Bear-Proof Food Locker

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bearproofcoolerOne of benefits for me of sending out a tenant newsletter is that I can get rid of stuff left by former tenants that I would otherwise have to have hauled away. Now here is something you don’t see everyday in Berkeley – a bear-proof food locker, and a brand-new one too.  A former tenant left it in her bicycle shed. It is well made and expensive. The tags and labels are on still on it. The price tag on the handle says that it sold for $329.  Now I am sure that there is someone in Berkeley who needs a bear-proof food locker, but I don’t know who that someone might be. If you need or just want a bear-proof food locker, let me know. I only have one. To be honest, I cannot guarantee that this food locker really is bear-proof. I have not tested it. If you would like to test it, be my guest, but its BYOB (Bring Your Own Bear.) I cannot supply a test bear.

I can’t figure out why the tenant who left this bear-proof food locker bought it in the first place. She didn’t have a car and never went camping. I think this food locker may be like the proverbial fruitcake that people just keep passing along to somebody else. Perhaps somebody gave this bear-proof food locker to my tenant as a gift. Since she had no use for it, she gave it to me, and now I am trying to give it to somebody else. It’s one of those things that nobody has any use for but that is too expensive to just throw away.

Things You Can and Cannot Put In Your Garbage Can.

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Did you know that you can be fined up to $25,000 for putting a used flashlight battery in your garbage can? I don’t know if anyone has ever actually been fined that much for putting a battery in their garbage can, but the penalties for putting batteries and CFL or other florescent light bulbs in your garbage can can be huge. In California, it is illegal to put electronic products of any kind in your garbage can. This includes telephones, cell phones, radios, VCRs, DVD players, televisions, computer monitors, and microwave ovens. Electronic products like these contain chemicals and toxic metals including lead, mercury, and chromium. It is also illegal to put non-electronic thermometers and thermostats in the garbage can if they contain mercury bulbs. All of these products can be taken to any Green Citizen store in the bay area. There are lots of them. There is one in downtown Berkeley. Green Citizen will accept used electronic products for free disposal. If you have other things that you want to dispose of but can’t legally put in your garbage can, like paint or used motor oil, call me and I will tell you where you can take such items.

 

My Huckleberry Jelly Bust

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I was in Great Falls, Montana in December. When my suitcase went through the scanner at the Great Falls airport, it set off the alarms. TSA agents surrounded my suitcase like there was a bomb inside. A TSA agent said to me: “Sir, the x-ray machine has detected a bottle of an unknown liquid in your suitcase.” I said: “I don’t have any liquids in my suitcase.” They took my suitcase over to a table. The agents put on rubber gloves and searched my suitcase meticulously. (Frankly, I think I would have washed my clothes first if I had known that they were going to do that.) At the bottom of my suitcase they found a jar of huckleberry jelly. The TSA agents asked me if the jelly belonged to me. I said it did. They confiscated the jelly. They told me that the TSA regards huckleberry jelly as a potentially dangerous liquid. I knew that the TSA doesn’t allow people to go into the secure areas of airports with liquids, but it never occurred to me that they considered huckleberry jelly a liquid, and a dangerous liquid at that. The jelly was quite solid. I purchased the huckleberry jelly at a ‘Made In Montana’ store in Great Falls.

After my huckleberry jelly was safely taken away and put someplace where it couldn’t harm anyone, I was cleared to go into the secure area of the airport. I said to one of the TSA agents: “Do you confiscate a lot of huckleberry jelly here?” Every hotel gift shop in Great Falls sells the stuff. She said that they confiscate huckleberry jelly every day. The gift shop inside the Great Falls airport’s secure area had several brands of huckleberry jelly for sale. I suspect they sell it to people who promised to bring huckleberry jelly back home as a souvenir of their trip to Montana, and the huckleberry jelly that they brought to the airport was confiscated, just like mine was. Huckleberries are fussy little berries that only grow in a few places. One of those places is Montana, which is why gift shops all over Montana sell huckleberry jelly to tourists. Although most Americans have never seen huckleberries, everybody has heard of them because of Huckleberry Finn and Huckleberry Hound.

The TSA agent told me that other airports in Montana also confiscate huckleberry jelly every day as well. What do you suppose the TSA does with all that confiscated huckleberry jelly? I suspect that they sell it back to the hotel gift shops! Then the hotel gift shops can sell the jelly again and again to unsuspecting tourists – like me! I wonder how many times my jar of huckleberry jelly was resold and reconfiscated.

The Most Overrated And The Most Underrated Cuts of Beef.

