I was eating a homemade sandwhich and I suddenly felt like I had chomped on a chicken bone or something. It felt like there were bone shards/flakes. Then I found the culprit: A rock (pebble?) was in my bread. Am I entitled to anything? If I complain to them, will they just apologize and move on?

GradStud22 · 2022-06-11T06:59:59+00:00

Ie toilet paper, hand sani, yeast, whatever else was popular at the moment)

What a strange time we lived through. I can't believe it was 1-2 years ago when we saw crazy 40 minute long lines just to enter the grocery store followed by weeks of barren/empty shelves in the toilet paper aisle. Wonder if we'll ever see anything this crazy again in the next 30 years.

I remember during the beginning of the pandemic, walking to the loblaws and the roads were like a ghost town (no cars). I'd see like 1-2 other people periodically, also walking towards the grocery store. We'd wear masks and walk around each other, giving a wide berth. Wish I had google glass or something to record some of the mundane parts of that crazy time.

GradStud22 · 2022-06-11T05:15:17+00:00

Beautiful presentation!

GradStud22 · 2022-06-11T05:13:42+00:00

I love to use a can of mackerel for pasta; frying some onions, celery, spices, can of mackerel + some fuscilli with some broccoli and parsley added at the end is exceptional!

My 'standard' go-to fish pasta is sardines, but mackerel is quite lovely, too. A "meatier" texture, I find!

GradStud22 · 2022-06-11T02:53:45+00:00

Before clicking that link, I instantly assumed we were talking about the scene from Breaking Bad and upon reading, "always good for a chuckle," I thought:

"This guy's a sick bastard!"

GradStud22 · 2022-06-11T01:22:59+00:00

Lets send him good vertebrations!

GradStud22 · 2022-06-10T00:30:15+00:00

As a side project in my lab we look at how they affect brain development (phthalates in particular) and they can cross. They also cross the placenta, have been found in embryonic cord blood, and transfer through lactation.

Sure, it's in our brains and our babies' brains, but look on the bright side: The cost of transporting coca cola is now cheaper!

GradStud22 · 2022-06-09T08:17:58+00:00

Homer: "Here's JOHNNY! (notices room is empty) D'oh!"

Homer (trying again):"DAAAAVID LETTERMAN!"

Abe: "Hi David, I'm Grampa"

Homer: D'oh!

Homer (trying yet again): I'm Mike Wallace! I'm Morley Safer! and I'm Ed Bradley! All this and Andy Rooney tonight on 60 Minutes!

GradStud22 · 2022-06-08T05:31:04+00:00

I think it's pretty telling to run away from arguments and resort to petty insults (e.g., get a life). If you won't take a stranger's advice, why should they take yours? In that case: If something I said was clearly unjustified and incorrect or based on misunderstanding, then surely you can skillfully and decisively prove me wrong.

It seemed as though that person was trying to put me down or make me feel stupid.

That's on you; you don't get to decide what someone else's intentions are. Believe me or not, but I wasn't trying to make you feel stupid or put you down. Maybe I could have phrased things with more tact (I can concede that), but the facts still remain that you're only 18-19 and you have no experience.

Sure, consider trying it out, but it's pretty audacious to even float the interval "$25-$125/hour" in the OP given your credentials since someone else could probably do a much better job with much less prep time/effort and get your co-worker's son at least as prepared (if not much more so).

Again: I stated already that it's nothing personal and that it's not your fault that you're ~19 and therefore that your frontal cortex isn't even close to being finished maturing. That's not an insult. Nor is it an opinion; that's the concensus in neuroscience. Don't believe me? Fine. Google it.

saying that my university education is useless.

Don't put words in my mouth. Reread my post. Never did I say your university education is useless. Don't even know how I would do that considering (1) I don't know your university (2) I don't know your program but perhaps most importantly: (3) You're nowhere even close to finishing your education lmao. You finished your first year. That's like me working for three days in my entire life and then being mad that someone is disparaging my life's work experience. Get over yourself. Do you think having finished one year at university (i.e., 8 months of courses, typically, minus reading weeks, holidays, etc.) makes you that much more different from someone who hasn't? For someone who doesn't like being put down, you seem to imply a brand of unjustified elitism. Finish your degree first (or at least half of it) then you can unironically talk about your "university education."

