Size matters, especially when it comes to your food bill
Have you been shopping lately? It’s a jungle out there. Prices for meat, fish, produce and other essentials continue to rise. Judicious bargain-hunting is a must if you are watching your dollars.
So it’s no surprise that Ilaisaane Taliauli is a familiar face at Costco these days. She’s the mother of seven youngsters, five of whom play prep football. Feeding them all is nearly a full-time task.
The Millbrae mom and her husband, Lio, typically spend between $500 and $600 per week loading up on groceries, even more in the summertime, said Ilaisaane last week.
“I shop a lot at Smart & Final too,” she offered. The five older boys — twins Raymond and Salio, Uluakinofo, Michael and Joe — are big fellows, all well over 200 pounds apiece and ranging all the way up to a whopping 300-plus. They are all student-athletes at St. Francis High School in Mountain View. The two younger ones are not of high school age.
Longtime observers cannot recall a similar situation in which five brothers play the same sport at the same high school at the same time on the Peninsula (one on the freshman team, one on the junior varsity and the others on the varsity). It’s believed to be a first in the area.
Their mother said she’s been driving them to and from school, but the family is saving up to buy another car so that the older boys can handle that chore themselves. Can’t blame her.
That’s a rough daily commute into the very heart of traffic-clogged Silicon Valley. Wouldn’t be a shock if mom had plenty of snacks available on those trips. After all, her burly crew is still growing — and, more than likely, hungry.
Tapeworm alert
It’s a habit that’s tough to break. You rise gingerly in the morning, brush your teeth, fire up your coffee and, of course, check your email. It’s what you do.
Sometimes, you can be rewarded with a morsel of totally unexpected information that has come right of the blue. WebMD provided such a gem recently.
That popular electronic entity, always eager to engage its curious readership, pulsed out a piece that raised an eyebrow or two: “Tapeworms: What you need to know.” It wasn’t pretty.
Yes, there’s nothing quite like expanding your medical knowledge of tapeworms before you chow down on your eggs, toast and hash browns.
Friendly Acres
For those shopping for a home on the Peninsula these days, there might be nothing more disheartening than learning about what real estate prices were like in distant decades past.
We give you this recovered blurb from one of the area’s defunct newspapers, circa 70 years ago:
New three-bedroom homes were on the market in Friendly Acres (located in southeast Redwood City) for the princely sum of $10,500, with affordable terms of $2,600 down and $56.50 per month.
Geez, and you thought the tapeworm warning was a downer …
Squirrel assault
Ever wonder why police can become jaded after awhile?
Here’s an example: A published blotter item indicated that a fretting individual recently called the Belmont cops because a squirrel had scratched a child at a birthday party. What are the perplexed gendarmes supposed to do? Get a warrant? Issue an allpoints bulletin? Order a lineup of the usual suspects? Didn’t think so.