Thanks for all the great questions. I try to answer ones where I feel like I have a good answer, but there are plenty where I just don't know, so I can't be of much help.
On food-grade equipment--if it wasn't made for food (pots for cooking, etc.), I wouldn't use it. The risk isn't worth the cost savings.
On the physics/chemistry of distilling, I doubt if controlling the temperature helps much. The boiling point of the liquid is a fuction of the ratio of acohol to water (probably also affected by whatever other chemicals are in there). If you don't heat it to that temperature (which will change as the alcohol evaporates, changing the ratio), then you won't get much out of the still. Trying to heat it hotter than that will just cause everything to evaporate faster, but it'll go on boiling at the same temperature. (Try heating a pot of boiling water over 212 degrees F--you can't do it, for the same reason.)
On ingredients other than white sugar, you'd do better to find some reference books on making better booze than to listen to me.
On charcoal, Dolly Freed says that you can make your own by sealing wood up in aluminum foil and then putting it in a fire for a while. You can probably also buy food-grade charcoal. I wouldn't use the cheap stuff for outdoor cooking (and most especially not any that has lighter-fluid included in it).
Do you know if the cartridge has to be COMPLETELY empty? Or can I just take the one I'm currently using - I know it must be getting CLOSE to empty by now. Lol.
easystockalerts will keep you abreast on the latest news on stocks you follow. You can get e-mail and RSS alerts when a stock you are tracking has news, an SEC filing, or a press release. It also monitors some of the top financial blogs for opinions on your stocks. So start money making now and sign up for easystockalerts.com
Never Lose An Opportunity to Make Money & Sign Up On EasyStockAlerts Now Sign up at easystockalerts.com for free to see your stock news before it breaks to the rest of the public!
We have it better than some since were in the largest "metro" in the middle of nowhere. But we still don't have a Trader Joes or a Costco. What seems to work is splitting where we get some things, the food coop is the place to get certain things like specialty flours but we buy other organic items at the grocery chain. We do have a Sam's Club and that can be a big saving grace for some things we use lots of like organic coffee and lettuce.
What we found helped reduce costs on some of those natural or organic items was to buy the components and make them. A bag of Bear Naked Granola is between $6-$8 and they are not very big bags. We buy the components, oats, honey, almonds, peanuts, pecans, brown sugar, canola oil and make it in large batches. Having a garden and buying local produce when it is in season also helps keep prices down.
We do try to stop at Trader Joes about once or twice a year when we are in the city. We stock up on a few things that have long shelf lives. Their natural peanut butter, their boxed granola etc.
If you don't know if the metal is food-grade, is there a way to tell?
Or is it better off just to go out and buy some that you know is?
I'm not a person of wealth, so I'd like to pinch as many pennies as I can! And is there any metal that will always be safe to us as tubbing in your still?
I am so with you on the rural thing. While it is a blessing to live where we live, it can also be a burden when it comes to issues like this. Linsey Knerl turned me on to the Amazon option where you can get some organic items. After using the free super saver option a few times and waiting for a hellishly long time for our agave nectar, we finally dished out the 80 bucks for the Amazon prime. Twice as much (about) as our Sam's Club membership, but that is four hours away and would involve an overnight hotel stay unless we happen to going through anyway (which we did recently for the first time in months). Now stuff comes in two days and we have ordered things like dried cranberries / cherries / blueberries, agave nectar, flax seed, quinoa and more. We never would have found these within even a three hour drive. So it's worth it to us. However, I'm with you that you have to make precision choices and build up with a few items here and there. We'd go broke doing it all at once. Thanks for pointing out that many of us don't have what other well meaning people mistakenly consider standard.
Interesting, even though I pay more per item at the local grocery and local organic store, my bill has dropped overall. Why? Because when I'm not shopping at a mega-store (Wal-Mart), I don't get all the impulse buys and my family isn't tempted by the "good deals." Plus we buy much less junk food, and that helps lower our overall grocery bill as well.
If you're just paying your taxes as usual, you'll have paid all of what you owe for 2007 by mid-April, and then get your rebate some time in May.
If you owe money from a past year, though, according to the IRS FAQ, the rebate will go to paying off that debt:
... the stimulus payment is treated like any other tax refund. This means that part or all of your payment can be used to pay past-due federal or state income taxes or non-tax federal debt such as student loans and child support. If this occurs, you will receive a letter explaining how the stimulus payment was applied.
That seems to go counter to the whole point of stimulus, but I guess the IRS is very much more a tax-collecting agency than a stumulus agency.
Keep in mind that I'm not a tax expert, and in any case I don't know enough about your tax situation to comment on it specifically.
