Health & Fitness
A Call to Reverse the Charges
February 1st, 2011 | 4 Comments
Tags: budget, Health & Fitness, Shopping
 Restaurants, doctors, hair salons and other service providers often ask for a credit card to hold your reservation and will bill you for a late or missed appointment. We appreciate the hazards ‘no-shows’ present to a business, but when a business or service provider attaches a penalty for tardiness or cancellation the charge should go both ways. If they are late or cancel they should be compensating you for your time.
If your physical therapist cancels an appointment due to illness without giving the same 24 hour ‘no-excuse’ notice they demand of you, then your next appointment should be gratis. In a recent snowstorm, a friend was stuck in horrible traffic and arrived fifteen minutes late to a dental appointment. Not only did they cancel her appointment, but they charged her for it. Often, though, this very same dentist runs late and our friend has spent thirty-forty minutes waiting.
Familiar? Yes. Outrageous? Yes. Should she get a new dentist? Yes.
What of the snooty restaurant that demands you show up within fifteen minutes of a reservation or you lose your table and trigger ‘no-show’ charges on your card, yet they think nothing of keeping you waiting for 45 minutes to an hour to seat you?
A special circle in hell, perhaps.
Ok, we know they can’t ask people to leave, but often we find they have overbooked or not allowed enough time between seatings. They should be bending over backward to be accommodating, at the very least, comping part of your meal for the inconvenience. And, if the wait has been outrageous, the entire meal.
Everyone has an emergency now and then, but equal rules should apply to you and the stylist, masseuse, psychiatrist, trainer, the airlines….
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Jack LaLanne died and you still need to figure out how to get yourself to the gym.
January 24th, 2011 | Comments
Tags: Health & Fitness
The amazing fitness and nutrition icon Jack LaLanne died on Sunday. He was 96 years old. It’s gotten us to wondering is there any way to get motivated to do what’s good for our body? 
Joining a health club is pricy. Paying monthly dues a drain on the budget. Worse, yet, regularly motivating yourself to go, once you’ve joined, challenging*.
What if you got rewarded for going to the gym and punished if you didn’t? (Oh, don’t get all excited we’re not referencing our WHAP! proposal.) The Boston Globe just wrote a story about a novel local start-up venture called Gym-Pact: Enforced Fitness. Their idea is to motivate you to get to the gym, or Yoga studio, or dance center, by offering discounted fees for working out and ‘motivational’ fees for not working out. They write:
” As a member, if you successfully fulfill your commitment, you enjoy great discounts on a fitness membership that you actually use. If you fall short of your commitment, a motivational fee is charged for each day missed that week to motivate you to get back on the fitness track. Members can choose both the number of days and the motivational fee, with a minimum of one day per weekand $10 paid each missed day.”
What do you think? Is money motivational? If Gym-Pact were offered in your area would it keep you moving?
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*From the book Bitches on a Budget:
The American strip mall landscape is littered with health clubs, swim clubs, and tennis clubs of every shape, size and stripe. You know, the one you joined with incredible enthusiasm, seduced by the super-duper introductory special offer just for you on the day you visited. Instead of $150 to join, the pleasure could be yours for just $100 and a low $75 monthly fee. With great energy and determination you worked out on your way home from work for several months, or, even more righteously, set the alarm one hour earlier in the morning.
Then you got a cold, your kid got a cold, maybe even the dog got a cold, and you missed a morning, then another, and pretty soon you fell off the wagon. Yes, on occasion you dragged your a** in on the weekend to a complete mob scene, and oh, how oppressive it felt! By now the bloom was off the rose. Not only were the locker rooms stinky, but you felt your skin crawling and were sure some pervert had wired the showers for video of your privates. It wasn’t fun. The dues were automatically deducted from your checking account for the year of that contract (yes, those sleazy suckers figured out how to mainline your cash when you signed up), and every time you thought about it you soothed your guilty conscience with a SnackWell’s cookie.
Ceviche on a Budget
January 17th, 2011 | 13 Comments
Tags: budget cooking, Health & Fitness, healthy food, recipes
When was the last time you had great ceviche? Was it in a restaurant? Was it delicious and ghastly expensive? Well, if you’re a ceviche lover and only have it when you go out, you can save a bundle by making it yourself–it’s super-simple.
Not to be too loco-cool or anything, we save big bucks and get the freshest possible mollusks by harvesting and shucking the scallops ourselves. Yes, you do have to live near the sea, get a license, freeze your little tushy off and be prepared to live with red dish pan hands. But, hey, this is great food we’re talking and with a little ingenuity and true girly grit you can be do anything. Or, of course, there is the wimpy girl way out–just go to the local fish guy.
