I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

The Saga of the Scale and a Tomato Update

As I have mentioned before, my spouse is on a meal plan to control his weight.  This is a system that has worked incredibly well for him, so even though he is now in a very healthy weight range, he continues to generally follow a meal plan and counts calories.  That would drive me crazy, but it appeals to his sense of order I think, and really, it is whatever works for you.  Now that he’s expanded beyond his original meal plan (his maintaining calorie count per day is about 800 more calories than the original meal plan) he frequently makes choices and decisions about the different fresh foods we have in the house and decides how much to eat.   The problem, for him, is that those types of foods don’t necessarily come with labels or easy to determine portions.  He can determine the caloric content from research, if he knows the amount of ounces he’s eating, but that isn’t always apparent.

So I decided to do something to reward him for all his progress and help him in the future.  We received a $50 gift card for Christmas to Walmart, and I put it away until something inspired me for its use.  After some deliberation, I decided that instead of spending it on groceries or something sensible like that, I would get my spouse a food scale so he can weigh his food and know the ounces he eats.  Again, something that would drive me crazy but it makes him happy.  When I looked at Walmart’s online site, I found what looked like a great idea - a scale that actually has information about a number of common food items including calorie content, fat content, and other facts, stored inside.  So, for example, when you weigh an apple, it won’t just tell you the weight, it will tell you the calories in that particular apple.  This would save my spouse time of looking things up, and also make it possible to weigh portions after cooking so he eats the number of ounces of foods that he wants to eat.

So in July I ordered the scale.   And there’s where the mishaps began.  Walmart only has food scales available online (not in store) so I ordered it from the online site and selected “Ship-To-Store” so I wouldn’t have to pay shipping.  This is a slow method but I was okay with that.  In a few weeks, I got an email that the scale was ready to pick up, so I went in to do so.  So far so good, and I got the scale and brought it home.

But it didn’t work.  Once the battery was installed, it just said “Please Wait” and then shut itself off after a few minutes.

Well, okay then.  I brought the scale back to the store and returned it.  Say what you’d like about Walmart, the one thing I love is that returns are super easy.  They took the scale back, no problem, and I chose to have a gift card issued in return.  That way, I could just order another scale online and use the gift card to pay.  And I went home, and a few days later I did just that.   By then it was the beginning of August.  I had originally had this crazy idea that I could use the scale to weigh our tomato harvest, but that wasn’t quite working out as I planned.  But, eventually, we’d have a scale and I could weigh some tomatoes, right?

Not quite.  Over the past weekend, I got an email that my order was ready to pick up.  So last night I went in and got my brand new scale.  I brought it home, and this time, it worked!  Hurrah!

Or… not.  It technically works, as in you can turn it on and it responds, but it stinks.  It is SUPER slow to measure anything, and it isn’t even consistent in its measurements.  So, basically, it is useless.  So back to the store with it, this time for a complete refund, and we’ll do some research into a different food scale.  Maybe without all the bells and whistles this one promised, but hey, if it actually measures, that will be a bonus.

As for my tomatoes, I have harvested 51 Roma tomatoes and 10 beefsteak ones as of this morning.  I haven’t been able to weigh them, but I know that the Roma plant has more than paid for our initial $6 investment in them both, and then some.  I weighed a few Roma tomatoes at Meijer to get an idea on what they weigh, and I got about 3-4 tomatoes to a pound.  If that is true of mine, I have harvested between 12 and 17 lbs of Roma tomatoes.  Since Romas were $1.88/lb at Meijer this week, that would be at least $22 worth of tomatoes at that price.  The beefsteaks I harvested were much more variable in size than the Romas, so I am not going to guess at the weight of those other than I know I have harvested at least a few pounds of beefsteaks, more than paying for the initial $3 investment in the plant.

I can’t quite equate the cost of tomatoes with what my plants have saved me as far as spending money goes, because when I have a lot of tomatoes at once, I tend to use them as the vegetable portion of our dinner instead of something else like broccoli or green beans or asparagus.  So the tomatoes I harvest aren’t always replacing tomatoes I would buy.  But they are being consumed, and we are using them instead of foods we would otherwise buy at the store.  And those other vegetables have costs too that I am saving by using what we’ve grown instead.

Next year, I’ll actually have a food scale so I can measure our crops.  I hope.  ;)  And I am planning to expand to a few more veggies out along our back porch.  Right now there are flowers there that were put in by the previous owners, but they are going to be sacrificed to crops.  The flowers might be prettier, but I’m allergic to most flower pollen anyway.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!