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

Want to be transported from LaGuardia Airport to New York City for the grand total of $2.25? Or $1.10 if you’re a Senior? Easy! Jump aboard the M60 Bus.

At first I had hesitated taking that bus. I had read too many downbeat reviews and still had too many questions about it. The M60 is not an airport bus so you can’t just hand over your luggage to be conveniently stowed away in a luggage compartment. It’s a regular city bus. Usually packed with standing passengers, city buses have narrow aisles, which means lots of bumping into other riders and their bulky paraphernalia. Add a passel of traveler’s luggage and no matter how small or compact those suitcases, I couldn’t imagine a scenario that didn’t include irate New Yorkers bellowing about suitcases smacking, tripping, or just plain annoying them.

Next was the question of travel time. For me, the closest M60 bus stop is 125th Street in Harlem (the bus starts at 106th St. and Broadway). Unfamiliar with uptown traffic patterns, I couldn’t really gauge how much time the overall trip would take. Some riders complained the bus had taken far longer then the 40 minutes claimed by the Transit Authority.

But Flying into La Guardia in heavy winds after Christmas, I finally decided to give the M60 a whirl. After I located the bus stop in the usual chaos outside the terminal, my next goal was not to develop frostbite while waiting and shivering in the icy wind. Next to me a young man in a thin jacket with a muffler wrapped around his head, was jumping up and down to keep warm. Ten minutes later the M60 appeared, and instead of pulling into our stop, the bus zoomed straight ahead. Yikes – the driver was brazenly passing us—leaving us to freeze our tails off. Charging into action, the young man jumped into the street and waved his arms to flag the driver down. Brakes were hit hard and we piled aboard with our luggage. I asked the driver where the bus stopped in Manhattan and approximately how many stops we had before hitting 125th Street. Apparently my questions demanded more time to answer than he had at his disposal so, after being impatiently waved on, I quickly confiscated a rare, vacant single seat, and parked my suitcase beside me in the aisle. Numerous other suitcases littered the aisles, some definitely not small. But the bus was only half full and no one seemed to notice or mind.

After a few quick stops at other terminals, we hit the main highway. Great. It would be clear sailing from here into the city. Wrong. In Queens we pulled up at another bus stop. Then another…and so on for maybe 10 more local stops. Then, golden lights twinkling all around us, the bus, solidly packed with standing passengers swaying among the suitcases, crossed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge into Manhattan. But yippee for my wallet – there was no $5.00 toll to pay nor any cabdriver’s tip to be handed over at the end of the line.

After we wheeled into 125th Street the driver announced, “Next stop, Second Avenue.” Good news. Maybe we’d also stop at Third Avenue, then Lexington, where I could grab further transport for my last leg home. And voila. The bus stopped at Lexington and 125th street, the heart of Harlem. It was almost dark now. With few tall buildings to break the icy gusts, I dragged my suitcase to the corner and tried to get my bearings. Clearly I could forget about cabs. There wasn’t a scrap of yellow anywhere in the streets. Subways were out too, even if I could find a station. There was no way I was schlepping my weighty suitcase up and down steep flights of subway stairs, in addition to climbing my own brownstone’s stairs. So a bus it had to be. The corner bus signs were not encouraging. All the buses went to Randalls Island – the opposite direction from home.

Apparently question marks were written all over me, because a man at the bus stop stepped forward. “Where do you want to go?”

“Down town.” I replied. And minutes later, thanks to the helpful stranger, I boarded a Lexington Avenue bus. Fare – zip; it was part of the transfer fare. By this time it was the height of rush hour, but you couldn’t have guessed it from the small number of bus passengers and the thin traffic this far uptown. After zooming forty blocks south, I disembarked, and clamored the final two blocks to my apartment. Richer by over $40.00 that a cab would have cost me, I felt a sense of exuberance. I had done it. I had cracked the insider’s code and taken my first trip on the elusive M60. But while I had come through without mishap, the bus was clearly not for the faint-hearted or those who valued their comfort.

For all others planning a future trip to or from LaGuardia Airport, hop aboard the M60 and save yourself some pretty travel pennies.

I stared at my lone skinny bathroom shelf. Then I stared at my piles of make-up, my growing collection of body splashes, my bath powder, my lotions, my shampoos and conditioners, my tooth brushes, my this and that and the other thing totaling pretty much a ton of beauty paraphernalia. How was I going to squeeze all that stuff onto that narrow, rinky-dink shelf?

