the micale index

My friend David judges prospective purchases in terms of Walmart Great Value spaghetti, the 3 lb. box. Which costs, generally, 97 cents. So, for example, when I tell him I've been wondering if a new shirt is worth thirteen bucks, he says, "Get the shirt that's ten bucks. Do you know how much spaghetti you can buy with the leftover three dollars?" If you're not great at math, three dollars will buy approximately nine pounds of spaghetti, according to the Micale Index.

Last night at Safeway I was looking for fruit. For 2.88 American dollars, I bought two pounds of fresh strawberries. No matter who you are, that's a deal. When I got home I cleaned them up, sliced them up, and had a bowl of them with some coffee ice cream. Today I printed off a recipe for strawberry-rhubarb crisp (I think the neighbors have some rhubarb that is coming along well. Maybe I'll have to freeze the strawberries until the rhubarb is ripe enough for me to carry out a midnite raid.)

I'm not a big fan of strawberry jam OR grape jelly. Why are those the only two flavors that you can buy in the big size? At Safeway, you can get thirty flavors of jam, jelly, and marmalade in the 16 oz. bottle, but only two flavors in the big jar. This is discriminatory practice. Just like shoe stores that don't carry size 14.

I DO, however, like the strawberry freezer jam that my friend George's mom makes. Mmmm, freezer jam.