I’m currently sick and incredibly bored.

Wednesday I wasn’t feeling very good but I had a very busy schedule so I went to work anyway. My last scheduled activity of the day was teaching a report class to staff. Normally I’m pretty energetic when I teach classes but I felt barely coherent by the time I was finished. I felt that was enough usefulness for the day and so wrapped everything up and tottered home. At home, I took for temperature for fun. I never run fevers so I was shocked when the thermometer claimed I had a temperature of 101.5. I tried it again and this time it said it was 101.7. I truly do not remember the last time I ran a fever that hot. It’s been years (possibly a decade?).

Based on the fever, I decided I probably should take Thursday off. I still had a fever Thursday night but it wasn’t so high so I figured that I would probably be better by Friday. I woke up this morning and had no temperature (well, it was 98.5 and I normally run 97.7 but still with normal bounds). I still had all the other cold symptoms but that normally wouldn’t prevent me from showing up to work (or at least working from home). However, I decided that I should probably take the day off to make sure my recovery stuck. Well, it didn’t. I’m once again running a fever.

I think there are few things more boring than being really sick. Within the past 2 days I’ve read 3 books and watched hours of online TV episodes (we don’t have broadcast/cable). It’s incredibly mind numbing. Since I thought I was getting better today, I decided it would be a good time to clean house since my parents are coming on Sunday (yea! ). However, I only got the kitchen moderately picked up before collapsing into bed for the rest of the day. Yes, bed is also boring, particularly when you can’t sleep because you can’t breathe.

Okay, that’s more than enough of me whining

The last couple of months have actually been pretty interesting (both in a good way and the Chinese curse way). We spent Christmas at Jaeger’s parents place and had lots of fun. We then came back and Fested for several days which was also lots of fun.

Early in January, I got contacted to see if I was interested in another library job. It was tempting but after a lot of thought, I decided it really wasn’t the right fit for me right now. Too bad the job couldn’t have waited another 5 years or so, it would have been perfect then.

Jaeger also had lots of job excitement. Namely, his employer had to lay him off due to lack of projects. This obviously caused us some stress but my obsession with creating an emergency fund made the process a little easier for me. Jaeger did find another job which sounds very interesting but it’s a start-up so they don’t pay as well as we’re use to (at least right now). Hard to say how things will turn out but as long as Jaeger’s happy, I am too.

The Weld Library District opened up a library in Erie in January and I’ve spent quite a bit of time down there making sure everything is working smoothly. It’s been interesting watching a whole new library come together. We’re also opening another library in Firestone in March. At the moment, the district is considering having me work at one of the two new libraries 3 days a week and spend the other two in Greeley. While I don’t have an office at the new libraries, the commute is almost half of what it takes to get to Greeley so I’m enjoying the change (though I miss all my friends up in Greeley).

After looking at Google maps, I came to realize that the Firestone library is only about 10 miles away from my house. This, in combination with pretty good roads*, made me think that it might be feasible to bike to work instead of drive. It’d be better for the environment, less expensive than driving — at least in the long run, and a great form of exercise. I started researching bicycles and last Sunday Jaeger and I went to Niwot Cycles and I bought a bike! I haven’t had a bike for at least a decade and this one isn’t like any of the mountain bikes I’ve owned before. It’s a Giant FCR3. I’m hoping it’s a good beginning bike for me to try commuting on. I still don’t know if my idea is feasible or not. I left the bike at the shop because I ordered a bicycle rack for panniers so I can carry my bags with me to work. Since I don’t have an office, I have to carry my office with me which can be a little awkward. The bicycle shop called this week to let me know that the bike was ready but I haven’t felt well enough yet to go pick it up. Anyway, it should be a great adventure

*Erie is closer but doesn’t have good roads for a novice bike rider.

Every year around Thanksgiving time my mother starts making “Christmas Candy.” We had some when I went home to Washington for Thanksgiving. In fact, mom had expanded her normal candy selection to include three new recipes, one being a yummy variation on Butterfingers. However, I felt the need to make my own Christmas Candy this year.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day making Christmas Candy. I made Almond Toffee, Coconut Balls, Peanut Butter Balls, and Frangoes. I think they all turned out good. In my opinion, the Frangoes didn’t turn out quite as good as normal but still decent.

