The Skippy peanut butter scam!

The big issue right now is health insurance reform – how the big insurance companies are ripping us off, cutting us off and doing other things to help us die before the death panel gets us.  Some people say, “Oh well, that’s just big business scamming the American public again.”

This morning, as I ate my daily bagel slathered with peanut butter, I thought again about the Great American Peanut Butter Scam.  If you are one of those millions of “addicted” peanut-butter-eaters who concentrates on homogenized peanut butter, for whatever good reason, you will know what I’m talking about or you are still one of the daily victims.

I’m not certain when the scamming began, but I became aware of it about the beginning of this year.  I, and my family, have “always” been a Skippy peanut butter users — sometimes creamy, sometimes crunchy – Bagels; toast; cookies.  That is a lot of peanut butter!  In late December, early January, I saw an article about “deception in product packaging” and the name Skippy jumped out at me.  It described a clever packaging improvement that Unilever had introduced — the original slightly concave bottom of the Skippy jar now sported an exaggerrated concave bottom.  What this change does is it reduces the amount of peanut butter in the jar, without changing the overall look of the product. This improvement reduced the amount of peanut butter by 1.7 oz.  That’s 7.2%.  This photo compares the bottoms of the 18 oz Jif jar and the 16.3 oz Skippy jar.  Same price.

18 oz Jif and 16.3 oz Skippy

As you can guess, I now slather my daily bagel with Jif and feel good about it.

Another blog’s comments at http://www.sogoodblog.com/

Many of you will not remember the real Skippy so here is a link where you can meet him.

http://www.skippy.com/

Julie and Juliet – part III

In a NYTimes article today, Maia de la Baume, writing for NYT from Paris reveals that “Julia Child may have been America’s best-known ‘French chef,’ but here in Paris few know her fabled cookbooks, let alone her name.” Her article is illuminating and entertaining, and adds to the Julie and Juliet story.

Saint Paul votes – September 15

September 15, 2009

All the DFL endorsed candidates won!  Coleman website.

Happy Gnome

At five we met the our son & family at the Happy Gnome.  It is another great Cathedral Hill restaurant just down the street from from Fabulous Fern’s at 498 Selby Avenue.  There is a large parking lot on its east side.

(Note:  On the east side of the parking lot is the Saint Paul Curling Club.  Started in 1888, it is the largest curling club in the country.  It has ice from mid-September through April.)

It is one of the top-100 brew pubs in the country and noted for its selection beers – 44 draft beers and more than 300 bottled beers.  They have dubbed Belgium as the Holy Land of ales and have 91 varieties.

Booths and bar downstairs, a real dining room up, a large patio outside, large wine selection, hard liquor and a menu for all tastes and occasion – burger, seafood, Muscovy duck.

We had 2 Argus cheeseburgers, a chicken sandwich, Spaghetti Seafood Puttanesca, a vegetable salad. pizza, a couple special-of-the-week ales, wine, gin and tonic, a Mr. Pibb  and a great evening out on the patio talking about the Obama rally.

Happy Gnome

Happy Gnome Brew Pub

President Obama came to town!!!

All fired up!

The President came to town today to talk to 17,000 Minnesotans of all ages and sizes at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis and uncounted thousands who were glued to their TVs.  While we took the TV route, our son, his wife and two kids took the Light Rail from Fort Snelling to a block from the Target Center. By eleven, when they arrived the lines were moving easily.  Most seats are good.  Only if you wanted a chance to get up close and personal was a very early arrival necessary.  They had a great day!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Fired-Up-Ready-to-Go/

Inglourious Basterds

This afternoon we went to see the Inglourious Basterds at the Highland on Cleveland Avenue.  Quentin Taratino wrote and directed the movie and misspelled the title.  As anyone who has turned on the their TV in the last month knows, the movie is set in German-occupied France and is an improbable story of two plots to assassinate all the top Nazis.  One plot was led by Melanie Laurent as a Jewish movie theater owner, the other by Brad Pitt as an inglourious basterd.  Christoph Waltz was a canny SS Jew-hunter.  Waltz was by far the best actor in the film.  Laurent played an excellent part also.  Brad Pitt’s part was a tribute to Aldo Ray.  Ray’s wife advised on the part, and I guess she was satisfied.  To me, Pitt seemed to be a caricature of the caricature he was trying to portray.  Taratino called the movie a “spaghetti-western” war movie.

The somewhat overly long movie was punctuated by excruciatingly drawn out scenes.  Jackie thought it was pretty good overall.  I was less generous when we left Highland Theater.  However, by the time we were back home, the slower bits had faded from my memory and it seemed okay for what it was meant to be.  I think it would be better seen on TV where you can find distractions during the slow portions.  As a TV movie I would give it 2 stars.

Remembering the Chicago Sun

A couple of days ago I read where the Chicago Sun-Times is having financial difficulties and may even have to shut down.  That got me thinking of my days as a young newspaper vendor in Oconomowoc when the Chicago Sun, a tabloid and predcexsor of the Sun-Times, was started by the Marshall Field family with a definite Jewish Chicagoan slant.

At the time, this southern Wisconsin lake town was a summer rail (Milwaukee Road) destination for Chicago Jewish families who stayed  at the Pine Terrace Resort or rented lake cottages.  The Chicago Tribune, the only Chicago newspaper we carried, was a big seller.  When the Chicago Sun was started, it seemed every Chicagoan in town had to have one.  At first it was sort of exciting.  The birth of a newspaper!  This was good for business, and my boss, Carl Reimer, thought it was great.  But, at thirteen, the excitement soon wore off and I just saw it as a lot of extra work that was hardly compensated for by the extra 5/8 cents per paper I received when I sold one

One of my jobs was to meet the early train from Milwaukee (and Chicago)to pick up the Milwaukee Sentinal and the Chicago Trib and cart them to the newsstand before it opened a 6 am.  Now, with the addition of the Sun, I had to make an additional  bicycle trip between the station and the newsstand unless the boss was up and we’d go up to the station in his car.

