Five Questions, Five Answers: My Kitchen

Q1: What inspired this entry?

My Kitchen's Knife Rack
My Personal Kitchen Maxim:
"Nothing makes a kitchen like state of the art weaponry."

A1: I recently acquired a copy of the eagerly anticipated book, The 4 Hour Chef, by Tim Ferriss. It's not just a book about operating in a kitchen with greater skills and efficiency, it's a great "life-hacking", and learning-how-to-learn manual for realms beyond the culinary. Along with tricks for making a party dish pretty, to properly eviscerating big game, it veers off at times in pleasant ways to the interesting subjects of improving physical performance, outdoor survival, and language acquisition.Tim is all about getting as much accomplished with as little time and effort as needed, which accords well with my philosophy. For gentleman bachelors, this is the mother lode of golden wisdom for guys who want to go from amateur at pro in leaps and bounds. Ladies, if you are looking for a book to make your guy experiment in the kitchen more, and to inspire him to be less of a couch potato, this would be an ideal Christmas gift.

Q2: One question in the book was something like, "What ten herbs and spices would you have to have if you were stranded on a desert island?" What would your choices be?

A2: They would most likely be (preferably fresh):

1. Basil
2. Thyme
3. Black Peppercorns (Maple smoked as an option)
4. Oregano
5. Cayenne Pepper
6. Rosemary
7. Montreal Steak Spice
8. Chives
9. Dill
10. Cinnamon

Q3: What would be the greatest challenge you could ever give yourself in the kitchen?

A3: The real test of my gourmet aptitude would be making something like Beef Wellington, or any kind of other meat dish wrapped up in flaky pastry. I'm not opposed to trying it once; but I'd need a whole day to do it, and a kind of day when I'd be more forgiving to myself for ruining an expensive cut of meat if I failed.

Q4: Again, related to one of the concepts in this and other of Tim's books: what 80/20 principle(s)* would you say apply in your kitchen?

A4: Before taking some corrective action, only around twenty percent of the ingredients listed on my weekly grocery bill made eighty percent of my meals (lots of expense went into stocking my pantry with exotic things I only used once or twice in a month). I'm endeavoring to not be so wasteful with space and money.

Q5: What are the things that you wish were better in your kitchen/cooking environment?

A5: That my condo regulations could relax and allow for the use of charcoal barbeques (me sir likes da fire!) A dedicated bar space would be a nice classy bachelor pad feature, one with a CO₂ and tap system to allow me to draw my homebrewed beer from a draught keg. Generally, I'd like a bigger counter space. Since I have no workshop/garage space, my kitchen and my office are the only other two creative spaces I have left around here. It's important for me to keep them in good functional order.

*The 80/20 Principle, otherwise known as the Pareto Principle, postulates that in many realms of natural/social sciences, economics, and other fields, eighty percent of one phenomenon in a given set of things is controlled or affected largely by twenty percent of the subjects within that population, e.g. eighty percent of the global wealth is controlled by twenty percent of the people on this planet.

Black Friday/Buy Nothing Day

Today was payday, and a day off. A typical kind of day where I devote a bit of my morning to tabulate my budget and pay my bills. Just for shits and giggles; just to force myself to think outside the box a bit, I performed the whole operation with one of my desk toys: a Chinese abacus. I sometimes use it for place holding numbers when I don't have a pen handy.* Most of the time though, it's just a fidgeting toy that I use when I'm lost in contemplation, like some sort of more scientific form of rosary beads. I suppose I keep it around as a reminder that sometimes solutions to majorly complicated problems can be found by using and focusing on the simplest of things.

An interesting bit of math trivia: if you used an average of one
 second to move the counters, non-stop, on a 13 column abacus,
like this one, to represent each and all of the total possible counter
 positions, just once, it would take 659,839,939 years to do it.
(. . . and no, I didn't calculate all that using this thing.)

