Food Storage, wow, someone in harlem actually turned their basement back into a root cellar

I stumbled across a NY Times article earlier today about root cellars. I was a little surprised, and then a little in awe when I realized that someone in Harlem not only had a basement, but had reverted it back into a root cellar.

How cool is that? Bravo.

The article "Food Storage as Grandma Knew It", by Michael Tortorello, spoke about a trend that happens during difficult economic times, people begin to buy in bulk, grow, and store their own food.

Surprisingly there were a couple hints and tips, for those of us not blessed with the square footage to store root vegetables, for the savvy reader. I just might try a few. But otherwise, I'll just continue to dream of the day when I own a basement, and in the mean time buy "The Food Axis: Cooking, Eating, and the Architecture of American Houses" by Elizabeth Cromley, when it comes out in 2010.

-Bitter

Voting, it went smoother this time

I'm happy to report that voting went A LOT more smoothly this time. (Click here to read about last time.)

The down side is that the police officers wouldn't let me take pictures, and they threatened to confiscate my camera.

The good thing is that I was greeted immediately when I walked through the door and was directed to a check-in table.

The next volunteers in turn quickly looked up my address and directed me a sign-in table, giving me clear directions on where the table was located.

While standing in line a friendly gentleman went along asking for last names, there were two people signing voters in, one covering the first half of the alphabet and the other the latter.

He quickly moved the line along, moving people ahead in line when the second sign-in book was available.

The volunteer handling my sign-in book had a little difficulty with alphabetization. She kept thinking that BITTER was found somewhere after BRINKERHOFF. I had to help her realize that BI comes before BR, . . . and BO. But it went smoothly and fairly quickly, and posed no problems.

When I finally arrived at the booth (which looked a lot nicer this time), a volunteer stepped into it with me, I was a little unnerved by this, but she calmly and happily described how to cast my vote.

1- Pull the lever over.
2- Turn the knobs.
3- Pull the lever back over.

Voila you're done.

She left me, I snapped a few pictures. Voted. Then stepped back out.

Overall, it was a vast improvement from when I voted in the 2008 Presidential primaries.

Here's the photo I promised from last time. I was too close to get the overall effect, so I just took a photo of the lever. I'm not going to go into details about my photo taking troubles, but let it suffice to say that the cops were NOT happy with me.

Water, important stuff

I first heard of Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway back in April when he had a guest appearance on the Stephen Colbert show about water. Here's the link to his segment.

I just ran across a NY Times article that was talking about him again. Considering that eventually we'll be fighting wars over water, not oil, I'll be a little selfish by saying that I hope he gets massive amounts of outside funding, succeeds at mass producing these water purifiers and power sources, and does so quickly.

-Bitter

Vote, don't do it

FYI: Rated R for language...

Diets, how to postpone resuming them

Fatty, over at fatcyclist.com, as usual has doled out some very witty and insightful advice today. This time he elaborates useful and valuable guidance on how to postpone resuming your diet. If you've been searching for excellent excuses reasons to continue putting of that healthy eating regimen you vowed to start at the beginning of the year, then Fatty's post is a must-read.

-Bitter

Hotel Cleanliness, not cool

This comes to you as a public service announcement for those of you who travel.

Atlanta's Fox News ITEAM reported that out of the 5 hotels they secretly investigated (four of them randomly chosen) all five failed to replace the glasses in individual rooms with fresh ones when cleaning the rooms.

The common procedure they found? Rinse them out and put them back. One housekeeping lady even cleaned the toilet and then with the same rubber glove on proceeded to rinse out the drinking glasses before putting them back.

The health expert they interviewed said the unwashed glasses could transmit diseases including flesh eating bacteria. I haven't been able to stop thinking about those video clips since watching them, and I'm worried about all the unwary travelers out there. So I'm spreading the word, consider yourself warned.


Read about it here, here, and here.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find an archived copy of the video clips online, perhaps FOX will re-post them at some point.

What to do?

BYOG -- (Bring Your Own Glass)
-Bitter