Homesteading the East Bay

Crazy.....

2009-11-18T03:03:00.000-08:00

So, I guess it’s come to this. Its 3:00AM and I’m posting something. I don’t have anything at all to write about. Quite the contrary. But I’m so done sharing a car, and I think the only way DH will take the BART enough times to realize he’s done, too, is if I go to bed at 4 or 5 AM and he therefore feels bad about waking me for work. Fortunately, I don’t have to even show up for work tomorrow, all the people who would miss me will be away from the office. Did you hear me? Done. I’m not evil, its just DH has these meetings until 9:15pm, and I get so done with work by about 8:30pm that my poor co-workers have to witness the return of self-frenchbraids. It would be amazing if I could hop in my high-mpg vehicle and escort myself home at, oh, about 7:00pm, when I’m done but not yet crazy. DH has so far seemed to enjoy crazy, hey, he gets a ride home; but tomorrow maybe he’ll get a little taste and understand. Yes, I know, it’s not frugal, but I’m seriously winging out over here. Its been two months since I gave up any personal space or freedom I may have once enjoyed. That's the number of months since I drove to or from work by myself, since I went grocery shopping alone, since I had control of the remote, since I got to spend Saturday mornings watching the Food Network instead of playing it in my head while I cooked and cleaned, and its a bit of a transition for me. I miss old me a fair bit right now. I could really do with a run. Too bad the car situation limits me to exactly 0 early morning state-park runs a week. UGH! I hate being so bitter. That's why I'm up at 3am. I'm protesting being bitter. And lobbying for a "new" car.

The Wonderful, Versatile, and Above All Inexpensive Bean

2009-11-13T10:26:00.001-08:00

There’s a certain stigma associated with beans. People who have been dirt poor look back on those days and say things like, “yeah, we were dirt poor, we lived on beans and rice!” or worse, “we were poor, but not so poor we had to live on beans and rice.” People who aren’t vegetarians tend to look down on beans as a “meat substitute.” We’ve all either been the kids or had to put up with the kids singing the ditty, “beans, beans, the miracle fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot.” (Why do we lose our enjoyment with such ditties as we age, anyway, we toot more, we should appreciate it more! Just saying…) On top of all this, to really get the economic benefits of beans, you should buy the dry kind, instead of the canned variety, and many people think making a pot of beans is simply too challenging.

I suggest that it’s time we reevaluate our position with regards to beans. Yes, they are cheap. Hallelujah, don’t we need some cheap sources of tasty protein? Yes, vegetarians use them as a “meat substitute,” but can’t we appreciate them for what they are instead of comparing them to a nice filet mignon? There may be some truth to that children’s ditty, but that’s only because beans are high in fiber and sudden onslaughts of fiber to a weakened digestive system tend to do that (okay, there’s more to the story, but we’ll pretend that’s the whole truth for now). Besides, fiber is good for you, get used to it.

The point I’d like to address today is how EASY it is to make dried beans into tasty food. You may need to invest up to a full half hour of your time into making them the first time, but once you get the hang of it, it will be more like 15 minutes total. Can you invest 15 minutes a month into having a wholesome, fiber rich, protein rich, virtually fat-free, incredibly inexpensive food on hand? I can. Here’s the steps, with the amount of time invested:

Step 1: 5 Min. I prefer to do this on Friday night before brushing my teeth for bed.
Open bag of dry beans, any type except lentils, which are a fast-cooking food. Pour said bag into a bowl. Add water. Swirl around with your clean fingers. Pick out anything that doesn’t look quite right: a particularly off-color bean, a small rock, anything that doesn’t look like good eats. Drain off water. Repeat the swirling and picking one or two times. After you’ve done a batch or two, you’ll figure out whether you need more attention at this step or if you can virtually skip it – some areas get more rocks and bad beans in their bags than others. Cover the beans to about twice their depth in water, cover with a plate or towel, and stick it on the counter-top. While we’re in the kitchen and since we’ve only used about 4 minutes of our allotted 5 min, why not find a decent dutch oven or stock pot that can hold a gallon or so of water (and has a lid) and put it on the counter next to the beans. Now go brush your teeth, you dirty person!

Step 2: 5 min. I prefer to multitask and do this Saturday morning while breakfast is cooking.
Drain the water off the beans, and since we’re all fresh, why not wash them one more time. Dump the beans into the cooking pot, fill it with water, add a healthy pinch (or chunk, if your salt is like mine) of salt. Put on the stove on high. Stir it occasionally (after unloading the dishwasher or setting up the coffee maker or making a martini, hey, we don’t judge here) until it comes to a decent boil. Reduce heat to grandma-low, cover, and walk away. Go eat some breakfast, read in the garden, do some errands, whatever you like to do on a Saturday morning. Check on the pot when you go back into the kitchen, and maybe give it a stir every so often. This is something you mostly want to be around for the first time you make beans – there’s nothing quite like finding out your stove is remarkably different from mine and that “grandma-low” wouldn’t cook beans in a year or that “grandma-low” turns your beans into an incredibly stinky burnt mass of nastiness while you’re at soccer practice (or the bar, again, not judging, but maybe you should at least wait until after 2pm!).

Step 3: 5 min. This usually happens Saturday afternoon after lunch.
When you can easily mash a bean against the side of the pot with a spoon, they are tender enough. First, label some quart-sized freezer bags “Date, 2 c black beans.” Ladle some beans into a 2-c mason jar (or a pint glass, anything will do). I try not to include much cooking liquid, but I’m not too careful about it. After all, we’ve got a pound of beans to get through in five minutes, we should try to move fast. Open a quart freezer bag, invert it over the mouth of the jar, and dump the beans into the bag. Press out air, seal, put in freezer. Repeat until you are done.

Yay! Now we have several bags of incredibly cheap protein in the freezer! Now how do we use them?

Southwestern lime style: Pull a bag of beans (I prefer black beans for this) from the freezer. Empty into microwave-safe bowl. Add hot sauce, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and lime juice. Microwave on high for a few minutes. Stir, taste, adjust seasoning, and microwave again until hot and tasty. Serve with rice and tacos, on tortillas with lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes, or all by themselves in a bowl with a little sour cream and black pepper. Yum!

Bean patties: When you want something a little more hearty, combine in a bowl some chopped onion (1/2 c), some bread crumbs (1/2 c), an egg, a couple tablespoons sour cream, buttermilk, or mayo, and spices (1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp paprika, 2 tbsp chopped jalapeno, 2 tbsp dried cilantro; or go Indian with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, chilis, and turmeric, or go, well, anywhere you want, its your spice rack!). Put the beans in a colander and rinse until they are thawed. Add beans and maybe a can (or cup and a half) of corn. Mash with a fork until you have a decent paste going. Form into patties, and fry in a little oil over medium heat about 4 min a side until cooked all the way through. Serve with a sauce made from mayo mixed with hot sauce. Yum!

Bean stew, soup, etc: For a super-easy bean stew, combine frozen bags of various beans in a soup pot with some canned tomatoes with chilis, some corn, a few beef bullion cubes, and enough water to cover. Add whatever spices make you happy. When it’s all nice and hot, taste test and add beef bullion until its salty enough. You can puree for a nice smooth soup, or serve chunky with lots of grated cheddar. Alternatively, if you enjoy this sort of thing, peel and dice up a couple of carrots, some celery, and an onion, and sauté with some minced garlic. Add in diced uncooked chicken, and sauté until browned. Add water and chicken bullion, a few tbsp rice, and a package of frozen beans. Simmer until rice is soft and enjoy!

