Savvy Saving Bytes

If your fridge happens to contain any yak, elk or Llama meat, you have a treat coming, according to an ad for transglutaminase (a.k.a. meat glue). Slap these singular meats together with meat glue and you can now “create an Exotic Mixed Grill Filet.” Or how about gluing some “Swordfish with Salmon to create a Seafood Filet?”

These unique combos of meat, fish, and even pasta (shrimp pasta anyone?) are now possible thanks to an enzyme called transglutaminase (TG).  Extracted from animal blood or soil bacteria, these enzymes are processed into white powder that’s used as an adhesive to bind proteins to proteins.

Food producers can bind together shreds of meat or fish and mix them with a glue mush that’s shaped into items like chicken nuggets, fish balls or imitation crabmeat.

In commercial kitchens, various cuts of meat that normally would be discarded or ground up can be slathered with glue, rolled up tight and refrigerated overnight to fuse the contents together. (For the visually curious, here are some products that have been shaped with a meat glue kit sold on the internet). The glued meat is then cooked to 165 degrees, the temperature the FDA considers to be safe for this product.

Some of the perceived problems of meat glue are centered on this cooking temp. Some claim the meat on steaks cooked rare or medium rare does not reach 165 degrees, opening up the possibility of bacteria forming inside glue pockets.

Breathing in TG in powder form is a definite no-no. Like all coagulants, it’s dangerous stuff to ingest.

There’s also a debate about an off-taste in meat glue, having to do with ammonia that’s discussed in The French Institute’s Tech’n Stuff Blog. In addition, the article raises a troublesome point regarding the testing of TG, which was paid for by its’ manufacturer. The test subjects were rats and they ingested the meat glue not through their mouths, but through stomach tubes. This means no tests were carried out on the effects of meat glue traveling through the delicate tissues of mouth, throat and esophagus. Also, no long-term tests (over 2 years) appear to have been carried out.

I’m also less than thrilled by the way meat glue is tested for freshness. The blog suggests rubbing a bit of the powder into raw chicken. If the glue smells like plain old chicken, it’s past its prime. If however the glue smells like wet dog, super — it’s nice and fresh. Don’t know about you, but for me, the stench of wet dog is at the very bottom of worst odors in the universe.

The French Institute post was written over 2 years ago when TG was a new product, untried by many chefs and difficult to find in other countries. The lively, enthusiastic comments suggest many chefs were champing at the bit to experiment with the stuff. And why not? Beef is ever more expensive.  Meat glue saves commercial kitchens money, cuts down on waste, is easier to mold and cut and makes a more uniform food presentation.

On the consumer’s side of the fence, rising beef prices are also a concern. But aside from that, I’ll take my meat neat, thank you, hold the glue.

Are you, on the other hand, like numerous chefs, okay with this product?

Yes, I know CVS paid a bundle to tear out their cash registers and replace them with self-service check-out stations so customers would have the convenience (cough, sputter, eye-roll) of checking-out all their own items, but I for one will not be jumping on the CVS customer-as-cashier bandwagon in New York City.

Number one, their new self-service machines slow everything down. With so many disparate devices cobbled together at the check-out stations, they don’t work so hot together. Some stop in mid-transaction and customers have to cool their heels waiting for CVS employees to materialize from where ever they hide out to fix the glitches. And some out and out refuse to do their stuff.  At two nearby CVS stores, each has one totally kaput self check-out.

Number two, by the time I hit my CVS store, I’m finally finito with my errands and am loaded down with shopping bags from other stores so I’m in no mood to deal with the pain-in-the-neck chore of self check-out. To free my hands for the task, I have to drop my shopping bags on the floor (where, being plastic, they immediately flop over and spill contents in every direction (which is not even to DISCUSS the floor bacteria situation). Then comes all the rooting through pocket and purse for eyeglasses to locate barcodes and punch in numbers. I should also add I get plenty of daily exercise, so I have zero need for the additional exercise of schlepping items (some big, awkward and heavy) from basket to bar code to shopping bag, while squinting for bar codes and feeding credit cards, coupons and cash into different talking slots.