Noting what today was, I couldn't help but to assume that budgeting and bill paying are the complete opposite things of what many of the Americans are doing right now, that is going overboard and getting deeper in debt with manic episodes of shopping. That is, today is also Black Friday, the day when the neighbours to the south go berserk and stampede into shopping malls in a greed driven frenzy. Reading an article about it in a complimentary issue of today's issue of The Globe and Mail prompted me a little more to look into this phenomenon, of how the cross-border shopping is impacting Canadian retailers. To be honest: either probably because I'm that disinterested in shopping, or I'm that indifferent or oblivious to the traditions of American holidays, I never even heard of the phenomenon of Black Friday until relatively recently in my life, probably about five years ago. That seems to be when Canadian news media started to shine more of a spotlight on this insanity. Now, there are even Black Friday sales here in Canada at this week of the year, despite the fact that our Thanksgiving Day is in October.** I notice "Cyber Monday" is becoming a bigger hyped-up deal here each year, to get supposedly big savings, with an adequate window of processing/shipping time before Christmas for online purchases of material items made at some domestic and US vendors. I've included this Wikipedia link about it, which better explains the how and why Canada's burgeoning involvement with this retail world wildness. What floors me about the figures in the table lower on this page, just before the references, is just the ever rising Total Billions Spent after the year of the big American financial crisis. All the news during the years of record high home foreclosures, and personal bankruptcies, and the consequences of being overburdened with debt didn't apparently sink in with the American consumers around holiday time. 

 

It's a ridiculous time of year when I hear the odd story about how many people got trampled to death down there when crowds charge at the doors when the malls and stores open for it. I'm sure I'll hear the other odd report about how many morons died of exposure because they had a tent pitched and camped outside a store two days in advance of its opening. I'm not at all sympathetic to such people. If they are that idiotic to allow themselves to forsake their own safety to get a discount iPad or a cheap pair of designer shoes, and willingly be at the wrong place at the wrong time, I say screw'em. That's just Darwinism doing its thing. I really won't shed any tears about there being a few less idiots, and greedy shitheads walking the face of this Earth. The topic of Black Friday only jolted some interest and concern in me because my parents are on a holiday tour in the United States right now. I'm hoping that they, and their tour group, had some good sense to steer clear of the insanity in their shopping malls down there today. Businesses and corporations control most of the mainstream news of course, so sure there is a lot of media hype about Black Friday on the business perspective to make the year end sound positive, but we sure as hell don't hear much about the following reality of "In-the-Red January" from the consumer end of the deal in the news.

 

My fourth Friday (or whole weekend) of November tradition is coming to be "Buy Nothing Day", an idea promoted by Adbusters magazine, to use it for anything else besides shopping and needless consumption, and to stop business/corporate control of the holidays. I'm also not keen on being part of the hyped up madness of Boxing Day sales: the Canadian equivalent to Black Friday. That leads to the question, what can one do to get into the spirit of the season, without spending money on anything? I thought of these things as answers to give:

 

