USPS Flat-rate Price Comparisons

We were curious to know how good a deal the USPS flat-rate boxes were, so I went over to their online calculator and ran some comparisons. The Priority Mail boxes come in three price categories across five box shapes (don't forget that the USPS changes this stuff all the time):

Large:
    23-11/16" x 11-3/4" x 3"    (835 cu in)    $22.65 (2.7 cents/cu in)
    12" x 12" x 5-1/2"              (792 cu in)    $22.65 (2.8 cents/cu in)

Medium:
    13-5/8" x 11-7/8" x 3-3/8" (546 cu in)    $16.25 (3.0 cents/cu in)
    11" x 8-1/2" x 5-1/2"         (514 cu in)    $16.25 (3.2 cents/ cu in)

Small:
    8-5/8" x 5-3/8" x 1-5/8"     (78 cu in)      $9.20    (11.8 cents/cu in)

First, the small box is by far the worst deal by volume, although who cares if you have something smaller to ship.

Now, let's consider what it would cost to ship similar sized boxes at the same priority postage rate for something about the size of the large and small boxes above to book end the comparison. I'll work with the following two custom box sizes:

My Large Custom Box -- 23" x 12" x 3" (828 cu in)

My Small Custom Box -- 9" x 5" x 1.75" (79 cu in)

When shipping a custom box, USPS charges based on distance, weight and size. It's a complicated formula that is completely different than the fixed-rate boxes, making it hard to do a simple comparison, but I'll do my best to give you a sense of it.

Since weight it such a big part of the equation, let's look at an empty box--let's call that 5 oz. Then, we'll look at a box filled with books. Paperbacks weigh about 0.5 oz/cu in.

The cheapest thing you could do custom is to send a small custom box within your same zone. With smaller boxes--those with no side longer the 12 inches, the prices for a 5 oz box is $7.95. For our small box filled with 40 oz of books, you'd pay $9.30, just a dime more than the standard post office small box.

Everything changes with distance. A coast-to-coast box (say MA to CA) is much more expensive:

My Large Custom Box:
    Empty at 5 oz                          $10.65 (1.3 cents/cu in)
    Filled with 3 lbs of stuff         $21.15 (2.6 cents/cu in)
    Filled with books at 414 oz    $97.20 (11.7 cents/cu in)

Small Custom Box
   Empty at 5 oz                          $10.65 (13.5 cents/cu in)
   Filled with books at 40 oz      $21.15 (26.8 cents/cu in)

A lightly filled large custom box is less expensive than the standard USPS box, but gets more expensive fast. The breakeven point for the large box is 3 lbs, which would cost you $21.15. Interesting that the USPS small box is always less expensive going coast to coast.

If you want to save money shipping a package there are other shipping options than Priority Mail. The post office doesn't make those other services easy to find, in fact there's no way to do the less expensive options on-line--you'll have to go into a post office and ask for them. Looking at our large box of books, we'd get:

First Class Package Service (1-3 days): Not available over 13 oz.
USPS Retail Ground (2-8 days): $81.10
Media Mail (2-8 days): $18.94

And, if you really want to get it there fast, there's always Priority Mail express, which has a 1-2 day promise for $195.45.

How Much Milk is Left?

My wife made an interesting observation this week. A gallon jug of milk does not empty evenly. We did an experiment of marking the quart marks on a gallon.

Notice that the top quart takes almost half the jug. There is a lot of jug taken up by that handle.

Of course, you still shouldn't put the jug back in the fridge with less than a juice glass at the bottom, you animal.

Treehouse Little Ripper

Just a quick blog post to share how much I enjoyed Little Ripper from Treehouse. Unusual beer from Treehouse, Little Ripper is a pale ale coming in a 5.2% abv. It lacks the sweet, fruitiness of most of their doubles and triples, but still has the rich hops profile I anticipate from them with a mix of east coast fruit and west coast pine flavors. An excellent, lighter choice. So good.

Playing with Quail Eggs

Gail found quail eggs from young, local, quail-raising entrepreneur. We are never ones to pass up a cool new thing. This morning, we turned them into three separate dishes. You see, with quail eggs, you can have three breakfasts without guilt.