Crankiness aside, I resent doing the same work as a cashier and not getting paid for it. I don’t like working for free. And if CVS expects me to do the exact same work as a cashier and receive zero payment, what other free labor do they have in store for me further down the line? Stocking shelves? Slicing cartons open, steam-cleaning floors?

At least CVS hasn’t abolished cashiers altogether. As Yet. Each store still employs at least one cashier for renegade shoppers like myself who by-pass all the self  check-out malarkey. I over-heard one of those teenage cashiers express disapproval of CVS customers who refused to change their old ways, move with the times and use the self check-outs.  Clearly A dream customer for today’s hard-line corporations, this young cashier actually sees self-service check-out as a progressive move — not as an aggressive maneuver to slash payroll costs and increase company profits. What’s your opinion on this CVS move?

To catch a flight at LaGuardia during the Christmas holidays I could do one of two things: either grab a cab and cough up well over $40.00 OR jump on an M60 bus and pay a sweet little $2.25.

I had already taken the M60 from FROM LaGuardia to New York City when time wasn’t a factor and there was no plane to catch at the other end. But getting out of the city at holiday time can be a dicey proposition. With masses of travelers on the move and roads packed with drivers with short tempers, a traffic snarl could  easily morph into a highway nightmare that could mean a missed flight. And with Christmas flights fully booked, there would be no hopping on the next flight out.

So to maximize my chances of getting to LaGuardia on time, I left my apartment on Sunday morning at 9:00 am, three whole hours before flight takeoff. My plan: Take a Madison Ave bus from 83rd Street to 125th Street, where I’d catch the M60 (map route here). After a cold 20 minutes wait for the uptown bus, I hit my first snafu when the driver informed me his bus didn’t go to 125th Street. But not to worry, he said, I could catch the M60 on Broadway over on his West Side route. Not good – this would be traveling west when I wanted to go east but I had no time to fool around and check other uptown bus routes. I’m not sure how long it took because I was too busy searching for an M60 Bus stop, but the west side blocks seem to stretch on forever by the time I pulled my book bag suitcase off the bus at Broadway and 117 Street. The entrance to Columbia University was only yards away, nicely convenient for students already congregated at the m60 bus stop with their luggage. As the minutes ticked by more students appeared with more suitcases, including a long weirdly shaped green canvas bag that could have doubled as a body bag for skinny corpses. Another standout was a large blazing orange case made of some rigid material shiny as ice.

Around 9:45 an M60 appeared (bus schedule here) and we all clamored aboard. It was one of the new city buses, double long, but just as narrow as the old ones. Which meant by the time we were all seated, suitcases of every size and shape littered the center aisle. With each new stop, more suitcases were added to the obstacle course. For boarding passengers dragging on ever more suitcases, it was like snaking their way through a minefield. And for the numerous standees wedged between suitcases, it was a major challenge trying to maintain their balance while not knocking over luggage or bashing into other passengers.

Because the traffic was Sunday morning light, we pretty much sailed from west to east on 125^th Street. The sparse highway traffic in Queens behaved too.

Our first stop at LaGuardia turned out to be on the unfamiliar looking lower level, an area where passengers usually depart from the airport rather than arrive. Anxiously awaiting us, a crunch of travelers surged forward and begged the driver to let them re-board. Apparently they had gotten off at the wrong stop on a prior M60. Not surprising, since the driver neglected to announce which airlines were at that particular terminal. New to LaGuardia, the discombobulated passengers had probably assumed the first stop encompassed the whole airport. To avoid a similar fate I jumped up and asked the driver which terminal housed my departing US Air flight. I had two more stops to go, he said.

To add some additional nail-biting tone to the day, US Air was renovating their space in the terminal and instead of two separate interior lines – one for check in and one for security, both lines had been combined into one VERY long, VERY slow-moving line. Somewhere along the snail-creeping trail I lost track of time. When finally I cleared security and headed for my gate, I had exactly thirty-five minutes till flight time. Just enough time to search for a yogurt in the jammed food court, gulp it down and rush to my gate where as usual a multitude of Christmas stand-byes were waiting to jump into any unclaimed seats.

