Sorry for having taken so long to reply - I only post from terminals that are completely anonymous.
Yes, I used sodium acetate. Unlike ZnCl2, this is very easy to make anhydrous. And I agree that the workup is the most challenging part. I did not have a very good heating setup the last time I did this - the acetic anhydride was very slow to distill off. And at the end I got a lot of p2p coming over with it. It would have been helpful to use a fractionating column.
I dreamed yet another Grignard, a la the procedure on Rhodium's page. BTW, thanks for the helpful advice, but my trouble was NEVER with getting the Grignard to form. In fact, the first time I dreamed this, it formed so merrily that benzyl chloride and THF squirted out of the condensor and all over the place. (using "3x the molar quantity of ether or THF" is *terrible* advice; this is far too little solvent.) My trouble has always been with the ZnCl2. After this last experience (I heated the stuff to like 200 C under vacuum for a good 20 minutes and it *still* had fucking water in it. I think perhaps you have to buy anhydrous ZnCl2, or make it by gassing a suspension of granulated zinc metal in THF with anhydrous HCl.
I dimly recall some procedure where you just use the Grignard, without converting to the organo Zn or Cd compound, and react it with ethyl acetate or acetonitrile. Anybody hear of such a procedure? Even if I gotta do a Collins oxidation on p2p ol, it might be worth it - I love the alchemical magic of the Grignard!
I think my next dream is going to be via benzaldehyde & nitroethane. There's a one pot procedure in "Organic Syntheses" for o-methoxy p2p from the benzaldehyde where the aldehyde, the nitrocompound, and n-butyl amine are reacted together in toluene, then the nitropropene reduced in toluene without isolation with Fe/Hcl. If you folks would like me to post this, say so and I will.
"On that Tower of Babel they knew what they were after."
P.Smith