Beans and rice: I’d prefer to not even go here…. But I feel I must. Saute a chopped onion, some celery, a chopped bell pepper, and some Cajun sausage in a little oil in a stock pot until the veggies are tender. Add a couple packages frozen beans, enough water to cover, some hot sauce and Cajun seasonings, and simmer. Cook some rice according to package directions. Put rice in a bowl. Top with beans. Tell family, “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” It’s actually pretty tasty, for all my whining about it.

Share your recipes in the comments section – there are so many good ways to use beans that I didn’t even mention: chili beans, baked beans, refried beans, stir fries, etc!

Well, while I hope I’ve convinced you that dry beans are an excellently easy way to lower your food bill, I realize that I could’ve emphasized their nutritional greatness a bit more. Do your own research, and I’m sure you’ll be a convert soon, at least to the beans, if not the rice!

Good Intentions.....

2009-11-11T03:51:00.000-08:00

Ugh. I had such good intentions for this blog. For my life, as well, I might add. However, I’m at the breaking point. There has not been much time that DH has been home that has not been accompanied by accommodating DH’s schedule (the carpooling). Before DH, I worked long, hard, and efficient during the week. Now that he’s back, we work long, hard, inefficient, and either he steals the car both days of the weekend to go in to work or I waste 3-5 hrs of my time driving him to, waiting for him to get done with, and picking him up from work. Feel sorry for me! My weekends are ruined! Either I get no days off, or I wallow in guilt about leaving DH to take the BART and still get no days off. I miss my once-in-a-blue-moon (which is next month, by the way) trips to LA. I miss early morning fishing. I miss running in my favorite state park. I actually miss living on an impossible monetary budget, compared to impossibly budgeting my time. I say, to DH, I will buy you a “new” car. I will get us a new place. Here are the leads, here are the addresses, here are the phone numbers, and here are the notes (I already called the phone numbers). I am met by resistance and chocolates on every front. He honestly thinks chocolates will make everything better. Since I never got chocolates before, I want to reward this chocolate-giving behavior with praise and treats. Seriously, though, he can’t surprise me with chocolates when we have only one car, and I can’t provide him with decent meals on even the most lavish of budgets when I can’t freaking get to a grocery store because he has the car all weekend. I’ve gained 5 lbs already from my lack of state-park-running. The kitchen is a disaster – even I won’t cook in it (and my standards are low, folks). I can’t work in my living room, because piles of laundry in front of my face gives me a nervous twitch. Not because piles of laundry are bad, mind you, but piles that have intruded into your living room and have encroached upon every available surface are clearly of demonic origin. I rant too much. I hope DH doesn’t read this. I hope he does and turns chocolate giving into a car-finding sport. I don’t even know what I hope anymore except that nice little house-elves that mend shoes, wash dishes, do laundry, and most of all repair cars visit us soon. We have lots of fresh milk in the fridge, help yourselves! (Oh, and btw, the image I wanted to post above is about the only image I’ve created with Excel lately. Unfortunately, I'm too exhausted (its 3AM here!!), and various programs are not cooperating, so you do not get to see said image. The Excel tutorial has been placed on hold almost indefinitely at this point. I hope you understand.)

How to Make Your Own “Intensive Spending Tracking” System Using Excel: The Budget Sheet

2009-10-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

This post is part two in a series on using Excel to track every penny you spend without wasting your entire life away with a calculator, pen, and paper. This post focuses on building the “Budget” sheet of your tracking workbook. This series is designed for the person who has little-to-no clue how to use Excel, and hopefully makes the process simple and painless.

Budget Sheet: Overview
This sheet is the plan of attack – it lists only what we have and what we plan to do with it. We list our sources of income, and the sheet calculates our total combined income. We list our fixed monthly expenses with their amounts. We list our less-frequent expenses, with their annual frequency and amounts, and the sheet calculates the amount that must be set aside monthly to cover those once or twice a year expenses. We list our variable expenses, preferably in order of importance, and the amount we can afford to spend on them. The sheet calculates how much we can spend on each variable expense weekly, which makes it easier to plan our shopping and outings. The sheet also calculates the total monthly expenditures and subtracts that from our total income, making it easy to see how changing how much we spend on variable accounts effects how much we can save or pay towards debt each month.

Income
Start at the top of our Excel sheet. Type “INCOME” in one cell (let’s say A1). Under that, type in the following column headings: Source (A2), Amount (B2), Times per year (C2), and Monthly Amount (D2). Fill in the columns: DH Job (A3), 1200 (B3), 12 (C3); DW Job (A4), 2400 (B4), 6(C4).

Now comes the first fun part: In D3 (under Monthly Amount) type: “=B3*C3/12” (without the quotations, they are there to delineate what goes in the cell). We highlight cells D3 and D4, hold down the CTRL key and press d (CTRL+d). This automatically calculates that DW’s monthly income is 1200, which should now show up in the D4 cell. If we had more sources of income, the method would be the same, you’d just highlight D3, D4, D5, etc. before hitting CTRL+d.
Then we move over a few cells, let’s say to E2, and type “TOTAL MONTHLY INCOME.” We go down a cell (E3), and type “=sum(“ then (without pressing enter!) we highlight the cells that show the monthly income, for us D3 and D4, then type “)” and hit enter. This cell should now show “2400,” as it’s automatically calculated the total income from all sources.

Fixed Monthly Expenses
Move down a few cells from our Income section. For us, we’re at about A6. Here we type in “FIXED MONTHLY EXPENSES.” Under that cell, we type in new column headings: Expense (A7), and Amount (B7). Then we enter each of our set monthly bills: Rent (A8), 895 (B8); Comcast (A9), 67 (B9); Loan 1 (A10), 150 (B10); Loan 2 (A11), 200 (B11), etc. (We actually add a total for this set of expenses like we do for income, but it’s not essential and not something we use very often.)

Fixed Less-than-monthly Expenses
We move down a few cells from our Fixed Monthly Expenses section, for us, about A18. Here we type in, because we are so very creative with our wording, “Other Fixed Expenses, Calculated Monthly.” Yes, I know, you’re astounded by our creativity. Under that cell, we again type in new column headings: Expense (A19), Amount (B19), Times per year (C19), and Amount per Month (D19). We enter our less-than-monthly bills: Car 1 Insurance (A20), 300 (B20), 2 (C20); Car 2 insurance (A21), 600 (B21), 1 (C21); Car 1 Parking (A22), 300 (B22), 3 (C22); etc. Now for the next fun part: In cell D20, we type “=B20*C20/12” (again without the quotes). Highlight D20, D21, D22, etc., then hit CTRL+d, and we have automatically calculated how much we need to account for monthly for each annual, biannual, etc. expense.