I also tried making Caramels and this was my downfall. Apparently, high altitude not only affects baking, it also changes candy making. However, I didn’t realize this when making the caramel and so closely stuck with the recommended candy temperature. I poured it in the pan and left it to harden overnight. Well, it did harden. It hardened enough to make it inedible.

It was only after researching the problem that I learned that you should drop the candy temperature 1 degree for every 500 feet above sea level (due to the faster evaporation at higher altitudes). For most people, this probably doesn’t make a huge difference. However, living at around 5,000 feet above sea level I should have dropped the temperature by about 10 degrees. Even though it’s a similar process, I didn’t have this problem with the Almond Toffee because I paid more attention to the Cold Water Test instead of the candy temperature. Oh well, I’ll know for next year

I divided the successful candy up into 5 batches (one for each branch library and one for Jaeger’s work). I delivered Farr’s candy today. I think the Almond Toffee is the most popular of the bunch.

I like the Almond Toffee but the Coconut Balls and Peanut Butter balls have more Christmas memories associated with it. We didn’t watch many movies growing up but mom would usually let us watch movies either when we helped her with canning in the fall or rolling peanut butter and coconut balls for the candy. I love Christmas time

More tomatoes!

• 3 lb 2 oz tomatoes (5)
• 9 lbs 3 oz white sweet corn (12)
• 3 lb 1 oz yellow watermelon
• 5 oz basil (1 bag)
• 6 oz green beans
• 2 lbs 12 oz white onions
• 10 oz eggplant (1)
• 11 oz cucumber (1)
• 2 oz banana peppers
• 4 oz green bell pepper
• 1 lb 3 oz carrots
• 2 lb 13 oz potatoes

This past week, I’ve been subjecting Jaeger to all sorts of food experiments. However, I suppose this isn’t really abnormal behavior on my part. Surprisingly, I think most of them either turned out good or with potential.

Friday night I made Pasta Caprese, a recipe I found in the July/August 2007 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. It’s a basic fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil pasta dish. However, the magazine recommended freezing the diced mozzarella for 10 minutes to prevent it from getting stringy when combined with the warm pasta. I neglected to seed the tomatoes with the result that the sauce was a little runny. However, Jaeger conceded that it was quite good even with the runny sauce.

Friday, I made a soybean soup and a Greek inspired sandwich with a Tzatziki sauce I found in Cook’s Illustrated. I was planning to make pitas from scratch but this part turned out a disaster. So, instead I used store bought pitas. I think the sandwich was good but I would have preferred to use fluffier pitas. The soybean soup was also good but was probably more appropriate as a winter soup.

For Sunday lunch, I decided to make a Grilled Mozzarella Sandwich with Roasted Peppers and Basil. This plan went a little awry when I had to go up to Greeley unexpectedly. However, I put the ingredients out for Jaeger and he reported that it ended up being pretty good.

Tonight, I made Spicy Carrot soup with Roasted Garlic, Tomato and Pesto Crepes and roasted beets. Jaeger didn’t seem terribly enthralled by the carrot soup but neither did he find it appalling. The crepes were good but as Jaeger pointed out, the filling tasted too Italian for what we expected to be in crepes. Jaeger thinks the crepe filling would be very good as a pasta filling and I would tend to agree. This means that I need to continue my quest for savory vegetarian crepe fillings. Currently, the only one I have really liked is for crepes filled with ratatouille and topped with swiss cheese. Oh well, I’m sure something good will turn up eventually.

I’ve always been fond of Costco. I suspect most of my fondness stems from nostalgia over the monthly trips my family use to take to Costco. However, I’ve also heard good things about how they treat their workers. In fact, sometimes Costco is criticized for treating its workers well at the expense of its shareholders.

When Jaeger and I first got married, it didn’t make sense to buy at Costco since we wouldn’t have had any place to store the items we bought. Later, I wasn’t sure if I could justify the membership cost. Today, I decided to wander over to Costco and evaluate if buying a Costco membership makes economic sense.

I’ve been keeping a grocery price book now for a little over a year. This spreadsheet includes various columns such as the item, how many times I’ve bought it, the average price I’ve paid and more. I copied a summary of this data into another spreadsheet and added an empty column for Costco prices. Then I printed the new spreadsheet out and headed to Costco for price comparison.

