The idea was simple and immediately appealing when I spotted it in the Charlotte Observer. Take a big batch of onions and, with minimal time and effort, caramelize them all at one shot. Then during the rest of the week, spark up lunches, dinners and snacks with the savory, intensely flavored onions. And are any other veggies cheaper than onions? No. This added another positive note to the idea.

A big onion lover, I put the plan into play that very night. While I had sautéed onions plenty of times I had never actually caramelized them, so I checked out a few online recipes.

I had already planned on a hamburger and salad for dinner. With my new onion treasury, I piled the hamburger high with my freshly caramelized onions. Delicious!

For next day’s lunch I sliced up some Longhorn Style Cheddar Cheese purchased in Spanish Harlem, a tangier variation of Cheddar, but much less expensive uptown. To an open face sandwich I added mayo, mustard, the cheese and a generous layer of the caramelized onions, unheated. (In Italian homes, including my grandparent’s, vegetables, especially those cooked with garlic and olive oil, are often served at room temperature). Another yummy home run!

Tonight for dinner I’m preparing pea soup made from scratch – pin a Julia Child star on me – and it’s bubbling on the stove right now, almost done. A recipe I’ve been fooling around with over time, the pea soup contains bacon, cumin, nutmeg, celery seed and cinnamon combined with the usual peas, carrots and celery. But tonight it also contains Ta-dah—heaping tablespoons of my caramelized onions…And now the soup is done. I just turned off the heat and tasted tonight’s rendition. Thanks to those sweet little old onions, it’s the most richly flavored pea soup I’ve ever made.

Tomorrow maybe I’ll try the caramelized onions with pasta, or just slather them on some crusty Italian bread, maybe with some olives or sardines or anchovies or…the possibilities go on and on.

At first glance I thought I had saved myself a quick four bucks buying a generic brand coffee creamer (White Rose) for $1.49 instead of the big name brand (Coffee-Mate) for $5.49. And why not? Though spotted in different stores, the jars appeared to be the same size, shape and color. Even their lids were identical, so it was possible they had both been manufactured by Coffee-Mate, making it a still bigger bargain. Operating on a large scale, big name food brands sometimes set aside a portion of their production for the generic and store label market and still come out with a tidy profit.

Of course it could be argued that coffee creamers weren’t even foods at all. Heavy on preservatives and the usual artificial suspects, the ingredients wouldn’t win any nutrition contests. Not a big fan of the stuff myself, I only use it for rare emergencies when I run out of milk for my coffee.

Still, $4.00 seemed a pretty steep difference for essentially the same product. Except a closer look at the labels showed they weren’t the same product. The $5.49 Coffee-Mate Creamer was hazelnut flavored, which partially explained the premium price, although $4.00 for a chemical spritz of hazelnut flavoring seemed a mite over the top. But hello there, an even closer look showed the Coffee-Mate and White Rose Creamer weren’t the same weight either. Though their size was identical, their contents, according to the tiny print at the label bottom, varied in weight, with Coffee-Mate coming in at 15 oz. and the White Rose at a mere 11 oz. In some quarters that White Rose disparity could be called subterfuge packaging, an implication the contents of the two weighed the same.

To compound the confusion I found the regular non-flavored Coffee-Mate in another store in a much larger jar, which looked as though it would hold at least 1/3 more than the 15-oz jar. Wrong. Though an inch taller and way fatter, the jar contained a weensy 1 oz. more, coming in at 16 oz. Which in other quarters could have suggested an attempt to mislead customers into thinking they were getting a heck of a lot more in that huge jar than one measly ounce.

With this set up, the only way to really compare prices was to figure out the ounce cost. Here’s what three neighborhood stores were charging (rounded off) per ounce:

• Coffee-Mate Creamer, CVS……………..$.28
• Coffee-Mate Creamer, Duane Reade..$.26
• Coffee-Mate Creamer, D’Agostino……$.25
• White Rose Creamer ………………………$.14

So in the end, by buying 11 ounces of the White Rose Creamer instead of Coffee-Mate I saved between $1.21 and $1.54 depending on where I opened my wallet.  Plus I got another lesson in staying alert while checking out the food industry’s hocus pocus pricing and Abracadabra packaging.

