Paying for Eggs

When it comes to buying your eggs at Vons or Ralphs or at any local grocer, which way do you lean? Are you paying the extra $1 a crate or $0.25 an egg for the free range or organic dozen?

Did you vote yes on Proposition 2 back in 2008 stating that farmers must increase cage sizes for chickens, veal calves and pigs by 2015.  If you did, you'd be helping a great deal by off setting this cost by spending the extra dollars.  In theory, everything proves to be a great idea, but with an economy such as ours, counting every nickel becomes priority.  

But when people vote one way, then vote a different way with their fork, they unintentionally undermine the very agricultural changes they’re rooting for.

Because of the dichotomy between what voters say they want, versus the reality of how they shop, the California egg industry faces ruin. The situation was recognized as being so serious, in fact, that state legislators passed another law, AB1437, requiring that all eggs sold in California must comply with bigger cage standards.

via Modern Farmer: Voting One Way, Eating Another

Costa Rica Day 2 and 3 (part 2)

Day 2 included walking around flooded streets while attempting to find some breakfast.  Strolling into a hotel opposite of ours, we enjoyed a typical American breakfast only because the waitress told us that the Tico breakfast wasn't that great.  Even though I asked for fried eggs, I guess Costa Ricans interpret them as sunny side up.  I'll take that for the road next time I order to ask for fried all the way.  

The entire day continued to drench us and there would be no end in site.  We decided after hearing that there was a chance of bridge closures to forgo staying the night in Coco Bay and head back to Liberia via autobus.  We ended up hitching a ride back to the city with Jose and bought him and his son some lunch as thanks.  He then took us to a couple of different hotels but without getting any deals, we paid $52 USD for a crappy room with no A/C.  Not that we needed the A/C, the only upside was that it was near the locale. 

More pictures after the jump!

While we scoured for cover underneath various awnings, Matt and I toured a church, walked around various shops and ran into a crazy looking mannequin.  So, of course Matt had to take a picture of it. Strolling around the grocery store, we took another picture of a fridge full of Imperial Beer and then walked around a little more where we entered a local high end bar (we had no idea) and retired there the rest of the night. 

We met a guy named Otto who originated from Costa Rica but lived in the US for the past 10 years and he was nice enough to hang.  He told us a couple of stories, drove us to the other club which was a bust, drove us back to where we met, which ended up closing and then took us back to our hotel. 

That was it really, we woke up two hours early due to our phones not being calibrated to the local time zone, had some breakfast (still then eggs were over easy) and got conned into taking a cab to the airport.  You see, the cab driver initially charged us $20 USD for a 10km ride, but when we started walking away, he started up his taxi and came riding over to us.  He lowered his price to $15 and when we told him that we were going to talk to the bus station, he told us a lie that the bus doesn't take us directly to the airport.  That was a bust!  We found out later that there are buses to the airport from a security guard who chatted us up a bit.  I bought some coffee and a couple of souvenirs from the duty free shop (expensive as heck) and then we boarded up and took off.  The plane ended up full so we got coach seating but it wasn't too bad. 

After all the rain that came down during the trip, at least we learned quite a bit so that our next trip to Costa Rica will be that much better!