Variable Monthly Expenses
We move down a few cells from our Fixed Less-Than-Monthly section, for us, about A24, and type in “Variable Monthly Expenses.” Yes, the creativity is flowing today! Under this, we type in new column headings: Expense (A25), and Amount (B25). Here’s where you really need the rest of the family to help prevent large gatherings involving pitchforks and torches, because you’re about to decide how much goes to each of several accounts that some will think are vital and other will think are useless (Clothes, Laundry, Food… some people just don’t understand the value of beans and rice!). Our expenses for this section are: Gas for Car 1, Gas for Car 2, Food, Laundry, General Upkeep, Garden, Dinners Out, Random Fun Stuff Together, DH Allowance, DW Allowance. See, this is where family meetings are essential – I wouldn’t have guessed DH would agree to fund my gardening habit, and really wouldn’t have guessed that we could both agree that new clothes aren’t essential any time in the near future.

Total Expenditures and Savings / Debt Payment
Now we go back up to the top of the sheet, where we calculated our Total Monthly Income. We find a handy cell, I’ll use E5, and type in “TOTAL MONTHLY EXPENDITURES.” Beneath that, in cell E6, we get to have a little more fun. First we type “=sum(“ (without the quotes and without hitting enter!), then highlight the cells that contain the fixed monthly expenses (for us B8, B9, B10, etc.), then type “)+sum(“, then highlight the cells that contain the less-than-monthly expenses (for us D20, D21, D22, etc.), then type “)+sum(“, highlight the cells that contain the variable monthly expenses (for us B26, B27, B28, etc.), then type “)” and hit enter. The entirety of what is entered in that cell should be something like =sum(B8:B10)+sum(D20:D24)+sum(B26:B28). What displays in the cell should be the sum of all your monthly expenses. You can check it with a calculator if you want…. At least until you build your confidence with telling Excel what to do.
Now we go down a few more cells, to E8, and type in a handy catch-phrase “Amount Towards New House,” or “How Much Less We’ll Owe This Month.” In E9, we type in “=E4-E6”. Hopefully, we have a positive number. If we have a negative number, it might be time to call the family back in to renegotiate the variable expenses (or we can change them ourselves and hide all the pitchforks).

A Few Closing Remarks
You’ll want to make sure you hit CTRL+s or click the little disk icon in the top right before closing and save your budget somewhere safe. This budget should not be changed frivolously; it should only be done when it becomes obvious that the plan of attack is unreasonable (you discover that you need four times as much money to pay for gas to get to work), based on insufficient information (such as forgetting car registration as an annual expense), or unsustainable (the rest of the family gets their pitchforks and torches in protest of another month of beans and rice three meals a day, every day). You don’t change the budget because you really, really, want that new designer handbag this month (get a knock-off that fits in your budget, money doesn’t grow on trees, you know!).

List of Excel Tricks Used In This Sheet

= When you type this into a cell first, it performs the operations that come afterwards.

* This is the multiplication operation in Excel.

/ This is the divide operation in Excel.

sum( ) This command adds up the cells contained within the parenthesis.

CTRL+d Typing this takes whatever is in the top highlighted cell and applies it to whatever cells are highlighted beneath it.

CTRL+s Typing this saves your workbook. If you have not yet designated a name and location for saving the workbook, it will open a window that will allow you to do so (the Save As dialogue).

The Envelope System: Pros and Cons

2009-10-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

The General Concept
Envelope systems are often endorsed by get-out-of-debt gurus, and are a fairly simple method of controlling spending. At the start of the month or week, you withdraw the amount of cash you’ve budgeted for expenses you pay at the vendor (not things like rent, electric, heating gas, or other bills you pay by check). You divide the cash into envelopes for the various categories; mine are food, general upkeep, gardening, and allowance. When you purchase something, cash comes from the envelope of that category to pay for the items. When the cash in the envelope runs out, you can’t purchase any more of that category and make do with what you have.

The Pros

You have an easy, visible tally in your envelope for how well you’re adhering to your budget in each category.

It’s easier to decide not to purchase something when you see an empty envelope at the store than it is to visualize your zero balance for that category when you are paying by check, check card, or credit card.

You don’t have to record and calculate every expense in a timely fashion to see that you’re running low on funds for a category, i.e. there’s no lag between purchase and deducting funds from a category in your envelope-based tally system.

The Cons

You really need to divide the funds in increments of $20 if you use an ATM for withdrawals, which many people need to do because of the difficulty in getting to a bank during business hours.

The envelope system causes some difficulty when you want / need to reallocate funds for a cycle. Diligence is required to update your budget accounting every time you move money from one envelope to another.

Purchasing items from multiple categories in one shopping trip gets confusing quickly. For example, you buy $4 worth of toilet paper at the grocery store along with $36 of food. You have only $20 bills in your food and your upkeep envelopes. Do you separate the purchases so you can get the separate change from the clerk? Do you ask her to break a $20 bill along with your purchase? Do you just make a note on the envelope that you can steal $4 from the upkeep envelope later for food? You see what I’m getting at here.

If you are trying to keep your envelopes balanced with a separate spreadsheet of expenses to make an even deeper analysis of your spending habits, you can find yourself in an interesting situation where the spreadsheets and the money do not line up. This can be because you find a $5 bill on the ground or because you forget to enter the amount you paid at the farmer’s market on cucumbers while you still remember.

Tips on making the envelope system work:

Withdraw funds weekly. This helps to prevent the unpleasant situation of having an empty upkeep envelope when you’re out of toilet paper in the third week (or something similar).

Withdraw funds weekly, and allocate in $20 increments into your envelopes in alignment with your budget. This may mean that on week 1 you withdraw $160, put $100 into the food envelope, $20 into your upkeep envelope, $20 into your garden envelope, and $20 into wallet for allowance. Then week 2 you withdraw $100, put the entire $100 into your food envelope. Week 3 you withdraw $140, and put $100 into food, $20 into allowance, and $20 into upkeep. Even if this gets a little confusing, it’s much less so than trying to remember to move $10 from upkeep to food once you break the $20 bill. You do the calculations at the beginning of the month, write them on your envelopes, and stick to them.

Separate and plan your shopping trips. My example: Before going to Walmart, I decide that I’m going to purchase a coke as a treat from my allowance, eggs, milk, and coffee, from the food envelope, toilet paper and saran wrap from the upkeep envelope, and borax to mix with sugar to kill the ants that are eating my sweet corn from the garden envelope. When I get there, I pull out the garden envelope first, leave the rest in the glove box, buy the borax, put it in the car, and trade the garden envelope for the upkeep envelope. Then I repeat with the food and the coke. This makes for a long shopping trip, but it’s much easier mentally than sitting down after the shopping trip, going through the receipt and trying to figure out how to make change into 4 different envelopes, especially when there’s only $20 bills left over.

Never, ever, buy anything when your defenses are down. This can mean overly hungry, tired, stressed, whatever. Sticking to the envelope system requires a certain amount of mental energy, and if you don’t have the mental energy to spare you’ll probably find yourself saying, “I can get all the items from all the multiple categories in one trip, I’ll figure it out later.” But later, you’ll pay the price with the big headache of going through receipts (part of which you’ll have lost because you were overly hungry, tired, stressed, whatever) and trying to figure out how your upkeep envelope is empty when you’re positive all you bought that month was soap, saran wrap, and toilet paper.

