of junk we don’t need. He freezes things that are better not frozen. We eventually do eat or use most of what he buys, but we also throw some of it out. I don’t like that.

My thoughts on these warehouse stores is that unless you’re shopping for a large family or group — or a restaurant — you probably shouldn’t be shopping in there. Sure, the strawberries are a great price per pound, but do you really think you can eat 10 lbs of them before they go bad? What are you going to do with 12 giant fresh-baked muffins? Got room in your freezer for that 10-lb bag of flash-frozen chicken breast? Are you even going to get them home before they start defrosting? And where are you going to store those 24 rolls of toilet paper and eight boxes of Kleenex? And you do realize that even canned food doesn’t have an infinite shelf life, right?

Shop with a Calculator

Buying bigger isn’t always cheaper. Don’t get conned into buying the jumbo size just because you’re too lazy to do the math.

I know this sounds dorky, but if you have trouble comparing prices of items because they’re sold in different quantities, use a calculator. 12 ounces for $2.39 is cheaper than 20 ounces for $5.29. Most supermarkets will help you by posting the per ounce (or other unit) price for each item on the shelf.

Going back to my coffee example, my supermarket also sells Eight O’Clock coffee in a larger bag. I think it’s 2 pounds. But a comparison of the per ounce price clearly shows which bag is a better deal; when the small bags are on sale, they’re almost always cheaper per ounce.

A calculator and a cheat sheet with supermarket prices would certainly help me prove my theory about Costco. But that brings me back to my original point: I’m not a shopper. I just buy the things I want or need in reasonable quantity when I find them at a good price.

Days in My Life, Deals and Steals economics, economy, food, shopping

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A soothing beverage from the Rez.

My first visit to the Hopi reservation was about 6 years ago. I was traveling in my Jeep with two friends. Our main destination was the annual Navajo Nation Fair in Window Rock, AZ, but my friend Shorty wanted to drive through the Hopi Reservation and visit Old Orabi, which is the oldest continually occupied village in North America. Shorty wanted to mail a letter to a friend with the Old Orabi (or possibly Hotevilla) postmark.

The Hopi tribe, unlike many other Native American tribes in the Southwest, is working hard to hold onto its culture and heritage and keep it from being commercialized by outsiders. This is probably why so few people know anything about the Hopi people. Their ceremonies are usually closed to the public — as are entire villages sometimes — and photography is not allowed. The reservation is completely surrounded by the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona and only a few paved roads go through it. There aren’t many shops or restaurants and there are no casinos. The place isn’t very tourist-friendly because they don’t want tourists around. (This may be changing as the Hopi tribe realizes the importance of tourist dollars for the tribe’s economy. I just hope they don’t lose their identity in the process.) ) You can read more about the Hopi people on the Tribe’s Web site or in The Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters.

With all this in mind, we drove into the reservation and found Old Orabi. I don’t remember much about it. The Hopi tribe are pueblo indians and they built their homes on the edge of the three Hopi mesas: First, Second, and Third Mesa. I remember walking around one of the villages, past ancient stone homes, some of which were still occupied.

Eventually, we got to the post office, which I think was in Hotevilla. I remember this a bit better. It was a standard tiny-town post office with a bulletin board in the outer vestibule, where all the mailboxes were. Shorty spotted an “ad” for blue corn meal. We made a call from a pay phone and were soon on our way to a Hopi home.

It was a more modern home than the stone structures in the old villages. We were invited inside and I remember being surprised at how remarkably “normal” it was. (I don’t know what I was expecting.) We sat on a sofa while kittens played around us. The Hopi woman we’d met there had a big galvanized metal trash can that was absolutely filled with finely ground corn meal. She measured out quantities of the stuff with a round, flat pan not unlike a cake pan and stuffed it into a Blue Bird Flour bag. She told us how the cornmeal had been ground as part of a wedding ceremony. This was the leftover cornmeal from that celebration. When the bag was full, Shorty handed over some money and took the bag. (I wound up buying about half of the cornmeal from Shorty and still have some in stock.)

The conversation turned to dance shawls. A friend of the woman’s made them and had some for sale. Were we interested in seeing them? Shorty was. So we hopped into the Jeep and followed the woman to her friend’s house. The shawls were pretty — square or rectangular with really long fringe — but the colors were too bright and gaudy for my taste. Shorty bought one or two, possibly to be polite. And then we got on our way.