• Make an appointment to donate blood/platelets: A way to be charitable without giving money. Go to your Canadian Blood Services clinic(or your nation's respective agency clinic for blood donations). If you never have done it before, at least get tested for eligibility. Everyone has it, everyone needs it. The best gift you may be able to provide is to help someone else survive to see another Christmas.***
• Sort through closets/drawers; donate clothing and other articles to good will charities and agencies: The thought of irony that really disgusts me is knowing that there were probably some Americans, perhaps during some moment in prayer with their families, who were stating how thankful they were for whatever type of abundance they have during their Thanksgiving dinner; who now a day later, some of these same people became part of the stampeding hordes of assholes who would trample over someone else to get through a WalMart entrance somewhere to buy more shit to hoard. That seems pretty insincere to me. If you are really that fortunate and secure with your so-called abundance, you wouldn't need to walk over somebody's face to get some cheap piece of crap made in a sweatshop. How greedy can you get? Abundance means you don't have to charge out anywhere to fetch something in near panic mode. Abundance means having more than you actually need. Sort through your crap to know just how much you do really have; if you've outgrown it or neglected it too often, just give it away.
• Turn off your TV, or else make an effort to watch commercials conscientiously: If you choose to watch TV, take a count of exactly how many commercials you viewed, note what the products are, think about how much money you would have to spend that day if you absolutely had to buy each and every one of those products that was pitched to you. Think about how many hours of work and financing that it would really require to both acquire and maintain the product. Ask yourself, "Is this thing really going to make me a better person?", and "What can I do/use instead of that is cheaper, costs nothing?" The outcome of this exercise should hopefully make you angry with allowing yourself to be a tool, and for being dazzled by so much magic in advertising, and this meme-warfare that you are being subjected to every day.
• Walk/Run/Move Your Ass: Start making an effort to take off more pounds during the season than the ones you'll be gaining with all the treats and parties between now and the end of the year. Move around six days a week, binge a bit on the seventh. I didn't say that you can't enjoy the parties, you'd just have to work for them. If you do a well enough job keeping the lard off before New Year's Day, you should have an easier time committing to your resolution after Jan 1st. Don't you think that one reason people are buying clothing so often, is because of exponential weight gains due to inactivity and overeating. Take measures to make it less likely to happen.
• Sit down and make a budget: Make a plan to pay off bills and any other debts you may already have, and live within your means. You don't have get too crazy by using an abacus to do it. Small steps are better than no steps, or totally veering off wildly in the opposite direction.

 “The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.”- Kim Hubbard

All this stuff that I mentioned could easily keep me occupied throughout the course of Buy Nothing Day. Happy non-shopping everyone!

*- Which is surprisingly often. I use a pen so seldom in my office now that when I do find one, usually while I'm on the phone, more often than not, the ink is dried up in it. An abacus needs no power, and no ink refills.

**- Better now than in October. Out of respect to the veterans, I absolutely refuse to put up Christmas decorations, or even consider holiday shopping before/during Remembrance Day.

***-Another thing that peeves me: hearing a person who talks about, or has actually endured, being poked enough with a needle to be decorated with tattoos and piercings, but admits to me that they would never attempt to donate blood. That's a true sign of a person being shamelessly selfish.

   

 

Skiing Weekend, Envisioning the Future of Education

Whew! I'm sure glad and relieved that the
city has this menace under control at this
time of the year along the ski trails.

It has been a delightful weekend so far with the perfect conditions for cross-country skiing. I went out Friday for about 40 minutes; I stretched out yesterday's excursion for about an hour. I would have liked to have gone longer, but my new boots have been neither broken in, nor have they been morphed to my unique feet/orthotics yet (or vice versa), so I didn't want to push myself into a new foot/leg/joint injury, especially knowing that my back hasn't healed 100% yet. Thus, I had to use a bit of discipline and restraint: like any new form of motion and exercise, it's something I believe that one has to phase in slowly, like for marathon training. Going overboard with it too soon, consequently becoming too sore and injured afterward, causes one to only end up being initiated into hating the activity*. I went again today, earlier this morning, before the weather became too warm, softening the snow too much for my liking. I went at a faster pace, but limited my time to 35 minutes. I then went to the gym to use the treadmill for a while (icky-poo) to re-adjust my leg and back muscles, and then did some core exercises. Since I started Nordic skiing this winter, I've only fallen twice. Currently, my fall count versus distance is averaging one fall per 7.5 km of skiing. Honestly, not too bad considering the long lapse I've had. Of course, I'll endeavor to improve that ratio. However, if I were on downhill skis, that figure would jump toward something like one fall per 7.5 meters.

