Groupon and Advertising

I see very little advertisements these days.  While the average American (who I'm always talking about), sees 3000/day, I see maybe 10.  Maybe.  I never watch live tv and even on Hulu, I mute the advertisements to do something else.  Once in a while I'll actually see the ads on various websites, but it's hardly compelling in their static state.  

However, recently I signed up for Groupon, which is a website that sends you a deal of the day- usually 30-60% off.  They do this by ensuring the deal giver a certain amount of customers.  Power of the numbers sort of thing.  Usually when my Groupon email comes, I read the title and ignore it.  I don't need massages and another fruffy nonsense.  But today, the deal was 45% off Let's Be Frank.  And to my surprise, Let's Be Frank is a sustainable hot dog place.  Maybe the first in the nation.  They source their beef from 180 miles away and the mission statement was to create a slow fast food.  Pretty sweet. 

And at 45% off, the franks were 5.33/lb.  That is a very respectable price, comparable to non-local, but organic Aidells (kicked out of Ferry Building Farmer's Market, oooooooo, scandal!).  So I bought the max amount, 36 ounces or 12 links.  

I am really happy with the purchase for a couple of reasons.  (1) I have not tried to make my own sausages.  While the endeavor would be interesting, sourcing it locally is not worth it.  I already have plenty of meat in the fridge and don't feel like butchering it further than ground meat (of one animal) or slices.  Maybe someday, along with my own bacon, when I start buying whole animals.

(2) I have only done a little research on sustainable sausages but pretty much resigned myself to the fact that everybody sources pigs from Iowa.  Which let's be frank, Let's Be Frank does for their pork sausages.  Their reasoning is that pigs do eat corn and so they should be as close to the corn source as possible.  I think this is...strange logic at best so I'll have to question whether or not I want to buy their pork sausage (or spicy Italian sausage).  Hopefully the latter is too spicy so I'll just end up with the beef sausages and call it a day.  Because I really love Italian sausage.

(3) We eat less meat when we cook with sausages.  One sausage is about 2-3 oz, and we'll eat 1/2 or 1 sausage per person.  And since less meat, even if the meat you buy is sustainable, is better, I think sausages are a good, flavorful way to trick my palate into submission.  It certainly worked this weekend when we had 4 sausages/person cover 4 different meals.

(4) Sausages are quick.  They are individually proportioned and freeze well.  And with my impending loss of freedom (more details later!), this may be the saving grace of it all.  But don't think I don't see your trick Groupon, I already was thinking of buying sausages last night, so this doesn't count as an impulse buy right?  Right?

Buying With Trust

I'm a geek.  I really like learning about things, researching, analyzing and coming up with best practices (as they say in policy).  As such, I have no trouble spending a lot of my free time examining who I buy from.  Last week, for the first time ever, I bought half a gallon of milk from Straus Family Creamery, a local creamery who seriously practices healthy farms.  From their waste management to pasture raised cows to the classy glass bottles, this was one of the only websites that answered all my questions.  And I had many.

But too often, I'm fooled by websites.  For instance Tom's of Maine, whom we trust our teeth with, is actually owned by Colgate.  Odwalla is Coca-cola and to compete, Pepsi bought Naked Juice.  See this article for more shockers!  

Like when Food, Inc included Walmart in their story, I'm on the fence about whether or not sustainable principles can be kept in the hands of faceless corporations only concerned with the bottom line.  Like I said in the beginning, it's not the fact we eat meat that puts us into environmental crisis, but instead the sheer amount of it.  Usually when things go bigger, it outgrows the natural system and externalities are pushed onto the environment to maintain a profit.  

And while I don't mind people making a profit, I absolutely abhor that they may be making 2x the amount just by slapping organic onto the label.  When one giant food conglomerate grows food conventionally next door to its giant organic field, the difference becomes negligible (except perhaps in pesticides).  See Micheal Pollan's "Behind the Organic-Industrial Complex." While that difference is enough for others to pay 2x as much and call it a day, I'm not exactly sold.  Although I certainly understand why they would stop at labeling- who has time to go through confusing advertising and purposeful misrepresentation?  Sometimes, even if you do the research, the results are murky.

I want to trust in what I buy, I want to trust that they are doing the best they can.  Nobody has to be perfect, except the Straus's who even agonize over the added weight of using glass for increased transportation emissions vs. being able to reuse glass containers 8x before recycling them.   And for that, I gladly chose them over Silk (Conagra), Horizon Organics (Dean Dairy Co, largest dairy in the world) and even Clover Farms and Organic Valley who are non-local farm co-ops.  This time, unlike a year ago, I didn't recoil in pain, I gladly paid 2x as much.  Because that's the kind of trust I want to buy behind.  

Called it! Trains are our future.

When I heard of the new increased security measures and fees for flying after the Christmas almost bombing, I told my friend J that the only bright side would be people would finally take public transportation seriously.  And sure enough, last week I saw a headline entitled, "Fliers’ pain is Amtrak’s gain."  Oh, if only I was clever enough to rhyme like MSNBC.  

"During the first six months of fiscal year 2010, Amtrak trains carried 13.6 million passengers, up 4.3 percent from the same period a year earlier. If the pace holds, the rail operator is on track to beat the record of 28.7 million passengers it set in 2008."  2008 being the year of record gas prices.  So we see cost is a huge contributor.  Airline fees go up, train travel goes up.  Gas costs go up, train travel goes up.  But what about time? 