Conclusions:
In my situation, it makes more sense for me to switch back to check card and the “virtual envelope system” for all items in the budget I am responsible for besides allowance. I use Excel daily anyway, so daily maintenance of the finance spreadsheet is not a big deal, and I have a little pocket where I can keep receipts and enter the amounts from them in the same binder that stores my shopping lists. I also tend to purchase items from multiple categories in one trip, which, as outlined above, creates headaches in the cash envelope system, but does not create extra work in the “virtual envelope system.” Perhaps in my next post I will provide detailed instructions for setting up a “virtual envelope system” using Excel, since I am now the master!

How to Make Your Own “Virtual Envelope” System Using Excel: An Overview

2009-10-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

I’ll try to explain here how I’ve designed my Excel system to intensively track my spending on every single item. At the end of the month, I can track how much was spent on each major budget category (food, general upkeep, garden, etc.), and I also get a deeper look at how money was spent within each major budget category (e.g. the food breakdown into dairy, meat, fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen vegetables, etc.). I can also sort each category by price to determine if the budget mainly went to large bulk-item purchases or to those little purchases here and there that add up. It has its pros and cons, but works well for me so far.
In this post I’ll give a broad overview of the workings of the Excel workbook, and in future posts I’ll cover each sheet of the workbook in more detail.

Note: This series of posts was inspired by a question to Mrs. Accountability about how to use Excel, so here I am generally attempting to give a quick primer on how to build something useful in Excel for people with little to no experience using it. The question, and Mrs. Accountability's answer can be found here:
http://www.outofdebtagain.com/2009/10/answers-to-mrs-as-qa/

A Very General Overview
The workbook is divided into multiple worksheets (these are the tabs at the bottom of your workbook that indicate what worksheet you currently have open). The first worksheet is the “Budget” sheet, which I plan once and make modifications only if necessary, only monthly. The second worksheet is the “Current Month” worksheet, where progress on the broad budget categories are tracked and compared with the budget. The remaining worksheets each track in detail the spending within a budgeted category.

The Budget Sheet
This is the sheet we created when we sat down to design our budget. We have our incomes listed and totaled, so we know exactly how much we make per month. Then we listed our fixed monthly expenses and their monthly amounts: rent, debt payments, phone, internet, etc. We then listed the expenses that come only once every few months, and calculated the amount we’d pay on each if it were monthly instead: car insurance, parking permits, medical and dental check-ups and prescriptions, etc. Finally, we listed our variable monthly expenses in order of necessity: gas and electric for the house, gas for the vehicles, food, general upkeep (think toilet paper and soap), laundry, garden, eating out, other fun (rock climbing, bowling, etc.), and allowances. We total up the amounts budgeted for all expenses, and subtract this amount from the total income so we can easily see how modifying our variable expenses changes the amount we are able to pay towards debt. This sheet needs to be modified when it becomes apparent that the budget is unrealistic or missing crucial information, and should be updated monthly as we grow in our budgeting skills and learn better how to reduce our spending sustainably (as opposed to saying, “we will buy nothing this month and just learn to make do with the dried beans in the cabinet and junk mail for toilet paper”).

The Current Month Sheet
I save a new version of the entire workbook each month, and update the name of this sheet for the month, i.e. “October,” for this month. This sheet is basically a copy of the budget sheet, with the addition of the capability to track what has been spent in each category this month, and how much is left in each category this month. It also automatically calculates how much has been spent, subtracts that from the income, and displays the amount that is left for spending and paying down debt. This sheet never needs to be modified, as it updates automatically from the Budget and the Category sheets. However, it should be consulted prior to every single shopping trip or other outing that costs money, so you can make notes as to how much money you should limit yourself to spending this time.

The Category Sheets
These sheets allow me to track exactly what is being spent for individual items within each category, and enter additional information such as date, subcategory, or store of purchase. An example is the “food” sheet. Here I enter the food item, the date it was purchased, how much it was purchased for, the store it was purchased at, and a number of subcategories: “need, could reduce, want,” “dairy, meat, veg, fruit carb,” “milk, cheap cheese, specialty cheese” etc. This sheet allows for a number of tracking tools that are very useful, for example, with a click of the mouse I can group all purchases by “dairy, meat, veg, fruit, carb,” then sort the dairy group by “milk, cheap cheese, specialty cheese,” and then compare prices on milk at the different stores I’ve purchased at in the last month. These sheets need to be updated after every single shopping trip. The exceptions are the cash “allowances” that we simply calculate as a loss to the budget and do not attempt to do any itemized expense tracking or control (the items tend to be small, frivolous, and generally don’t come with receipts, i.e. vending machines – remember, the allowance is our way to control the frivolous spending by putting a set, low limit on it).

Summary and Work Involved
The initial, one-time investment of time is about one to two hours to build the budget and the rest of the workbook. For the rest of the month, it’s just a matter of checking the data and doing data entry – I spend less than 10 minutes after each shopping trip inputting the data. Since I primarily only shop once a week, this is very little time spent on maintenance. Once a month, a copy of the workbook must be made for the new month, the budget from last month reviewed, and the budget for the next month modified accordingly. This usually takes about an hour, since we spend too much time playing around with the features instead of just getting the job done (which should only take 15-30 minutes). Speaking of playing around with features, I probably waste half an hour a day on this, so the system is dangerous in that regard!

In Which I Complain Mildly About Chemistry and Wish I Could Find the Stick of Knowledge to Beat Back the Bear

2009-10-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

I had a chemistry teacher in high school that liked to use battle analogies for scholarly problems. In particular, he liked to say he was giving us the “stick of knowledge” so we could “beat back the bear” of chemistry problems. I am having a particularly challenging chemistry problem in lab right now, and I have been wracking my brain and searching for a stick of knowledge that will help me beat back this bear.

The bear requires aqueous reaction conditions, and that’s where the trouble starts. There are sticks that can be used underwater, but the new hotness of sticks mixes with water like oil. Well, more like sand. DH recommends using a phase transfer catalyst, but I’m pretty sure those work excellently with oil, not so wonderfully with sand. It is an idea, though perhaps not one I want to spend a year on.

I even went up to ask the purveyors of the new stick of hotness, and found out they only use the stick in DMF. If they need a water stable reaction, they use the stick in DMF first, then put the product in water. Unfortunately, I need to put the stick in water first, then use it. The new stick of hotness hates me!

I’ve been in a right state over this new hotness, let’s say the fighter jet, of sticks for about three weeks now. My older model, let’s say the tugboat, of sticks, gets me across the ocean eventually, but while I was presenting my work, someone brought up the fighter jet model and got everyone perhaps a little too excited about it. A fighter jet gives great style points, awesome power, and incredible speed, but it’s pretty much useless in water. The tugboat’s got zero style, and severely lacks speed, but at least it’s got some power in water. I’m ready to ride the tugboat all the way to Australia, but I’ve got to convince a few other people first. Hopefully my frustration with trying to get a fighter jet to swim across the ocean will show through and I’ll get permission to take the tugboat one of these days.

So if you haven’t gotten completely lost in my sea of mixed metaphors, thank you for reading. Now you know why today is a not a good day for me to write on the actual topic of this blog.

The Fresh Fruit Experiment

2009-10-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

DH loves fresh fruit. I’m actually not a huge fan. When we shop together, DH has a tendency to want large volumes of fresh fruit. This fruit goes into the crisper drawer of the fridge, and doesn’t see the light of day again until it’s formed a liquid rotted fruit soup mess all over the drawer. Still, every time we go to the store, he wants pounds of grapes and oranges and strawberries, and every time I try to argue that he’ll never eat the fruit, it will just go bad.