During this weekend my mind has not only been tuned into noticing weird signs for the season, like the picture I took of the one above, but I've also been thinking a lot about signs of changes happening now and how they are going to shape and influence things coming around the corner in the near future, especially in regards to what course the future of education is going to take. Life long learn has now become the rule, not an exception. If I can't make a move to any other field without some sort of certification, it's important to figure how and where one has to devote one's time and energy. Everyone bitches and complains about the ever-rising price of fuel, but the rising cost of tuition in the past few years in comparison makes the jump of fuel prices look like chicken feed. The other concern is the validity of a degree or certificate with the risk of ever rising rate of obsolescence in education programs, and the fact that there are so many holes being poked into the system by evolving social media, used to either outpace someone else legitimately or otherwise. It all makes for more fierce and competitive students, many more who are willing to lower themselves to resort to cheating. I suppose what really spurred those thoughts was a documentary on CBC Newsworld that I saw last Thursday on Doc Zone called Faking the Grade**, about the ridiculous epidemic of high-tech academic cheating that's going on, in colleges and universities, how pervasive the problem is, the wild repercussions it's having, and the most likely demographic group that is most likely to do it.

*- As with my first (and last) experience with downhill skiing. Please. . . Don't ask! . . . I'm still trying to forget it.
**- Sorry, for some reason the direct link to the actual documentary footage failed, perhaps it will be available in the future. Perhaps CBC hired a tech-head who cheated through the Web Page Development exam.

Den Skandinaviske Eftermiddag, Less Old Fogey-Dodging

I woke up this morning and assessed how much new snow had fallen since yesterday. It was about 15 centimeters, and was still coming down. I was almost ready to cocoon myself in for the rest of the day and keep it uneventful, but the craving for movement and fresh clean air was too great. I was easily prompted to walk all the way to Broadway for a friendly rendezvous for coffee. I didn't plan for it, but the rest of the day spun around such that I ended up snagging a ride with my cohort who was doing some sports apparel shopping, and before I knew it, I ended up spontaneously purchasing a brand new set of Nordic skis, poles and boots. I haven't been cross-country skiing in ages, and I'm excited to start doing it again. It's a lower impact exercise than running (I may get a chance to heal right), and it's a fully body workout, which means I don't have to do it as long to get the same results. I'm itching so badly to start cutting some new trails by the river, and through Diefenbacher Park.

There was a lot of deep snow to trudge through coming back home, but I was so happy with the terrific bargain I got on my gear, I felt like I was scurrying along on air. The only setback in the deal is having to wait until my bindings get set and fitted. This dump of snow was transformed from a miserable curse, that it was in the morning, to a beautiful phenomenon I eagerly welcomed. I wish I had the sense to capture a few photos by the river, with the snow being this fresh. It was more scenic there this winter than I ever remember it being. When I came back home after the eight kilometers of tramping through the drifts, banks, and flurries, I jumped into the sauna a while, and relaxed with a couple shots of Aquavit (the only vodka/schnapps-like potable I had in my liquor cabinet) after the shower. It all helped to have me drift into a peaceful nap; dreaming pleasantly, for the first time in ages it seemed. If I had one word to use to summarize how this Saturday afternoon was, I'd have to say that it was very. . . Scandinavian. If indeed a long sauna session, drinking some spirits, and a light nap and reading in peace is the common ritual in Norway, Sweden, or Finland after tramping around (or skiing) outside on a snowy winter's weekend like today, I could get used to adopting such a lifestyle to endure a longer than usual winter like this one is turning out to be.