The B’s Scallop Ceviche on a Budget
1 pound fresh scallops
1/3-1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
Lime zest
fresh or dried hot red pepper to taste
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Ginger Root
Horseradish Root (optional)
Fresh Cilantro or Parsley
Kosher or Sea Salt
About one hour before serving rinse and dry scallops and toss them with the lime juice. Refrigerate and every 15 minutes or so mix again. Right before serving add hot peppers to suit your taste, then using a micro-plane grater gently shred a fine taste of ginger, horseradish and lime zest across the top. Finish with a tiny drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and salt. Garnish with cilantro or parsley leaves.
Serve as an appetizer with toothpicks, on a bed of butter lettuce as a first course, or all tarted up with chunks of avocado in sexy martini glasses.
This method works for almost any great fresh fish from a reliable source. Add or subtract herbs, garlic, minced onion.
Fresh, healthy, incredibly delicious.
Don’t Forget to Drop Your Acid
January 10th, 2011 | Comments
Tags: Health & Fitness
Folic Acid, that is.
This is our annual reminder for all bitches—especially pregnant bitches or friends of pregnant b’s!—that we’ve just finished National Folic Acid Awareness Week. But you knew this, right? We’re sure you threw a wild and crazy Folic Acid party to celebrate… shots of wheat germ, anyone?
Kidding aside, folic acid is absolutely critical for women of childbearing age, and it’s one of the keys to a healthy pregnancy. When scientists finally understood its role and encouraged pregnant women to take it, the incidence of brain and spinal birth defects dropped dramatically. So check out this page to make sure you’re getting enough!
If you’ve got a bun in the oven—or you’re hoping to have one there soon—be a good B and take your F.A. Talk to your doc about what’s right for you.
All the little mini-bitches will thank you later.
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A Low Resolution New Year
December 30th, 2010 | Comments
Tags: Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness, Travel & Entertainment
We hate to seem bitchy and unsentimental but, except for the pink bubbly, we don’t like New Year’s Eve.
To begin with, the whole resolution thing is more like a guilt-tripping-shame-festival than a positive self-esteem builder. Think about it, people looking to fix what they most hate about themselves by resolving to:
1. Lose weight
2. Quit smoking
3. Stop drinking
4. Be a nicer person
5. Spend less
Like at the stroke of midnight with a little magical thinking and a carefully crafted line item list of corrections they’re going to morph into a Shape cover girl or Mother Teresa, right?
And, who doesn’t dread the focused pressure to ‘celebrate’ New Year’s which inevitably leaves you feeling alienated and/or puts you into a position of spending more money than you bargained for (breaking resolution #5 before you begin)? How many times have you done the following?
A) Rather than feel like a loser with no ‘fun’ plans you’ve been the one to organize and hold a party.
B) Or, you head out to a restaurant with a ‘special’ menu and jacked up pricing that keeps you captive for longer than you want.
C) Or, you head out to a restaurant with a ‘special’ menu and jacked up pricing that throws you out on a schedule so they can squeeze in another seating of suckers.
4) Or, you take your life into your hands by driving home after midnight from a party you really didn’t want to attend. (Most people don’t follow through on resolution #3 .)
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Go NUTS!
December 7th, 2010 | Comments
Tags: gifts, Health & Fitness, Holiday Shopping, nuts, Shopping
We’ve just tuned into the ‘Get Crackin’ ad campaign by Wonderful for their pistachio nuts: A bunch of clever commercials that tout pistachios as the lowest fat, lowest calorie nut.
It got us to wondering… how much lower in fat and calories are pistachios? We went to the Mayo Clinic and found an article comparing the fat and caloric values of nuts. Pistachios are indeed the lowest calorie nut per ounce, but there is not a huge difference between 1 oz of pistachios (weighing in at 162 calories) and cashews (163), almonds (169) or hazelnuts (183). The article does underscore nuts are really, really good for you:
“… eating about a handful (1.5 ounces, or 42.5 grams) a day of most nuts, such as almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans, some pine nuts, pistachio nuts and walnuts, may reduce your risk of heart disease. But again, do this as part of a heart-healthy diet. Just eating nuts and not cutting back on saturated fats found in many dairy and meat products won’t do your heart any good.”
We hate to brag, but we were already on to this and keep a stash of nuts on hand as our late afternoon go to munch food. Actually, we love all nuts (plants or people), but they are high in calories (the nuts). So, control yourself.