Yesterday we went shopping together. We made a number of miscalculations in our shopping trip, namely that we went when I was pretty much starving. I generally have no problems spending only a small fraction of the food budget so that we have enough left over for more pricey wine choices in the $10-15 a bottle range (obviously the nice wine will be going away as we reduce our spending, but it is an appreciated luxury at this point). I turn around from shoveling some bulk dry beans into a bag to find a huge bunch of bananas in the cart. I know what happens to bananas – they turn black and gross and someone in the family ends up making lots of banana bread, which then also turns black and gross. DH sees my expression and says, “Wow, that raccoon is getting really bold, I guess he wants some bananas this week!” (He likes to blame things on the raccoon, like the sudden disappearance of all the cheese in the fridge, or the sudden reduction in pepperoni that was supposed to be used for pizza later in the week.)

When we get home, I decide that instead of putting all the fruit in the fridge, I will make a pretty display on the table. I’d like to claim this was a calculated move, but really I was too lazy to find a spot in the fridge, the countertops were covered in cooking stuff from the last meal, and the crisper drawers were filled with…. You guessed it, fruit getting close to the nasty soup stage. Anyway, it worked. DH has now eaten half the bananas, and it’s been less than 24 hrs. That thing they like to say about if you want to increase your fruit intake, put out a fruit display, apparently it works for some people! I'll let you know if we have to make banana bread this week, but I don't think it's likely!

Status Update: Car trouble and DIY

2009-10-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

Recap: In an earlier post, I detailed DH’s car issues. The main problem we’re addressing currently is diagnosing the black smoke that billows out of the tailpipe and hood occasionally. It primarily smokes upon start-up from the tailpipe, and more rarely for the first few seconds after startup from the hood. The car is a 1993 Lexus ES300 that’s been with DH’s family since it was brand new.

Research:

The Auto Mechanic: We paid an auto place $120 to look at the vehicle and check the computer code for why the “check engine” light is on. The light was on due to a loose hose. The mechanic originally thought the smoke was due to the oil change people spilling a little oil on the engine block, and that it would go away after running the engine long enough to burn off the extra oil. We paid the mechanic an additional $120 to fix the loose hose, and for his advice on the smoking problem. After running the engine for 20 minutes, the smoking problem did not go away in the shop, and the mechanic became convinced that the rings on the piston heads have been corroded and worn enough to allow oil to leak through into the combustion chamber. His advice? Replace the engine. He was skeptical that removing and re-machining the piston heads would be better than replacing the engine – while the engine is more expensive to replace, removing and re-machining the piston heads is much more labor intensive and would cost more to have done. Either way, we’d probably be better off selling the car for a small amount and purchasing a used car in better condition – the amount we’d end up paying that way would probably be less than the amount we’d pay to repair the car professionally.

My Dad: My Dad knows everything. (I imagine everyone thinks this of their Dad, but in my case, it’s true!) Well, at least he spent the early years of Mom and Dad’s marriage pulling the engine out of one of their cars and working on it on a sheet spread out in the living room of their trailer house. On a side note, my parents are two of the coolest people I know, but that’s enough material for a whole other post. Maybe in honor of my Mom’s birthday coming up I’ll write about why they are so cool. Anyway, I call Dad and ask him what he thinks of the problem. After listening to the symptoms, he says we can trace the smoke to one of two sources: transmission fluid or oil. A leak in the vacuum cinder (sender? Sometimes when Dad says stuff I have trouble spelling it later) would mean burning transmission fluid and an easy fix. Burning oil would spell bigger troubles, either what the mechanic said about piston rings or leaky valve seats. Dad’s always been a little skeptical about my abilities to fix my own cars, for good reason. I never have a ton of time, and never have a ton of space to work. He said fixing the piston rings or valve seats would be one thing if we had nights and weekends completely free and a large garage we could keep clean and dry, and another thing entirely if we only have a few hours a week to dedicate to the project and only an apartment carport with cars sandwiched in like sardines on either side. Anyway, I checked the oil and transmission fluid levels after running the engine for a little bit, and sure enough, its burning oil. We’d be crazy to try to fix it ourselves, but well, they called Mom and Dad crazy once when they were young.

The Auto Zone Clerk: The clerk was like, “wow, that’s a great car, you should put in a new engine and you can probably get another 100,000 to 200,000 miles out of it!” Yeah, I would also think that if you put a new engine in any car you can probably get a lot more miles out of it; doesn’t that almost make it a new car? We picked up a copy of the Haynes repair manual for the 1997-2001 Lexus ES300. There were a lot of changes to the Lexus engineering between 1993 and 1997, but we’ll also go for a 1993 Toyota Camry repair manual when we can find one. Unfortunately, Haynes does not have a repair manual that lists the 1993 Lexus ES300 as one of the models it addresses. We will have a steep learning curve whether we have a repair manual or not, so against the clerk’s advice, we got the manual. DH also got some higher density oil (HD30) and a “StopLeak” formula, on the clerk’s advice. These are supposed to add enough viscosity to the oil that it’s less likely to seep through small leaks. I think his plan is to try out the oil formulas and see if he can get a few more smoke-free miles on it as a stop-gap measure between now and attempting repairs.

Continuing Research: Please, please, if this sounds like a familiar problem to you, post a comment for us. We’re such newbies at this kind of thing, and can use all the help and support we can get!

Tips for Successful Budgeting (and not ruining your marriage in the process)

2009-10-16T11:11:00.001-07:00

DH and I have attempted budgeting twice. The first time led to some serious marital issues. This second time has actually been a stabilizer in the marriage, has been fun, and has brought us closer. In this post I’ll share some of the tips for successful budgeting, with discussion of what has worked for us this time, and contrast that with what pretty much destroyed us the first time.

Start Slow
This time around with the budget we’ve started exceptionally slow. Instead of starting our budget by setting ambitious goals on how much we want to save and pay down on loans, we started by looking at how much we currently spend on various categories. For the first month, we didn’t even set a budget, we just each made a conscious effort to catalogue what we were spending normally. Then we broke this down into categories: set and necessary monthly bills, variable and necessary monthly expenses, variable and unnecessary monthly expenses. In the set necessary monthly bills we include rent, credit card payments, student loan payments, phone and internet, insurance and parking (even though this is bi-annual, we set aside the amount for these payments as if they were broken down monthly and stick the money in savings for the next time the bill is due), etc. In the variable necessary monthly expenses we include gas for the cars, electricity and gas for the house, food, laundry, and miscellaneous household upkeep (you know, toilet paper, shampoo, that kind of thing). In the variable unnecessary monthly expenses are separate accounts for dining out together, doing fun stuff on weekends (the wine and jazz festival, camping, rock climbing, etc.), our own allowances (for days when we forget to pack a lunch, want to buy cokes from the vending machine, DH’s fantasy novels and poker, my random addictions too many to list here, etc), and the garden. (Don’t get me started on the garden being considered an unnecessary expense, but at least my lobby to not have it taken out of my allowance was met favorably.) We designated an amount to put towards each sub-item equal to the amount we spent on it the first month, when we weren’t budgeting. Throughout the month we record where the money goes each day, and at the end of the month, we examine what can easily be trimmed without affecting our lifestyle too much. We do this every month, until we have an aggressive savings and payment plan in place.