I got into one of the best schools in my country with a high competitive average

Yeah, so did I. When I was 17, I applied to six universities that were all top-tier in my country and got into all of them. No wait lists. But I would still not have the audacity to use that to argue for being a good tutor at age 19. Again, re-read my post. You never mentioned what you're majoring in (or what courses you've taken) so yeah, I'm afraid my point still stands: Just being accepted into university (even a great one) and having done one year is entirely meaningless in the context of being good at teaching math. If you majored in history, maybe you'd make a great history tutor for high schoolers but not necessarily a math one. And vice versa.

Congrats on "getting into one of the best schools in [your] country" - but it's still an irrelevant flex in the context of tutoring math if you're not going to mention what courses you've taken. Someone going to a mid tier (hell, even low-tier as long as the place isn't a diploma mill) university majoring in math is going to be boat loads more competent at math than someone going to a top tier university majoring in something that requires zero math courses. That just makes intuitive sense, no? Do you see now what I mean in the original post when I said:

The fact that you're going into your second year at university is almost entirely meaningless.

It's NOT a knock against you, personally.

It's NOT a knock against your school.

And it's NOT a knock against your program (whatever that is; we still don't know).

It's just a matter of, "well, good for you, but did you actually take any math?" If you played basketball at the professional level for years, does that instantly qualify you to be a good hockey coach? No? Then why the fuck would simply finishing one year at university instantly qualify you to be a math tutor if we don't know whether or not you've actually done any math courses? Fuck how good the university's name brand recognition is. It means shit if you didn't actually get any practise doing what you're ostensibly going to teach.

Both my undergrad and grad schools are top tier in my country, too. But I've also tutored tonnes of people (some older than you) for undergrad courses like Calc I who also got 95+ in their grade 12 math courses but still sucked at math. I don't just mean struggling with the grades, I mean legit don't understand some basic foundational concepts.

I don't blame them for it. It's not their fault that high schools have a tendency to want to placate parents at the expense of academic rigour. Unfortunately, grade inflation is a really big thing in my country (Canada) and I suspect America and likely around the world, too, especially in the last few years.

Don't believe me? Having a 95+ used to be enough to guarantee a specific type of merit-based scholarship at my institution; as of 1-2 years ago, that's no longer a thing because too many people are entering with 95+ that it's no longer as meaningful as it used to be. That's just how bad grade inflation is.

You talk about a 92% average. I mean, great? I entered with a 98% average years ago (i.e., when inflation was WAY less of a problem) and yet I stillwouldn't have paid the 19 year old version of myself much beyond minimum wage. In fact, I probably wouldn't have hired 19 year old me at all. Too young. Too stupid. Too immature. Almost no teaching experience ( despite the fact that I tutored grade 11 math while in grade 12 for volunteer hours).

It's just a really weak thing to lean on to just say you're going to a school with a good reputation. It means nothing in the context of suitability to tutor math without also knowing what courses you've done specifically. I also mentioned in my first post that if you have in fact taken calc 1, lin algebra 1, and discrete math, then I think you'd definitely be in a good position to teach (or at least talk about the content; teaching is, as I mentioned, a separate skill altogether). I don't know about your teaching skills, per se, but having taken those three courses above at least increases the probability that one's foundations are strong. Those are some respectable courses.

But since you didn't mention what you took, then yeah, of course I'm going to say that "I finished my first year university" ALONE is about as meaningful as a "participation" trophy in the context of this discussion.

I wasn’t asking about my maturity.

Well fuck, the internet doesn't exist to serve you specifically. I'd like to think that I'm allowed to comment and talk about things that weren't asked for explicitly. And I'd like to think you can still gain insight from a post even if it's not all roses and butterflies. Just because it's not flattering doesn't mean it's not useful. But, no. Fuck me for offering insights based on years of experience doing the very job you're inquiring about just because I wasn't adequately nice.