Straw baskets to the rescue. At Goodwill for a few dollars I found a straw napkin holder with its’ original label still attached. Next I foraged around for some thrift shop glass containers to separate my different make-ups, brushes, emery boards, nail clips, etc. For my lipsticks I found a circular shallow container. Encased within that, I placed a curved taller glass to hold my make-up pencils and brushes. For my toothbrushes I dug up an unusually shaped, slender glass that wouldn’t tip over from the weight of the brushes. My tortoise shell hairpins were a tougher proposition; no glass was tiny enough to suitably contain them – till I spotted a shot glass at the back of my kitchen cupboard. Perfect. With all my make-up and application tools now visible and easy to reach, I had myself an organized make-up station.

In a more commodious straw basket that had originally arrived with a flower arrangement, I gathered all my taller beauty aids: bath powder, cotton balls (stuffed into in a vinaigrette jar because of its apt size and shape), tanning lotion, scissors (I always seem to be chopping away at hair that grows faster than weeds) and a large magnifying mirror (for make-up application, not god-forbid, examining skin magnified a creepy five times large than life).

Next I attacked my bath toiletries. For them, I located a long slim basket to take up permanent residence on the corner rim of my bathtub. Into it went my shampoos: one really good one, one cheap one to use in between the “good” applications, an anti-dandruff one and one that removed harsh red tinges from my hair stylist’s occasionally over-zealous, blonde highlighting. This basket also contains hair conditioners and pumice stone, all easily reachable during bath time. Another plus: it’s impervious to shattering on the hard surface of tub or tile floor.

Straw baskets last a surprisingly long time. But they’re thirsty little devils and need a solid drenching every so often to keep their fibers tough and supple.

So if your collection of bath and beauty aids belongs in a king-size bathroom instead of the doghouse size you actually have, consider organizing and containing it with versatile, easy on the wallet, straw baskets.

Why are American workers left stranded at the pier while vacation boats are sailing off left and right without them? The primary reason: unlike other advanced countries, there is no law in the United States that says employers must grant their employees paid vacations–OR paid holidays. Result: 1 in 4 less affluent lower wage, part time and small business employees receive neither paid vacations nor holidays. And if you combine full and part-time workers, on average they receive a paltry 9 days of annual leave and 6 paid holidays.

For those workers who DO get paid vacations, it’s because their companies kindly “grant” them or collective bargaining has won them. Unlike other industrialized countries (see table comparing paid leave in OECD countries) the length of American vacations is strictly at the discretion of employers.

Some workers luck out and some do not. But even the lucky ones are nowhere near as lucky as French workers. Employees in France receive 30 workdays of paid leave free and clear every year. Forget seeing any locals in Paris during the month of August. They’ve packed up their bikinis and Bain de Soleil and fled the city for their month long holiday.

The French are actually a bit behind Finland which not only also grants all its’ workers a full months paid annual vacation, but also grants them an additional week their second year on the job. For time off though, Italy may take the vacation cake. Yes, Italians also get their sacred month long summer holiday, but on top of that, they receive 13 days of paid public holidays. And just so they don’t get too overworked, poor bambinos, wealthier Italians ALSO pack up their skis for their annual ski holiday known as “una settimana bianca” (a white week).

On this chart I counted 15 fortunate countries where workers are guaranteed a minimum of 4 weeks paid yearly vacation. And where is the United States on this vacation chart? At the very bottom in ignoble last place where our mandated paid vacation time is a big fat zero.

Some will see this as no problem. Haven’t hard working, innovative and productive workers made America great?  But behind this productivity are long, overtime work hours.  Forty percent of Americans work 50 hours a week and some are in their offices 60 to 70 hours. Yet well rested workers in France, Ireland, Norway and Holland, who take far longer vacations, are actually more productive. This seems to agree with a study by Ernst and Young that showed the longer the vacation their employees took, the better they performed.

More than a third of American workers don’t even take all the vacation time allotted them. And 88% carry electronics to stay in touch with the office while away from their precious desks. The reasons? Fear that work will pile up in their absence, or other employees may be seen as more devoted to the company and be promoted above them. Our poor economy has also convinced some workers their economic success is subservient to employers who can — and will — dump them in a minute.

According to Dr. Jeremy Reynolds, Professor of Sociology, cultural factors also influence how much time we work. “Cultural norms may encourage work as an end in itself or as a means to acquiring other things, including consumer products.” Many Americans continually want more and more. They want the latest model, the newest thing and the bragging rights that go with that. So they need to work more hours to have the money to spend on those shiny consumer enticements.

Do you think Americans work too many hours? Should this country have legally guaranteed vacation time for all?