One more thing about nuts– great nuts make great gifts. We have a particular weakness for these hazelnuts from Fastachi.
Go nuts.
Fishmonger Love
November 28th, 2010 | Comments
Tags: bargain, Beauty & Grooming, budget, Health & Fitness, healthy food, simple pleasures
We’re in love with our neighborhood fishmonger.
Yes, they still make fishmongers and since we’re in an anti-meat phase (for lots of reasons: hideous growing conditions, greenhouse gases, we’re grossed out eating flesh) which we don’t strictly adhere to (sometimes we give into temptation) we’re at the fish store a lot.
While our fish guy is the best purveyor for hundreds of miles around, and we do love his glistening, fresh, briny catch, the real reason we’re in love with him is because he noticed our new hair color. We’ve been parading around with a new mop shade for some time and he is one of the few people to take note and approve.
It got us to thinking about how such little things (like being recognized, noticed, complimented) can make someone’s day. All it costs is seeing something and saying something.
So in this overhyped season of forced good cheer and pricy gift giving (or should it be pricy good cheer and forced gift giving)–remember, even though you are a bitch it doesn’t mean you are bitchy, besides it doesn’t cost you anything to be NICE to someone else.
Try it. It’s sweet. It feels good.
Divorce Purchase and Pleasure
November 26th, 2010 | Comments
Tags: Health & Fitness, Shopping, simple pleasures
Instead of getting in line to buy a toaster oven at 4AM on this day after Thanksgiving, we slept in and had a leisurely breakfast. We’re getting ready to head over to our local museum for a peaceful stroll with our family and friends. It will be the perfect antidote to yesterday’s chaos! We talk a lot about the value and meaning derived from simple pleasures in our book Bitches on a Budget. Things like: a free concert, an afternoon at the library, a local theater production, a cup of tea by the fire, a rousing game of charades, a walk in the woods.
After all, we think this economic adjustment (we like that euphemism) has given all of us an opportunity to take stock of what really counts in life. (And it isn’t a new toaster.) So, on this frenzied holiday shopping day we want to remind you to enjoy the moment, live in the present, seek pleasure in the everyday and the simple things. Remember, pleasure and purchase are not always synonymous*.
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(*Unless we’re talking killer Clergerie over the knee boots that you find on sale.)
Sweet Potatoes or Yams for Thanksgiving?
November 17th, 2010 | Comments
Tags: Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness, Shopping
 Have you ever cruised the supermarket and wondered about the difference between a jelly and a jam, a cornish game hen and a chicken, a sweet potato and a yam? We have.
Have we ever thought about it beyond more than the passing turn of the cart down the aisle? No. Not really.
Recently, the writing up of our baked sweet potato fry recipe inspired us to do a little research into solving the yam and sweet potato mystery. Since Thanksgiving is next week we think it’s timely to share our findings.
According to the Library of Congress, yams and sweet potatoes are from different families of plants:
Although yams and sweet potatoes are both angiosperms (flowering plants), they are not related botanically. Yams are a monocot (a plant having one embryonic seed leaf) and from the Dioscoreaceae or Yam family. Sweet Potatoes, often called ‘yams’, are a dicot (a plant having two embryonic seed leaves) and are from the Convolvulacea or morning glory family.
Due to very confusing USDA labeling regulations (the history of which is convoluted and boring), almost all potatoes labeled as yams are in fact sweet potatoes. ”Real” yams are drier and starchier than the sweet potatoes we buy labeled as yams (we told you it was confusing).
So, as you’re shopping this Thanksgiving and are wondering which to buy– yam or sweet potato– know that all those boxes stacked high and labeled as yams, garnet yams, sweet potatoes, white sweet potatoes, etc. are really all the same. They are sweet potatoes– just different varieties.
This begs the question: which sweet potato to buy?
The Texas Cooperative Extension Aggie Horticulture Network, advises buying sweet potatoes with a deep color for the best food value. (And, don’t forget, sweet potatoes are near the top of the good-for-you-food-hiearchy-of-foods.) For best food flavor they advise storing them in an environment between 55-60 degrees–not the refrigerator.
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Restaurants, doctors, hair salons and other service providers often ask for a credit card to hold your reservation and will bill you for a late or missed appointment. We appreciate the hazards ‘no-shows’ present to a business, but when a business or service provider attaches a penalty for tardiness or cancellation the charge should go both ways. If they are late or cancel they should be compensating you for your time.