This whole experience really made the visit to the Hopi reservation special to me.

From there, we stopped at the Hopi Cultural Center for a bite to eat. Unlike my companions, I had a traditional Hopi dish that included lamb. This was before the vendors started setting up stalls outside, so after lunch we continued on our way.

As we were leaving Second Mesa, we passed a shop on the left called Tsakurshovi. (Don’t ask me to say that.) We stopped in. It was a small shop that caters primarily to the Hopi people, offering the materials they need to conduct their ceremonies. There were dozens of traditional-style Hopi kachinas — figures carved to represent Hopi religious and ceremonial people — furs, herbs, and more. The shop had two small rooms and a friendly young Hopi man behind the counter.

Turns out, this shop is owned by the Days — Janice and Joe. Janice is Hopi, Joe is not Native American. And it was mentioned in a recent story on NPR, which interviewed Joe’s son, Jonathan. Jonathan grew up spending his summers on the Reservation and the rest of the year in Boston with his mother. He now lives in Flagstaff where he runs a shop that I suspect is very similar to his father’s.

I don’t remember why I bought the hopi tea. Perhaps Shorty bought some. Perhaps I asked the guy behind the counter what the bundles of sticks in a Ziplok bag were all about. In any case, I bought a bag of three bundles of sticks for $4.

I also bought a copy of Jonathan Day’s book, Traditional Hopi Kachinas: A New Generation of Carvers, which I had autographed on the spot by the guy behind the counter, Wallace Hyeoma, who happened to be one of the featured artists (page 47). (A year later, I would return to the shop and buy several traditional style Kachinas, one of which was carved by Wallace’s uncle.)

We continued on our way, leaving the Hopi Reservation. Our next stop was at the Hubbell Trading Post, where I wound up buying a Navajo rug. But that’s another story.

Much later, when I returned home, I found the bundles of sticks in my luggage. I boiled some water, broke off a few sticks and leaves, and dropped them in. In minutes, I had a hot cup of some of the most soothing tea I’d ever tasted. Clean, fresh, and simply delicious. No need for sugar or milk or lemon. This tea, like green or jasmine tea, is perfect straight. Now I commonly drink it on cold, lazy afternoons, when I feel a cold coming on, or when I’m feeling blue. To me, it’s like a comfort food beverage.

Those three bundles of sticks lasted a long time. A few years ago, I was back on the Hopi reservation and bought more. But today, waking up with a head cold, I decided to forego my usual morning coffee in favor of the clean flavor of Hopi tea. As I brewed up a cup, I realized two things: (1) the long story of how I’d discovered Hopi tea might be interesting to at least a few blog readers and (2) I was running low again.

I did some research for this blog entry. I discovered that Hopi tea is from a plant commonly known as greenthread and scientifically known as Thelesperma filifolium. You can see some photos of it as a plant and stick bundles, learn how to brew it, and read about its medicinal values on the New Mexico State University’s Medicinal plant Web site. I learned that it grows in abundance in the Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni reservations of the Four Corners area. I also found an online source for purchasing Hopi tea online, High Desert Farmers. High Desert is a small scale grower which sells Hopi tea as traditional bundles (they call it “bulk”), loose, and as tea bags. Since the bundles weren’t available, I bought bags and loose. It cost me $14.50 (including shipping), but saved me a 200+ mile trip to the Hopi reservation.

If you like plain, soothing hot teas like green tea, you’ll probably like Hopi tea. If you ever see some in your travels, I recommend it. And I hope you story of first acquisition is as memorable to you as mine is to me.

Days in My Life, Travels with Maria Arizona, China, coffee, desert, economy, fat, Flagstaff, food, for sale, home, how to, India, interview, Mexico, Navajo, New Mexico, NPR, online, Page, photography, plants, research, restaurants, summer, time, travel

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Some people are just too stupid to get the point.

They think I bitch about Wickenburg’s questionable politics and its poor economy and its lack of decent paying jobs and its part-time population and its mediocre dining experiences because I don’t like Wickenburg.

Hell, if I didn’t like Wickenburg, I wouldn’t live here. My work is portable — I can live anywhere I want. But I live here.

I complain because I want Wickenburg to be the best it can be.

I want politics to be clean and politicians to vote according to the majority of their constituents. But if voters don’t know what’s going on, how can they change it?

I want to see businesses in every single storefront downtown, with visitors and residents strolling the sidewalks and doing business. But if people don’t notice the empty storefronts, how can they fill them?

