Coffee Marketing Stupidity

Being environmentally conscious and all, when I go to coffee shops I always bring my own cup. Most of the time I make my own, but once in a while going to a coffee shop is necessary. They can charge me what they want, they don’t have to rinse it out or anything, just as long as I’m saving a tree.

The cup I use is a halloween-themed Starbucks travel mug I got on clearance. You can barely see the Starbucks logo and it glows in the dark, so @the time I decided it was worth my 5$. Yes I’m aware that the cup costs the same price as the eggnog latte I was getting. I know I advocate being frugal, but the holiday drinks are a weakness of mine from the pumpkin lattes in late August until the Christmas-themed drinks stop. I’m human and I get wicked caffeine headaches.

I was in downtown DC for training last week, and I got there early because I wanted to get to the Metro before parking spaces ran out. So when I got into downtown I had time for a leisurely breakfast, with coffee. There was a Corner Bakery around the corner from where the training was.

Well, when I asked for a coffee @Corner Bakery I was told I couldn’t use my glow-in-the-dark cup for their coffee, that instead I would have to buy one of their travel mugs. So it’s only acceptable to save the planet if the cups have their logo on it, and it didn’t help that the lady @the counter was pulling some major attitude. I’m not trying to steal coffee, so don’t talk to me like I’m some kind of thief. Screw that, I went somewhere else.

It’s a shame since Corner Bakery has tasty breakfasts. Well, they just permanently lost a customer because of their asinine coffee policy.

Like I’ve said, coupons suck

I read this article in Consumerist about a coupon queen’s quest to not let food inflation bother her. While this is certainly a noble quest, and I certainly hope that she does her coupon shopping during weekdays when shops are filled with people like me w/day jobs, I still think coupons suck. Here’s why:

• Most coupons, MamboSpouts handouts being a rare exception, are for crap food loaded with added sugars and salt.
• Most coupons nowadays make you buy 2, 3, or more of a product to save anything. If there’s only 2 people in your house, what’s the point in having 2 bottles of ketchup? Why spend 10$ to save 1$?
• The internet versions of the major coupon sites make you give all kinds of personal information in order to download their coupons. You’re selling your identity for cheap. Plus no shops – in DC anyway – take internet coupons, probably because they’ve been ripped off in the past.
• I did my best to use coupons during my last shopping trip, since Harris Teeter was tripling coupons up to 99 cents this weekend. I got a chunk of feta cheese for 2$ this way, but I don’t think we saved more than 10$ despite the savings hype. The prices @Costco for food were much cheaper, so it was a better deal for food that we could freeze.

If you really want to save money on food, lay off the processed foods and learn how to cook. 

Gimme back my Osteria!

The Osteria is my and my future husband’s favorite restaurant located in the fancy-pants Whole Foods by our house. All Italian goodness, and a dinner bill under 20$ for two most of the time.

But since the beginning of the year, in the space where the Osteria once stood proudly, Discovery Networks have taken over the space. They have been filming a new cooking show for their Planet Green network w/Emeril hosting. For five frikkin months. Does it really take that long to film a show? I don’t care if a cooking “celebrity” is roaming around my local grocery store, dammit I want my restaurant back!

Anything “green” in major media and now I get suspicious. Why? I was looking up info about an exhibit @National Geographic headquarters in DC and what do I see on the front page of nationalgeographic.com? A banner ad for Hummer! Don’t believe me? Here’s a screenshot. Like Bob Marley said, oba-oba-serving the hi-po-crites.

Does this mean we’re hippies?

As a way to be frugal, we’ve been doing things that could certainly be considered hippie:

• I just made a batch of homemade granola for the week, complete w/nuts and berries bought in bulk @Costco. I’ve been going to Costco to stock up on things we use all the time, plus milk, bread, and eggs are super-cheap there. Of course super-cheap means what was the full price @a grocery store a year ago.
• I’m learning how to bake bread, which is certainly a challenge because our oven sucks. I started this week by making carrot cake muffins, which I’ve been keeping in the freezer and bringing in to work for breakfast.
• I’m also learning to make my own vinegar from leftover wine.
• We wash and reuse plastic bags, though they get tossed if we marinate meat in them.
• We have hard water @home, so I’ve made my own dishwasher soap from a mix of Borax and baking soda, with a few drops of tea tree oil thrown in.
• I’ve also been shunning expensive cleaners in favor of white vinegar.
• We’re the only ones on our block who recycle, much less compost (which is almost ready for planting). I even bring home things from work like cardboard boxes and recycle them @home. Our neighbors? They regularly leave 1/2 full cans of Coke and bottled water in the parking lot and let their Volvos, motorcycles, and SUV’s run idle for insane periods of time (as in an hour or even more).

I’m reluctant to call myself a hippie, though. Trust me, I’m well-versed in hippie. I went to Hampshire College, briefly. I lived in Santa Cruz, not-so-briefly. I’ve always thought that most hippies, while well-meaning, come off as self-righteous and dogmatic. If you want evidence of self-righteous hippiedom, just stop by the Whole Foods near American University and observe.

But as long as there are things like this in the neighborhood grocery store:

(Yup, oatmeal’s in the freezer section.)

I guess I’m a hippie. Granted, this is steel-cut oatmeal which takes longer to cook, but give me a break! Frozen oatmeal? Oatmeal is the easiest thing to make as well as dirt cheap. I go through a can of rolled oats every 2-3 weeks, depending on how much granola I make. The whole can is $1.25, or 9.6 cents a serving! A handful of nuts, raisins, honey, and cinnamon will add a few cents. Making oatmeal from scratch probably takes less time than re-heating a bowl of the frozen stuff.

Compared to a culture fed by instameals, we’ve been practicing conspicuous alt-consumption. I don’t see this stopping once we finally have a decent down payment for a house, which was the catalyst for the frugality. But neither my fianceé nor I will ever grow dreadlocks.

Evil office sweets

I’ve worked in offices where there’s been a jar of candy lying around. But the office where I’m working now has collectively brought office sweets to the extreme. There is a “12 Sweets of Christmas” where people bring some kind of sweet. What puts this tradition over the top is that the sweets are put out @the reception desk around 8am and by 10am they are gone. That means that for 12 working days in December, there are a lot of people who are eating cakes, cookies, and pies – for breakfast. No wonder people get stressed out @Christmastime with diets like that. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of my coworkers are @least borderline diabetic.

But it’s not just @Christmastime that the junk food comes out. There were piles of chocolate for Valentine’s day. Everyone’s birthday gets celebrated w/@least one cake. I love me some Shamrock shakes this time of year, but damn.

I’ve been avoiding the sweet tsunami two ways:

• Water, and lots of it. When I smell some home-baked goodness 20 feet away I want to indulge. I have to stop myself and fill my belly with some water. It usually goes away.
• Working out during the workday. We’re fortunate to have a gym @work. I’ve been using lunch breaks to work out. It’s very important that you do some kind of exercise that works your abdominals – hard. The last thing you want to do right after a hard-core pilates class, for example, is eat. The last thing you want to do just before a pilates class is eat. In either case you’re going to feel sick.