I want to also suggest the option of joining your local CSA - Community Sponsired Agriculture - subscitption service for seasonal, local produce. You can go here: to find out more about the programs and where a local one is for you.
It supports local agriculture and is a great way to eat locally and truly fresh from the field produce. Prices vary and so does selection from farm to farm but it is pretty reasonable.
I too live in a rural area with limited grocery options. We don't even have the local food co-op. One option you don't mention is buying lots of local produce at the farmer's market when things are in season and preserving it for later. Even if you don't want to try canning, freezing is fairly simple and a great way to put away a lot of veggies and fruits to use later in the year. Most counties have an Extension Agent who is happy to provide information on food preserving.
I just finished Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and realized that I can save so much more money by buying "real food." By buying fresh, real veggies/fruits and avoiding the center of the store, I am eating healthier and saving a lot of money, too! I could just as easily go to Whole Foods or TJ's and get organic, and maybe I should, but for now I am relishing in not eating chemicals, substitutes and refined grains. It's definitely more effort to make a fresh meal every day, but so rewarding. Try shopping the perimeter of the store, get the real stuff, and cut out the processed, packaged and unhealthy food in the middle. I am saving about $100 every two weeks because of it!
Where do you find used bicycles? None of the used sporting goods stores in my area have them, and going to garage sales would take a very... long... time... to find one the right size. Any tips?
If someone (me) owes money this year, will I still get my rebate, or will the IRS just automatically apply it to my balance owed? I would much rather apply it to some of my other debt that has higher interest rates, you know?
I lived in China from 2004-2006, and from what I saw there, your list still applies. Plus, of course, the plethora of knockoff products at various street markets made #4 easy!
Do you have any knowledge of recruitment agencies or headhaunters in Shaghai that are placing Americans with Helpdesk/Customer Support Manager skills with local companies. I would very much be interested in coming to live and work for a while ( several years ) in Shankhai!
It's tough to make the jump. (For example, we haven't. We don't drive much (fill up the tank about once a month), but we still have a car.) Going car-free, though, not only saves on fuel costs, but also on insurance, licensing, maintanence, parking, etc.
More transmission problems but still drivable. I said the heck with it and called the local Salvation Army rehab program. Very simple business, you sign the back of your title, they send someone with a tow truck and off it goes. Doubt I could have sold it as is and gotten much more than I hope to be able to write off. It's been painless so far (2 weeks). I'm amazed how far I can go on our bus system here and how crowded the bus was on Sunday when I went to my church (an old union hall downtown). There are 3 different routes very near my house. I'm not sorry, feels kind of like a weight lifted. My family think I've lost it but it's great.
Hey so incase you didn't know IE7 has this awesome bug where it never unloads flash elements untill it closes. I just did this with a 100mb setting and it changed my IE memory load from 150mb to 3. sick!
As someone who worked in internet tech-support I can not stress enough how important it is to be NICE to the person you are talking to. Here's why!: They don't get paid enough to put up with your ****, really. So if you are some pissed off caller helping you goes down in priority and not talking to you anymore goes up to #1.
Actualy I could write a whole post on how to talk to SPs. If it's not too hard to get posted on this site I'll have one up by weeks end.
Thanks for your tips!
While it is true that some devices and software really do have higher/newer system requirements than others, this is an impossible scenario for the iPod Classic. Apple is doing a cash grab just like Microsoft did with Halo 2 for PC by requiring the latest OS, even though there is no performance difference between the two(especialy since Halo 2 was developed on XP).
The key idicator for the iPod: it works on XP. And XP is old, SP2 came out at least 2 years ago, maybe 3 now? So if it will run on the old windows OS why not the old Mac OS? It's not like the newer versions are even new, they are comparable to the (free) MS service packs. Notice how we aren't on OS14? For PCs the compatibility issue is this: USB devices work on XP really well, other OSs not so well(2000,98,etc). iPods connect with XP as a hard drive or with iTunes as a music player, the only upgrade needed for this newest iPod is the latest iTunes(free). So we see that the bridge of files to device is not the OS but the software. On Mac X USB devices work great, on OS9 not so great. See where i'm going?
A legit non-compatibility issue like what you're talking about is the new PS3 with no PS2 compatibility in the low price point. To save money Sony took out the hardware that handled PS2 functionality.
These two are tricky when buying used, we recently had a small repair done on our quite old washer and dryer set and asked about replacing them as they are quite loud. The repair guy told us to hold off as long as possible because new models have a service life shorter than that of older models. So swing by or call a company that does service on machines and see what they have to say. Also on buying anything take a look at consumer reports, they have a huge list of products that have been recomended and by looking at backed issues or thier online site you can find out how that used product was rated.