First up was Scotch eggs. The quail eggs were the perfect size for a Scotch egg. A regular sized Scotch egg is frankly daunting, not that I wouldn't eat two if you sat them in front of me, but these dainty things were much more sane. We started by par-boiling the eggs for 3 minutes. Peeling the little things was a pain. While the half-hard eggs were firm enough to handle--regular eggs would be a mess after just 3 minutes--the shells were harder and broke into tiny bits that were difficult to remove. We covered them in a maple breakfast sausage, which, while delicious, overpowered the flavor of the eggs, so we couldn't reasonably tell the taste. The presentation was dramatic enough, but I can't imagine peeling enough of the little guys to make a reasonable meal.

Next up, we made two fried eggs. We did them in olive oil thinking that butter might overwhelm the flavor of the eggs. We served them over a single piece of toast cut up to fit them. Boy, these were good; richer and more flavorful than a chicken egg. They were easily worth the effort of this simple preparation. Oh, and so cute.

Finally, we made shredded potato bird nests. You can see in the picture that we used mini-cupcake tins for the quail egg nests and regular cupcake tins for a chicken egg comparison. (So, you might say we had four breakfasts this morning, but who's counting.) What you probably can't tell from the picture is that we shredded the quail egg nests using the fine shredder. We wouldn't bother with this in the future, it made no difference to the final texture or taste. These were also quite good, and indeed, tasted better than the chicken egg versions.

Next stop, the emu egg.

Shout out to Zero Waste Blogger

This is a nod to sometimes-contributor to this blog, Noele Flowers' new blog. Slow & Steadman focuses on a zero waste lifestyle. I'm biased, but I think her new blog is great.

Advent Beer 2017 - First Half

I got another Craft Beer Cellar Advent beer calendar this year. I think we've got the sharing right so that I'm not inundating the girls with beer. They got 4 each. That's left me with a few more than I can keep up with, but not too bad.

The calendar this year was in a beautiful box with cut-outs on the top that were meant to be broken open on each day. Because I wanted to share, I opened the whole box ahead of time. I think that took away some of the surprise (and fun), but it did mean I was able to hand pick beer that I thought each of my daughters would like best. Seems like a good trade.

Here's what I've opened so far:

December 1: New Holland Brewing, Dragon's Milk Reserve (Mocha Mint Bourbon Barrel Stout). This was an excellent start. It was a perfect dessert beer, rich, creamy and everything the label said it would be.

December 2: Fuller's ESB. This was a favorite of mine from a time before craft beer was a thing, so it was fun to try it again. Taste memories reminded me why it was a favorite. Clean, rich, malty flavors abound, with that classic British flavor I associate with Burton salts.

December 3: C&A Veltins Grevensteiner. I've never had this before. It was a delicious German lager which I would have called a Belgian single in a blind taste. It had a slight taste of Brett. Very good.

December 5: Firestone Mocha Merlin (Oatmeal Stout). This was another excellent dessert stout, but not quite as good as the Dragon's Milk.

December 7: Stranger than Fiction Porter. A really excellent porter with good clean flavors. Much cleaner than the two stouts without all the adjunct flavors. Very pleasant, and the can had great artwork on it.

December 8: North Coast Brother Thelonius (Belgian Style Abbey Ale). Firstly, nice pun. This was as good an Abbey style ale as you could want. It certainly competes nicely with many I've had from Belgium. This was a real treat, and Abbey beers taste so good this time of year.

December 9: Weihenstephaner Vitus. Look at the head on this thing. I always love Weihenstephaner, and didn't know what to expect with this one. This was another German beer masquerading as a Belgian beer, again with flavors of Brett to my taste. This was truly outstanding.

December 11: Von Trapp Dunkel Lager. I've never had a Von Trapp beer that I've been thrilled with. This reminded me of the pre-craft beer dark beers put out by by AB such as Michelob Classic Dark. There is nothing wrong with it, but there is just nothing special going on with it for me. I have no idea why I took the picture with a pineapple in the background.