I had called Costco earlier in the day to see if I could get a temporary one-day pass without having to pay any money. The lady that answered the phone told me that I couldn’t because memberships are fully refundable if the customer is dissatisfied with it. However, they would give me a pass to wander around and look at the store. If I decided to buy anything, I could buy a membership at the checkout station. I think in the long run, this method turned out better for me. If I had a free, no-strings-attached temporary membership card, I probably would have walked out of the door with $100 worth of stuff before I had time to calculated the actual savings (or lack thereof). However, with the constraint of having to buy a membership if I wanted to buy any products, I dutifully went aisle by aisle comparing the items I had in my price book with comparable items I could find on the shelves.

When I got home, I compiled my data and came up with this spreadsheet. Since Costco often sells items in larger quantities than normal supermarkets, I compared costs based on the unit price of an item. To determine whether or not I would save on an item if I bought it at Costco, I took the Costco unit price minus the supermarket unit price. Then, if the result was positive, I multiplied it by the number of units I would have bought at the supermarket for this item and the total number of times I bought the item. I considered the result to be the amount of money I would have saved over a year if I had bought the item at Costco instead of the supermarket.

There are a number of flaws with the method described above. First, I don’t have an exact count of how much I bought of each item. Instead, I have a count of how many times I bought the item. For instance, when I went to the store today, I bought two cartons of yogurt. However, my spreadsheet will only count it as 1 visit. Thus, multiplying by the number of times I bought each item may underestimate the savings. However, while the unit cost for a Costco item may be cheaper than its supermarket equivalent, I may not have bought as much if I had bought it at the supermarket. Thus, I may spend less money overall if I had bought the item at the supermarket. There are several other flaws similar to these. However, I believe that the method referenced gives a decent estimate of whether or not I’d save money shopping at Costco. In fact, I suspect that my totals are a little conservative since I didn’t include the cost of some things that don’t have direct equivalents. For instance, I eat oatmeal every weekday and usually put some sort of frozen fruit in it such as blueberries, blackberries, etc. I buy these at the grocery store in individual 1 lb bags. At Costco, there is a frozen organic berry mix that ends up being cheaper than buying the berries seperately. It’s not an exact equivalent so I didn’t include it in my spreadsheet. However, if I shopped at Costco, I would probably gravitate toward buying the cheaper, organic frozen mix at Costco rather than the non-organic individual frozen fruit at a supermarket. Unfortunately, this spreadsheet doesn’t reflect the extra time/gas required to add another store to the grocery shopping circuit.

Before analyzing the results, I suspected that we could easily break even buying a Costco membership if we had a family. However, I was dubious that there would be any benefit when just buying for Jaeger and I. However, even buying the quantities that Jaeger and I typically use, it appears that we likely would break even if we bought a Costco membership. Only comparing prices against direct equivalents, we would save around $40 beyond the $50 membership cost. If we further limit results to items that can be stored for long periods (such as canned tomatoes), we would still save a little over $20 for the year.

As you can see, the savings aren’t substantial. However, I believe this provides enough data to show we will not lose money by buying a Costco membership. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve wanted a Costco card for a while so I’ll probably go ahead and get a membership and shop there quarterly, buying enough of the cheaper non-perishable items to last until my next Costco trip. However, when I shop there, I’ll need to take my price book along* to make sure I’m not buying items that appear to be a good deal but really aren’t. Of course, I’ll also have to battle against the typical Costco temptation to buy really fun stuff that one doesn’t need

* My normal price book is kept on my PDA so I’ll be able to modify it to determine unit prices as I’m considering buying the item.

Organic food may be good in many ways. However, I haven’t gotten use to various aspects of it like worms in my corn. Oh well, it’s a good learning experience

• 2 lbs 3 oz tomatoes (4)
• 3 lbs 7 oz corn (7)
• 5 lb 4 oz watermelon (yellow?)
• 1 lb 13 oz honeydew
• 1lb 2 oz carrots
• 1 lb 4 oz green bell peppers (2)
• 3 oz jalapeno peppers
• 1 lb 9 oz cucumbers (2)
• 1 lb green beans
• 2 lbs 14 oz beets
• 3 lbs 2 oz red potatoes
• 3 lb yellow onions

Here’s this week’s produce:

• 1 lb 10 oz tomatoes (4)
• 1 lb 10 oz cucumbers (2)
• 9 oz anaheim peppers (5)
• 4.5 oz green bell pepper (1)
• 3.23 lbs white potatoes
• 1 lb 1 oz carrots
• 3 lbs red onions
• 1 lb 5 oz zucchini
• 2 lb 12 oz cabbage
• 11 oz green beans
• 2 lbs 6 oz orange honeydew
• 1 lb 14 oz orange honeydew
• 4 lbs 7 oz muskmelon
• 3lbs 9 oz yellow watermelon

We got lots of melons this week also but fortunately Jaeger is finally back! It looks like we’re starting to get more tomatoes too. I hope the trend continues. You can never buy good tomatoes in the grocery store and I’m hopeless at growing them.