Lesson learned: Allowing three hours door to door to LaGuardia on the M60 was adequate if the traffic was light. But with busier traffic, giving yourself more time could be a gift to your blood pressure.

Impatiently waiting for the real estate market to recover from the recession, my niece, spurred on by the $8,000 government tax credit for new homebuyers, finally jumped in and bought herself a house. Happily for her, she’ll be paying property taxes in Virginia, one of the twenty states that have the lowest property tax rates in the country.

Of these 20 low property tax states, the northern most state is Wyoming, which comes in at number 10. For our water-lover friends, eight of these bargain tax states are on the coastline: California on the Pacific: Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina on the Atlantic and Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico. The majority of the states are in the sunny South or Southwest.

The rock bottom property tax rate on owner-occupied housing in the country is .14% in the Deep South State of Louisiana. The highest rate is in Texas at 1.76%. For an idea of the difference, if a house is valued at $126,800 in Texas, you would pay $2,232 in property taxes. If that same $126,800 house is sitting on Louisiana soil, you would plunk down $178 for your property tax bill. A tidy $2054 difference.

Property tax rates are only part of what can be a multi-layered property tax situation. Never having owned a home, I just found out that one reason Connecticut property taxes are so high at 1.50% is that a large part of that tax covers schooling. If you have children who go to public school there, lucky you, you don’t pay a dime for their education. But if you have children in Virginia, which has a much lower tax rate with less money going to support schools, you have to pay extra school fees to cover your children’s education. Where this difference really kicks in is when the kids leave school. In Virginia, residents will no longer have to cough up those school fees and can now live in their home with that low tax rate for the rest of their lives. Whereas In Connecticut, residents must continue paying that high property tax even though their children no longer utilize the schools. For retired people on fixed incomes, this could be a difficult proposition.

For a balanced tax picture in each state, the property tax rate and all its ramifications should be considered in combination with State, City and County Income and Sales taxes.

The Tax Foundation, a tax research group in Washington, DC, provides these numbers for the 20 Lowest State Property tax Rates on Owner-occupied Housing in the USA in 2008:

1. .14% Louisiana
2. .32% Alabama
3. .43% Delaware
4. .43% Washington DC
5. .47% Mississpippi
6. .48% West Virgina
7. .49% South Carolina
8. .51% Arkansas
9. .51% New Mexico
10. .54% Wyoming
11. .56% Utah
12. .57% Arizona
13. .58% Colorado
14. .61% California
15. .63% Nevada
16. .66% Idaho
17. .67% Tennessee
18. .69% Virgina
19. .70% Kentucky
20. .72% Oklahoma

For a more detailed property tax picture of the entire country, MSN Money features a rollover map covering inter-related tax information in each state.

Not once in the twenty plus Halloweens I’ve lived in this Upper East Side brownstone have any Spidermen, Batmen, or little sparkly princesses knocked on my door, trick or treating. Nor have I ever seen any costumed kids canvassing for candy on my block. And why should they? They get far richer pickings over on the commercial avenues of Lexington and Third, where they speed walk from store to store collecting sweets in bulging shopping bags that drag their little shoulders down.

A few of my Manhattan neighbors, however, can always be counted on to uphold the Halloween spirit. Somewhat competitively, they festoon their buildings with jack-o-lanterns, black, plastic crawly things, blow-up characters, tons of dried corn husks and enough sprayed-on cobwebs to reach Saturn. With their enormous bony mitts and diaphanous, tattered shrouds, my favorite spooky, but chichi skeleton ghosts (shown here) make fitting companions for these Halloween passages:

• Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing; Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. — Edgar Allan Poe
• Everyone is a moon and has a dark side, which he never shows to anybody. — Mark Twain
• Her smile was the grave and her eyes the elevator to hell. I put out my hand. She knew what I was. — Bill Shields
• My candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open… — Mary Shelley
• Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud. – Sophocles
• Just like a ghost, you’ve been a-hauntin’ my dreams; So I’ll propose… on Halloween. Love is kinda crazy with a spooky little girl like you.  — Classics IV
• One need not be a chamber to be haunted; One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing; Material place. — Emily Dickinson
• Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things, which escape those who dream by night. — Edgar Allen Poe