Dear Starbucks:

Enough already! I’m heading for a larger dress size yet again. And while I can pretend all these extra pounds jumped on my innocent frame because I’m “big boned” or “not doing enough exercise” or “a bunch of monster chocolate mousses forced themselves on me” you and I both know the truth. I can’t resist, no how, no way, your divine double chocolate brownies. I’ve tried and tried. Really I have. Every time I approach your nearest branch on Lexington Avenue, I start my incantation:  “No. No brownie for you today. Be strong. Be tough. Do you want to end up a big chubbo? No. No way. ”

Most of the time this little pep talk works. I get past the Starbucks door, then the entire establishment. Yay! Made it. But oh no, there’s another Starbucks just around the corner on Third Avenue. And ANOTHER one two blocks north. And no matter which direction I turn, there are still MORE Starbucks lying in wait with their brownie treasures. It’s getting boring, this tedious, ongoing lecture to keep myself from scarfing down yet another you know what.

Clearly, dear Starbucks, it’s time for a big change of direction here. How about we try something new — a win-win situation for both of us. How about raising the prices on your double chocolate brownies? And not by a little — but by a LOT. Plenty of people would pay a heck of a lot more moolah for those heavenly chocolate concoctions. Of course I wouldn’t. And that’s where the price increase would benefit us both. Your profits would increase and I would stop buying brownies left and right. The more money you charge, the more my frugal (some might say cheap) side would kick in. No longer considering those brownies a bargain price, I’d start rationing my purchases, eating those luscious things at a sensible, more moderate rate. And that dreaded larger dress size would be cut off at the pass.

So whatcha say Starbucks? Why not raise the prices on your double chocolate brownies and make both of us happy. And richer, thanks to more jingle in both our pockets.

I was up late that Saturday night reading the Sunday Times when I hard an odd snapping noise. Snap-snap-SNAP — the snapping got faster and louder and suddenly burst into what sounded like powerful firecrackers going off. Alarmed, I jumped up, trying to figure out what was happening and where the scary sounds were coming from. They seemed loudest on the window side of the room. As I took a tentative step in that direction, the room exploded in a choking gray cloud as massive plaster chunks peeled away from the 100 year old ceiling, smashed onto my furniture and shelves and lamps and crashed to the floor.

Thick with paster dust, the air was difficult to breath, but the path to the window was blocked with piles of heavy plaster and floorboard debris that had come close, I shakily realized, to smashing me into unattractive bits. I opened the front door, letting the ancient smelling, plaster fog roll into the hall.  All was silent out there.   Most neighbors were out of town for the weekend.  The few remaining had apparently heard nothing.

What to do? It was late, I was tired. Blanketed in plaster dust, my bed was buried under weighty blocks of jagged plaster too heavy for me to clear.  Who knew how long it would take for the floating gray haze to settle?  Though I had a friend who lived only blocks away, I was not keen on calling her and bunking on a living room couch.

So I did what all apartment renters do — no matter the hour — I called my landlord, who was away at his country place. As a doctor, he’s used to late night calls, but not calls telling him a ceiling in his 100 year old building has come close to mashing a tenant into oblivion.

Playing on that note, I told him I didn’t know what to do. Of course I did know what I wanted to do which was to escape, go to a nearby hotel and camp there till the disaster was cleared. Yes, he said, going to a hotel was a good idea. He would have men there in the morning to start work.

So with his monetary okay, I packed a few things and, in disheveled condition at that ungodly hour, registered at the neighborhood hotel. Not impressed with my middle of the night appearance, the desk clerk assigned me an impossibly tiny room. The bed was smack up against an air conditioner, which gave me the sensation of spending the night with a roaring machine in bed beside me.

The next morning after a brisk chat with a new desk clerk who apologized for the tiny room and my cramped, frozen limbs, I was assigned a new room — a spacious suite no less. And there I stayed for nine nights, enjoying meals served with linen, china and silver coffeepots, courtesy of my landlord

If you yourself are considering buying a 100-year-old house, there’s one thing you can definitely count on.  The longer that home has been standing, the more complex and costly the repairs you’ll be facing further down the road.

Would you ever consider buying a house that old?

Are you looking for tempting salad and sandwich ideas to jazz up your brown bag lunches? Want to give the boot to the tired lunchmeat and tuna on white routine? Or maybe you’re ready to take your packable lunches up to a higher level. This collection of over 100 super recipes will beef up your lunch menu repertoire or maybe inspire you to jump on the brown bag lunch bandwagon if you’re not already aboard.