Contrast this version with the version from the first time around: the aggressive savings and payment plan came first, and then we took what little money was left and tried to distribute it between the various categories all in one sharp transitional month. Our lifestyle changed very suddenly, and it was a painful process for both of us. We place different importance on the “unnecessary” budgeting areas, and caused no end of jealous guarding of funds as he wanted expensive bleu cheese and I wanted to buy a grill. Take note here that we thought I could feed us on less than a dollar a day. I can, and maybe we’ll do that experiment again, but let me tell you, it is NOT fun to go from a newlywed couple enjoying steak and wine to a newlywed couple eating bean stew three meals a day without a slow transition.

Individual Input and Commitment
This time around, we sat down together “family meeting” style and drew up our plan for how to approach the budget. After agreeing on a “slow start” with a month of no budgeting, just cataloging, we each committed to tracking our spending. Then we had another family meeting, and negotiated categories and amounts to go to each category. Because we each had equal say in how to categorize spending and how much money goes to each category, and the categories and dollar amounts were based on reality, we were able to give equal commitment to the budget. We also had a caveat for the first month that if we found our original plan was unsustainable in one area, we could change it for the next month. This gave each of us a sense of freedom with the budget instead of a sense of confinement and resentment towards the plan.

Contrast this with the first experiment, where DH drew up the budget based on his own expenses as a bachelor. I felt left out every time there wasn’t enough money for hair care products after we spent much more on toilet paper than he had planned. Also, he had too much faith in my ability to feed us on a limited budget. Sometimes I think he divided his old food budget by ten and said that should be enough for two since I said he could give me any food budget greater than zero and he’d still gain weight (I was right, btw, but I probably should have chosen my words a little more carefully). Since he had no input on what was important to me, he made some decisions that in retrospect we both regret, e.g. he cut one car out of the equation and said we could get by easily on one car. Basically, with only one person devising the budget and expecting the other person to live by it, you set the family up for conflict of interest, feelings of resentment towards the budget by the non-budgeter and feelings of resentment towards the non-budgeter when they get dissatisfied with the arrangement. This is not a good way to start a marriage!

Individual Control of Budget Categories (Based on their importance to the individual)
This time around, I took responsibility to purchasing, tracking spending and adhering to the budget on categories near and dear to my heart, particularly food, upkeep, the garden, gas for the car, our various set bills, and my own allowance. DH took responsibility for seeing to the rest. This allows me to get his input on the menu and what he needs, then do various trade-offs at the store and at home to make sure all our needs and wants are covered. As long as there’s food he likes on the table, enough gas to get to work, and shampoo and toilet paper in the bathroom, he doesn’t particularly care whether I made the pancakes from scratch or from a mix. As long as we get to go out occasionally, I’m not too concerned if DH says, “well, honey, going to X restaurant is pretty expensive, why don’t we go to W, Y or Z, instead so we can also go out next week?”

Contrast this with the first time around, when DH was solely responsible for all tracking and maintaining adherence to the budget. I still was responsible for purchasing a lot of things, which led to a number of problems. First, there was a lag between when I’d buy something and DH would have a chance to track it. Second, tracking all expenditures by two people in a two person home is really too much work for one individual who has a demanding job and would like a little spare time on occasion. It’s not surprising that he fell behind on tracking occasionally. There was one infamous example (in my mind, anyway), where I thought we had plenty of money for all the household items we needed that month and I could finally buy that cheap $10 grill I’d been wanting for what seemed like forever. The morning of the shopping trip where I would finally get the grill, DH tallied up the expenses and made a shocking discovery – we were already over budget! The damage probably would’ve been mitigated if he’d mentioned this before we already had the grill in the checkout line at the store, but it would have been a very challenging moment for me no matter how he broke the news.

Individual “Freedom” Allowances
These, I think, are absolutely essential. It’s one thing to have $20 to spend on WHATEVER I WANT and another thing all together to try to justify how to work an eyebrow wax or a particularly expensive specialty beer into one of the categories of an already tight budget. This allows both of us to feel no guilt whatsoever buying those little things that only benefit one of us that the other sees as completely superfluous. It’s MY allowance, I’ll spend it however I want, thank you very much. This may not be as important for well established couples, but it is truly what makes or breaks our little budget. My big problem with the no-allowance method is that I feel very constrained to never spend only on myself, but very generous with items that only benefit DH. The allowance method gives me freedom from this constraint and gives me permission to go pay that nice lady at the salon to wax my eyebrows and that specialty shop for a 6-pack I read about in the brewing magazine. Even if you feel no compunction spending on items that benefit only one member of the family, you may want to think of your spouse. DH has no problem with the no-allowance method because he can accept that there are times when we’ll have to spend on things that only benefit one of us, but he’s considerate enough to my silly prejudices to still give us both allowances. He’s nice like that!

Summary:

Start slow! Give you and your family time to adjust to your new, more financially responsible lifestyle. You’ll be less likely to cause the kind of strife that leads to everyone falling off the budget-wagon if you make the process as painless as possible.

Let each member of the family participate in drawing up the budget and get input from everyone. You’ll be more likely to draw up a budget that the entire family is satisfied with, and each family member is more likely to stay committed to a budget they helped design.

Give each member of the family a responsibility for an area of the budget. Heads of the household may want to divide based on who’s actually doing the spending in that area. Children, while not addressed here, can be responsible (with your help) for spending their allowance wisely and sustainably. My sister is only 5 years old but she can make decisions about whether she wants a cheap new toy this week or a more expensive new toy in a month or two. (This also helps keep her quiet about all her “I wants” – the answer to “can we get this?” can be, “How much money do you have?” then “This is too expensive, do you want to save up for it?” or “This costs X amount, do you want to spend your money on this, or do you want to save up for Y?”)

Give everyone an allowance! Even adults appreciate having a few dollars a week to spend on things that just they benefit from. This helps keep that kind of individual spending to a set, budgeted limit, and alleviates some of the self-deprivation that eventually leads to resentment in some individuals (like me).

Thoughts on Rain, Gardens, and Life

2009-10-15T09:42:00.000-07:00

It’s been a few days since my last post, partly because my motivation to write has gone way down. It started with the rains on Monday and Tuesday – I like to be outside and I fell into the habit up writing for this blog outside my building for the first hour or so after I get to work. This is because I have to physically leave my house before I feel like doing much “work,” and writing is kind of a work. It’s also because my work is more results oriented than it is time, although we are encouraged to be physically present during certain hours it doesn’t truly matter when we’re here most of the time – the real emphasis is on how much we get done. If I’m confined to the building because of rains, then I don’t feel like writing for the blog, I feel like getting my stuff done for work. Anyway, today is a nice day, and I feel a little like I ought to actually post something. It’s a new blog right now and I don’t think anyone but me reads it anyway, but If I want it to have a readership eventually I will need to keep working on it.