While the Sun only lasted for 3 or 4 years on its own before merging into the Sun-Times, it has still been a long run and I’m sure there will be a lot of sad people if it finally goes under.

Mill City

It seems like forever that our kids have been telling us that we must visit the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis.  And, we have said to ourselves many times that we just have to go to Mill City.  Today, was another beautiful, cool and sunny day, in a stretch of five so far, and we got up and told each other today is the day.  Twenty minues after leaving home we were feeding quarters into a meter in front of the museum. (Meters are $1 per hour.  There is a parking ramp across the street.}

Mill City Museum is at 704 S. Second Street (55401 will help google map it).  It’s a few doors west of the Guthrie Theater.

You immediately find out that street level is considered the third floor.  Knowing this helps when you start pressing elevator buttons. We stopped by the ticket desk to get our assigned time for the elevator ride to the observation level.  Because we are History Center members, no cash changed hands.

We took an elevator to the first floor where much of the exhibits are.  Our elevator time was 11:30 so we had about half hour and chose to see the 20 minute film about Minneapolis.  Don;t miss it.  This isn’t just a fact filled documentary, it’s a lively presentation of Minneapolis from the first explorers to the city it is today.  Between these you learn about why people settled here, the rise and fall of milling and the many many people who added to the Twin Cities’ character,  all fast paced and sprinkled with humor.

After the movie it was time to catch the elevator to the observation area.  they told us that it was a 20 minute ride.  It was either a very slow elevator or what?  We would only be going to the sixth floor.  Actually it was a very entertaining and effective history of the mills given in videos and stage setups as the elevator stopped at different floors.

The top floor housed the flour dust removal machinery and the observation deck.  Floor dust, in case you didn’t know, is very explosive. In fact, before they got rid of the dust, the predecessor to the current building was blown sky high in 1878 when the flour dust exploded.  It killed 18 workers and was so violent that it broke windows in Saint Paul and across the river in Wisconsin the people thought there was an earthquake.

The observation deck provides  a grand view of the river, Stone Bridge along with several others, the St. Anthony Falls, the locks and more.

Back down on the first floor, there is a large kitchen that has the smells of fresh baked bread and exhibits of wheat farming, milling the company products that made all this worthwhile.

Back on the entrance floor (3rd), Jackie checked out the gift shop and, as we had a little time left on the parking meter, we had lunch in the museum’s cafe.  It has a good selection of salads, sandwiches and soup. I had a great BBQ pulled pork sandwich and Jackie had a Tarragon chicken salad sandwich.

We finally made the trip and, as it turns out, there will be many more days of activity ahead in this waterfront area.

Mill City Museum, Minneapolis

Mill City Museum

nice little

Health Care Reform Town Hall

Last night we went to a Health Care Reform town hall meeting headlined by Congresswoman Betty McCollum of MN CD-4.  To our relief, there were no Birthers, Deathers, sign wavers, gun-toters or yellers.  Only people that wanted to find out what was going on, what seemed to be ahead for them and how they might help.

The meeting was hosted by Representative Erin Murphy, 64A, and DFL SD-64 at Mt. Zion Temple on Summit Ave.  The panel included, besides Erin and Betty,  State Rep. Tom Huntley, Dr. Lynn Blewett,  State Heath Access Data Assistance Center, and Rev. Grant Stevenson, St. Matthews Evangelical Lutheran Church, head of Twin-Cities Isaiah.

There was a lot of discussion about America having not the best health care system in the Western World – by a very large margin.  Rev. Stevensen pointed out that not too many years ago Americans discussed “who is my brother’s keeper?” Now the argument is “who is my brother?”.

McCollum was the main event and it was a different Betty than most of us had seen for some time  Really passionate about health care reform!  Sounded all fired up, ready to go.  I think the August recess worked wonders on her.  The crowd responed to her message with a standing ovation.

Earlier, before her Monday night town hall at Macaleste., Betty had said, ” a public option can definitely be part of the solution, but she’s eager to hear what others think. I’m keeping an open mind, I’m listening to people, and I’m going to see where we can have common consensus.”  It sounds as if she got the message.

At the end, cards were passed out so anyone that wanted could write their thoughts and wishes for health care reform and be delivered to Congresswoman McCollum and Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken before they return to Congress on September 8,

Fabulous Fern’s

The drive from the Art Park to Fabulous Ferns on Selby Ave. in the Cathedral Hill district takes about five minutes at most.  From Marion Ave. we went up the hill, around the Cathedral and west on Selby, past the popular Nina’s Coffee Cafe – Garrisons Kieller’s Common Ground Bookstore and Congresswoman Betty McCollum’s Saint Paul office are in the basement.   Fabulous Fern’s Bar and Grill is a half-block down the street at 400 Selby Avenue.  There is a large parking lot to the west.

Fabulous Fern

Fabulous Fern’s is a place for good food and good service in a comfortable setting with well-spaced tables.  We are mainly lunch and Sunday breakfast people so we can only say that it is a great place for lunch and an overflowing Sunday brunchattests to it.

We ordered off of the weekly features menu that has a variety that should satisfy most people.  Jackie enjoyed her Warm Roasted Beet Salad – best beets in the world, but a smaller slice of the Antonella cheese might have been better.  I had to make a difficult choice; Fern’s Beer Brats or Country Fried Steak.  I choose the Country Fried Steak with cheddar cheese on thick sourdough bread with gravy.  No complaints!

From the parking lot

Fern’s also has a happy hour and Twins and Wilds events.