The Savvy Life

Finding a date just got harder, at least according to one person’s survey of the field. The following post was found on the New York Craigslist:

So I am guy who tested out these posts to see if they are real. I have replied to 100 posts in Casual Encounters. I wanted to see how many were fake or not. Now, there might be some who are not fake but decided not to reply and not sure what percentage that would be.

Here are the results.
- 100 post replied
- 81 responses
- 4 seems to be legitimate (or person at least): 1 successful online conversation / 3 email conversation (2 dudes)
- 58 immediate (with in 2 hours) automatic fake responses (porn sites)
- 19 delayed responses: the fake sites are getting smarter, they are sending out reply after a day
- 19 non-reply (i even got rejected from porn sites!!)

Your mileage may vary. No matter which way I look at it, the fact of the matter is, the only way to get a quality date is through some effort, not spamming 100 craigslist posts in hopes for a quick hook up.

While I could write hundreds upon hundreds of words about the importance of Labor Day, the historical nature of it, what it means to have a day devoted to recognizing and saluting the benefits organized labor has given to this country, and thanking those early day unions for things like 5 day work weeks and 8 hour work days, no one would read it. So instead, I decided to focus on one important aspect of Labor Day – grilling.Without further delay, I present to you the Ten Greatest Grilling Tips for Labor Day.

• Clean with fire. Scrubbing down the grill grate so it is thoroughly clean is a drag. Instead, fire up the grill as hot as you can get it, burning the old food bits and grease from the grate. Finish it up with a wire brush (being careful because you know touching hot things with bare skin hurts, right?).
• Grill more than you plan on eating. Once you have the grill fired up, you might as well keep piling on the food until the heat is gone. Grilled foods make fantastic leftovers.
• Control the flare. When you have your grill going like the grillmaster you are, make sure you have a water spritzer nearby, located right there next to your tongs, so if there is a flare up, you can gently spritz it out. The spritzer is not a substitute for a fire extinguisher which you should have have on hand, just in case.
• Wait on the meat. Ideally, the meat you are cooking should be as close to room temperature as possible, but you don’t want to leave the meat out longer than an hour. It is a delicate balancing act, but it is worth the effort. Cold meat will contract when it comes in contact with the hot grill, making even the best cut of meat tough.
• Rest your chops. When you pull chops of meat off the grill, you need to put a piece of aluminum foil over them and let them rest for five minutes. This five minute rest will let the juices of the meat redistribute inside the meat instead of running out all over the plate and into the potato salad.
• Give your kabobs room. A skewer of meat is a tantalizing sight, but make sure each piece of meat has room on the skewer for the heat to get up and around it. Leaving roughly a quarter of an inch between each piece will make sure each piece of meat will cook evenly. A separate kabob tip is to put like with like. Even though a skewer of onion, green peppers, meat, onions, and mushrooms look fantastic, each part of that skewer will cook at different speeds.
• Ditch the lighter fluid. No one likes the chemical taste you invariably get when you use the lighter fluid. Additionally, no one likes spending all the money for a good charcoal chimney starter gadget that doesn’t get much use. There are other options. First, you can take a full sized metal coffee can with both ends cut out. Set it in your grill, stuff a piece of newspaper in the bottom and pile your charcoal on top. Tilt the can a bit so you can light the paper and in thirty minutes, your charcoal should be good to go. To remove the can, you can pull it out with tongs or a pair of vise grips. Be careful and try to lift straight up. If this method doesn’t excite you, then you can put the newspaper on the bottom of the grill, pile on the charcoal, and then douse the charcoal with salad oil. Light the paper and the oil should begin to flame.
• Soak the veggies. Grilled vegetables are an incredible part of a barbeque dinner, and the best tip regarding grilling vegetables is to presoak them in cold water for an hour. Don’t soak mushrooms, as they will get water logged, but peppers, onions, potatoes, and tomatoes are all good to be soaked first. Soaking for an hour will prevent the vegetables from getting dry and charring.
• Sauce correctly. Sugary or tomato based sauces will burn on the grill, even at lower temperatures. Keep these sauces to the very end of the cooking process. Other marinades can be basted onto the meat throughout the cooking process. If you are using the same liquid to baste as you did to marinade the meat, boil the marinade first to kill off errant bacteria. I’d recommend tossing any marinade that was used with chicken or any poultry. The chance of cross contamination is just too high. You are better off dividing the marinade before adding the poultry and keeping the reserve to the side for on-grill basting.
• Experiment. Grilling is a forgiving cooking medium once you’ve mastered controlling the heat. Don’t be afraid to toss non-traditional items onto the grill and see what the outcome is. Grilled pizza is a real delight. Eggplant grills up real nice and even tastes pretty good if seasoned correctly. Cast iron pots and pans love the grill. Try different types of meat, like lamb or venison. Your butcher can assist you with cooking guidance.

