EZEtoGRU

Anyone with plans to travel to Porto Alegre Brazil in the next six months should rethink their plans.  Parts of the city are under water after historic rain and flooding during the last few weeks.  Hundreds dead or missing and over half a million displaced from their homes.  Flood waters may take a month to recede and  POA airport is under water and closed.  Some estimates are that the airport may not re-open until September.  
reuters.com
WWW.REUTERS.COM  
Airport terminal completely flooded:
 

Anyone with plans to travel to Porto Alegre Brazil in the next six months should rethink their plans.  Parts of the city are under water after historic rain and flooding during the last few weeks.  Hundreds dead or missing and over half a million displaced from their homes.  Flood waters may take a month to recede and  POA airport is under water and closed.  Some estimates are that the airport may not re-open until September.  
reuters.com
WWW.REUTERS.COM  
Airport terminal completely flooded:
 

Anyone with plans to travel to Porto Alegre Brazil in the next six months should rethink their plans.  Parts of the city are under water after historic rain and flooding during the last few weeks.  Hundreds dead or missing and over half a million displaced from their homes.  Flood waters may take a month to recede and  POA airport is under water and closed.  Some estimates are that the airport may not re-open until September.  
reuters.com
WWW.REUTERS.COM  
Airport terminal completely flooded:
 

Sorry BD, while I agree on your estimation that dancer preferences are diverse and work themselves out by whether or not they make money, I disagree about liquor consumption.  The bartenders at Johnson’s are busy serving men drinks! And I’ve been in plenty of clubs where some bachelorette parties are drinking and others are simply being tourists for the dancers - not drinking at all either because they’ve drunk in the limo or they don’t want to pay gay bar drink prices or who knows why… But it’s just factually incorrect that women drink and “us older guys don’t.”  That is definitely projection of your perception.  

That is fair - we did lose fiscal discipline; but that has been the case for many years (starting in 2001, to be honest.) So what changed in the past 3 to 4 years to spark inflation? The short answer is Covid and various conflicts. 

Inflation cooled slightly again in April.  As I posted before, its going to be slow-going now to get from 3.4% to the 2% target.  That's just how it works.  Were doing quite well having gone from the peak of 9% to the current level.  It may take a year or more to get from the current level to 2%. 

Same old posters pushing the same old nonsense. Sheesh…it’s like a broken record. The reality is that huge headway has been made on the inflation front.  The rest will be slow-going. 
 
Anyone that thinks the economic consequences of COVID are over with is clueless about what’s gone on.   Supply chain problems continue in a big way. Millions left the workforce either by choice or cause they died of COVID. Many places are still not fully staffed.  Think hotels, restaurants, retail stores, etc. Even factories continue to be understaffed. Nearly every place I drive by here in Michigan still has “Now Hiring” signs out. 
 
When there is a shortage of workers, wages go up. Our local Burger King is paying $18/hr for full time workers and $16/hr for part time. This is much higher than the state-mandated minimum wage.  It’s just what they have to pay to get applicants. Otherwise, prospective employees feel it’s not worth their time. 
 
We are still feeling the economic fallout from COVID…so making that final move down to 2% inflation will be slow-going. 
don’t expect restaurant prices to fall as long as we continue to have a worker shortage in our country. 

Have you been to a Broadway show or in an airplane lately?  
People have turned into couthless animals since COVID hit.

Inflation cooled slightly again in April.  As I posted before, its going to be slow-going now to get from 3.4% to the 2% target.  That's just how it works.  Were doing quite well having gone from the peak of 9% to the current level.  It may take a year or more to get from the current level to 2%. 

Went again today, Saturday.  Got there around 4:40pm.  Lots of providers.  Chatted with a few and can confirm that it seems that the going rate is 50 euro.

I decided to go with the same guy as yesterday.  His name is Alfredo, not Alberto.  Nice guy.  
I'm hooked.  Gotta get back to Barcelona soon.

Propaganda you say. Wall Steet analysts are saying it. The Federal Reserve is saying it. Large retailers are saying it. Fortune, Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal are saying it. Of course nobody is saying that ALL of inflation is caused by price increases - but there is no doubt greedflation is a thing and a large contributor. 

https://fortune.com/2024/01/20/inflation-greedflation-consumer-price-index-producer-price-index-corporate-profit/

I have a vacay place in Rio and flew down here for the free Madonna concert. 
I was here for the 100 Year Anniversary Celebration of The Copacabana Palace. That resulted in over 200 arrests of pickpockets and assaulters in the area. 
The Madonna show, as mentioned, is also outside The Palace. 
Here’s hoping it goes on without (too much of) a hitch!
 

You got scammed dude, it happens to the best of us. Move on and don’t make the same mistake again. Sorry he got one over on you. It sucks. 

Just a moment...
BROADWAYDIRECT.COM  

Kosher-adjacent?