"Between 2006 and 2009, the on-time performance of Amtrak’s 15 long-distance trains improved from 30 to 75 percent. Upgraded sleeping cars, schedule changes and other improvements helped boost customer satisfaction scores from 65 to 80 percent."  While 75% accuracy may not seem very good, it definitely competes with air travel.  I know I certainly get peeved when my public transport is delayed (silently wishing I was on my bike).  Because the airlines share just 5-6 national hubs, air travel later in the day is only 60% on-time.  But even if Amtrak was 100% on-time, it's completely unfeasible time-wise for cross country travel.  It'd take days to get from coast to coast.  

Even so, what's really unfortunate is that people have a skewed mindset of how long it takes to travel by plane vs train.  One tends to only account for the time the plane is in the air.  They forget that often times, you arrive 2 hours early to get through security.  They forget the time it took to get to the airport.  They forget the extra time it takes on the other side to get picked up.  

When my mother and I took Amtrak from Chicago to Ann Arbor, it took 4.5 hours and under $40.  A plane's air time from Chicago to Detroit (DTW) would be 1.5 hours and $179.  Seems like an easy equation of whether money or time is worth more to you.

But since the Amtrak station was inside downtown Chicago, it only took us 10 min (.5 miles) to get there, versus 25 min to 1+ hour (18 miles by car or M line) to the airport.  On the other side, it took my sister 10 min (1 mile) to come pick us up, but it would've been 1 hour (50 miles round trip) by car.  Adding it up, the train took 5 hours while going by airplane would've been 4-5 hours (includes 1.5 hours for security).  So given the disparate ticket prices, the train clearly was the way to go, even though at first it looks like flying would be way faster.  

So I wish people would treat the train right.  With the advent of high speed rail in America (or at least California), I hope people start giving trains the same leeway they give planes.  High speed rail spaced out more akin to airports rather than commuter rail stations.  But faster security lines.  More comfortable seats/amenities.  Bringing your bike.  Less fees.  But probably, the same high ticket prices.

P.S. Berkeley recently did a study comparing emissions of different modes of transportation across the whole life cycle.  The whole shabang- from manufacturing to tailpipe emissions.  I hope the CA high speed rail pays attention since this method of calculation gives trains 155% more emissions but only gives airplanes 31% more.  In fact, on a per mile basis, large aircraft travel was quite comparable to fossil fuel energized light rails.  See chart below.  Crazy.

Image Source Environmental Research Web

Golden Gate Bridge Sunset

Sometimes you forget to do the touristy stuff.  But it sure is easier with longer daylight hours!  Awesome, made my worries go away instantly.

Transforming Leftovers- Taco Salad

I get a lot of flack these days after I embraced Pumpkin's exclamation that I liked eating "garbage."  But sometimes I even get lazy and you never know what leftovers will become.  Even in the realm of food, one man's garbage is another's treasure.

Such as what I had for lunch today:

I call it taco salad (and chocolate milk).  It was as tasty as it looks even though the bulk of it came from leftover nachos.  I know, a truly heinous piece of garbage.  After all, the chips get limp only moments after putting them into Tupperware and the whole thing in general is mangled mess.  But I took the nachos home from dinner out (a necessity of skiing) on Saturday, despite dubious looks from R+J.

Fast forward to just hours ago.  After throwing a mini-impromptu dinner party last night, I didn't feel like making an affair out of dining.  So I opened the fridge but found nothing from the same cuisine, very few things already cooked, and eggs.  Well, not entirely helpful.  But the leftover nachos saved me, because with the chips come cheese, olives, and jalapenos.  I put down a base of salad (one of our only convenience foods), topped on some more chips (these are now 4 months old and somehow have retained their crispiness- processed food kind of scares me), put on the nachos, put on some leftover refried beans (with the nacho cheese melted onto it), and topped it with freshly carmalized onions.  You can call it garbage, but I call it delicious!

I HAD STEAK!!!!!! An Elaboration.

While nobody I know quite shares my unbridled enthusiasm for meat, I feel like I have to disclaim the previous post.  That steak was exciting for many reasons.  (1) I haven't had steak in so long, I can't remember anymore and (2) IT'S STEAK!!!  But this steak was particularly delicious because (1) I haven't had steak in so long, I can't remember anymore, (2) it was grass fed Marin Sun Farms top sirloin, and (3) I BROWNED IT IN BACON FAT!!!!  To be fair, I think the caramelized onions and mushrooms contributed as well, but oh my goodness, so delicious!

As L cleverly asked me, how does one who only gets roast/braise end up with a steak?  Well, when one is an amateur butcher, one sees steak everywhere.  

First, 15 lbs of meat comes in an unassuming box.

Bike the meat box home!  The C in CSA stands for community so the box is delivered, amongst many others, to a neighbor.

That box is not as small as it looks ;).

Meat should never defrost in a bag of it's own juices, lest you want to taste iron.  Putting it over a rack and covering it with paper will allow it to breath and dry age a little.  See award winning River Cottage Meat Book.

Cut it up!  Just make sure it's against the grain.

One 4 lb roast becomes 3 steaks and 1.5 lbs of strips.  All separated into reused containers (SF doesn't recycle styrofoam) and labeled with dates and sizes.  The easier you make it for your future self, the easier it is!

Some slices are destined for grinding.

My perfectly marbled, oh so delicious, and sustainable steak.

I HAD STEAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!