What do you think tastes better when made on the grill?

Bourbon lovers around the country are raising a glass to the U.S. Senate today for passing a resolution, just before it adjourned, officially declaring September 2007 “National Bourbon Heritage Month,” according to the Distilled Spirits Council.

“At a time when consumer preferences have led to a renaissance for premium bourbons, it’s great news that the Senate has recognized America’s distilling heritage by designating September as Bourbon Heritage Month,” said Distilled Spirits Council Senior Vice President Frank Coleman.

“America’s distilling heritage is intertwined with the history of the nation,” Coleman noted. “This legislation will help bring that history back into focus for many Americans, and help us celebrate our bourbon heritage — responsibly!”

Senate Resolution 294, sponsored by Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY), and passed unanimously, calls on consumers who enjoy bourbon to do so responsibly and in moderation.

“The bourbon industry is a source of pride for Kentucky and its heritage and has served as a major part of the commonwealth’s economy for over 200 years,” Senator Bunning said in a statement.

Bourbon business is booming in the United States. Since 2003, high-end bourbons have seen revenue grow from $450 million to over $500 million, some 2.2 million cases, in the United States. High-end bourbon sales accounted for eight percent of total spirits growth in 2006.

From the colonial era, where whiskey had an important economic and social function in the fabric of the community to the Whiskey Rebellion and Prohibition, whiskey has played an important role in the cultural heritage and history of spirits in America. In fact, America’s Founding Father, George Washington, had the largest whiskey distillery in the early years of the nation.

Bourbon was first recognized as a distinctive product on the United States in 1964 by an act of Congress. Under federal law, bourbon must be made in the United States; consist of at least 51% corn; and be aged in new, charred oak barrels for a minimum of two years.

In 2004 the Distilled Spirits Council and Historic Mount Vernon launched the American Whiskey Trail, a national cultural heritage and tourism initiative featuring historic sites and museums in 5 states that showcase whiskey and distilling. The Gateway to the American Whiskey Trail is the new distilling museum at George Washington’s Distillery at Historic Mount Vernon. http://www.americanwhiskeytrail.com.

One of the hardest things for a single person to do is to go out to a restaurant and dine alone. There are many obstacles for the single person, from going to parties alone, going to movies alone, and dining alone. Yet, just because a person is single does not mean he or she should be cut off from enjoying any of these things. Besides the pure sense of enjoyment of doing these things, how will a single person meet new people?

Solo diners are becoming more common and there are many reasons for this. The rise of food culture has increased a desire in people to experience fine dining with or without a dining partner. For example, there is a wine bistro in Chicago called Volo that has the best steamed mussels I’ve ever had the luxury of enjoying. I have two options. I can abstain from going there until I have a suitable dining partner or I can go alone.

The reason why there is a stigma to dining alone is dining is considered a social activity. Sharing food with your friends is a truly rewarding experience. Some of the best conversations occur over plates of food and glasses of wine. Right away when a solo diner goes out to a restaurant, there is the feeling of loss, the loss of that social activity. Another reason why solo dining is stigmatized is the experience isn’t shared. Sharing an experience makes the experience more real. It can turn a bad experience and make it something good because it will be shared and can be laughed about later, or simply commiserated upon over a drink later if it was truly horrendous. Yes, the solo diner may enjoy the best dessert of his life, but if there isn’t someone to share a bite of it to corroborate the fact that the dessert is indeed amazing, there may be some doubt. How will he truly know he just wasn’t fooling himself? The other big reason, possibly the biggest reason, dining solo is difficult is because of other people in the restaurant.

I read an article in the New York Times [All By Themselves] on solo dining by Frank Bruni and he interviewed waiters and managers on their opinions of solo diners. All were enthusiastic about solo diners, but the words ‘feel sorry for’ popped up. “I almost feel sorry for them because they’re alone, and I want to make their experience better.” Unless the diner is some sort of drama addict, he doesn’t want to be felt sorry for, he just wants a good meal. He isn’t expecting people to entertain him; he is expecting to be served good food and treated like the paying customer he is. I am not saying special service should be turned down, I’m just saying that it shouldn’t be offered out of pity.

Solo diners do have special requirements. Because the solo diner won’t have a flow of conversation to fill the void, a restaurant should close the gap between appetizer and entrée and dessert. A solo diner most likely won’t order a full bottle of wine, but that does not mean he wants to forego wine with dinner, so making sure he is aware of splits or glasses of wine that are available is definitely key. These are suggestions for restaurants, not for the solo diner, so I will return to the main point.

Why should a person choose to dine solo?

Does the person want another frozen dinner? Does the person have the time to cook a great dinner for himself? Does the person want to spend another night in his apartment watching bad TV while eating on the couch? Does the person want to have a sink full of dirty dishes – again? Does the person have the option to have a dining partner?

