hotdogs are seven to the package. Four buns, each with 1 1/2
dog takes care of six dogs, and then there is one left over.

And that last one is the one you need to enrich your baked beans,
mac and cheese or hash brown potatoes and onions.

This speaks to a couple of topics we've been moaning
about lately. For transparency a pack of dogs should be
12 or 16 oz and contain 4 or 6 or 8. Okay, I'll pass 16.9,
but who sees that. The food industry really is engaging in
a boiling frogs campaign and has been for a long time.

And hot dog buns? Why would it be so hard to put the same
number in a package as the hot dogs are customarily offered
in? Which leads me to wonder why people just don't fold a
slice of soft bread (I'd prefer cheap squishy white) over
their dog? Tastes better and is cheaper - for the same
price you have half a loaf left.

Whenever I fry diced potatoes I add onion (or chopped leek if I have
onion hand), garlic, celery, a mixture of sweet and hot red and
green peppers and a wee bit of animal protein, usually something pork.

Potatoes O'Brien we call it, even those of us who
don't eat the things. Potatoes O'Weller?

I just had a scoopful of these, billed as breakfast
potato hash, by Michelle Bernstein (but, poopsie, there
was no meat - all one has to do to make breakfast
potatoes edible is to add meat, not just call them hash),
along with resilient rubbery baked egg cups and some
packing material with a fancy Mexican name but really
dry steam-table French toast. Ms. Bernstein, you've been
CHOPPED! A good thing was all the reasonably recently
squeezed orange juice I could slug down, no additional cost.

... Booze tastes best when you're underage; the secet ingredient is crime.

I've never enjoyed the tang of forbiddenness. Of course
I had my first beer in 1953 and my first Bourbon around
1960. Nobody cried child abuse, and in the latter case
at least, there was none.

+

So a property owner has to take out insurance against
a tenant's negligence?

Actually insurance companies will not cover landlords against tenant
damage. A landlord's defenses are checking references carefully at
the outset, collecting the largest security deposit allowed by law
(one month's rent here) and then, as a last resort, use the courts
to recover expenses.

That would put the ultimate burden closer to where it
belongs but could lead to an unwieldy enforcement
system plus increase the rental prices with a sort of
built-in self-insurance. I'm not sure which is the
right way to go, if there is one.

JW > unless a friend or relative volunteers to do it for free

And in the tenant situation, it's the poor grunt
from the management company (presumably you in this
situation) who had to do it.

Nope. My leases spelled out that any absence longer than 48 hours
required regular house checks and I made them initial that clause.

So there must be commercial house-checking services.
As I said, requiring such a short interval is going
to cramp a lot of people's style.

When absentee landlords I worked for had no tenants I did do their
house checks and they were free as my fees were 10% of the rent
collected. So if there were no tenants or bad tenants in arrears I
worked for free.

Heh. It was incentive for you as the agent to keep
the properties occupied, then.

Does that clause obtain in insurance policies
written for places in less extreme climates?

Nope. In rural Ontario my parent's insurance company didn't call for
house checks after they passed away and before I sold the place.

That makes sense if the risk of troublesome
events is low enough.

They merely surcharged me $50 per month for vacancy coverage after
the first mont's grace and cancelled the broken window coverage from vandalism part of the policy. I guess that's a thing in rural parts
these days.

So this is where the burden shifts. What about if
there's a theft and little or nothing is taken?

Breaking and entering makes some kind of sense,
whereas just plain breaking not so much.

Up here mobile homes raised off the ground with wood blocking or
steel piles that have insulated floors and cold crawl spaces under
them are more vulnerable than homes built over basements.

That makes sense. Could that be alleviated by extra
insulation

Yes. One's pipes might survive 3 hours instead of 2 during heat or
power outages.

I've seen electric blanket-type arrangements for
pipes in Alaska and northern New England. Of course,
with a significant power out, that isn't going to do
much good, either.

Is there a way to improve
the R rating of the house as a whole?

There certainly is. One can get 18" of attic insulation instead of
the standard 12", 8" walls with 2" of styrofoam instead of 6" with
just pink fiberglass, double the floor insulation and install triple
glazed instead of double glazed windows and along with a very high
efficiency furnace, an HRV system, on demand hot water and LED
lighting, reduce the heat and power bills by 50% but increase
construction costs by 20%. In this era of low mortgage rates and
escalating utility costs, doing the upgrades makes sense.

I'd think so. I wonder if such provisions can
be written into forward-looking building codes.

So the far bathroom sink should perhaps be left
dripping in extreme weather.

Nope. Unless the drip is fast enough to wreck your water bill, the
slow drip will eventually freeze the drain and sewer line solid. one
needs to shower, do a laundry or at least was the dishes with hot
water almost daily to flush out ice build up in drains up here.

My experience is with the 20-30F (-1--7C) typical of
our populous northeast, with occasional forays to 0F.
I suppose your more extreme conditions make it
worthwhile to completely purge the system in
properties that are less regularly inhabited.

Even without a drip, domestic sewer services can freeze over time
from the buildup of hoar frost that is created from water vapour
given off by the liquids flowing through the main line. When Roslind
is away on her trips I run her tub for a minimum of three minutes
every other day. just to keep that branch line open. The other
branch connects my bathroom, the laundry room and the kitchen
drain so it always gets regular use. If I screw up and forget the
steam truck charges $200 per hour, with a $200 minimum.

Plenty of incentive to be vigilant.

... If you don't know that, you're not really Canadian

Well, duh to that.

Swedish Polar Bear Cocktail
categories: booze
servings: 1

2 oz Raspberry Vodka or unflavored if preferred
1 oz Blue Curacao
sprinkle of edible cake lustre
1 splash Sprite adjust to taste
1 splash lemon juice

In a shaker with ice, combine vodka, curacao and
lustre and shake. Pour into glass, add sSprite and
a splash of lemon juice

thekitchenmagpie.com
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