I want businesses to come to Wickenburg to offer good-paying jobs for career-minded young people and the goods and services we need right here in town. But if people don’t see the problems with the local economy, how can they focus on fixing it?

I want new homes to be bought by people with their lives still ahead of them, people who can enrich our town with their participation in activities rather than complain about high prices and do all their shopping at Wal-Mart in Surprise. But if people don’t realize that our part-time population spends most of its money outside of town, how can we encourage businesses to keep them shopping in town?

I want good (or at least interesting) restaurants where I can get food I can’t cook at home, prepared better than I can make it myself. But if people don’t see the opportunities to meet this need, how can qualified people come forward and fill it?

The narrow-minded, stupid people in the Town government and the Chamber of Commerce just don’t get it. They think we should all sugar coat the truth and live with what we’ve got. They want to lure people in under false pretenses, like saying that Wickenburg is “the West’s most western town” (what a line of bull that is), without even trying to make their claims remotely true. They think we should ignore the forces that are stripping away whatever’s good about Wickenburg to turn it into just another mediocre Phoenix suburb.

And I won’t sit by quietly and watch that happen. Not in my town.

Now if only I could figure out how to draw them a picture.

Deep Thoughts business, careers, economy, food, government, hate, home, how to, Phoenix, politics, restaurants, shopping, time, Wal-Mart, war, Wickenburg

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I get pretty fed up about what’s going on in Wickenburg…and start to do something about it.

Small town politics sucks. There’s no doubt about it. And it sucks even more when the politicians are fighting over a desert crossroads town with a weak economy and a part-time population.

When I moved to Wickenburg ten years ago, it was a small western town with a year-round population of about 4,000 people. Just enough shopping and services to make life convenient. Lots of space between the homes on the outskirts of town where I live. Privacy. Quiet. Clean air. Little crime. Slow pace of living. Just the thing a pair of New Yorkers needed to get a grip on their own lives.

One of the things we liked best about Wickenburg is that it didn’t have a lot of high density housing. Sure, it had some condos and apartments and the homes in the older downtown area were small and on small lots. But the rest of the town was zoned for one house per acre (or more) and the outskirts of town were zoned for one house per five acres. (We have 2-1/2.)

Fast forward to 2004. A developer proposes a high density housing development at the 9-hole golf course known as Wickenburg Country Club. He promises to expand the golf course to 18 holes. All the golfers want it. But the people who will soon have condo roofs in their back yards don’t. And neither do the people who see that one high-density development will open the floodgates to others.

Voters put together a referendum to get the issue on the ballot. Proposition 421 was the result. And the voters voted the development down.

Let me make sure you understand what I just wrote. The majority of voters who voted on Prop 421 voted against it. They were saying that they did not want the development to proceed.

Fast forward to 2006. The Mayor and Council voted in favor of allowing a virtually identical development on the same site by the same developer.

Huh?

Silly me. I thought we lived in a democracy.

But it gets worse.

Another group of voters put together another referendum to stop the development again. It was submitted the same way as the first one and should have been accepted. But they Mayor decided that because an attachment was made with a staple rather than a paper clip, it was not properly submitted. He directed the Town Clerk to reject it.

What?

I’ve been sitting back watching all this bullshit unfold for the past three years. Occasionally, I’d write an article or a letter to state my point of view. But I pretty much kept out of things — there were other people writing for my Web site, wickenburg-az.com who were saying pretty much what I would have said anyway.

But now I’m pissed. This little twerp who was voted in as Mayor — I couldn’t vote because I live outside of town limits, but I never would have voted for him — is making decisions that are not only beyond his authority, but they’re clearly against the will of the people.

This is wrong.

And I’m not going to sleep through this one. I’ve already made my first contribution to the voters efforts by writing an article about the paper clip rejection. More to come.

I promise.

Days in My Life, Deep Thoughts democracy, desert, economy, home, New York, politics, privacy, shopping, sleep, time, war, Wickenburg, writing

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I get a new coffee maker…again.

It’s disposable products all over again.

I’ve been using a Black and Decker coffee maker called “Brew and Go” (formerly, “Cup at a Time”) for about fifteen years now. I like fresh-brewed coffee every morning, but Mike doesn’t. It’s silly to make a whole pot — even if I do want a second cup, I won’t take it from a pot that’s been sitting on a burner for 30 minutes. So I make a single fresh cup every time I want one.

