I stopped buying margarine when I finally managed to persuade Himself that butter would not take him to an early grave with heart disease. I haven't eaten the stuff myself since I was a child, and my parents bought it because it was cheap.

I must confess that it took me way to long to learn that, with respect to food, "both good and cheap" typically applies only to what's in season where you live, if you're lucky.

Yesterday I went out to Canadian Tire and bought myself a Food Saver vacuum-sealer. This is a gadget that vacuum-packs food for storage in heat-sealed plastic bags. As soon as I brought it home, I set it up in the kitchen and promptly packed up two trays of chicken legs bought on special the day before. This task normally takes a great deal of fiddling around with clingfilm, zipper bags and masking tape, with mediocre results. With the Food Saver, time on task was cut by at least half, with much less accompanying mess. The resulting packages look just like the vacuum-sealed items in the butcher's freezer, and I expect them to be as resistant to damage. Himself tells me that vacuum-sealers are very popular with "preppers" -- the people who think they can survive the Zombie Apocalypse if they only pack away enough freeze-dried soup mix in their basements. I hope the Food Saver is the only thing we have in common ...

All this was brought on by the discovery of a package of chicken parts damaged by freezer burn. I remember that package, an awkward thing of corners and odd angles, and it was a damnable nuisance to wrap. I hope that's my last freezer-burned item. It would also be nice to reduce our holdings of baggies and clingfilm, which I loathe because it can't be recycled and it always twists into useless clumps.