My knee continues to improve, slowly but steadily. I have given up using my walker and also my pain meds, though I'm also not racing about or leaving the house yet. I expect to begin venturing out and around the block over the weekend and to walk into next Tuesday's check-up appointment with a limp but no physical assists. As long as the infection that forced my second operation doesn't return, I may be able to avoid a third.
I am still being pumped full of antibiotics but they'll stop soon and we'll see if the evil bacillus returns. At last report, the men with the petri dishes and the incubators were still unable to identify exactly what kind I picked up. Since it won't flourish in their lab, maybe it won't flourish within me. By New Year's Day, I may have my mobility back to normal and a high level of confidence that this whole episode is over. Then I can start fretting about the other knee…
Hope you all had a fine Thanksgiving. I mostly worked and rested…and dined not on turkey but on my favorite quickie meal, Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roast. Some of you may recall me raving about this product (for example, here) and going to great lengths to actually procure it.
That's getting to be more and more difficult. Costco, where I first discovered it, no longer carries it. For a time, the Fresh & Easy chain had 'em but they stopped stocking them…and now there is no more Fresh & Easy chain. I am trying to suggest a connection even though there probably isn't one.
Then just when I was frantic to find a source of them, the Ralphs chain suddenly had them. Nirvana! Ralphs is everywhere in Southern California and I was a happy consumer. Then Ralphs dropped them. I would have thought that the quantity I alone was purchasing would make them a best seller for the entire chain but apparently not.
I have developed a deep, personal relationship with various folks at the Jennie-O company. They seem unable to fathom why this product does not sell all that well, especially compared to other Jennie-O offerings. I spoke to one salesguy there who sounded about as frustrated as a Fact Checker for the Trump campaign.
At the moment, my best source of them is the Sprouts Farmers Market chain. The bad news is three-fold: Not all their stores carry them, the ones that do don't always have them…and two of the ones that sometimes do are quite some distance from me. The good news is that not one but two new Sproutses are about to open within two miles of me. One is over on La Brea in West Hollywood, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard on the real estate that once was the studios of KCOP, Channel 13.
The other is kind of interesting. You may recall that when I can't obtain Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts, I replace them on my table with Hormel Roasted Chicken Breasts and Hormel Roasted Sliced Turkey, both in gravy in handy microwaveable packages. I could only find them at Albertsons Markets…and the Albertsons Market near me was sold to the Haggen company and would soon stop carrying those Hormel products.
Well, as it turns out, the Haggen company's attempts to become a major player in the west coast market industry crashed and burned, and their west coast outlets are being sold off by a bankruptcy court and snatched up by other chains. Some are becoming Gelson's. Some are becoming Smart and Final's. And some — including the former Albertsons where I bought my Hormel goodies down on Venice near Robertson — are becoming Sprouts Farmers Markets. So I may be able to score my Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts there.
Should you go on a similar quest, I will let you in on a carefully-kept secret. This is a revelation that will make me the Edward Snowden of Turkey Pot Roasts and thus may force me to flee the country. Still, in the interest of transparency…
Jennie-O also makes a product called Turkey Carnitas. This is slow-roasted dark meat turkey that is not sold directly to consumers but is instead sold at the service deli in some markets. The market gets these pouches of Jennie-O Turkey Carnitas that come fully-cooked, and the market heats them up and sells the meat by the pound butcher-case style to be used in tacos or burritos or other concoctions, largely of a Mexican nature. The product is therefore available mainly in markets that sell to people who are likely to want to go home and make tacos and burritos and so on.
Well, a package of Jennie-O Turkey Carnitas as received by the market contains two (2) Turkey Pot Roasts. It's the exact same thing.
That's how I get my Turkey Pot Roasts now from one Sprouts outlet. I call up the service deli and ask if I can purchase an entire package of the Turkey Carnitas as it is before they open the package, heat its contents and offer it for sale in their display case. If they have enough of the product in stock, they say, "Sure!" And they let me have it for the same per-pound price, which is only a few cents more than I paid for the same food item packaged as Turkey Pot Roast.
I tell you this whole story not to prove how resourceful I can be or to send you scurrying to buy the same thing but to make a point…
One recurring topic in my bloggings over the years — and we're coming up on the 15th anniversary of newsfromme.com — is how sometimes, you want to buy a product but the company offering it has devised a system that makes it impossible. I have found that if one is persistent and does a little detective work, it is usually possible to locate a workaround.
Usually…but not always.