COME TREASURE HUNTING WITH US!
Tastebud Tango, 5-15-06
IMPORTANT! CHANGE OF ADDRESS
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Janette
----Table of Contents----
1. A Job for You
2. It's Garage Sale (and Antiquing) Season
3. A Never-Ending Garage Sale
4. Electronic Trash Removal
5. Craigslist.com
6. "My Money" Tool Kit
7. Amazing Language Resource!
8. Touring Europe on Your Own?
9. Burma Shave
10. Quick Meals for Tired Families
11. Recipe: Lorney Faber's Sourdough Starter
1. A JOB FOR YOU
The Baby Boomers are getting ready to retire, and it has occurred to Uncle Sam that a lot of federal jobs are going to go vacant when they do. The U.S. government is therefore trying to entice people to come work for it, starting right now. Here's where you go to check that out:
http://www.opm.gov/Career_Opportunities/index.asp
Eventually Boomers will vacate a lot of jobs in the private sector as well. Statistics vary as to whether the private sector job market has loosened already, but the process seems to be under way. If you want to check that out, I'd suggest you start with the Job Hunt website I wrote up last December. It lists both executive and nonexecutive positions. Be sure to read its articles, especially, "The Dirty Dozen Online Job Search Mistakes," and, above all, "Dangerous Online Job Search Assumptions."
http://www.job hunt.org/jobs/states.shtml
And here's one more job site - a humongous one:
2. IT'S GARAGE SALE (AND ANTIQUING) SEASON
It's the time of year when we learn once again that "one person's trash is another person's treasure." We also have a little sneaking desire to find a valuable antique for, say, one dollar. Such things do happen, but, if you're serious about finding bargains in antiques, you'll need to research them so you can recognize them. At the site below an "appraiser and author offers her suggestions for research and list of today's hottest antiques and collectibles."
http://www.news antique.com/?id=239000&keys=Warmans Antiques prices
And below is a list of collectibles you can find for under $10 (and you'll notice that the website has a lot of other information on antiques):
http://antiques.about.com/od/buyingandsellingantiques/a/aa072504.htm
If you've already selected an item you want to collect, I can't overemphasize the benefits of doing a Google search for it. Putting, say, "antique dolls" into the search box will give you more than 11 million items! Which doesn't mean there are 11 million antique dolls or antique doll sites out there. It means that the words "antique" and "doll" have occurred in one another's vicinity 11 million times. But still you will have an amazing amount of useful information, which you may narrow further by putting in a qualifier, such as: antique doll Raggedy Ann. Or, if you hate Raggedy Ann dolls and don't want to get items on them, put: antique doll -Raggedy Ann. The minus sign means you don't want any Raggedy Anns. A plus sign, +Raggedy Ann, would mean that you only want sites that mention Raggedy Ann dolls. Be sure to leave a space before the minus or plus. And putting quotes, "Raggedy Ann," around a term means you want those two words together, not Raggedy in one paragraph and Ann in another.
3. A NEVER-ENDING GARAGE SALE
Freecycle.org has been called a "never-ending garage sale," which isn't quite accurate, as Freecycle material is fr*ee!
When you check this out, be sure you go to Freecycle.org rather than Freecycle.com. Freecycle.com is one of those fake websites that pretend to be another, popular website. When I landed there, they had a lot of dubious looking stuff, and the "Work at Home" section was, in my view, downright dishonest. (I'd estimate that 75% of all "work at home" schemes are either partial gyps or total gyps. At best, they're deals you should go into with your eyes wide open and your hand on your wallet.)
So, all right, you're at Freecycle.org, a website that deals ONLY in items you want to give away for fr*ee. You'll need to find a Freecycle group near you, as people are going to actually come to your home and physically pick up your freebies. (And you are, of course, going to their homes to pick up theirs.) Freecycle's main rule is that "everything posted must be fr*ee, legal, and appropriate for all ages." Freecycle strikes me as a good choice for giving away old cell phones or used computers and their equipment. A person hates to just throw these things away, yet older electronic devices simply aren't as desirable as they used to be and a home can be hard to find.
4. ELECTRONIC TRASH REMOVAL
If giving away your old cell phone, computer, or other used electronic device through Freecycle doesn't appeal, here are other good, maybe even better, options. I expect the following eBay page was set up for people who tried to sell their used electronic goods on eBay but got skunked. It names a number of organizations that can help you find a good, fr*ee home for your used electronics.
http://rethink.ebay.com
5. CRAIGSLIST.COM
Are you moving or cleaning out closets? Either way you've got used items to sell. Or maybe you're looking for someone to mow your lawn or paint your living room. Craigslist can help in all these situations.
Craigslist started as a no-frills website with fr*ee listings for San Francisco area jobs and goods for sale. Craigslist has since swept the U.S. and is now all over Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America . . . I don't see any listings for Antarctica, but that day may come. The charm of Craigslist is that it does the same things as newspaper want ads, but its listings are fr*ee. While eBay deals in goods that are shipped from one location to another, Craigslist deals only in local goods people can come to your house to pick up, and in local jobs. And Craigslist ads really work!
So, if you want to SELL ANY USED ITEM from china to a grand piano, try a Craigslist ad. It's fr*ee and it works.
If you want to USE A LOCAL SERVICE - to hire someone to clean your house or your chimney, to move you or to clear out the brush in your back yard -- check out Craigslist.
And if you PROVIDE A LOCAL SERVICE, Craigslist is the absolute best place to advertise. My husband has used Craigslist to advertise his sedan business, Sterling Transportation, and the results have been great!