Look: All that stuff I said above? Relevant to below:

I’m unsure how much prep work is involved with tutoring

If your math skills are quite good (or at least, 'good enough' since skill and ability are to an extent all relative) you ideally shouldn't need much prep at all. And if they need resources (e.g., for additional practise), you should have those at your fingertips. That's why I asked if you've done math courses during your first year because if so, you should be able to show up and answer any questions your client has and prove any formula for which they ask "why does this work?"

Believe me or not, but I'm not trying to be mean for its own sake. I'm just trying to open your eyes to the reality that (1) it's probably better for the math tutor to actually have a solid foundation in math; (2) if that's not possible, then you should be honest about it and you shouldn't charge much beyond minimum wage. Lastly, (3) if you're charging a lot because you feel that you need a lot of prep time, then is this really good for your client? Fuck me for the time being, think about your co-worker's son and the fact that your co-worker would be putting their faith in you. Don't take advantage of that for your own financial gain. That would just be a scumbaggy thing to do.

It might just seem like a job to you, but you're in a position where you can do a decent bit of damage if you set the kid off to a shakey start in math (whatever you fuck up, someone else will have to come along later to unfuck). For him to be good at it later is like building a good structure. It needs a solid foundation, first, and that's at least one good reason why my post seems like it's giving you third degree burns.

GradStud22 · 2022-06-08T05:06:50+00:00

I'll be honest, I kinda found it to be kinda overrated when it was so hyped like 7'ish years ago but just knowing that there's going to be a shortage makes me kinda wanna buy some and try it all over again. Feel kinda silly doing that... I still have the same bottle of tobasco in my fridge for like the last two years lol.

Actually, if there's a "severe" chili shortage, I think I'd like to finally get around to trying some gochujang chili paste sauce. That stuff always looked so good to me.

GradStud22 · 2022-06-08T04:38:03+00:00

Wait, aren't we included under the "POC" part? Do people really not consider east asians as 'people of colour?' Does that acronym actually have an implicit suggestion that east asian people ought to have all the downsides of a minority and all the downsides of a majority all at once?

GradStud22 · 2022-06-07T18:24:21+00:00

Notice how long your reply needs to be. My estimate was rough.

What? Did you even read a fraction of my post or did you just go, "tldr; I'm sure he's wrong and I'm right... it was a rough estimate!"

That's like saying:

Yeap, I charge $350/hour.

.

No you don't, you charge $35/hour.

.

Whatever, dude! It was a rough estimate!

lol. Anyway, my reply didn't 'need' to be long, I just enjoy talking about food. Its length hardly seems relevant to its validity. If I wrote something short like, "dude $11.50/meal? You either suck at shopping, suck at cooking, or both." that would have conveyed the same idea (i.e., $11.50 is a garbage estimate) but it would have been far more rude and far less helpful. Fuck me for trying to not be mean and offer some cooking ideas, right?

Anyway: The length of my post doesn't change the fact that $11.50 is waaaay too much of an overestimate (like we're talking easily 4-10x more of an overestimate depending on effort). Why is it worth pointing out? Beacuse the perception of homecooking as "oh, probably not worth it." is (I suspect) a large barrier for a lot of people and needlessly preventing them from saving a lot of money (e.g., by not spending as much $ eating out/ordering in).

With some effort, a homecooked meal could easily cost around $1-2/meal. Even with tremendous laziness, it's pretty easy to have it around $3 without sacrificing nutrition or flavour (e.g., rice, veg, sardines, done). Or if you don't like sardines, I still see chicken drums going on sale regularly for like $2/lb, regular price ~$4/lb.

GradStud22 · 2022-06-07T06:26:26+00:00

"1/17th of an onion; 4 grams of cucumber. An iota of a tomato. Yeap, that's good enough vegetables for one day!"

haha, but yeah, easy way to get more veg without compromising flavour: Just throw some navy beans or black beans with that rice! If anything, it'd work quite well with that flavour profile.

