I was watching the news this evening.  As they went to a commercial break, the teaser for the story after the break was about how your kid’s lunch might cost less this fall.  My boys are all past school age these days, but I am an accountant and I like to eat, so I wanted to hear this story.

So I waited through the commercial break, here is the big news, you might want to sit down for this, the cost of a jar of peanut butter is down 3.8% from the same time a year ago!  I imagine you are almost as excited as I was at this news.  Wait there is more, jelly is also down 0.7% from the last year and white bread is down 2.8% from last year.  Now I do enjoy the occasional PB&J (grilled sometimes, but I covered that in an earlier blog) and I do like to save money, but I found myself asking the question, “so, what does that really mean?”

Being an accountant, I had to try to quantify this information.  First I consulted my wonderful wife who has a degree in home economics.  Here are some rule of thumb numbers she provided, they are not exact, but will prove a point.  Let’s make the following assumptions: 1) a jar of peanut butter currently costs about $3 and will provide a dozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, 2) a jar of jelly currently costs $3 and will provide for 18 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and 3) a loaf of white sandwich bread costs $2 and will provide for a dozen sandwiches.

The same story also goes onto say that the average child will eat 1,500 sandwiches before graduating from high school.  If we assume the child begins eating PB&J sandwiches in kindergarten, then he or she would eat approximately 115 sandwiches a year for 13 years.

So, now comes the fun part, well for a nerdy accountant like me, the fun part.  First we take 115 (the number of PB&J sandwhiches a child will eat over the course of the next year) and divide by how many sandwiches a jar/ loaf will produce and we estimate that we will need 9.58 jars of peanut butter, 6.39 jars of jelly and 9.58 loaves of bread.  Next we take the current price of each item, divide by 1 less the decrease over the last twelve months to arrive at the price last year, then we subtract this year’s price from last year’s price to determine the price difference and then we multiple the price difference by the number needed for each item (yes I used a spreadsheet and yes have been told that I am a nerd – often by the aforementioned home economics major).

The final result of this calculation tells me that, given current prices compared to prices last year, for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches eaten by a child over the course of the coming twelve months, I can expect to save $1.70.  Yes one dollar and seventy cents!! The next problem will be deciding how to invest this  exorbitant windfall! 

And I waited through a commercial break for this!  The economy may still be in the dumps, I may be paying an arm and a leg for gas, the Middle East is a powder keg, but no worries, the average person can save $1.70 the next year on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or about a cent and a half per sandwich.

I feel so much better, don’t you?

A orse, a orse! My kngdm 4 a orse!

2B or nt 2 B, dats Q

dis abov ll: 2 thine own self B tru

F?, Romans, countrymen, lend me yr ears; I cum 2 bury Caesar, nt 2 kudos him

What’s ina nme? dat wich we cll @>–>– By Ny oder nme w%d smel as swEt.

d ldy doth protest 2 mch, methinks

ll d world’s a stage, n ll d men n women merely playAs; they’ve their exits n theirentrances, n 1man n hs tym plays mnE parts

der r mor fings n heaven n erth, Horatio, thN r dremt of n yr ethos

gud nyt, gud partin S such swEt sorrw

Now S d wintr of r discontent

somit S rotten n d st8 of Denmark.

ll dat glisters aint Au

w@ lyt thru yonDr windO breaks

w@ fools deez mortals B!

dis wz d most unkindest cut of ll

2 zzz, perchance 2 dream- ay, there’s d rub

w’r such stuf As drms r md on; n r lil lyf S rounded W a zzz.

lov l%ks nt W d Iyz bt W d mind

Cowards di mnE tyms b4 their deaths, d valiant nvr taste of deth bt 1s

Im constant as d northin (*)

Translated into Plain English

A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse! – Richard The Third

To be or not to be, that is question – Hamlet

This above all: to thine own self be true – Hamlet

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. – Julius Caesar

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. – Romeo and Juliet

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.- Hamlet

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts, – As You Like It

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet
Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow- Romeo And Juliet

Now is the winter of our discontent – Richard The Third

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark – Hamlet

All that glitters is not gold – The Merchant of Venice

What light through yonder window breaks – Romeo And Juliet

What fools these mortals be! – A Midsummer Nights Dream

This was the most unkindest cut of all – Julius Caesar

To sleep, perchance to dream-ay, there’s the rub. – Hamlet

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. – The Tempest

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind. – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once. – Julius Caesar

I am constant as the northern star – Julius Caesar

I am not usually a picky eater, I try to be open to new and different foods. There are even a few odd things that I do eat like the occasional grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich. As they say, “Don’t knock it until you try it.” (This is not peanut butter and jelly on toast – when I say grilled, I mean  “grilled” peanut and butter sandwich where you make the sandwich, butter the bread and grill it in a pan on the stove.) I do have a word of caution –  If you give it a try, do be careful the contents may be hot and a bit messy as well, but it is worth a little mess.