If you are onboard, you’re already enjoying the benefits of brown bagging it: eating more healthful meals, knowing your food sources, relaxing with pleasant eat-in lunches and of course, saving bucks (lots of bucks: a daily $10.00 restaurant lunch tab totals $2,600 a year. A $20.00 dollar a day big spender racks up a $5,200 yearly tab).

Reasons for not being aboard seem to center around the idea of missing out on lunch time networking, a reluctance to eat alone in a deserted workspace while work mates are out scarfing up lunch together in a noonday haze of camaraderie. The weak spots in that scenario could include fatty, fast food lunch destinations, lunch mates whom you would actually prefer not to see every minute of the work day and fellow workers who might also love to bring their own lunch to work in this iffy economy, but who are too chicken to be the first in the office to break out of the eating out mold.

Except for occasional lunch dates, I’ve always packed my own lunch whenever I’ve worked on-site and enjoyed a tranquil respite reading while eating it. Prepared in the morning, my favorite was a pasta salad with grape tomatoes, celery or peppers or whatever fresh veggies I had on hand, along with olives, capers and vinaigrette dressing. For desert, a bunch of grapes. A big snacker, I also packed little containers of dried fruits, trail mix and puffed wheat for all day munchies. All were tossed into a canvas carryall bag.

For those more organized in the culinary department or who transport warm foods, a bento box collection might be the ticket. These can be pricey, but would quickly pay for themselves with their sayonara to luncheonettes savings.

So for the brown bag lunch brigade and those considering joining them, here are 103 of the most creative recipes on the most streamlined sites (no over the top links) I could find:

• 35 tempting sandwiches and salads to bring the typical brown bag lunch up a few notches: Country Living
• 13 quick and healthy packable lunches with zippy flavor combos featuring full nutritional info: Cooking Light
• 43 appealing and off the beaten track lunch recipes (that spicy Moroccan lentil salad sounds good): Recipe 4 Living
• 12 easy, tasty, healthful recipes for brown bag lunches that save both calories and cash: Dallas Morning News.

At first I thought the $9.99 price for Maybelline Colorsensational Lipstick at CVS was a mistake. I hadn’t bought that lipstick in a coon’s age or two, so I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the price take a bit of a jump, but not THAT high of a jump. When I found out the cost was indeed correct, it added to my growing sense that CVS’s prices have steadily been rising a lot more steeply than other discount stores.

Sure enough, a few days later I hit my local Rite Aid and the price for that exact same Maybelline Colorsensational Lipstick was $7.19. That’s 39% cheaper. Which meant CVS was making $2.80 above and BEYOND a normal mark-up. And they were making that off ME. And I would be losing $2.80, the price of a nice juicy melon or box of berries, every time I would be dumb enough to pay that higher price for a tube of lip color.

The story doesn’t end there. When I double-checked the oline lipstick prices at CVS, the price listed for that Maybelline lipstick suddenly turned out to be $8.79 – over a dollar cheaper than their in-store price.  It’s true some stores charge lower prices online than in-store but I couldn’t help wondering if that cheaper CVS online figure wasn’t conjured up more for the benefit of the Maybelline folks,who might not be exactly delighted with the exorbitant markup CVS was actually pulling in for their product.

It’s interesting though, that Rite Aid’s price for that Maybelline lipstick both online and in-store was the same $7.19. Which I think is always less confusing for customers.

If you’re wondering how CVS can get away with charging 39% more for a product than Rite Aid and why customers simply don’t desert them for the cheaper store, the answer may lie with their real estate. CVS stores are everywhere in New York and their locations are always prime spots near subway stops. The two nearest me are only blocks away, both on Lexington in the eighties, giving them a wide radius of buyers in every direction. Whereas the nearest Rite Aid is a bit of a hike much farther east. It’s a more out of the way location and  too much of a hike for customers pressed for time or unwilling to traipse those extra blocks.

Needless to say, it’s now my lipstick refill stop and, pending further research in price differential, my discount store for who knows how many more items.

Internships don’t usually come with position titles, so the ad on Craig’s List for an Intern – Gallery Photographer and PhotoShop Editor, caught my eye. The internship called for a student who owned and was an adept user of a DSLR camera with on-board flash. This pricey piece of equipment would have set any student back at least $600 to $3000 in the lower price range. Additionally, the job required good digital photo editing skills and the availability to work 8 to 12 hours a week for 8 weeks or more.