The rains have been kind to my garden – everything is looking much healthier now. With the shorter days, it’s too dark to harvest when I get home, and although I have had success harvesting at night with a headlamp, I’s much more challenging to avoid the mud from the rains at night. Now that we are down to one car, it’s more challenging to harvest in the morning, because DH’s job requires a more rigorous adherence to a morning arrival time (like I said, alone, I have the luxury of choosing my own hours, within reason). The lettuce desperately needs to be trimmed now, and there’s probably a pint of cherry tomatoes ready to be picked. I plan to have a “garden” meal this weekend, where we focus on using the fruits of my labors instead of using what’s in the fridge. I also plan to steal all the hot little Fresno chilies and pickle them. While fresh peppers feel very luxurious, I also love pickled peppers, and having the pickles will add some nice variety to my enjoyment of the garden.

On another note, DH and I have been having some settling-in issues. Mine have been based on the challenges of going from plenty of room and lots of independence in my schedule and travel to within a few weeks having no space in the apartment and having my schedule and travel dictated by DH’s plans. I think DH’s main settling-in issues have been based on having a DW getting more and more stressed by the lack of space and independence and also dealing with the slight seasonal affective disorder that brings my mood way down. He’s also not a fan of living so far from work, and I think the morning and nightly commute gets to him. Fixing the one car situation is quickly becoming a priority for me, and that adds to his stress level as he feels it is his responsibility and he gets antsy when I get too interested in one of his responsibilities, especially when he hasn’t felt very motivated to act upon it. I suppose I need to just put a lid on it, get used to the situation, and suck it up.

Strangely enough, the budgeting has caused us no trouble at all. There are many reasons for this success, so perhaps I’ll post this as “yesterday’s” blog and post tips for successful budgeting as today’s post. I still have about 40 minutes of “blog time” before I go get to my “real work” anyway!

How I Learned to Make the Best Pie Crust I’ve Ever Tasted

2009-10-11T10:19:00.000-07:00

For someone who loves food and cooking and culinary experiments as much as I do, I’m surprisingly thin. Since many in my family saw the line in the sand between pleasantly plump and obese and plowed right through it into joyfully rotund, I can’t blame this on genetics. Instead, I blame it on my absence of a sweet tooth – given the choice between a second portion of meat or a dessert, I will almost always choose more meat. I don’t particularly like bread, fruit, potatoes, rice, cakes, candies, or any starchy or sugary foods. I’ll eat them when they compliment the meats and vegetables, but I’m not someone who’d ever be likely to over-indulge in these items. The diets that are most akin to the way I eat naturally is a later-stage Atkins or South Beach style, so apparently these are diets that work well for me.

However, I love to make jellies, desserts, pies, all things gross and sugary and not at all appealing to me. Pies in particular are my favorite, since they are simple to do decently, but require true skill to do well. The component of the pie that has long plagued me is the crust – I used to quake with fear at the thought of making my own crust from scratch – it would always turn out tough, rubbery, and then so light it would float to the surface of my pecan or pumpkin pie… always an embarrassing outcome for someone who considers herself to be culinarily inclined. However, with a little research I finally made the perfect pie crust – light, flaky, savory, melt-in-your-mouth excellent. And it’s SO easy! While I am hesitant to share the secrets of the perfect crust (I don’t want everyone to be able to make pie crust as good as mine, when I consider it to be such a major life accomplishment), for the sake of advancing the cause of excellent pies, I will do so.

The Recipe
This is adapted from Alton Brown’s recipe only slightly. Follow his recipe exactly if you don’t like savory crusts, and add some sugar if you like sweet crusts, but beware – every modification has its challenges and sugar will promote early browning of your crust!!

1 c flour
6 tbsp butter, chopped and frozen
2 tbsp frozen bacon grease
1 tsp salt

The Mixing Technique
Work COLD! Mix the flour and salt in a heavy glass or ceramic bowl and stick it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. Pull it out, and mix in half the butter with your finger tips, squeezing it into the flour until it has a meal-like consistency, no large clumps. Work quickly and stir frequently so the butter does not melt. Put the bowl back in the freezer while you wash your fingers and dry them off. Maybe pour yourself a cold drink of ice water; we’re just making sure the bowl stays cold here. Repeat with the process with the remaining half the butter, re-freeze the bowl, and repeat with the bacon grease. Throw your rolling pin in the freezer at some point, two pie plates in the fridge, and maybe lay some frozen foods out on the counter you will be rolling your crust onto. Flakiness happens when pockets of solid fat melt leaving flakes of pastry – any melting that occurs reduces your flakiness! We use part butter, part lard / bacon grease, because butter gives awesome flavor and works right if you do it right, and the higher melting solid animal fats provide some insurance in case you screw up and melt the butter. Okay, the mixture has probably gotten cold enough, so pull it out and sprinkle a little bit of that glass of ice water you made earlier into the dough, stirring just enough to see if its combining into a dough yet. DO NOT KNEAD! Kneading, and even over-stirring, promote gluten formation, which is what happens when you use force on a water and flour mixture. This is great for bread, when you want a tougher, meatier texture, but terrible for pie crust! When you’ve got your dough, proceed to….

The Rolling and Plating Technique
I am totally stealing this from Alton Brown, sorry Alton, but your method has been tested against all others and has been found to be superior. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap down on your cold countertop. Put the ball of dough on top, and flatten with your hand into a disk. Work fast so the dough stays cold. Top it with another sheet of plastic wrap, and roll out until it’s a couple inches larger on all sides than your pie plate. Sit one pie plate on top of the plastic wrap on top of the dough, facing “up” so you can still put stuff in the pie plate. You won’t, but that’s okay. Flip the crust and saran wrap and plate upside down, so that the crust is laying nicely in a pie shape on the bottom of the plate. Remove the easy-to-get-at layer of saran wrap, and invert the other pie plate onto this assembly. Flip the whole shebang one more time, remove the “inside” pie plate, and the last layer of saran wrap. Push the pie crust into the corners of the plate, repair any rips or damages, and stash the whole thing in the fridge.

Make Your Pie the Normal Way
Maybe you were thinking ahead and assembling your pie filling during the times the crust was cooling back down in the freezer. Maybe you weren’t and now have to make a filling. I’m only addressing the bottom crust here, because so far I’ve only used this recipe for crumb-topped sweet pies and wonderfully savory egg pies. Maybe you’re fancy and like to call egg pies quiche, but I won’t hold that against you! My favorite filling for this crust is a cheddar, onion, and spinach filling. I sauté 1 onion in butter, then add in a pound of frozen spinach, thawed and drained, cooking until warmed through. I stir in one cup of grated cheddar, then spoon this mixture into the crust and cover quickly with 4 eggs beaten with 1 c milk, and put the whole thing into a 350 F oven for 15 minutes. Then I pull it out and top with half a cup more cheddar, and continue baking for 30-40 minutes. While I wouldn’t call this a quiche, it is definitely the best breakfast egg pie I’ve ever eaten. I swear I could eat this every morning and never complain!

Comments or suggestions? Please share with your comments!

State of the garden

2009-10-10T21:34:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been cooling off here, and the days are getting shorter than the nights, which has a definitive effect on both my mood and my garden’s productivity. I went to pick some tomatoes this afternoon, and only got a quart or so. I figure it’s about time to do a post on lessons learned from the summer crop. Expect a post on winter plans in the near future.