Yet, there is at least one food that I do not like – I do not like it here or there, I do not like it anywhere and that is a pimento cheese sandwich. It has taken me the better part of fifty years to communicate this little piece of information to my Mother, but I think I finally have it firmly established. I am not really certain why I do not like pimento cheese; in fact I am not really certain what a pimento is. So, I conducted an exhaustive and lengthy two-minute search on the Internet and I discovered that a pimento is actually a pepper!

The pimento is a large, red, heart-shaped chili pepper that grows to be 3-4 inches long and 2-3 inches wide. They say that the flesh of the pimento is “sweet, succulent and more aromatic” than that of the red bell pepper. Now tell me, have you ever seen a whole pimento pepper? Do you know anyone who ate a whole pimento pepper? If these peppers are so succulent why are there only two know uses for them in the civilized world: 1) sticking them in the middle of a green olive and 2) adding them to a ton of sharp cheddar cheese, a half ton of mayonnaise, a little salt and a little pepper to make pimento cheese spread which, obviously is a lot more cheese and mayonnaise than pimento. It is a little known fact that because they cut these peppers up so small, the entire world-wide crop of pimento peppers is grown on less than a ½ acre in the backyard of a guy in Mississippi.

I hear that Pimento cheese is very popular in the South and, oddly enough, in the Philippines as well. I usually like Southern comfort foods and I have deep southern roots, I have lived in the south and the “deep south”, but I have never acquired a taste for pimento cheese. I acquired a taste for black-eyed peas, grits, even okra, but not pimento cheese.

I am told that you can’t find pimento cheese in Boston, maybe I will take a trip up there and introduce them to grilled peanut butter and jelly.

I know that with a ling holiday weekend just around the corner that many will be taking to the roads.  So, I wanted to take just a minute of your time to warn you of a little noticed and little understood danger that is lurking on the roadways all across our great nation.  This is something that you have encountered numerous times on your drive to work or school or shopping, perhaps even today without ever giving it a second thought.  It is a silent, stalking creature that moves slowly, almost imperceptibly along our road ways claiming everything that gets in its way.  I am speaking of the ravenous creature know as araungicus barilis or more commonly called “orange barrels.”  In the infant stage, this creature stands about two feet high and is cone shaped; as it matures it begins to reach a height of about feet and begins to round out so that it resembles a large orange barrel. 

These creatures often travel in large herds, usually in a single line formation that can stretch for miles.  The adult barrels are usually seen in the middle of the herd with the cone-like children at the front and the back.  Scientists believe that these creatures are migratory, going south in the winter and making their way north again as the weather warms.  They appear to have a rather voracious appetite for asphalt leaving mile upon mile of road torn up and unusable.  Once they have found a good place to graze, they seem to stay for months, barely moving as they silently feed only to disappear when the cold weather arrives.  While these creatures appear harmless and almost stationary, they can be frightening when they attack, as evidenced by the almost universal presence of idle machinery along their path.  We can only assume that they have either eaten, attacked or frightened off the workers who had used these machines in a vain attempt to protect the roads from the destructive force of this silent menace.    Although they appear almost motionless while feeding, once they have consumed all the pavement in one area, they have the ability to travel quickly to another area where they can appear overnight to begin destroying another stretch of road.  

So be careful while you are out on the roads this Fourth or July weeekend.  Those little cones and barrels along the road may appear still and harmless, but don’t let them fool you or you just might be their next victim.  Drive safely!

My grandfather was born in the 1890’s, he served in World War I, and he could tell stories of living on the farm with no electricity, no plumbing, no cars. My father was born in the early 1920’s, he served in World War II, and he could tell stories of living on the farm, no electricity, no plumbing, no cars. They could also tell fantastic stories of living in the farmhouse – of how the rain sounded when it would hit the tin roof in the summer and of waking up with frost on their noses and snow on their bed in the winter. They could tell stories of the depression and it’s aftermath;  of the sacrifices needed to win two world wars.