If the answer is no to any one of these questions, then there is enough reason for a person to dine solo. Now that the decision is made, the question is where.

I personally struggle the most with this. Part of this struggle stems from really liking familiar things, so I need encouragement to go to new places. When dining solo and going someplace new, there is the fear of not knowing how that place reacts to solo diners. It is a fear that needs to be overcome. If I don’t overcome it, I end up eating at a diner. Honestly, a BLT isn’t hard to make, doesn’t dirty many dishes, and the décor of a diner is less than thrilling. If I don’t choose a diner, then I may slip into a pub for a burger at the bar. That is safe. That also won’t let me experience truly great food.

Here are my tips to you on dining solo.

• Don’t read a book. This tip is contrary to most everyone else’s tip. Reading is a safe way of walling off the rest of the world and creating a zone of safety. A person reading a book is secure and very much alone. If you do choose to read something, make it a magazine or newspaper. Make it something very casual and obviously not important to you.
• Don’t pop in earphones to your Ipod or other MP3 player and slip into your musical world apart from everyone else. This action is the same as reading. It is cutting yourself off from everyone else. You can do that at home. There is a reason why you chose to come out and it wasn’t just for the incredible seared salmon. Dining out is a way of connecting to the world. You may not be sharing an experience with a person at your table, but you are sharing an experience with everyone in the restaurant at that moment.
• Do write in a journal or notebook. Writing is not reading and as odd as it seem, people don’t have a problem interrupting a person writing. Curiosity overtakes people and they want to know what you are writing. You may be a food critic or an author. Writing creates mystery, even if it is just a grocery list. What I strongly recommend is journaling you’re dining experience. This goes along with the shared experience and making it feel more real. You are sharing the experience directly with your future self. Make comments about the menu, the wine selection, whether there were vegetarian options or if the chef’s special was appealing. You aren’t putting on a false front by writing, you are interacting with your environment and that is the key.
• Don’t let the waiters rush you. There is a certain loss of money when a solo diner sits at a table. Butts in chairs mean bigger checks and thus bigger tips. Quite honestly, this isn’t your concern. The restaurant could choose to put in tables for solo diners or seat a diner at a table for two. If you were seated at a table for four, that was the restaurant’s choice. Now if you seated yourself and sat at a huge table, take pity on the server and offer to move to a smaller table. The point of this tip is you are a paying customer and deserver to enjoy your food in the same amount of time as everyone else.
• Do allow yourself to be open to possibilities. Other diners do look at solo diners. You might think this is the pity thing, and sometimes it is, but most of the time it is just interest. A solo diner has a story. Why are you there alone? Are you from out of town? Some people are so overcome with curiosity they will ask you to join them. Depending on your mood, you may or may not wish to do so, but certainly be open to the possibility. This is one of the reasons why you don’t want to seem ‘closed off’ because these opportunities are normally interesting. The people want to know your story. No higher compliment than that.
• Do return to a restaurant you like. I am a creature of habit and there are places I do return to over and over for one reason or another. Normally it is because there is a particular dish I can only get at a particular place and I get a craving for it. Sometimes I go to a restaurant because I know the waiters and they know me. That feeling of being known is good and you know you are going to be treated well because you are familiar.

I made a promise to myself that I would stop just repeating what other bloggers and journalists are saying on the topics I claim to hold dear and start being more original. Yet, I do seem to keep running into articles and posts that state things so much better than I could that I can’t help but point people in their direction.

When I pulled up Hungry Man with Charles Passy I couldn’t help but guffaw out loud. Literally, I guffawed. It wasn’t pleasant for those who work around me. His blog post focuses on a PR pitch for Fashion Week that includes a cocktail recipe with Ciroc Vodka. Ciroc is a grape based vodka which provides a different sort of vodka drinking experience. My chatter is just preventing the payoff, so you can read the post by following this link: The Pointless Pitch (or Pathetic Moments in Food PR).

I am the kind of person who has his hands in many different projects at once. I know it is an ill-conceived way of accomplishing anything but it is my nature and attempting to go against my nature just makes me grumpy and sad. Being grumpy and sad accomplishes very little.

Yet, when you have many different projects, some pressing, some fun, some mind numbingly dull, but all that need to be accomplished by set deadlines, it is good to know how you are spending your time.

Lifehacker.com currently has an article on the Emergent Task Tracker. This tool can be valuable when juggling multiple projects with deadlines close to each other. Every 15 minutes, the tool chimes with a request to update the status on the items you’ve entered.

I’m currently in the middle of four projects, one with a tight deadline. I plan on using this tool through the weekend and see if it helps prod me along or if I find it an annoying nagging shrewlike thing.