I do have one caveat: I say that all the sites I list are family safe, but there are a few ads on Craigslist you would not want your eight-year-old daughter to read. (That's the way I make decisions in this area: would you want your eight-year-old daughter to see this?) I've hesitated to write up Craigslist for that reason, but it's so very helpful to so many people that I feel I should.
6. "MY MONEY" TOOL KIT
I hadn't heard of the U.S. Financial Literacy and Education Commission before now, and you probably haven't either. I swear, there's a government program for everything you can think of and some you can't. But, since we've already got these folks, we should take advantage of what they can do for us. They've got a fr*ee "My Money" tool kit, which would be especially valuable for GRADUATES STARTING THEIR FIRST JOB. It deals with budgeting, taxes, credit, home ownership, starting a new business, and more. It would also help someone starting a new business or someone with financial problems. (Just a guess, but I suspect this commission was started due to pressure from the banking industry, which wants to prevent bankruptcies. There's always a logical reason for these agencies if you search for it.) The "My Money" Tool Kit comes in both English and Spanish. You can sign up for it at:
http://www.mymoney.gov/mymoneyorder.shtml
7. AMAZING LANGUAGE RESOURCE!
You're going to travel abroad and would like to learn a few words in, say, Slovak? Or Afrikaans, Italian, Hindi, or Croatian? This site has amazing helps for you. It not only gives "fr*ee language tools," it tells where to find dictionaries in many languages. And, if you've traveled abroad, you know that the basic basic is NUMBERS in the language of the country you're in, so you can discuss prices. This site tells where you can find "numbers in over 4500 languages." That ought to do you. Translators, translation software . . . find the addresses here. And, ultimately, you will find "Eureka, the new search engine for language and translation resources." As I tour the Internet, I get harder and harder to impress. But this site is impressive!
8. TOURING EUROPE ON YOUR OWN?
So you're not going with a packaged tour - you're traveling in Europe on your own? Rick Steves has a helpful and delightful website in which travelers to all parts of Europe exchange information about subjects as diverse as good hostels, drinking water, and even getting married in Europe! (Which last may result from another topic on the website, "Magic Moments.") A sample post is this note about a stay "at a centuries old working wine and olive oil estate [in Tuscany] that rented rooms and apartments. Our apartment had a small kitchen and we prepared many of our meals after purchasing local produce and meats from the nearby small town shops."
Sound good? There's a lot more where that came from. Find it all here:
http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/graffiti116.html
9. BURMA SHAVE
If you remember the fifties, you'll remember the Burma Shave ads, which were divided among six signs along the highway. You read them as you drove along, and the last sign always said "Burma Shave."
The signs were hilarious, and people loved them. So what ended them? It was President Eisenhower's transcontinental highway program, which so improved the highways that people drove faster and faster -- and soon they were driving so fast the Burma Shave signs were just a blur. And so ended Burma Shave, another victim of progress. But, though the signs are no more, you can enjoy them again on this website.
http://www.fiftiesweb.com/burma1.htm
10. QUICK MEALS FOR TIRED FAMILIES
On this site, a tired parent was looking for quick, easy recipes for a family of four in which both parents work. She or he posted the problem on the website below and got a BUNCH of replies, including many cookbook suggestions, some great websites, and a few recipes. If the replies don't grab you, I'd suggest you do a Google search for "parents easy healthy recipes." The word "parents" gives you access to the thousands of parents' websites. Among other helps, parents' sites often have easy recipes for dishes children like.
http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/eating/quickmeals.html
11. RECIPE: LORNEY FABER'S SOURDOUGH STARTER
The taste of real sourdough bread, hotcakes, and biscuits can't be packaged or canned. You create a real sourdough starter, such as Lorney Faber's Montana ranch starter, and proceed from there. If you want recipes for using your starter, put "sourdough recipes" into the Google search box. I did and got slightly more than a million listings. As I said earlier, that doesn't mean there are a million sourdough recipes out there, but there are a bunch.
Lorney says, "I made my first starter sixteen years ago by the old fashioned method of mixing flour, milk and sugar together. This was put into a cheesecloth covered container and set outside during the day for a couple of days until the airborne yeasts supposedly had done their duty. The resultant starter was so sour that we couldn't enjoy the flavor.
"So I tried again, using the modern method of putting yeast into the starter. It turned out very well and I've been using that same starter ever since for the past sixteen years. This is the way I made mine years ago:
"Mix 2 cups unsifted regular flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1-1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast with 2-1/2 cups water. Use a stone crock, bowl or big glass peanut butter jar. Cover with a cloth and let stand for two days in a warm spot in your kitchen.
"Whenever you take out sourdough for baking, you must replenish the starter in the jar. To do this, simply stir in 2 cups warm water, 2 cups unsifted flour, and a sprinkling of salt.
"Always keep your starter refrigerated between bakings to prevent it from getting too sour. After making the original starter, I never again added sugar to it. Instead, I added a sprinkling of salt from time to time, which keeps it at about the right degree of sourness.
"If you don't make hotcakes every morning, you should still try to use your sourdough about once a week to keep the starter fresh."
Even dedicated cooks who don't cook for Montana ranch crews can find it difficult to use sourdough starter once a week, as Lorney does. If you fall in that category, put "freezing sourdough starter" into the Google search box. You'll discover that freezing starter either kills it, if you do it wrong, or preserves it, if you do it right. My suggestion: freeze half according to directions, keep the rest in the refrigerator, and see if the frozen part survives and revives.
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Janette Blackwell