I was born at end of the 1950’s and I am not sure what stories I have to tell my grandchildren about how hard it was when I was growing up.  I guess I could mention that I did actually walk to school from kindergarten through eighth grade, but it was only across the street.  So what can I say? “Let me tell you about life growing up in the 1960’s. We only had one television and it was black and white plus we only had three stations to choose from and get this young fella – when we wanted to change the station – why we had to get up off the couch and walk all the way across the room and actually turn a knob on the TV!  And we didn’t have no fancy microwave ovens – we had to actually turn on the stove if you wanted to cook something. In summer, when it was hot, we opened a window and maybe plugged in a fan to help cool down. I went to schools that didn’t have air conditioning and when we did math all we had to use was pencil and paper.”

Yet, as bad as I have it in the life was not so rough department, what stories will my children have to tell their grandchildren? “Why I remember back at the end of the twentieth century, 3-D TV had not even been invented, that was even before HDTV, our TV only had 150 TV stations and we didn’t even have a TiVo in every room. I can remember when we had to use something called “dial up” to get on the internet, we had to use a phone LINE.  You probably won’t believe this, but there was an actual line that went right into your house in order to use the phone. Why I can even remember Super Nintendo and Playstation 1 and sometimes we had to play on a screen that was less that thirty-six inches across! Cell phones?  I didn’t even get my own phone until I was sixteen!  Yes, we had it rough, if we wanted to listen to music we had to use something called a Compact Disc, where the music was actually put onto a little disc and you had to carry the disc around and put it in a player to listen to it, you see way back in the last millennium, there were no digital downloads, yep we had it rough.”

Don’t you envy our parents and grandparents? They had it easy when it came to telling stories about having it rough.

The official start of summer is only a few days away.  The warmer and longer have many looking to cool off with a couple of dips of ice cream. (Hot or cold, I am always ready for some ice cream!)  For much of my childhood I pretty much stuck with the basics of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.  You might be surprised to know that with all the various and sundry flavors out there, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry still account for approximately 70% of ice cream sales .

However, when I was in high school my eyes, or should I say my taste buds, were opened to the almost limitless combinations that can be made with the various flavors and toppings that can be found at an ice cream parlor.  My horizons were widened when I began working at Sherer’s Ice Cream in Dayton, Ohio. (When it comes to dipping ice cream at my house, I still take the scoop and say, “Stand back, I’m a professional, let me handle this.” I soon learned the joy of flavors like root beer float, peppermint, strawberry cheesecake, eggnog, pumpkin, coffee and most of the other 36 flavors that were available.

Around that same time Baskin Robbins came out with a couple of seasonal flavors I really liked, baseball nut and banana bunt – maybe I just liked them for the baseball references. Baseball Nut was vanilla ice cream swirled with a black raspberry ribbon and crunchy cashews. Banana Bunt was a banana flavor with peanuts if I recall correctly.

However, even I had to draw the line somewhere and I drew it at rum raisin and fruit salad, two of Mr. Sherer less favorite concoctions.  Yet, even these sound “normal” compared to some that have made the rounds in recent years. So, if you want to get your licks on the wild side, here are a few flavors you can find right here in the good ‘ole USA.

• French Toast-with bits of French toast and maple, the breakfast of champions?
• Buttered Popcorn – a flavor with butter pecan and caramel popcorn – perfect for movie night.
• Strawberry Basil – what compels one to put herbs in ice cream?
• Firehouse 31- think Atomic Fireball ice cream.
• Creole Cream Cheese- a cream-cheese-like base and a spicy kick.
• Coconut Jalapeno – coconut with a big kick.
• Licorice – black ice cream, only slightly creepy.
• Garlic – only at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California, wonder if it keeps the vampires away?
• Maple Bacon Sundae – you can thank Denny’s for this one.
• Breakfast in Bed – a vanilla ice cream base with pasteurized egg yolks, real maple syrup and bacon! Just don’t drip on your pillow.
• Lobster Ice Cream from Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium in Bar Harbor, a butter ice cream-based treat with fresh (again buttered) lobster folded into each bite. I wonder if it makes a sound if you boil it?
• Pear With Blue Cheese, a well-balanced mix of sweet Oregon Trail Bartlett Pears mixed with crumbles of Rogue Creamery’s Crater Lake Blue Cheese. Seems like everything is a little strange on the West Coast.
• “Real” Eskimo ice cream or Akutag as the locals would call it. It is overflowing with enough fresh berries for your sweet tooth; however, its base is actually animal fat (reindeer, caribou, possibly even whale). My guess is that you will have a hard time finding a low calorie version of this one.