The intern’s job duties entailed photographing numerous antiques (with the intern’s OWN CAMERA), editing and retouching the photos, then uploading them to websites where the antiques were to be sold. Rather than assisting, the intern would essentially be doing the exact same work as a professional photographer, retoucher, editor and digital production team whose services could easily total many thousands of dollars for this kind of job. The intern, on the other hand, was to be paid the exultant sum of zip-zilch-nada. Actually it was more like MINUS zip-zilch-nada, since the employer made no mention of paying the intern’s expenses. Assuming the intern worked three days a week for 8 weeks, the transportation tab alone could total a minimum $120.00. Tack on the cost of camera batteries, memory cards and that intern was about to PAY up to $300 bucks for the privilege of saving that antique broker a huge hunk of money.

But hold on, you say, what about the professional experience the intern would receive? Along with the portfolio boost of published photos and online exposure to potential clients?  Yes, the ad also pointed out these advantages — along with words that are magic to a beginning photographer: “Full Photo Credit.” Curious, I visited the employer’s website and there — Among zillions of small, crowded photos of antiques — not a single photo credit was visible. Of course the employer hadn’t specified a “visible” photo credit, so a photo credit could certainly have been buried deep somewhere inside the text.

As to the style and quality of the photos — they appeared to be strictly low-end, catalog shots. The lighting in all the photos was identical and every antique was silhouetted against an identical white background. So not only would a photographer’s skill and style not be further developed on this job, they could easily be set back some.

Nor did any other of the usual advantages of internships — like networking and learning from experts in one’s field of interest — appear to apply here. Because the intern was going to be working pretty much alone, taking the photos and editing them (on a slow, cheap version of PhotoShop, it turned out, known to crash a lot), there would be few, if any, people to network with. And with no other photographer on the scene, let alone one with expert ability and experience, the intern would have no mentor to help sharpen photo skills.

From where I sit, it looked like this employer was taking advantage of a tight, super-competitive job and intern market. What do you think?

Before exploring the country’s lowest sales taxes, I always assumed New York was the primary sales tax monster, hitting us up for 8.875% sales tax* every time we New Yawkas made a purchase. But lo and behold, another state turns out to be an even bigger tax biter: the gentle state of Tennessee charges its southern citizens a whopping 9.41% combined state and local sales tax, the highest in the country.

Of the 20 lowest sales taxes in the U.S., the residents of five states are fortunate enough to be charged zero state sales tax. But of those five states, two charge local sales tax which leaves only three, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon, with a combined state and local sales tax of absolutely zero. If you live in any of these three states and decide to purchase some new furniture for $3,000 bucks you will not have to tack on a penny for sales tax. But if you buy that same furniture in pricey Tennessee, you’ll have to cough up a whopping $282.30 to cover the sales tax bill. Quite a difference, especially if you’re on a super-tight budget, retired or thinking of furnishing an entire new home.

One reason why Alaska has a zero state sales tax rate (though it charges a local 2.15% sales tax) is Oil. Companies happily enrich the state coffers for the privilege of drilling for the stuff.

Combined State and Local Sales Tax Rates from Tax Foundation (September 2009)

1. 0%       Montana
2. 0%       New Hampshire
3. 0%       Oregon
4. 1.13%  Alaska
5. 1.92%  Delaware
6. 4.38%  Hawaii
7. 5.00%  Maine
8. 5.00%  Virginia
9. 5.38%  Wyoming
10. 5.42%  Wisconsin
11. 5.52%  South Dakota
12. 6.00%  Connecticut
13. 6.00%  Idaho
14. 6.00%  Kentucky
15. 6.00%  Maryland
16. 6.00%  Michigan
17. 6.00%  North Dakota
18. 6.00%  Vermont
19. 6.00%  West Virginia
20. 6.15%  Alabama

Check out Tax Foundation for the ranking of every state’s combined state and local sales tax rates.

* Includes 3/8% for the benefit of the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District.

I’m not keen on celebrating New Year’s Eve in public places with raucous crowds, revelers determined to have a BIG night, dining room prices jacked up to the ceiling and food poorly prepared thanks to over-worked, over-steamed chefs. To this, add wobbly merrymakers weaving through the city on their way to getting blotto and it’s definitely not my idea of a fun way to start the New Year.