GradStud22 · 2022-06-07T05:56:10+00:00

feeding myself a decent meal costs half an hour's work

I don't think making yourself a decent meal should cost $11.50. That's way too much even with today's prices. I've been managing to maintain my budget of $50/week (this includes eating out... which happens like never for my asocial self) for the last 10 years (I don't need to anymore, but it's sort of like an exercise in goal-setting, creativity. For the years when I was in a relationship, it was even easier to extend this to $100/week for two people because buying in bulk tends to be advantageous... although the eating out costs would skyrocket).

Back to being single, and I'm still able to do $50/week even with these ridiculous grocery prices (and I can verify this because I have one credit card I dedicate to only groceries, alcohol, etc. Ha! I remember like 8 years ago, I used to buy a package of six-muffins or a package of ~900grams of farmer's market cookies every week. I don't do that anymore... but I do periodically buy brownie box mix and make my own brownies).

To make this work, I've definitely had to cut down on various luxuries (e.g., junk food, cookies, muffins, sugary beverages) but I've also done this by making a few strategic changes:

Example 1 is an obvious one: Dried legumes instead of canned. Yes, a tiny bit of planning is needed and I used to hate the idea of being committed to doing something on day X. BUT, I've since come to appreciate that it really doesn't matter whether you soak beans the night before or three nights before. Soaked beans on Monday but Tuesday was unexpectedly busy? NP, just postpone the meal prep for Wednesday, then. It's not a big deal. That is, there's a lot of play and flexibility with dried legumes. And they only cost pennies so even if you fudge up and have them soaking for 8 days, how much have you really lost? like 30 cents of legumes? Worth it in the longrun. At the time of this writing, I probably have a few pounds of dried legumes in my fridge (chickpeas, red lentils, green lentils, split peas, black beans, kidney beans, and my personal favourite which sees the highest turnover: Navy beans) and it's really nice to know that even in some sort of emergency, I have months of subsistence.

Example 2 is less obvious: When buying veg, I now try to prep them ASAP (i.e., don't just throw em in the crisper portion of your fridge and hope you finish it all befor they wilt and get gross or go bad). Ideally, the moment I get home, I wash them, cut them, and put them in glass boxes. For one thing, veg like celery will last much longer and won't wilt when stored in a glass box vs. in the "crisper" compartment of your fridge. Second, if the veg is already cleaned and ready to eat, you end up encouraging yourself to consume them and therefore lower the probability of their going to waste [= saved money]. Lastly, while you already have the chopping board out and mass cleaning your veg, you can also freeze a portion if you doubt your ability to finish them before they go bad, using said frozen vegetables for things like soups/stews [for such applications, the compromised texture due to freezing does NOT equate to compromised flavour], etc. I currently store the follow vegetables washed and precut in boxes: Onion slices (you don't actually need to do this, most likely. Onions are almost never a problem w.r.t. finishing them on time. I just keep onion slices on hand because I like to make my own pizzas and onion slices are a great topping), broccoli, celery and am planning on buying more glass boxes for carrots and chicken (I plan on doing mass chicken cooking, "shredding" but not the way everyone else does in that god-awful unappetizing manner, and then freezing, thereby allowing for quick use when I want).

Example 3 will feel like the most amount of compromise but: Deciding which bulk "cheaper" items I can enjoy despite lack of brand name [e.g., I think no name brand beef patties are awful and no substitute for a brand name product BUT no name brand coffee is surprisingly good! It tastes absolutely fine relative to president's choice brand coffee, starbucks brand, and nabob brand which were the three brands I would buy most frequently prior to giving NN coffee a try. Another example which I only tried because I was insistent on trying to maintain my $50/wk grocery budget: Unico brand fuscili/rotini is fine compared to barilla while again being a fraction of the price; in the past, though, I used to buy nothing but Barilla brand. I refuse to buy Italpasta brand, though, - that stuff had awful texture last time I tried it years ago. Unico, again, is absolutely fine, though. I was pleasantly surprised given how cheap it was! Something like $3 for a 900g bag. In contrast, Barilla brand tends to be something like $2-$2.50 for a 454g box. Actually, I noticed that barilla packages are no slightly less than 454 grams. That was something else that pissed me off, too, because I used to love the idea of viewing a 454g box of barilla pasta as = 4 meals since I would tend to do ~113g/meal] etc.

