You're paying too much...
They say every person has the ability to maintain only a few intimate online relationships — the kind of site you visit every day, if not more often. I have more than a few of those (thedailybeast, huffingtonpost, my daily pleasure/temptation gilt for online sample sales). But every Monday, I also make sure to go to consumerworld where I learn about new ways people are making money, saving money, spending money or getting ripped off. Today’s big aha? More…
THE DIFFERENCE
Recently, my 11-year-old daughter came home from Health class with a pocketful of Hershey’s Kisses and a new strategy for eating them. If you just put one in your mouth and let it melt, it will last longer, you’ll enjoy it more and you won’t need to eat as many, she told me.
Of course, she’s right. But not, as it turns out, just about chocolate. The Mind column by Benedict Carey in yesterday’s Science Times takes the position that stretching out almost any enjoyable experience seems to make it, well, more enjoyable. He didn’t go for what would seem to be the easy example (sex, see Tantra), he went with one that wouldn’t seem to be enjoyable at all: television commercials. More…
They say three makes a trend. At least, that’s what my editors at monthly magazines used to say. And this morning I got three in five minutes. From TodayShow.com a story entitled, Is The Recession Making You Fat? And two from The New York Times, one about how the menus on charity fundraisers have been tweaked from filet mignon to chicken pot pie and another that says: Food Magazines Begin To Consider Cooks’ Budgets. “As the high-end magazines try to survive a shaky 2009,” it reads, “it is out with the truffles, in with the button mushrooms.” (Oooh, wait, there’s more. A piece by Ask Kitty, Today’s depression-surviving 86-year-old columnist, about how gardening can help you eat well in troubled times.)
There is definitely something cooking (pun intended). More…
The last time I went to Costco — about three years ago — I came out with two bathing suits my daughter never wore, boxes of snack foods that purchased in a normal size my family would have devoured but in supersize we never seemed to eat, and a surprisingly big charge on my credit card. One friend of mine went in for dog food and came out with a tent. Yet I know others, people I trust, for whom a trip to Costco is a bi-weekly must. They swear by the white fish salad, the bags of frozen shrimp, the turkey meatballs.
I was afraid to get back in there, renew my membership and start again. But this weekend an opportunity presented itself. More…