The ski equipment wasn't a cost I was prepared for, but I thought about how much more refreshing it would be than using the crowded indoor track during the winter. It amounts to free space and fresh air. The lousy situation for training for running through winter is that since my work hours are more skewed than others', the only usual convenient times when the track is available for me mid-week are times when it tends to be over-populated with retirees and seniors groups*. Sure, they have a right to exercise, but many (if not most) of the seniors' groups are usually there for rehabilitation purposes. It's hard to relax and keep a steady even pace there when one has to be on guard for slowly staggering, spatial-awareness challenged hemiplegic stroke victims, half-deaf/half-blind with cataracts old men and women, or others stunned and stricken with dementia or Alzeimer's, who absent-mindedly, suddenly, and dangerously veer and wander into the designated lane that the runners use. I've come close to more than just one or two hazardous collisions due to this. There seems to be a real shortage of fresh air at the track when the old-timers start circuiting around there en masse. A little bit of sweat smell can be expected and is even tolerable, but I seem to have a hard limit when exercising and respiring heavily around the wafting stench from the miasma of medication-infused, old person BO and flatulence**, which they seem to liberally express when they exert themselves a little more than younger folk. Cripes, it's like slamming into a wall of it some days while running over there. Knowing that these extremes of bodily odours are so easily smelled and consequently inhaled, it then only is a reminder of how easy it is to contract the flu virus in an indoor fitness facility, thus the inclination to cruise around the track in winter loses even more appeal. I'm not going to continue ranting too sourly about them. After all, they, especially the stroke victims, serve as examples as to why one should be active to begin with while one has younger years to use to one's advantage.  My own back pain, and the slower recovery time from aches, pains, and sickness is a reminder that I'll probably be like them some day. Some of those old folks are veterans, and sacrificed and spent their time as younger people fighting in some way for the oppressed in other nations, and the freedom of this great land. Let's be thankful that they got lucky and had a chance to 'get old'. Rememberance Day is tomorrow. Let us be mindful, and give them due respect.

Treadmills are the other unfavourable option, but I'll devote another entry to complain about using them some other time.

But let's return to the happy place now. Through my course of adventure sports shopping today, I was also giving some thought about saving up for a kayak for summer. My greatest issue around here though would be storage. Trying to stow a three meter long kayak in any room around in this place would be trying to park a Hummer in an elevator. Using the ceiling space on my deck may be an option, but it would be very tight. Getting a kayak might not be such a crazy idea, especially if the snow is going to accumulate this massively over this winter on a more frequent and regular basis. The spring flooding risk has been rising each year. If the snow keeps coming like this, next spring may come to be an all time record high if that is so. The kayak might be my new street transportation. I might have to check out YouTube and learn how to parallel park the thing.

*- Sadly, no fit LuluLemon clad women closer to my age. Given my appetite now, I think I'd prefer them being Nordic.
**- Or at least I hope it's just flatulence. . .one also has to be mindful to check the track to see if something didn't . . . shall we say "slip down the leg".

Money Still Votes in the U.S. Election

I was at a training workshop today at the Union office. I really do appreciate such sessions, and come out of them with a little more confidence, and a clearer sense of how help others, and how I'd like to see myself become better organized in general, but the amount of information to process does become very overwhelming to me. I really don't like immersing my mind too deeply into politics (especially American politics), or writing about them to any great extent, but with the finale of this long drawn out, hyped up, election of our neighbours down south that has just passed, it becomes unavoidable.

My opinion of the result of it is that I'm relieved that a more right wing party isn't in power in America.  However, I don't think that another four-year term of a Democrat government down there is long enough to correct problems that were caused by the aftermath of the Bush years. I'm just happy that all this hype is over with. I'm sick of their political smear ads permeating into our media.

I heard that the dollar amount for running campaigns for this election (on both sides), ran into the billions*. . . how utterly obscene, outrageous, and shameful! What a disgraceful and inefficient use of resources! Much of those billions of dollars were collective flat-out contributions made by very wealthy people, essentially gambling really, to see one man (figurehead) or the other, get into power of their nation; yet if those same rich people were asked to contribute that same money (or any) in tax dollars to directly fund the improvement of some other public amenities for the common good of everyone, regardless of political leanings, those same bastards would probably use every slick trick in the book to keep that money under wraps and sheltered from their IRS. So long as this kind of big money is involved in their elections, to finance their excessively long meme-war to push influence one way or another, America then is still very much an oligarchy, or a competitive corporate aristocracy; not a true democracy. I'm sure that it's a safe bet, and a sickening actuality, that the funding for whatever promoting/support, or attack/smear campaign ads by the American politicians for this election far exceeds the annual budget for the education and health care expenditures combined of several other nations*.