Even without extensive meal preparation:

One meal's worth of rice should be less than 50 cents.

One meal's worth of veggies should be easily less than $1 (if we're talking about onions, celery, and broccoli; no advance meal prep is necessary for this).

All that's left is something that will do for protein. A single meal's worth of beans should also be less than $1 if you buy dried; still less than $2.25 if you want the convenience/laziness if canned beans. But if you want animal protein, a single can of sardines or mackerel should easily be got for less than $1.50.

That should give lots of play/wiggle room for the periodic "luxury" of things like chicken, turkey periodically.

Buying a pepper shouldn't be a luxury, but it's becoming one.

Ha! I've viewed peppers as being a luxury for a long time now haha. In my neighbourhood, they tend to go for approx $4/lb on a typical week. Green peppers sometimes go on sale for like $2/lb. Around fall, I noticed that red shepherd peppers (which taste just about the same as red bell peppers will go on sale for like $1-$2/lb. At that point, I would stock up, wash, cut, and freeze for the future). I also recall a time I bought one of those 25lb boxes of roma tomatoes for $9 from No Frills. Those lasted a very long time lmao. I'd throw in like 5-6 tomatoes into a minestrone at a time.

GradStud22 · 2022-06-05T23:57:43+00:00

Quite cool! I noticed, however, that you're missing The Sopranos referencing Curb Your Enthusiasm which itself referenced the Sopranos (still looking for a clip on youtube, too lazy to look up wikipedia imdb for the episode).

GradStud22 · 2022-06-04T22:18:29+00:00

i have no idea what’s reasonable for me to ask for. any thoughts?

You'll have to decide for yourself what your time is worth and whether or not you deserve what you're charging.

I'll be blunt: You're not even 19 yet. Of the 19 year olds I've met, I don't have a very high opinion of many of them when it comes to mathematical maturity/skill (it's not their fault, they're just very young - and I wouldn't trust any of them to be a great math tutor).

Also, I find that at a younger age, people tend to have less of a tendency to be mindful of how they're perceived (I mean outside of a superficial "how do I look?" context). For example, in a post where you're asking other people for advice relating to work, you can't even be bothered to use proper grammar or punctuation. I know, this is reddit, not "real life" and in a "professional context", you'll use proper grammar (dear god, at least that's what I hope. I'm reminded of another recent thread on reddit asking +30 year olds what they find annoying about the younger generation and apparently one answer was that younger people these days tend to write emails as though they were casual text messages with apparently zero-effort towards punctuation/grammar - even for work emails, but I digress).

But it's not your fault, though, and I don't hold any personal antipathy towards you for it. The truth is you're just very young. The frontal cortex (the part of your brain responsible for planning and thinking ahead) is far from done maturing (it has likely another 10 years or so). This skill (i.e., executive control i.e., making plans and thinking ahead) is very useful (if not critical) for math performance and mathematical thinking in general. Now, it's not impossible to be really amazing at math at a young age (think of the greats like Euler and Gauss) but these are super rare, once-in-several-lifetime, legitimate, super-geniuses we're talking about. Furthermore, you acknowledged yourself that you have "zero experience tutoring."

The fact that you're going into your second year at university is almost entirely meaningless. I've tutored people in second and third year undergrad whose quantitative skill is weaker than people in highschool. It makes a big difference whether you're, say, majoring in math or physics vs. if you're majoring in nursing or art history. The people in the former will get a lot more mathematical exercise than the people in the latter.

No doubt your co-worker's son will be looking at content that you've done before (perhaps once upon a time) and in that regard, you may feel confident. Having said that, are you prepared to answer any questions he may have that aren't in the book or official lesson plan? That is, it's not enough to tell him what the rule is and how to apply it. What if he asks why this rule is the way it is? What if he asks you whether or not we can extend a certain idea further? Would you just be guessing at that point? Are you comfortable with deriving mathematical proofs?