Thanks for all the great questions. I try to answer ones where I feel like I have a good answer, but there are plenty where I just don't know, so I can't be of much help.
On food-grade equipment--if it wasn't made for food (pots for cooking, etc.), I wouldn't use it. The risk isn't worth the cost savings.
On the physics/chemistry of distilling, I doubt if controlling the temperature helps much. The boiling point of the liquid is a fuction of the ratio of acohol to water (probably also affected by whatever other chemicals are in there). If you don't heat it to that temperature (which will change as the alcohol evaporates, changing the ratio), then you won't get much out of the still. Trying to heat it hotter than that will just cause everything to evaporate faster, but it'll go on boiling at the same temperature. (Try heating a pot of boiling water over 212 degrees F--you can't do it, for the same reason.)
On ingredients other than white sugar, you'd do better to find some reference books on making better booze than to listen to me.
On charcoal, Dolly Freed says that you can make your own by sealing wood up in aluminum foil and then putting it in a fire for a while. You can probably also buy food-grade charcoal. I wouldn't use the cheap stuff for outdoor cooking (and most especially not any that has lighter-fluid included in it).
Do you know if the cartridge has to be COMPLETELY empty? Or can I just take the one I'm currently using - I know it must be getting CLOSE to empty by now. Lol.
easystockalerts will keep you abreast on the latest news on stocks you follow. You can get e-mail and RSS alerts when a stock you are tracking has news, an SEC filing, or a press release. It also monitors some of the top financial blogs for opinions on your stocks. So start money making now and sign up for easystockalerts.com
Never Lose An Opportunity to Make Money & Sign Up On EasyStockAlerts Now Sign up at easystockalerts.com for free to see your stock news before it breaks to the rest of the public!
We have it better than some since were in the largest "metro" in the middle of nowhere. But we still don't have a Trader Joes or a Costco. What seems to work is splitting where we get some things, the food coop is the place to get certain things like specialty flours but we buy other organic items at the grocery chain. We do have a Sam's Club and that can be a big saving grace for some things we use lots of like organic coffee and lettuce.
What we found helped reduce costs on some of those natural or organic items was to buy the components and make them. A bag of Bear Naked Granola is between $6-$8 and they are not very big bags. We buy the components, oats, honey, almonds, peanuts, pecans, brown sugar, canola oil and make it in large batches. Having a garden and buying local produce when it is in season also helps keep prices down.
We do try to stop at Trader Joes about once or twice a year when we are in the city. We stock up on a few things that have long shelf lives. Their natural peanut butter, their boxed granola etc.
If you don't know if the metal is food-grade, is there a way to tell?
Or is it better off just to go out and buy some that you know is?
I'm not a person of wealth, so I'd like to pinch as many pennies as I can! And is there any metal that will always be safe to us as tubbing in your still?
I am so with you on the rural thing. While it is a blessing to live where we live, it can also be a burden when it comes to issues like this. Linsey Knerl turned me on to the Amazon option where you can get some organic items. After using the free super saver option a few times and waiting for a hellishly long time for our agave nectar, we finally dished out the 80 bucks for the Amazon prime. Twice as much (about) as our Sam's Club membership, but that is four hours away and would involve an overnight hotel stay unless we happen to going through anyway (which we did recently for the first time in months). Now stuff comes in two days and we have ordered things like dried cranberries / cherries / blueberries, agave nectar, flax seed, quinoa and more. We never would have found these within even a three hour drive. So it's worth it to us. However, I'm with you that you have to make precision choices and build up with a few items here and there. We'd go broke doing it all at once. Thanks for pointing out that many of us don't have what other well meaning people mistakenly consider standard.
Interesting, even though I pay more per item at the local grocery and local organic store, my bill has dropped overall. Why? Because when I'm not shopping at a mega-store (Wal-Mart), I don't get all the impulse buys and my family isn't tempted by the "good deals." Plus we buy much less junk food, and that helps lower our overall grocery bill as well.
If you're just paying your taxes as usual, you'll have paid all of what you owe for 2007 by mid-April, and then get your rebate some time in May.
If you owe money from a past year, though, according to the IRS FAQ, the rebate will go to paying off that debt:
That seems to go counter to the whole point of stimulus, but I guess the IRS is very much more a tax-collecting agency than a stumulus agency.
Keep in mind that I'm not a tax expert, and in any case I don't know enough about your tax situation to comment on it specifically.
I want to also suggest the option of joining your local CSA - Community Sponsired Agriculture - subscitption service for seasonal, local produce. You can go here: to find out more about the programs and where a local one is for you.
It supports local agriculture and is a great way to eat locally and truly fresh from the field produce. Prices vary and so does selection from farm to farm but it is pretty reasonable.
what???