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Meat is the most expensive thing that most people buy at the supermarket. Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to judge meat, and as a result, they wind up buying meat simply on the basis of its appearance. In other words, people buy steaks that look pretty. That is why the prettiest steaks are usually the most expensive ones. However, there is no correlation between a steak’s attractiveness and it’s flavor.

filet-mignonThe most overrated: Filet mignon. When professional chefs are asked what cut of beef is most overrated, they invariably name filet mignon. It is usually the most expensive cut of meat in most butcher shops and on restaurant menus. Admittedly, a filet mignon is pretty. It looks nice. It is round and symmetrical, and it is super tender. You can cut a filet mignon with a fork. The reason that filet mignon is so tender is that it is a non-working muscle. The cow doesn’t use it. Because it is a non-working muscle, filet mignon has very little marbling. While a filet mignon is very tender, it also has very little flavor.

The most underrated: Chuck. Chuck is very versatile cut and has a lot of flavor. Nevertheless, it is always one of the cheapest cuts of meat in the supermarket. I often see it on sale at Safeway for under $2 a pound. Chuck is cheap because there’s a lot of it on a cow, it’s not pretty, and most people don’t know how to use it. Chuck roast is the ideal cut of beef for pot roast and daube. Daube is a classic French beef stew. It made with chuck, vegetables, herbs, and wine. You can find lots of good recipes for chuck on the Food Network web site.
 

Beware Of Phony Credit Card Investigators.

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One of the common methods identity thieves use to get information is by calling people on the phone posing as credit card fraud investigators. You may get a call from someone claiming to work for your bank or a fraud investigation firm. The caller tells you that an identity thief tried to charge something to your credit card. Ironically, the person calling is the identity thief! The caller asks you to confirm your credit card information with him. By ‘confirm’, the caller means that he wants you tell him your credit card number, your credit card security code number, or your driver’s license and social security numbers. You should hang up on all such calls. No bank will ever call you and ask you to tell them what your credit card number is. They already know it. They also know the security code number on the back of your credit card. They aren’t going to ask you to tell them that either.

 

Garbage Disposals

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What can and can’t you put in your garbage disposal? As a general rule, if you can’t chew something, neither can your garbage disposal. A garbage disposal is not a chipper. Never put anything in your garbage disposal that you could not chew yourself, such as bones, corn cobs and husks, pineapple tops and rinds, peach pits, or cherry stones. Also, don’t put pasta or rice in your disposal. Rice and pasta expand in water. That’s obvious when you cook them. Pasta and rice will do the same thing in your garbage disposal and drain pipes. Don’t put egg shells or coffee grounds in your garbage disposal. While these things appear to grind up just fine, the membrane in eggshells and coffee grounds can get stuck in your disposal’s trap and clog it up. All of the things listed above can be composted. If you don’t compost, just put them in your garbage can.

Bad Odors. The most common complaint about garbage disposals is bad odors. There are a number of products on the market for deodorizing garbage disposals, but the best (and cheapest) way to solve this problem is with citrus rinds. After you have squeezed the juice out of an orange or a lemon, cut up the rind into a few large pieces and grind it up in your garbage disposal. Citrus acid is a powerful deodorizer. Use cold water. Hot water will flush the citrus acid away.

Auto-Antonymns

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Have you ever heard of an auto-antonym? My Uncle Maurice told me about these odd words decades ago. An auto-antonym is a word which has two opposite definitions. The word is its own antonym. Maurice gave me a long list of auto-antonyms, but I lost that list a long time ago. The only word that I remember from Maurice’s list is ‘clip.’ ‘Clip’ can mean to attach or to detach. When you clip documents together, you attach them, but when you clip a coupon, you detach it from the newspaper. There are a lot of other auto-antonyms. Here are a few of them.

‘Inflammable’ literally means ‘capable of burning’, but when most people use the word, they mean ‘incapable of burning’. many people use the word ‘imflammable’, but ‘imflammable’ is not a real word, so its meaning is anyone’s guess. Because of this confusion, most fire departments prefer to use the words ‘flammable’ or ‘combustible’ instead.

 
‘Oversight’ can mean ‘to examine’ or ‘to fail to examine.’ (The oversight committee was supposed to review the contract, but they didn’t. It was an oversight.)
‘To rent’ can mean ‘to borrow’ or ‘to lend.’ If you say that ‘Julian rents his house’, that could mean that Julian is the landlord or that Julian is the tenant.

‘Shelled’ can mean either ‘with the shell on’ (Eileen ate a soft-shelled crab sandwich) or ‘with the shell off’ (Lauren bought a pint of shelled oysters.)

‘To dust’ can mean either ‘to remove dust’ (Bryna dusted the living room) or ‘to add dust’ (Lilah dusted the chocolate truffles with cocoa powder.)
‘Left’ can mean ‘to leave’ (Adin left the room) or ‘to stay’ (Bob was the last man left.)