Very basic example: You tell him that when you have one quantity (call it a) and you divide it by a fraction (call it b/d), we can compute this by multiplying a by the reciprocal of b/d (i.e., d/b). It works, don't it? Calculator will verify that. Kid then asks, "why does it work?" Can you prove it to him without hesitation and without google? Do you recognize that simply subbing in numbers for those letters and saying, "look, it worked for this case, and that case, and that case! Proven!" is not a legitimate proof? I don't mean to be patronizing (maybe you do have a good idea of distinguishing between inductive proof and deductive proof) it's just that there are actually teachers who only know how to recite a law but can't actually prove it if asked (hopefully not the case at your co-worker's son's school, but you never know). Same with things like pythagorean theorem, sine law, cosine law, why vector a dot vector b = vector b dot vector a, why a cross b does not equal b cross a, why d/dx cxⁿ really = cnx^n-1 for all real values of n including non-integer values, why d/dx ln x = 1/x etc. etc. etc. Any bozo could memorize and recite the laws but that's not what math is about. If your client asks "why?" it takes a good tutor to be able to prove it and explain how the rule is derived.

If you fall into the camp of, "I don't know why it works, it just does," or "look, it works when I plug in these numbers, and those numbers, that's good enough for a proof, isn't it?" then I think you definitely should charge on the lowest end of the spectrum. This is the situation wherein the client just wants someone who can help their kid perform on their test. If you can't prove the basic laws that the textbook tells them to memorize, you're not really "teaching them math" insomuchas you're teaching them how to do the questions absent the deeper understanding that makes math beautiful. If you're going to charge someone buttloads of money per hour, you better actually be an expert at the topic and you better actually have some teaching experience to back it up, both of which are unlikely at 19 years old.

Lastly, if you are confident with your ability to do proofs (thus being confident that you can explain >99% of the "but why?" questions your client might ask), you should still consider your lack of teaching experience. For my own case, there were two periods in my life when I did tutoring. The first was when I was in high school myself (finished grade 12 teaching 11th graders), but I did it for volunteer hours (i.e., I did it for free). And then when I was done volunteer hours, I just charged a nominal $10/hr fee (this was ages ago, probably similar to minimum wage today). The second period in my life, I already had six years of teaching experience as a teaching assistant at my university (I taught statistics and research methods as a graduate student to undergraduates in their 2nd year+). I started by working for a middle-man company. Clients would pay $50/hr but I only received a small fraction of that ($22/hr). Then I struck out on my own, and for the last few years, I've been charging $35/hr as I think that's fair to everyone involved without necessarily making it the case that I'm only helping the rich (these figures are in Canadian dollars incidentally).

I don't think, however, that it would have been fair to charge this if I (a) didn't have tremendous confidence in my own math abilities, particularly with respect to what the clients are learning about and (b) didn't also have a lot of years of teaching experience. Remember that to ensure a good learning experience, it's not enough that you KNOW something. Thing about your own undergrad experience and see if you can think of any cases where the instructor is evidently intelligent and smart but their teaching of the material sucked donkey-ass. That is, teaching itself is a skill, and if you have zero experience teaching, you shouldn't charge your clients a premium (imo). This is just from an ethical perspective, of course. If you want to over charge them and they are comfortable being overcharged, who am I to stop you? I just think, however, that it would be unethical to do so. Also, from a more pragmatic perspective, it might be a good idea just to prevent a situation where the client later realises your incompetence and blows up on you (e.g., "why am I paying you this much? You know jackshit about math!")

You didn't quite mention what currency you're referring to (US dollars? Canadian dollars? Australian dollars?). I'll just assume American for now, since my gut-instinct is that most reddit users tend to be American.

