Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on August 02, 2017, 11:04:58 am ---But, like your experience with sweet corn, that usually means the price is lower per unit. In other words, you'd pay less than 75 cents an ear if you bought a dozen, but you wouldn't pay less than 75 cents total. Whereas Lee, if I understood correctly, was saying that a quart actually costs $1.03 more than a gallon! That's terrible, because unlike shelf-stable or solid foods, you can't even easily split them with a friend.
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I'm sorry I wasn't clear. That's what meant to imply: If you buy a dozen ears of corn, the price is lower per ear of corn than if you just buy two ears. And isn't that what Lee was saying about milk? I don't know what would be the unit for milk (an ounce, maybe?), but if you buy a larger quantity of it, a gallon instead of a quart, the price is lower than if you buy a smaller amount. I don't see how this differs from what I wrote about the corn. ???
You got a couple of empty quart jars, preferably glass? You can split a gallon of milk with a friend. ;D
--- Quote ---They used to say "don't pick the corn until the water's boiling." But now -- well, I don't know about the East Coast, but here in the Corn Belt they now grow longer-lasting corn. I think it's often called "supersweet." What happens to corn once it's picked (as I understand it) is that the sugar in the kernels quickly turns to starch, and it's not as good. But this new corn either has more sugar to begin with or transitions more slowly.
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That's my understanding of sweet corn, too. I seem to remember seeing some corn advertised as supersweet (not here in the city, though), but without an explanation of what that meant. Seemed like just an advertising gimmick.
--- Quote ---If you bought a dozen and ate two a day, I'd wager that the last two would still be OK on the sixth day.
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If I bought a dozen ears of any type of sweet corn and had to clean and cook two a day, I would very quickly get tired of corn on the cob. ;D
--- Quote ---In any case, it would still be great great for cooking: Southwestern casseroles, corn bread, corn salad with green beans onions and bacon ...
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Don't eat no corn salad around here.
--- Quote ---Or you could just shrug it off the way you would milk and buy fewer ears. To me, $1.50 for a side dish that you really enjoy and is only available for a short time every year doesn't seem like such a bad deal.
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On the one hand, I see your point and agree with it. On the other hand--and I neglected to mention this--at the beginning of the season, the farmer charged only 50 cents an ear. And I'm afraid I'm spoiled by prices "back home," where you can buy corn that was picked that morning and priced at 25 cents an ear (less if you buy a dozen) (I recognize that there are costs of transportation to bring the corn into the city, but still. ....)
--- Quote ---My ex-husband and I are part of a community garden my neighborhood organizes. It's in the yard of the church right behind my house, so it's almost like having a garden in my backyard. Unlike some community gardens where it's one big garden and everybody pitches in, here you get your own plot.
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We have community gardens here, too, but the land is owned by the city, and last I heard there is actually a waiting list to get a plot. I don't know what the city charges. There are none near my place. Of course, it helps if you enjoy gardening and want to spend the time on it. I'd have a walk of many blocks before I even got to the garden. ::)
serious crayons:
Re cows and calves: That was educational, Jeff. So I guess baby cows do suffer in factory farms.
However, I was going to make the point that cows are like wet nurses in the old days. That is, long after they have a baby they continue giving milk because their body feels it being sucked out. Mothers' milk doesn't dry up as long as it's being consumed, whether by a baby or a pump (and it dries up pretty quickly when it's not, which is why workplaces need to provide comfortable nursing/pumping rooms, though they often don't). And of course cows don't get pregnant unless the farmer wants them to.
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on August 02, 2017, 01:43:38 pm ---I'm sorry I wasn't clear. That's what meant to imply: If you buy a dozen ears of corn, the price is lower per ear of corn than if you just buy two ears. And isn't that what Lee was saying about milk? I don't know what would be the unit for milk (an ounce, maybe?), but if you buy a larger quantity of it, a gallon instead of a quart, the price is lower than if you buy a smaller amount. I don't see how this differs from what I wrote about the corn. ???
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Because your corn situation is that you pay less per unit: 75 cents versus whatever it is per ear for a dozen. If you buy, say, six ears of corn at 75 cents each you'll pay $4.50. I can see paying less than 75 cents/ear if you buy a dozen. But does a dozen ears cost less than $4.50? I'm guessing not, because that's crazy. I'm guessing it's closer to the price of 11 ears or something -- just enough to make it worth getting the extra corn.