If the underlying issue is voter apathy, and it's that big of a problem there (especially if starts costing billions of dollars to prime people up to coax them to vote) perhaps then they should consider doing what the Australians did: by legislating it such that it would be illegal not to vote; making non-participation an offense punishable by a monetary fine. Hell, their government would probably even start making billions if that was enacted. It might do us well here in Canada also to do the same thing, and make us take a more serious interest as to how we choose to be governed. One way in which I think that Canada is correctly going, in terms of the right direction for disallowing more big money to influence/corrupt political campaigns, is with using the recent Federal Accountability Act, by restricting individual contributions to political parties a maximum of $1000 (down from $5000). I'm thankful at least that when a federal election happens here, the political campaigning only carries on for a fraction of the time as it seems to happen down there.

I'm not spiteful towards Americans so much as to be wishing anything worse for them. As I look more at the dynamics of their political system, I realize that they have their own special ways of being victims of it, just as others from any other nation do with their respective governments. I listened to CBC 2 radio on the drive back home this afternoon, which announced the results of a survey was that was taken in other nations outside the United States as to who the people would vote for if they could. Right now, I'm listening to what the rest of the world would be comfortable with so as to, at the very least, keep the peace globally. Of the many nations that were sampled for the survey, the results were overwhelmingly pro-Obama. We, as a global community, seem to think more that Obama is the answer for the USA, and the for the rest of the world. No exception here. The Canadian responses of those sampled were in concordance with the remaining global results. I just hope that whatever resulted yesterday, and whatever transpires during the next four years down there, won't effect us too negatively over here.



* - I found a news report (Vancouver Sun) that an estimated whopping combined total of six billion dollars was used by Obama and Ronmey for campaigning: the most money ever used in fighting away for the US presidency. Twice the amount that was used to put on the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, 3.4 times (in today's US$) the cost of the Apollo 11 mission. Apparently today, it costs almost three and half times more for the Americans to put a man in the White House than it did to put one on the moon in 1969. Go figure that out. The only satisfaction I get in reviewing this factoid is that somewhere out there in the USA, there are a few tax-avoiding, greedy, rich pricks, and crazy right-wing special interest lobbyists who became a little poorer, some losing millions, by betting on the wrong horse in this race. The Democrat rich pricks and that other bands of idiot lobbyists who supported Obama, still have yet to see if they'll be getting their money's worth.
**- With this kind of stupidity and greed and lust for power, it's probably one reason/factor as to why there is no system of universal health care in the United States, and why there is no one educated enough to figure out how to make it happen. It would be even more disturbing, or else quite laughable, to discover any other nation's government, working within that kind of budget restriction ($6 B), that still is able to provide a quality free education and health care to their citizens of their respective country (I wish I had more time research this)

Stranded Alone with Couch Thoughts

“Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Don’t worry; you will survive, and you will have a lot of fun.”  

– Paulo Coelho (taken from the book Veronika Decides to Die)

I woke up in the morning a couple days ago to see everything blanketed by about 10 centimeters of new snow. There was a slick sheet of frozen rain under all that snow, so walking and driving was somewhat treacherous for the past couple days. I'm pretty sure, even though the weather reports are predicting plus six Celsius daytime temperatures later this week, that most of this stuff will be staying on through until next spring. What I'm most thankful for right now, with the way my back is now, that I don't have to be responsible for shoveling and clearing any sidewalks.

I'm a little better than I was before Halloween. I can at least sit down and stand up more comfortably, and I think I might be able to put my shoes on today without feeling an urge to scream.

This past spell of forced immobility to avoid extra pain wasn't all bad, it didn't tax my wits and sanity as much as I thought it would. In fact, it was a bit enlightening in some ways.