I do agree with this.  I really enjoy some international foods (ie Indian, Thai, Mexican) that use spices we are not accustomed to in traditional US cuisine as long as the level of heat is not too high.  However, food that is overly hot is not appealing to me.  Some foods are spiced so overly hot that the flavor of the dish gets lost in the heat.  Only my opinion of course.  
To me, there are some hot sauces and chili that greatly enhance the heat level without actually contributing much to the foods flavor.  
 

Here's another example of the spicy food conundrum.  I'm currently on a Delta flight back to Michigan.  Along with the main course, a small salad was also on the tray for my lunch.  They provided a tiny bottle of Spicy Tomato/Chili salad dressing to pour on top.  No non-spicy alternative was available.  I'm not picky about salad dressings.  I can eat French/Ranch/Thousand Island/Blue Cheese/Oil & Vinegar/Many others....but I don't want spicy dressing on my salad.  I did use the dressing on the salad but frankly I do not desire my salad to be spicy.  Very irritating.

I was at a nice Jewish Deli today in the downtown area of Ft.  Lauderdale. It’s called The Top Hat. I’ve been multiple times in the past and have always enjoyed it. Today I had the Matzo Ball Soup (Excellent!)  and a nosh plate of Mac N Cheese. Nothing on the menu suggested the Mac N Cheese would be served with some spicy kick to it…and being a Jewish Deli I certainly didn’t expect it. But it was spicy. 
 
Having been raised in the Midwest in the 60s,  spicy foods really weren’t part of our regular diet.  Mac N Cheese certainly was never spicy. 
 
I guess I got a nostalgic thinking about how our cuisine is evolving in the US. We can’t expect standard American fare (think Mac N Cheese, Meatloaf, Pot Pie) to be made in a tradition way anymore. 
So many things are served spicy now. Everyone serves hot chicken now. So many salty snacks have red hot versions.  There’s a gazillion different brands of hot sauce at the grocery store. 
 
Im sure this is all a consequence of more international influence on our cuisine…particularly from Asia and Mexico. Of course nothing stays static. There is always evolution and I really do enjoy the much wider variety of foods  we have available to us now compared to the 1960s. But sometimes you just want to have a traditional Mac and Cheese like mom used to make. It’s getting harder and harder to find😢. 
 
By the way, I do recommend The Top Hat. Most of the food is solid there. I’ll go back there again and again.  Just not for the Mac N Cheese.
Deli | Top Hat Deli | Fort Lauderdale
WWW.TOPHATFTL.COM Top Hat Deli is modern deli by be nice restaurant group. Located in Fort Lauderdale, FL.  

That may well be...but I do know that plenty of Jewish deli restaurants offer Mac & Cheese.  

Really?  I've been to many Jewish Deli Restaurants that offered Mac & Cheese...useually as a side dish.

Personally,
Food can be flavorful and have some spiciness, without being so hot that my sense of taste is burned off my tongue…. 
 
I also try my best to avoid extremely spicy food, but not because I don’t like it, but because of my philosophy on spicy food:
If it’s hot going IN, it’s going to be just at HOT coming OUT 🔥🚽

I do agree with this.  I really enjoy some international foods (ie Indian, Thai, Mexican) that use spices we are not accustomed to in traditional US cuisine as long as the level of heat is not too high.  However, food that is overly hot is not appealing to me.  Some foods are spiced so overly hot that the flavor of the dish gets lost in the heat.  Only my opinion of course.  
To me, there are some hot sauces and chili that greatly enhance the heat level without actually contributing much to the foods flavor.  
 

The cynic in me says that on a US Legacy 3 airline I would need to taste test the dressing before taking their word that it was in fact 'spicy'. One hot chilli in the room when they made it, sure, a lot, or actually any heat in the dressing, maybe not! (And as an aside, to me spicy and hot are not the same thing, there are combinations of aromatic spices that flavour foods that aren't in the least bit hot. Of course there are some cuisines where the two go together, Sichuan being one,)

This is an outrageous slander of the great British culinary tradition.
Actually, no it's not. It is, however, slightly unfair to say that the idea of food actually tasting like something had completely passed the country by. Curry houses have been popular in the UK for decades, and chicken tikka masala is called a national dish of the country. I haven't been there for years (sorry Jamie) but there was, and perhaps still is, much stodge on offer.

Honestly, the first time I was really conscious of this was when I started habitually watching Wendy Williams the last few years of her show. No matter what food she was talking about, there was some kind of mention of her adding hot sauce to it.
 
I have never been able to tolerate anything more than the slightest bit of spice although there are times while I don't even mind a dish being slightly too spicy just because I'm in the mood to have something out of the ordinary.
and when Stop & Shop was having a clearance on all sort of stuff in January, I got a couple of bags barbecue potato chips for $.67 apiece (full size) and basically ate each one in three sittings. Not that that is particularly spicy, but that's about as hot as I usually like to go. 
 
but just reading articles and watching TV shows the last few years I have seen how hotter, spicier foods have become much more common.