(And in case you’re wondering, I usually don’t drink brewed coffee in restaurants. Burner sludgification is one reason. The other is that most restaurants out here don’t know how to put enough coffee in the brew basket to make a strong enough cup. I think it’s because it’s pre-measured and it comes in bags. This is the same reason I’m avoiding those “pod” coffee makers. You can get decent restaurant coffee in New York and on the west coast, but in the midwest, southwest, southeast, and elsewhere, the only way I can get a cup of coffee that’s strong enough for me is to order a latte at a coffee shop.)

The other day, I bought my fourth or fifth one of these coffee makers. They work fine for about two years, then they start getting unreliable. The usual symptom is that they stop brewing before all the water in the reservoir has been heated and pumped up to the grinds. You wind up with a 2/3 full cup of coffee with leftover water. It isn’t a big deal to push the button again — usually that’s enough to get the rest heated and brewed. But experience has taught me that this is only the first of the pot’s symptoms. The next step is that button getting broken. And when that happens, the coffee maker won’t work at all.

So I consider the funky button a warning sign. I’ll need a replacement soon. So I went online and found a replacement for a good price on Amazon.com. (Note to my critics: Sadly, you can’t buy anything like this in Wickenburg, so shopping locally was once again out of the question.)

Oddly enough, they showed two models and the only difference I could see between them was the size of the machine. Since both were under $20 with only a $4 price difference and I figured that I could use one in my hangar, too, I bought them both. I was curious to see how they differed.

They arrived yesterday. Their boxes are identical with two exceptions:

• One box says “Deluxe” (that’s the $17.99 model) and the other doesn’t (the $12.99 model).
• One box illustrates and identifies a stainless steel travel mug (the $17.99 model) and the other one illustrates and identifies a plastic travel mug.

I opened the deluxe model and got a good whiff of the plastic aroma that accompanies many new appliances made primarily of plastic. I pulled out all the packing material, plugged it in, and brewed through some plain water. Then I decided to read the instructions for some tip to get the smell out. The instruction book only had four pages in English — not much to instruct.

Of course, the unit is made in China. I’m not sure if the original “Cup at a Time” was made in China. It was a long time ago. It was probably Taiwan back then.

I brewed up a cup of coffee using the built-in filter basket. I usually don’t use that thing because grinds get through it into the coffee. I like my coffee very strong and usually grind the beans to the first “Fine” setting on the machine at the supermarket. The “gold” filters that come with many coffee makers simply aren’t fine enough to prevent the grinds from going through. But I figured I’d try it a few times. If I could make a good cup of coffee with the reusable filter, I’d save a few bucks on paper filters — not to mention the time it takes to cut the #2 cone filters down to size. I’ll experiment over the next few days and maybe even get some coffee ground a litte coarser.

The first cup of coffee tasted a bit like the plastic I smelled. Or at least I assume so — I don’t make a habit out of tasting plastic. There’s a puddle of finely ground coffee at the very bottom of my cup, like mud on the bottom of a pond. The first problem will be remedied with time, the second will probably require a grind or filter change.

But the coffee maker performed flawlessly, using up all its water and making a nice, hot cup of coffee.

The old coffee maker is now sitting in the trash like the three or four that came before it. As we all know, it’s usually more expensive to get these things fixed than to buy a new one. That’s how the disposable economy came into being.

A little side story here. Our original DVD player only lasted about 5 years. We tried to get it fixed and everyone we brought it to quoted us a price to look at it that was more than the thing was worth. Then we tried to give it away to a school or electronics repair training facility so the students could use it to learn about the machine and/or how to fix it. No one would take it. Mind you, this isn’t a machine that had been abused. All of its parts pretty much still worked. It just didn’t play DVDs anymore. The only option was to throw it out.

I recently sold two very old Macs (an 8500 and a beige G3) on eBay. I got 99¢ for one and $9.99 for the other. Plus shipping, of course. Although I’d spent a total of more than $5,000 for the machines years ago, I was willing to take the money. Not because I needed the $10.98 but because I didn’t want to take the two machines — which were still perfectly functioning — to the landfill.

I guess their new owner will do that one day.

It’s time for another cup of coffee.

Technorati Tags: coffee

Days in My Life China, coffee, DVD, eBay, economy, how to, law, New York, online, Page, repair, restaurants, shopping, time, travel, war, Wickenburg

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