As for the New Year’s Resolution Bandwagon, I’ll give it a pass. I’m less than thrilled at being informed NOW is the time to sum up the past year. NOW is the time to set goals for the New Year. Who says? To me New Years Day and the next day are interchangeable. As are Valentine’s Day and Halloween and Ground Hog Day. The only difference between them is a date written on a calendar. So why make resolutions at the exact same time every year just because the community at large and a bunch of articles are saying it’s the time to do so. Why can’t resolutions be made any old time of the year?  If you’re living and thinking at your fullest every day, you’re probably making resolutions and setting goals left and right all along. Ideally I am.

Still, as we wave Sayonara to 2010, I happily sense positive vibrations rolling our way. For months the economy and the stock market have been bubbling northward, something we haven’t seen for quite awhile. Hopefully 2010 washed away the last of bad feelings about bleak, black 2008. We’re finally past all those tankers of red ink and sinking financial ships.  We’ve started peeking over the barricades, looking to see what’s coming up the road and maybe even thinking about loosening up our purse strings.

So bring on 2011. Don’t know about you, but after austerity’s extended gray stay with us, I’m ready to rumble. Aren’t you?

When I first moved to New York City I had a job at Harper’s Bazaar that paid a salary in the pitiful peanut range.  But thanks to miniscule living expenses, I had plenty of cash to splash around on eating out, weekend trips and all around fun stuff. I shared the rent on a two room, kitchen-in-the-living-room, fourth floor walk-up apartment with two, sometimes three, roommates in Greenwich Village.

So stoked was I about landing a plum job and finally moving to the big city that I slept every night without complaint on a rickety cot beneath a window with a wide open shade.  With the torpid heat that summer, we only pulled down the bedroom window shade when dressing.  We had no air conditioner and the coolest spots in the apartment were at the windows.  But sitting in a window seat facing the street had turned into a tricky proposition.  Directly across the street from us lived a pale, shadowy, hard-to-guess-age-guy who rarely left his small one room. Dressed in frowsy, shapeless old shorts, he always seemed to be fluttering around his windows so I thought of him as Moth-man. He had taken an acute interest in our apartment to the tune of flashing one of my roommates when she had been home alone. Not wanting a repeat performance in my memory bank, I rarely looked in his sleazy direction.

With everyone in the apartment now pretending he didn’t exist, the flasher, bereft of attention, started printing poster board signs with juvenile salutations and his phone number and flapping them in our direction. Still new to the city and all its dazzling enticements, my roommates and I barely noticed, rating him pretty much at the bottom of our interests.

That changed, however, when we arrived home one evening and discovered he had crossed the street, entered our locked lobby without a key and somehow got a note into our mailbox. On it was his name, phone number and a super-sleazo invitation to get together. Now having entered Creepy-land, we called the police. That night two amiable young detectives showed up and informed us that there was nothing they could do unless he was caught committing some unlawful act. As for the flashing — they needed witnesses for an arrest. Perhaps, they suggested he could be enticed into flashing while they were there. Our most outgoing roommate jumped right in and offered to stage the scene.  A few minutes later, she strolled into the bedroom and started opening drawers and removing clothes from the closet as though preparing to undress, leaving the shade wide open to give Moth-man an unobstructed view. With the detectives hiding below the windows, my other roommate and I checked Moth-man’s reaction out of the corners of our eyes. Though clearly interested, he made no move suggestive or otherwise. As a further enticement, the detective suggested our femme fatal remove her shirt. Which she did. Still no action from across the street. Then, for the first time that summer, as though somehow alerted the police were watching him, Moth-man suddenly pulled his window shades down.

On their way out, the detectives said they were going to pay him a quick visit on their way downtown. Conveniently for us, Moth-man hadn’t lowered his window shades all the way down so we had a ringside seat of his bare white legs nonchalantly walking across his room to answer the detective’s knock at his door.  Four trousered legs advanced into the room as Moth-man’s legs, stiff and tense, suddenly backed quickly away. We couldn’t see anyone’s face nor hear what the detectives were saying, but whatever they were saying was causing Moth-man’s movements to get jerkier and more agitated by the second.

A few minutes later the detective’s legs vanished from the room. Almost immediately the shades were slammed down all the way and the room went dark. The next day when we got home from work and looked across the street, Moth-man’s room was empty. We never saw him again.

Have you also had an offbeat first apartment situation?  I’d love to hear about it.