‘To fight with’ can mean to fight against (I had to fight with Michael to get him to take out the garbage) or to fight alongside (I promised to fight with Eleanor to get Mayor McCheese reelected.)
‘To seed’ can mean to add seeds (Ben seeded his front lawn) or to remove seeds (Karyn seeded a tomato.)

‘Off’ can mean to activate (Piper set the alarm off) or to deactivate (Howard turned the alarm off.)
‘Citation’ is either an award for good behavior (The fireman received a citation for bravery) or a penalty for bad behavior (The policeman gave the driver a citation for making an illegal turn.)
I think auto-antonyms must be frustrating for foreigners learning to speak English, but there are a lot of frustrating things about the English language. I wonder if they have auto-antonyms in other languages.

The Rent Is Too Damn High

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The Rent Is Too Damn High Party is a political party based in New York City that ran candidates for mayor in 2005 and 2009, generating a lot of publicity. The Rent Is Too Damn High Party claims that tenants would have more money if rents were lower. (It is hard to argue with that logic.)

A new study from Harvard University has concluded that The Rent Is Too Damn High Party is correct. According to the study titled ‘America’s Rental Housing’ from the Joint Center for Housing Studies, rents have been rising at a greater rate than tenant income for over 50 years. The number of people who rent and who pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing has risen from 25 percent in 1960 to 50 percent today. Harvard researchers also found that about 28 percent of those who rented in 2011 paid more than half of their income for housing. The Harvard report warns that the problem of affordability could worsen if Congress eliminates the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit.

The Rent Is Too Damn High party is frequently ridiculed because they have no specific proposals as to how to lower rents. Perhaps that is why Jimmy McMillan, the party’s first candidate for mayor, only received 4,000 votes in a city of 7 million people, the majority of whom are tenants.

Shock Chocolate

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Chocolate is a highly competitive business, and it is becoming more competitive with time. The number of companies making chocolate has grown tremendously over the past decade.  There are over a dozen professional chocolatiers and independent chocolate stores just here in Berkeley. It’s always hard to break into a crowded business, and that is certainly true of the chocolate business. As a result, many new chocolate makers resort to extreme measures in order to get noticed.
Shock chocolate is a term I created to describe chocolate that is designed to get attention by shocking consumers. There are a number of ways of doing that. One way to get attention is by making chocolates with bizarre fillings and flavors. I have seen chocolates for sale here in Berkeley that were filled with some very strange things, including anchovies, garlic, Tabasco, curry paste, and horseradish. I once ate a truffle at the Edible Complex on Northside without knowing that it was filled with raspberry vinegar. It was awful. I turned to the wall and spit it out discreetly into a napkin.
Chocolate Rats. rattrapOther companies make chocolates in shapes that are designed to shock people. Morkes Chocolates makes chocolate rats that comes packaged in real rat traps. The chocolate rat’s head is under the trap’s spring, with it’s neck broken. (See photo below.) This item is undeniably shocking, and it has generated publicity. Morkes chocolate rat traps were recently featured in Martha Stewart Living magazine, a well respected and widely read publication.
I don’t think that shock chocolate has any lasting value. To the contrary, I think that shock chocolate leaves people with a bad feeling about the company that made it and a suspicion that their chocolate probably isn’t very good. After all, if their chocolate is good, why are they making products like these? My philosophy is that a chocolate company’s best chance of success lies in making a consistently great product. In a highly competitive market, even a great product may not make it, but a lousy product will certainly fail.

Loaners.

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Bissell Steam Mop. SteamMop I just got a Bissell steam mop for loan to my tenants. A steam mop is much more effective than a sponge or a regular mop for cleaning floors, especially when it comes to removing dried on and sticky stuff. More important, a steam mop not only cleans your floors; it also sanitizes them. Steam will kill virtually all the germs and bacteria on your floor. My steam mop is for use on linoleum and ceramic tile floors. It is not for use on wood or carpeted floors. (Remember, I also have a loaner commercial vacuum cleaner.)
Chocolate Fondue Pots. If you would like to serve chocolate fondue at your next party, I can supply you with electric fondue pots, skewers, and fondue chocolate. All you have to add is cream. The most popular things to dip in chocolate fondue are strawberries, chunks of bananas, marshmallows, and cubes of Sara Lee pound cake. Chocolate fondue is very easy to make. You just put chocolate and heavy cream in an electric fondue pot and turn the thermostat on ‘low’. When the chocolate is melted, you just stir it up, and you’re done. This isn’t a simplified recipe. This is how the pros make it. Chocolate fondue is a great party item! fondue