Pages

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Beef and a Beef

Last weekend, the result of many weeks of negotiating, hard work (none of it mine...) and coordination of various trailers, farm hands and meshing of schedules, came to fruition.


A portion of my friend, Cynthia's, Randall cattle have moved onto my other friend's beautiful farm.  Everyone is thrilled - especially the cows!  To learn more about this lovely, endangered breed and Cynthia's 20+ year journey to bring them back from the edge of extinction, go here


Now, onto a beef(s) of another stripe.  As background - almost totally unrelated because, well, I tend to ramble on - I do not watch television (my small screen is used only for DVD viewing - I have no dish, satellite or other connection), have refused to listen to the radio since last November and do not get a daily paper.  A few weeks ago, while out with my sister, I managed to get myself strong-armed into signing up for four-day delivery of our largest local newspaper.  They hit me at a weak point - in JoAnn Fabrics, of all places - with the offer of a $20 gift card and a limited subscription.  Since we live in the sticks, they have to hire someone to deliver the newspapers in the wee, early hours of the morning.  This is how my very limited subscription rolled out - Thursday: a paper delivered.  Friday:  no paper delivered.  Saturday:  see Friday.  Sunday:  paper delivered.  I called customer service and advised them of the missing papers.  I was credited.  Next week - wash, rinse, repeat.  Third week - I made it to Friday morning and then called customer service and cancelled.  It was then I was informed that my 'credits' meant that they extended my subscription by the number of papers not delivered.  Wonderful.  Not only would the Thursday and Sunday - apparently, the only two days where a live brain cell connected with conscious thought - be stretched out forever, there was so little of the newspaper to read that it was not worth the effort.  I kid you not when I say that a good 65% of the paper was advertisements.


Another beef - actually the original beef that got lost in the random beefs above - is the food editor of this paper and her latest local 'star' chef.  We may live in the capitol of the state, but there is very little of the sophistication (and money) of the unofficial capitol downstate, no matter how hard they try.  I am assuming that the food editor - her little blurb contains many references to her British-ness - was looking for something to do to fill her days, or else a good way to get tax-deductible meals.  She is so verbose and tiresome, that you long for a pair of scissors about two-paragraphs in (and she takes up most of the front section page and part of an inside page!)  I digress - again.  It may just be me, but this description of a four-star dish, really rankled me:  Veal cutlet, Marsala mushrooms, soft polenta, a sunnyside egg, and arugula.  In a heap.  I may not be a gourmand, but veal is pretty mild in the first place, let alone buried under wined mushrooms, a bland glob of mush and a runny egg.  I suppose the arugula is so that it has some color, other than tan, yellow and white, and a bit of flavor.


It seems apparent, even to me, that I need another latte to offset the onset of crankypants.

15 comments:

Ed said...

I've been around cattle most of my life and never heard of Randall. Learn something new every day.

I've unfortunately had similar experiences with our state newspaper which I gave up on over a decade ago. I was the only one on our street to get it which I think was a large part of the problem. Now I just get the local town rag which has a much better track record of getting delivered since just about everyone on my street gets it.

wyomingheart said...

Crankypants... You really crack me up!!! It seems the same where ever we go, that papers now days are advertisement and drivel and more drivel and obits... wouldn't get a good story if your life depended on it... I am very thankful for the blog world where real life happens. Thanks for the Randall story. That story is absolutely awesome!

Rain said...

I LOVE your crankypants rant! :) Verbose is annoying. Just say "yum, veal good, hmmm, potato bad." I get that lol...plus what is a credential anyway? It means that you get paid for your OPINION. Reviewers are way too subjective and I never pay attention to them anyway.

Your friend Cynthia is AWESOME. I just checked out her web site, I think it's wonderful what she's done, what an accomplishment!

Just a story from my vault: When I was 14, I delivered newspapers. That was early 1980's when newspapers were still interesting to pay for. I had one client whose paper was constantly stolen by other apartment dwellers; so he asked me to ring the doorbell when I left the paper each morning...6:30am. Every morning I would ring the bell then as I ran down the stairs (triplex top floor), I would hear his wife b*tching about being woken up...EVERY morning lol...she would often swear at the "paper girl" as I fled. Rough business, now all they have to do is drive and throw the paper in the general direction of your porch; and they can't even get that right! :)

Pioneer Woman at Heart said...

Ha! I stopped our paper. It was all garbage, no news, full back page of a local recipe and interview, blah, blah, blah. Nothing good. Love your posts. They pick me up.

Guillaume said...

Who needs a TV when one has the internet.

Susan said...

I rarely eat out, something immoral about paying a ridiculous sum of money for some pretentious concoction when half the world is starving.

coffeeontheporchwithme said...

We don't pay for a paper but are lucky enough to receive the free local one. Mostly it is flyers for various grocery stores, but the paper itself is pretty good for covering local happenings, and of course, births and deaths. Food editor could be a pretty slick job I suppose - lots of free meals - but everyone's taste is different. I would think it would be more of making people aware of various restaurants that are out there and what they offer. -Jenn

Susan said...

Ed, this newspaper is delivered to a lot of the homes around me, so I could not figure out why they could not just add one more. I've got a bet with my neighbor that I'll be getting Thursday and Sunday papers for another month...

Susan said...

WH - I LOVE the blog world! That's about as real as I want to get.

Susan said...

What a hoot! My paper was either tossed on my driveway - six inches from the road - or stuffed in my mailbox.

Susan said...

Exactly!

Susan said...

I agree, although I will have breakfast out. For some reason, that is the one meal I enjoy having cooked FOR me.

Susan said...

Jenn, I subscribe to our local paper and it is the lifeline of our community - you wouldn't know what is going on without it.

Leigh said...

We gave up on our local newspaper because I couldn't see the point of paying for all that advertising (one more reason why I don't have a television service either.) Plus our paper is about 1/10th the size of the area "big city" paper but for the same price! My last reason for keeping the paper was for the Wednesday ad section, but it seems that our local grocery stores now think it more cost effective to simply put the sales section online. Oh well. But it really works out better for me because if I don't know it's on sale I don't buy it! So I'm actually spending less by not getting the paper - in more ways than one.

And thanks for the link to the Randall cattle. Been researching the rarer breeds of cattle lately, and it's good to know about these.

Unknown said...

i am interesting about it.something immoral about paying a ridiculous sum of money for some pretentious concoction when half the world is starving.
พี่มากพระโขนง