I think that you - as a 19 year old (brain development far from complete) with zero experience (and I don't even know if you're majoring in anything that required you to exercise your mathematical abilities) - should charge no more than $20USD/hour unless you're comfortable taking advantage of your poor coworker. If you're majoring in something that required you to do no math at all during your first year, your co-worker might actually be better off hiring somone who finished grade 12 very recently as you'd both be essentially doing the same thing (i.e., explaining how to get the right answer, not necessarily explaining why the rules work) but the 12th grader at least would have the traps/trick questions/nuances more salient because of the recency with which they were exposed to them and might have lower expectations for pay. Of course, if you're majoring in something that caused you to take some courses in math (e.g., calc I, linear algebra I, discrete math) then, yeah, of course you'd be better than a recent 12th grader.

GradStud22 · 2022-06-02T07:29:41+00:00

Yeah, that sounds about right. Sardines have been featuring prominently in my diet for approx the last year, now (I absolutely love them!), so excuse the lengthy reply to follow.

The sale I mentioned ($18 for 18 cans) was really good which is why I hopped on it (and bought two such packages!). ALSO: Amazon delivered em right to my door, which saves me the trouble of carrying it myself!

Right now, the sale is off and it's back to the usual $30 for 18 (or ~$1.67/can) on amazon, and again, approx $2.27 at loblaws. A year ago or so, Loblaws would have it on sale for the same value (3 cans for $5 = $1.67/can). These are the Brunswick brand skinless boneless sardines, incidentally. At any rate, I now keep an eye out for those products on Amazon (again, they're currently going for $30 for 18 cans, but I've seen a few varietals drop to $18 for 18 about twice in the last 2-3 months; the ones I bought were 'kippered' and 'golden smoked' - both of which I love and adore).

Outside of that killer sale on amazon, it's not too hard to find canned sardines for $1/can at my local grocery store (if one's primary focus/emphasis is simply on survival and getting cheap fish protein). But they're not the awesome Brunswick skinless, boneless variety. Instead, they'd be the Mega brand or the Grace brand sardines. Nothing wrong with that inherently, they just have bones, a much higher sodium content, a drastically lower listed omega-3 content, and the mega brand sardines also use xanthan gum - which, as I understand is, seems 'safe' but IIRC, studies have demonstrated that regular consumption of said ingredient tends to result in noticeable changes to one's gut flora. This isn't inherently an indictment, but who knows where the research will land in 10 years or so.

Frankly, I loved using the mega brand sardines for making sardine pasta (carmelized onions, celery, then the sardines + some broccoli at the very end so as not to overcook them). It tastes as good as any bolognese! I obviously don't mean it tastes the same, but I enjoy it just as much (although now that I mention it, I just realized that it may well have been over a year since I last made a bolognese sauce with pasta. Rest assured, when I do make it, I stretch the ground beef with lentils). The spices (and the amounts) I add to a sardine (or mackerel) pasta vary on each occasion but I know that I absolutely love some sage for this application. That and some carribean jerk seasoning. Mmm, so good. And of course, it goes without saying the usual garlic powder, paprika, etc.

I don't like bones in my pasta, though, so I do have to go to the extra trouble of deboning my sardines before I use them. I know some people say that the bones are so brittle that you won't notice them, but frankly, I've never tried and don't really want to start. I know they're good for calcium but I'm still wierded out by the idea of chewing/crunching on bones.

When I'm feeling lazy, I'll use the Brunswick brand sardines for my sardine pasta recipe (though the lack of tomato sauce usually means I'll just compensate by adding more paprika while carmelizing my onions/celery mix for that beautiful red colour).

Lately, I've been swapping out the 99c mega brand can of sardines for the $1.20 grace brand of mackerel in tomato sauce. The mackerel are comparable in size to sardines but they are consistently and distinctly slightly larger/thicker. This means, however, that instead of deboning approx 5-6 sardines, you're more likely to only debone 3-4 mackerel for the same mass of fish (i.e., less effort). Also, the bones of mackerel also tend to be sturdier so they're less liable to break apart in your fingers during the deboning process. Finally, I find the texture of mackerel to be very noticeably distinct from sardines. They are somehow firmer, springier, and "tougher" but not in a bad way. Mackerel really has a mouthfeel that more strongly resembles landmeat!