But in Lee's example, not only is the gallon of milk cheaper per unit, she's actually paying in excess of 50% more for a quantity one quarter of the size:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on August 01, 2017, 11:57:20 am ---A gallon of milk costs an average of $1.83 in my town, while a quart of milk costs $2.86!
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It's common for larger packages of things to cost less, sometimes a lot less, per unit. It's not surprising that a gallon is less than four times the quart's price. If a quart costs $2.85, a gallon probably won't cost $11.44. Or if a gallon costs $1.83, it's not surprising to find that a quart costs more than 45 cents.
What's rare is for the total cost of a smaller package to be higher than the total cost of a bigger package. In other words, she'd save $1.03 by buying the gallon and then throwing three-quarters of it out. Like you buying a dozen ears of corn, throwing out all but three and still saving money.
I've occasionally seen sales where the smaller package on sale is even a few cents cheaper than the larger package (though usually still higher per unit). But I've never seen a package cost 50 percent more than one four times its size. (Unless you're comparing a gallon at Costco to a quart in an upscale market or something.)
--- Quote ---You got a couple of empty quart jars, preferably glass? You can split a gallon of milk with a friend. ;D
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Aside from the fact that if you want a quart you would need a total of four jars and three friends, this is an excellent suggestion. And of course you'd have to all consume your milk at the same time, and meet regularly for the pour-off.
--- Quote ---I seem to remember seeing some corn advertised as supersweet (not here in the city, though), but without an explanation of what that meant. Seemed like just an advertising gimmick.
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No, I think it's a hybridization gimmick.
--- Quote ---If I bought a dozen ears of any type of sweet corn and had to clean and cook two a day, I would very quickly get tired of corn on the cob. ;D
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Good point. Do you have a friend? You wouldn't even need glass jars.
--- Quote --- Don't eat no corn salad around here.
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What is wrong with you people? ;D Corn, onions, beans and bacon and variations thereof are delicious both as a hot sauteed dish or a vinaigrette salad.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on August 02, 2017, 02:38:11 pm ---Aside from the fact that if you want a quart you would need a total of four jars and three friends, this is an excellent suggestion. And of course you'd have to all consume your milk at the same time, and meet regularly for the pour-off.
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That would really depend on how much milk you want. For example, if you want a quart, but the other party can make use of three quarts (a couple of kids, maybe?), then you only need two people and one glass jar. You only need four people and four jars if everyone wants a quart.
--- Quote ---No, I think it's a hybridization gimmick.
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Sure enough. I just never saw anything that explained that supersweet was a new hybrid.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on August 02, 2017, 04:06:55 pm ---That would really depend on how much milk you want. For example, if you want a quart, but the other party can make use of three quarts (a couple of kids, maybe?), then you only need two people and one glass jar. You only need four people and four jars if everyone wants a quart.
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Sure enough. :laugh: I just made that point because when you advised two jars and two people per gallon, it sounded like you were thinking two quarts to a gallon.
Maybe you weren't, but in any case I usually think of you as being more aware of that kind of common factual stuff like that than I am. So I had to google it to double check. That's when I realized the word "quart" probably came from "quarter of a gallon."
Actually, now that I think of it, if you had four people and a gallon of milk and everybody wanted a quart, you'd only need three jars. One person could just keep the milk in the jug it came in.
That should be a question on one of those tricky logic quizzes: "If four people have a gallon of milk and everybody wants one quart of milk, how many jars do they need?" Many people would jump to "four," like I did.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on August 03, 2017, 10:21:38 am ---Sure enough. :laugh: I just made that point because when you advised two jars and two people per gallon, it sounded like you were thinking two quarts to a gallon.
Maybe you weren't, but in any case I usually think of you as being more aware of that kind of common factual stuff like that than I am. So I had to google it to double check. That's when I realized the word "quart" probably came from "quarter of a gallon."
Actually, now that I think of it, if you had four people and a gallon of milk and everybody wanted a quart, you'd only need three jars. One person could just keep the milk in the jug it came in.
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Sure enough, but maybe that person would rather keep milk in a glass quart jar than in a plastic gallon jug. Then you would be correct. It also wouldn't take up as much room in the refrigerator as a gallon jug.
Truth to tell, I double-checked on a website that allows you to make conversions of measurements, just to make sure I was remembering correctly that a gallon has four quarts.
I never though about the derivation of the term quart. You might be right about that.
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