December 14: Foundation Ember (Red IPA). This was a delight to try with everything the name implies. It was a combination of good IPA flavors and the Belgian flavors of a Flanders red ale. It's not a style that's likely to take over the world, but quite enjoyable to drink.

December 16: Wachusett Wally (New England Style IPA). I've been disappointed with Wachusett in the past, so I was not looking forward to this one. I found myself pleasantly surprised. It is a stretch to call it New England Style, but so goes marketing. As an IPA, though, it was a good showing characteristic of the other larger producers in the area. In the past, I might have just had water if this was the only thing on tap. I've changed my mind.



I probably will have one more article just after Christmas with the rest of the box.

Urban Hearth in Cambridge

Gail and I went for a celebratory dinner this weekend at Urban Hearth on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge. What a delight. They do a supper club on Thursday, Friday and Saturday each week. That's their way of turning the traditional sit down meal into something closer to a visit to the chef's home.

It's a little more traditional than described on the web site. We were seated right away at a private table. I wonder if the communal dining concept was difficult to implement with each party arriving at a different time.

After greeting us, our host went off to create a welcome cocktail for us. She brought back a Cava and rosewater cocktail with dried rose petals. It was lovely and elegant. What followed was dish after dish of wonderful flavors and textures, punctuated by pleasant descriptive interludes by the team of four in this intimate, storefront setting. The team included our host, the chef-owner Erin Miller, the sous-chef, and a helper/dishwasher.

The menu is prix fixe with either three or five courses. For the two of us, the five course menu let us have one of everything, and gave us an opportunity to honestly say, "We'll 'ave the lot." Our host got it.

I added the wine pairing, which was equally delightful. The owner seems to search out special and small batch wine selections. Each was nicely paired with our dishes. Since we were sharing each dish, we made the per-course pairing more difficult, but we watched the host and owner consulting over each course to find a match that worked with each pair of dishes on the table at each course. I was never disappointed, and particularly enjoyed the white vermouth pairing with dessert. That would have never occurred to me, and it was excellent.

Our first course was the duck and the halibut. The halibut was clearly not Gail's thing with both raw-ish fish and roe, but it was outstanding for me. It set a tone that we would be enjoying not just good flavors, but excellent textures with each tiny egg bursting with light saltiness. The duck was also quite tasty and topped with a treat of small cracklins of duck skin.





Next was the delicata squash and the stewed eggplant. The squash was excellent and also included perfect greens and dabs of goat cheese, cranberry, and a humous-like mixture, which went best when mixed together. The eggplant dish had dollops of parsley crema, but really starred the katailfi egg. There is a certain mastery in getting the egg cooked so perfectly while not burning the coating and delivering it to the table still perfect. Again, the texture contrasts enhanced the joy.

Between the courses, the sous-chef brought over some roasted peppers. He warned us that they were usually mild, but once in a while one would have a little heat. We didn't notice any heat. Look how perfectly seared they were.






The next course was beautiful bass and shrimp dish coupled with an equally beautiful ramen dish. Each was perfectly cooked to bring out different tastes and textures with each bite. We were starting to get full at this point, and some of the ramen came home with us for later.

The final savory course included "the best vegan dish we have ever had" and a wonderful pork and Brussel sprouts dish. The peanut butter-like smear was cashew and miso butter, and it was amazing. It  was specked by a crispy quinoa that played up the flavor and texture theme more than anything that preceded it. It was simply amazing. It made it hard to appreciate the wonderful pork sitting next to it. Of course, roasted sprouts are always delicious, but Brussel sprouts coleslaw was a surprising and delicious addition.

Before dessert, the chef brought over a small snack plate with a young manchego cheese, roasted pecans and some unusual grapes and offered us some coffee. Gail thought even the decaf coffee was remarkably good. The standouts with dessert were the fresh figs and the apple mille feuille, which tasted like the yummy goo along the edges of an apple pie.



Overall, this was an excellent meal in a lovely place, prepared and served by people who made us feel very welcome and cared for. We will be back.