omelette in a bag

i decided to share a little tip for those holiday brunches i know many of you are having. cooking omelettes to order is a pain in the butt. you can only do one at a time which is a problem if you have more than 2 people over. you spend the whole time cooking and everyone eats in shifts.

thanks to my colleague, cassie, there is a solution. the incredible omelette in a bag. it's very simple. all you need are:

eggs
your favorite omelette additives
one quart ziplock freezer bags
a big pot of boiling water

all you do is put two or three whipped raw eggs in the quart bag, add your favorite ingredients, squeeze all the air out. zip it shut. drop in the boiling water for 13 minutes (a little longer for 3 or more eggs in one bag) and presto, you have a fluffy, unfried, non-greasy quite yummy omelette.

oh, don't forget to write your name on your bag so you know whose is whose. as you can see, you can make 6, 8 10, 12 omelettes all at once, all done at the same time. bigger pot, more omelettes.

i have done this a couple of times now and others in our office have, too. it works.

i may not be checking in much for the next week or so. enjoy the holidays and please feel free to leave comments. i will get to them.

travel tip

ok. i'm going back to my lazy self and not bothering to capitalize. i'll at least try and punctuate. it was great to see my friend dinna posting a comment to the blog. she is the first to do so and that can never be taken away from her. no one else can ever be first. congratulations, dinna.

i would encourage any and all readers to vist dinna's blog and learn a bit about the filippino community here in new york and get a flavor of what the culture is like. my wife, my son and i made the pilgrimage back to the philippines last christmas to visit members of her family who still live there. going back at christmas is a tradition the natives call Balikbayan(sp).

it was really an eye-opener for me and one of the best trips i have ever taken. the countryside there is beautiful and the scuba diving is some of the best in the world. plus, selfishly, the dollar goes a loooong way there and someone of moderate income by US standards can live extremely comfortably and even afford domestic help. i like to say that the philippines is one of the only places where you can actually live on US social security.

this is not to say that it is paradise. obviously, if the dollar is so strong that means the local currency is weak and the economy is not great. manila is a big, smoggy city with literally millions of people who live close to or in abject poverty.

despite this, the overwhleming majority of filippinos are very generous, friendly and warm-hearted people. customer service and personal relationships really mean something there. after living in new york for 11 years, the treatment i received everywhere i went was such a refreshing change that they literally had to drag me to the airport when it came time to leave.

i'll definitely be going back. if you decide to go, make sure you ride the jeepney.

First time out - airline blues

This is my first venture into the "blogosphere" (I really detest buzz words, just fyi). This seems to be the way the world is headed and I decided I didn't want to be left behind completely. Thanks to my friend and colleague Pamela Samathivathanchai for making this possible. She is a "Digital Native" (another buzz word) and set this whole thing up for me.

Currently, the airline industry is on my s**tlist, specifically Continental Airlines (www.continental.com) and, by association, Northwest (www.nwa.com). Northwest holds my frequent flyer miles. Continental is their share partner. As you may or may not know, this means that Continental miles count for Northwest and vice versa. I currently enjoy Silver Elite status on both airlines which gets me the occasional free upgrade to first class and special ticketing, security and boarding privileges. Nice perks when you travel as much as I do for work.

I flew over 40,000 miles with these airlines this year, the majority with Continental as a matter of convenience at my particular airport. You only need 25,000 miles to maintain your status. Yet, I came up over 4000 miles short with just under 21,000 miles credited. How can that be, you ask. I asked too.

Seems Continental has certain fare classes that only receive half miles. Problem is, it's not readily apparent what these classes are. They aren't tied to promotional codes and free tickets that you would expect not to count. It's much more insidious than that. You can pay the full, published fare and still wind up in one of these classes simply because you booked early and got a good deal. I have been assured by Northwest that it's there in the fine print somewhere as they were telling me that I was SOL and would lose my status on January 1.

I book most of my travel through a professional travel agent who was also unaware of this "fine print." This leads me to believe that this information is not common knowledge and Continental doesn't care too much that it isn't. I have another trip coming in January that I already booked on Continental. My agent checked after I found out about this practice and, yes, I was once again only going to get half mileage. So I asked my agent to get me into a different fare class. This cost an extra $43. Plus, even though I didn't change my flight, my seat or any arrangements, I had to pay a $50 change fee. Basically, I had to pay them more money for the privilege of paying them more money.

Does anyone else besides me think this is nuts? I mean, the airline industry as a whole is on life support. Their customer service, with a couple of exceptions, is viewed as anywhere from poor to horrendous. Yet, they do this to a guy who has flown them loyally for over 77,000 miles and dozens of flights in a two-year period.

I'd be interested to hear from others who have had problems with these yutzes.