I too live in a rural area with limited grocery options. We don't even have the local food co-op. One option you don't mention is buying lots of local produce at the farmer's market when things are in season and preserving it for later. Even if you don't want to try canning, freezing is fairly simple and a great way to put away a lot of veggies and fruits to use later in the year. Most counties have an Extension Agent who is happy to provide information on food preserving.
I just finished Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and realized that I can save so much more money by buying "real food." By buying fresh, real veggies/fruits and avoiding the center of the store, I am eating healthier and saving a lot of money, too! I could just as easily go to Whole Foods or TJ's and get organic, and maybe I should, but for now I am relishing in not eating chemicals, substitutes and refined grains. It's definitely more effort to make a fresh meal every day, but so rewarding. Try shopping the perimeter of the store, get the real stuff, and cut out the processed, packaged and unhealthy food in the middle. I am saving about $100 every two weeks because of it!
Where do you find used bicycles? None of the used sporting goods stores in my area have them, and going to garage sales would take a very... long... time... to find one the right size. Any tips?
Gross!
If someone (me) owes money this year, will I still get my rebate, or will the IRS just automatically apply it to my balance owed? I would much rather apply it to some of my other debt that has higher interest rates, you know?
Food is too important to outsource it all to the lowest bidder.
Good thoughts on finding the balance between that and paying yuppy specialty-item prices for your whole diet.
I lived in China from 2004-2006, and from what I saw there, your list still applies. Plus, of course, the plethora of knockoff products at various street markets made #4 easy!
Dear Jabulani Leffall,
Do you have any knowledge of recruitment agencies or headhaunters in Shaghai that are placing Americans with Helpdesk/Customer Support Manager skills with local companies. I would very much be interested in coming to live and work for a while ( several years ) in Shankhai!
Thanks in Advance,
Paul Lebo
Dallas TX
It's tough to make the jump. (For example, we haven't. We don't drive much (fill up the tank about once a month), but we still have a car.) Going car-free, though, not only saves on fuel costs, but also on insurance, licensing, maintanence, parking, etc.
Good luck!
More transmission problems but still drivable. I said the heck with it and called the local Salvation Army rehab program. Very simple business, you sign the back of your title, they send someone with a tow truck and off it goes. Doubt I could have sold it as is and gotten much more than I hope to be able to write off. It's been painless so far (2 weeks). I'm amazed how far I can go on our bus system here and how crowded the bus was on Sunday when I went to my church (an old union hall downtown). There are 3 different routes very near my house. I'm not sorry, feels kind of like a weight lifted. My family think I've lost it but it's great.
Hey so incase you didn't know IE7 has this awesome bug where it never unloads flash elements untill it closes. I just did this with a 100mb setting and it changed my IE memory load from 150mb to 3. sick!
As someone who worked in internet tech-support I can not stress enough how important it is to be NICE to the person you are talking to. Here's why!: They don't get paid enough to put up with your ****, really. So if you are some pissed off caller helping you goes down in priority and not talking to you anymore goes up to #1.
Actualy I could write a whole post on how to talk to SPs. If it's not too hard to get posted on this site I'll have one up by weeks end.
Thanks for your tips!
While it is true that some devices and software really do have higher/newer system requirements than others, this is an impossible scenario for the iPod Classic. Apple is doing a cash grab just like Microsoft did with Halo 2 for PC by requiring the latest OS, even though there is no performance difference between the two(especialy since Halo 2 was developed on XP).
The key idicator for the iPod: it works on XP. And XP is old, SP2 came out at least 2 years ago, maybe 3 now? So if it will run on the old windows OS why not the old Mac OS? It's not like the newer versions are even new, they are comparable to the (free) MS service packs. Notice how we aren't on OS14? For PCs the compatibility issue is this: USB devices work on XP really well, other OSs not so well(2000,98,etc). iPods connect with XP as a hard drive or with iTunes as a music player, the only upgrade needed for this newest iPod is the latest iTunes(free). So we see that the bridge of files to device is not the OS but the software. On Mac X USB devices work great, on OS9 not so great. See where i'm going?
A legit non-compatibility issue like what you're talking about is the new PS3 with no PS2 compatibility in the low price point. To save money Sony took out the hardware that handled PS2 functionality.
These two are tricky when buying used, we recently had a small repair done on our quite old washer and dryer set and asked about replacing them as they are quite loud. The repair guy told us to hold off as long as possible because new models have a service life shorter than that of older models. So swing by or call a company that does service on machines and see what they have to say. Also on buying anything take a look at consumer reports, they have a huge list of products that have been recomended and by looking at backed issues or thier online site you can find out how that used product was rated.