Firstly, my limited movement made me think with a little more empathy about the people I serve. Secondly, I became very grateful (and very overwhelmed even), as to how many possible things I still have the ability to do (that involve no extra cost), even while confined to a bed or couch to help to keep making my life an actively enriched and engaged one. I'm not saying that I'd be any better than anyone else at adapting, or adjusting, to a situation involving temporary or permanent physical disability. I'm saying that, left to my devices, I'm a little more reassured that it would even be harder to completely bore myself. I'm realizing though, with great frustration, that injuries seem to occur during days that are my scheduled time off (times like now, and my last entire summer vacation) after long stints of activity, and I seem recover just in time for my scheduled work days. What a bloody waste! No wonder it feels like I'm burnt out half the time. Perhaps the stage was already being set for me being rendered useless by my own clumsiness, which was caused by exhaustion, fatigue, and unrest, and thus an accident like this was coming inevitably.

I could have chosen to wallow in bitterness and self-pity, or to do as much as I could within my restrictive limits. I chose the latter. The extra forced stillness gave me more focus for taking personal inventory, and examining motives; mentally scratching the math/home economics itch again for making some optimizations, and playing around with some recreational calculations. Reviewing my interests and consumption habits, I've been figuring out things like*:

• The number of varieties of the kinds of homemade pizzas I could make using the kinds of dough, sauces, cheeses, plus a choice of any three from the list of the other toppings, that I like (1.797 x 10¹⁰).
• My estimated personal annual coffee consumption. I buy and use about 5.2 kg of (whole) coffee beans per year for home use; I'd like to reduce that to 4.0 kg or under.
• The amount of paper I have moving into my suite per month taking up space (flyers, free newspapers, junk mail, packing material, etc.) I figured averages about 4.7 lbs (2.14 kg) per month. Is it really worth having that kind of mass to sift through for the two or three slips of general purpose coupons that I use? (economy of space vs. economy of savings)
• Is it a cost effective measure to make my own kvas at home? Unfortunately, the answer is no: considering the rarity of the kind of rye bread I'd need, the amount and cost of sugar needed, and the energy/time to make it from scratch, even in bulk production to reduce overhead costs, it's just cheaper to get the genuine, quality assured, Ukrainian or Russian kvas from the East European import store, $4.50/imported 2 L bottle vs. $7.70/homemade 2 L bottle. If this stuff was taxed like regular alcohol (retail beer/wine/spirits), it then might be worth the trouble. 
• The cost per serving of the Coconut Pumpkin Soup recipe I recently made and shared with a friend ($0.48)

Even with just lying still on my chesterfield and thinking about all those unique and lovely flavours I thought, the savings, the abundance of possibilities, and potential for future experimentation with these simple things put me in a much more content mood, even despite the inclemency outside. My back even relaxed more and hurt less. Sometimes you have to peer into the crazy side of things to have a contrasting context to create a realm that serves your own sanity. I'm happier with thinking and preparing for things, with a few crazy twists, to avoid and prevent creating waste of time and money, and detriment to one's health, sanity, and environment. I find it is ten times more progressive, gratifying, and entertaining, than getting lost in and surrendering to impulsiveness, instant gratification fantasies, and dreaming of some get rich quick schemes. So long as one can reel oneself back into reality from the daydreaming, back into the present moment, there is no harm in it. It's a hell of a cheap way to spend a bit of an afternoon to relax at the very least.

On the world stage, with final thoughts on reckless impulsiveness and being unprepared for loss. I have to note the kind of idiocy I've been witnessing on the news about what has been happening in New York, with the storms and power outages there. It's beyond ridiculous and shameful that one of the "richest" cities in the world would have the kind of society where people would instantly lower themselves to resort to looting stores in an event as minor as a power outage, like the end of the world was coming to them. That makes me also mindful of the comparatively far worse disaster of the tsunami/nuclear reactor breach in Fukushima, Japan last year; seeing people on the news, some of whom having lost everything in that destructive event, yet astonishingly remaining for the most part calm, and still being civilized and orderly enough while queuing up for water, food rations, and other aid. Proof again of the power of calmness, in a place where perhaps it was due to a Zen ethic being more pronounced and established.

*- All costs calculated in Canadian dollars.