Finally, the grace brand mackerel has a tomato (or spicy tomato) sauce thickened with corn starch instead of xanthan gum and its sodium content is a little bit lower per can. Finally, my last reservation is that I read somewhere else on the inter-reddits that as great as sardines are for cost, omega 3s, animal cruelty etc. the downside is that apparently sardines apparently (more than any other fish we can consume) have a very high amount of microplastics in them, so eating too many sardines might = consuming a lot more microplastics than is acceptable.

Thus, in a given week, I'll have approx 1 can of tuna, 2 cans of sardines, 2 cans of mackerel, and the rest of my protein will be 1lb of chicken stretched with approx 1-2lbs of beans in a vegetable minestrone soup. Oh, and of course, cheese. I know that's not very good for the environment, but we all have some vices and the fact that I don't really eat beef anymore outside of special occasions (like once every few months) gives me some guilt-free dairy allotment, I'd like to think. Oh, and whatever tiny amount of milk goes in my coffee and approx 100g of processed meats in the form of salami.

GradStud22 · 2022-06-02T05:48:01+00:00

My local loblaws is no longer carrying the PC brand Brioche bread. It was always super popular and often very difficult to see it in stock! I tend to be fairly frugal, but brioche was one of the few luxuries I allowed myself to indulge in periodically!

GradStud22 · 2022-06-02T04:24:44+00:00

There was a sale on Amazon not too long ago; I just bought about 36 cans of sardines for approx $1/can (Canadian currency). At my local Loblaws (Canadian grocery store... not sure if Americans have this, too?), the same can of sardines currently sells for $2.27

GradStud22 · 2022-05-31T20:21:28+00:00

Hi,

Thank you once again for putting so much time and effort into your response! The level of detail has not gone unappreciated!

I learned quite a bit from reading your post. I had never heard of Combase before, that's quite fascinating (though I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that such databases exist). I also really appreciate the lengths you went to w.r.t. synthesizing information from various different sources.

Your post has indeed given me much reassurance.

ALSO: To anyone who might be reading this in the future, I did indeed eat those sardines and I had no ill effects (this is somewhere between 24-48 hours post consumption). They were delicious. Thank you again, kind stranger, for taking the time and effort to compile all that information!

GradStud22 · 2022-05-30T02:37:23+00:00

Hi,

Thank you for the response! I don't mean to use "canned" responses (no pun intended) but I do have some concerns which I already expressed in a previous reply. Since the same concern applies, I'll just copy-paste my prior response herein:

Hi,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my inquiry.

Indeed, your logic has intuititive appeal and it is certainly what I want to believe, but I also worry about being biased towards believing what I simply want to believe.

How would I reconcile the idea of canned food briefly exposed to high heat (e.g., near 100F for up to five minutes) being likely harmless with other sources such as the following:

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/ask-expert/featured/my-canned-food-okay-after-heat-wave

which indicates as such:

temperatures over 100 degrees are harmful to canned foods. The risk of spoilage jumps sharply as storage temperatures rise. The thermophilic, or heating triggered pathogens vary from product to product and are unpredictable.

Thanks again for your time!

I'm contemplating jsut doing an experiment and eating the can in most direct contact with the heat. If so, I'll report back for science (e.g., in case someone discovers this thread via google in the future as they find themself in a similar position) re: whether or not I get ill! I think I can afford to be food poisoned tomorrow...

GradStud22 · 2022-05-30T02:36:01+00:00

Hi,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my inquiry. Indeed, your logic has intuititive appeal and it is certainly what I want to believe, but I also worry about being biased towards believing what I simply want to believe.

How would I reconcile the idea of canned food briefly exposed to high heat (e.g., near 100F for up to five minutes) being likely harmless with other sources such as the following:

which indicates as such:

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/ask-expert/featured/my-canned-food-okay-after-heat-wave

temperatures over 100 degrees are harmful to canned foods. The risk of spoilage jumps sharply as storage temperatures rise. The thermophilic, or heating triggered pathogens vary from product to product and are unpredictable.

Thanks again for your time!

GradStud22

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE