Yesterday, when I was at the gym. It was there while I was warming up on the treadmill. At the same time I was flipping through the channels on the little television, in front of me. Just about every channel had some commercial, infomercial, or discussion about living a better life through better physical or mental health.

Last Sunday, at church, our pastor proudly announced, during his sermon that he had lost 25 pounds last year. His goal for 2010 was to get in even better physical health.

It seems like anytime that I get concerned about out healthcare insurance is when there is a need to go to the doctor. This was true, last week, when I made a visit to my dentist.

After he did his drilling, flicking and poking, he sets me up in the dental chair. He moves to a more comfortable chair in front of me. Then we have our usually catch up talk for a few minutes before I leave. This time we started talking about health insurance and the changes that are coming up about next year?

He said that he is seeing quite a few people taking care of needed dental work, now. They are afraid that their benefits will be reduced to the point of not being able to get the needed dental work done.

Yesterday, I was walking out of the local grocery store, the headline of the local newspaper jumped out at me. It read, “The Great Recession Is Over.” My first thought was that it was a cruel trick.

Then I started asking myself, “Is The Great Recession really over?” Jobs are still tight. Milk and other staples have gone up in the past month. Big box store are worried that this Christmas’ sale will be at record lows.

Friday the stock market dropped almost 250 in both the New York and Dow Jones stock exchanges. This is in spite of good financial news for the week.

Nothing can bring a big pro football lineman to his knees faster than a toothache. The pain shoots up from the tooth through the jaw bone and consumers that whole side of one’s face. The brain becomes focuses on only one thing. That is stopping the pain.

Words like excruciating, agonizing, harrowing, racking, tormenting, torturing, torturous have all been used to describe when that protective shell on a tooth gets a hole, whether by decay or other means. Then a nerve becomes irritated. The human mind and body becomes focused only on one thing, STOPPING the PAIN!!

Labor Day weekend is here. This is the last great of the Summer. I don’t know how you are ending your weekend, I am ending mine with a barabque. Yes, a family barabque with my family, and we are going to cook up something special.

The first step is get a recipe of something we never cooked before. We chose a barabque sauce that we saw being make on the Food Network by Sunny Anderson. I noticed that we did not have some of the spices needed. I put them on the shopping list and headed off to the store and pick them up.

Now I want you to note that I did not just go to the grocery store to buy just spices. The trip I took was my weekly shopping, along with some recon. I am constantly adding product, price and store to a database that I keep.

When I went to the fresh produce section and saw the that ginder was $2.48 for a decent size root. I nearly had a heart attack. I know it has been a while since I have bought ginger root, but I do not remember it being so expensive.

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Well I thought I would go over to the spice section. There I could be a small container of ginger. I could not believe my eyes, a little 8 ounce bottle of ground ginger was even more. It was$2.89. At that point I thinking Wal Mart had just mispriced their ginger.

I shifted gears to finish getting the other items I was going to get while I was there. I left Wal Mart and headed over to another grocery store that was on my way home. From knowing there prices, I didn’t really expect a whole lost less, but I want to check on the price of ginger. I was thinking that maybe I should invest in ginger and not gold.

The other store was Albertson’s. They wanted $4.99 for the same 8 ounces that was the same bottle Wal Mart wanted $2.89.  The fresh ginger root was a little bigger at the price of $2.48. Now Winco sell the same 8 ounce bottle of ginger for $2.02.

Later that day, I went online to see is there is some kind of price fixing being done on ginger powder and ginger root. I had forgotten how ginger has been used for centuries as a medicine. After doing some research, I found that I have been ignorant to the value and price of ginger root and all of it’s processed forms.  14 ounces of ginger root on Amazon sells for $8.90.

Bottom-line: Ginger is more than a nice spice to put in barabque sauce. It does have some health benefits. However, if I am going to use ginger in anything. The cost of whatever I am going to be making is going to cost a bit more.

Last week, I was out doing some recon, when I got a 911 call from my wife. She was home with some stomach flu. She called me to bring home some antidiarrheal medicine. I quickly headed for the local chain drug store.

It had been a while since I bought any stomach flu – diarrhea type medicine.  Like usual I quickly noticed the difference between a name brand and generic. The name brand was $6.99 while the generic was $5.99 for16 fluid ounces.

Later that day, I was in a local chain grocery store. I decided to make a quick check their prices on Pepto-Bismol and that stores generic brand.

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I expected a difference in the price between the two, but I was not ready to see such a large difference. Pepto-Bismol was being sold for $8.39 while the stores generic was $4.89. Almost $4 difference!!!

The chain drug store sold Pepto-Bismol for$5.99 while the chain grocery store sold the same bottle $8.39. See it all depends on where you shop, here it was $2.40 difference from one store to another.