This week’s haul:

• 2 lbs 2 oz tomatoes (3)
• 3 lbs 5oz honeydew
• 5 lbs 10 oz muskmelon
• 9 oz green beans
• 6 oz broccoli
• 6 1/2 oz globe eggplant (white)
• 4 oz poblano peppers (2)
• 5 oz green pepper
• 3 oz lemon cucumbers (2 sm)
• 1 lb 8 oz cucumber (2)
• 15 oz carrots
• 1 lb 9 oz patty pan squash
• 14 oz summer squash
• 2 lbs 15 oz fingerling potatoes
• 2 lbs 13 oz white onions
• 15 lb watermelon

Jaeger got back from Australia late afternoon on Saturday. Since even under normal circumstances I have a compulsion to feed people, I figured Sunday morning was a good time to have Sweet Rolls.

Sweet Rolls are one of those recipes that require multiple hours of prepapation. I didn’t feel like getting up in the wee hours of the morning on Sunday so I made most of it ahead on Saturday. One recipe makes 18 sweet rolls which is way more than Jaeger and I can eat by ourselves (at least, when we’re trying to be marginally healthy). So, I settled for making a half recipe.

I’ve probably mentioned before that I’ve become infatuated with White Whole Wheat flour (a whole wheat flour made from white wheat berry instead of red wheat berry like the more common whole wheat flour). When making the sweet rolls this time, I used the white whole wheat flour for about 1/2 of the flour the recipe calls for. After they were finished, I asked Jaeger if he noticed the whole wheat taste and he said no. Also, I used the optional 2 egg whites instead of 1 egg (remembering that I cut the recipe in half). Other than that, I mixed everything up as specified and let it raise a half hour at room temperature. After that, I put it in the refrigerator and let it rise another 10 hrs.

After Jaeger and I got back from the airport and had supper, I finished putting the sweet rolls together and popped them in the fridge to rise overnight.

Previously, I’ve had trouble with the topping (which goes on the bottom of the pan when baking) being burned before the sweet dough has finished baking. However, this morning I decided to try baking the bread in a water bath. I put the 8 X 8 pan that contained the chilled sweet rolls in a 9 X 13 pan and poured 2 cups of warm (not boiling) water around it. I then placed the whole contraption in the oven and turned the oven on to 350 degrees. I didn’t preheat the oven since the sweet rolls had been refrigerated the entire night and I didn’t want to risk my baking dish cracking with the sudden exposure to heat. I baked the sweet rolls like this for 45 minutes and then checked them. They were obviously not done yet so I raised the oven temperature to 375 degrees and let them bake another 30 minutes (part way through I did need to cover the top of the sweet rolls with foil to keep the top from getting too dark).

The sweet rolls ended up perfect. Next time I think I’ll try the same method over again but this time start with a higher oven temp. Jaeger and I only ate 2 of the 9 sweet rolls so I individually wrapped the remaining sweet rolls and stuck them in the freezer. I’m not sure how well they’ll reheat but I think they have a decent chance of still being tasty.

Still have melons coming out of my ears . . .

• 9 oz Tomato (1)
• 4 lb 10 oz Musk Melon
• 4 lb 12 oz Musk Melon
• 3lb 13 oz White Honeydew
• 5 lbs 15 oz corn (12 ears)
• 13 oz green beans
• 7 oz Anaheim peppers
• 1 lb 4 oz carrots
• 3/4 oz jalapeno peppers
• 1 lb 7 oz cucumbers (2)
• 8 oz lemon cucumbers (2)
• 2 lbs 12 oz onions
• 12 oz cabbage
• 1 lb 2 oz patty pan summer squash
• 1 lb 3 oz beets (without greens)
• 1 medium Watermelon (forgot to weigh it before giving it away — there’s only so much watermelon 1 person can eat)