Tomatoes
The tomatoes were well worth the money. I’ve been planting in 18 gallon stainless steel drums, and put an heirloom yellow pear cherry (I don’t know the real name for it) and a hybrid “normal” cherry into one drum. I also planted some corn and some carrots in this drum. In another drum, I planted carrots, an heirloom slicer tomato, and a winter squash. I didn’t stake or cage them, and they really need the support if you don’t want to be wading through sprawling vines to find the tomatoes. They also need space and probably more water than I was able to give them early in their life. If I were to do it again, I’d plant one tomato per drum, cage them early, and plant fast-growing, space-friendly radishes around the border of the drums.

Corn
I started by asking the corn to share its space with tomatoes, and ended up with stumped plants and tiny ears with almost no kernels. Then I asked it to share a space with just one squash, and got slightly less stumped plants and… tiny ears with almost no kernels. I finally gave a late crop of corn (planted in August) its own container and have been feeding and watering it heavily. My feed is basically dissolving a quarter cup of rose fertilizer in a 2-liter full of water, then adding about a quarter cup of this to my 5-gallon watering containers before watering the corn with it. They seem to love it, and I have high hopes for some late season corn from the last late drum. While it is definitely possible to grow corn in such a small space, I won’t do it again unless I can commit to excessive watering and fertilizing.

Peppers
I planted three pepper plants in one drum: a bell pepper, a New Mexico Big Jim, and Fresno chilies. The chilies have been a bumper crop, but the ‘coons steal the bell peppers and the Big Jims. In the future, I would like to build a removable wire cage to house my sweeter peppers, and leave the hot peppers to fend for themselves. I get little shivers of glee when I think of that raccoon stealing and loving a sweet red bell and then thinking it’s dying when it munches down on a hot green Fresno!

Potatoes
I had some aging russets and some baby reds that I was probably not going to use in time, so without even consulting Contra Costa’s guide to recommended varieties and planting times, I tossed some in a drum in August. I probably wouldn’t have done this had I consulted the guide first, and I’m glad I didn’t. The baby reds took hold and have produced lots of beautifully tasty potatoes. I’ve dug up enough for two meals, and I know there are more under the surface. When we run out of the 10 lb bag of russets we found for $2, I’ll dig up the rest and put something else where the potatoes are, but as it stands we have quite some time before we get to that point. The russets did not take hold, and my guess is that I let them get too ancient before planting.

Squash and Cucumbers
The squash has grown wonderfully, and flowers regularly, but generally either in all male or all female flowers on any given day. Because of this, only three squash have developed and begin their slow growth to maturity. Thankfully, they’re still putting on flowers and seem to be just fine with their cramped living quarters, since each squash is housed with either tomatoes or corn. I will definitely do squash again, but I will probably want to plant 5-10 plants instead of just two to help improve yield (hopefully with more plants, I will actually have some male flowers open on days when female flowers are open). The cuke’s are holding in there, but I did not give them enough space and even though they are trying they just haven’t been successful. I’ll try something else for the winter season and let you know how it goes.

Radishes, carrots, okra, lettuce, herbs
The carrots couldn’t get enough light or probably nutrients, and slowly wasted away after sprouting, in every instance that I tried them. I don’t particularly know what I’m doing wrong with them. I’ll let you know if I figure something out that works. If carrots were my first big failure, radishes were my early success. These guys grew to the size of golf balls while I wasn’t paying attention, and I get a couple huge ones a month after every planting. My only complaint is that I don’t have enough space to keep planting more and more of them. The okra actually did very well considering I planted it in with a tomato and forgot about it. Then one day I’m hunting tomatoes and am rewarded with some okra! That was an unexpected surprise, I thought it had followed in the fate of the carrots. I thought I just wasn’t a lettuce grower, because all my early attempts led to failure. Now, after consulting the literature, I realize I was planting them when it was way too hot for them and not watering frequently enough. The crop I planted last month is already thick enough to thin back, so yay! All my herbs have done quite well (mint, thyme, oregano, and sage), and it’s been great to save money on fresh herbs. I would put in some rosemary if they didn’t have a hedge of the stuff a block long and growing faster than they can trim it outside my office – I help keep it in check between hedge trimmings and have all the fresh rosemary I can possibly use.

Conclusions
When you read something about how to care for a plant, don’t assume you know better until you do. Corn needs lots of food and water and doesn’t appreciate competition very much. Lettuce tends to hate the heat of summer. People are adamant about staking or caging tomatoes for a reason, and the “3-ft” plant spacing guide isn’t there to take up space on the seed package, somebody thought long and hard about it and we should take it as good advice that we paid for when we bought the seeds. Find information from your local agriculture office, and use it to your advantage. Good soil, lots of light, lots of water, and lots of fertilizer does wonders; but I moved my garden from full sun and heat into a slightly more sheltered corner after even the peppers began getting sunburned. This probably wouldn’t have been a problem had the plants been in the ground, but the soil in the containers can get hot enough to fry tender young roots. I’d be interested to hear your summer gardening trials, tribulations, and massive successes, so please post your comments!

Beginning Greywater Reclamation

2009-10-08T11:13:00.000-07:00

There are many great sources online already for installing home greywater and rainwater collection systems. This post won’t even examine these options, because we rent and can make no modifications to the interior or exterior of our unit. Instead I’ll be discussing some of the “baby steps” we’re taking, and some of the options I’ve brainstormed but not yet implemented. My reasons for using greywater are pretty simple – I am allowed to plant my garden as long as I don’t use any additional water from our unit or complex on it. The landlord pays the water, and we’re in a drought situation that makes water costly for him. We’re not allowed to wash our cars at the complex either, because of this, so I’m not being singled out – no one is allowed to use more water than is necessary for the day-to-day basics of cooking and washing.

The benefits of greywater use are pretty extensive, even beyond enabling me to raise a small vegetable garden. For the home owner, it can reduce your water bill. We have a limited amount of freshwater in almost all areas, and using treated drinking water in situations where slightly dirty or soapy water isn’t the best use of this resource. In some areas, water is already being rationed due to drought, and greywater can allow you to use water more luxuriously than you might otherwise be able to. Are you on board yet? Well, here’s how we’re doing it cheaply and with no modifications to our home.

Water Transport and Storage
I experimented with used gallon milk and drinking water jugs. I was surprised to find that they become rather leaky after just a week or two of hard use – I suppose they weren’t meant to be refilled, stored in hot car trunks, and squashed on a regular basis. Now I use hard plastic 5-gallon jugs like you might find inserted into an office water cooler. These were purchased for $7.00 apeice at the local WalMart, and I’ve kept my eye out for similar jugs on freecycle and the free portion of Craigslist. These work great. They are heavy when filled and bulky, but hey, we’re talking several 5-gallon jugs of water here. There’s no way that’s going to be light.

Reclaiming Water from Work
I work in a laboratory that uses freshwater extensively for cooling equipment and running small water aspirator vacuum pumps. I simply stick the end of the hose into the jug, use the equipment until the jug is full, then replace the jug. This is the main way I get water for my garden because it is the easiest and fastest way to fill my water needs. We use way more water than I can possibly package and transport on a daily basis. You may have similar situations in your place of employment, but this is obviously not an option for all people.

Reclaiming Water from Aquariums
We have two red eared slider snapping turtles in a 40 gallon aquarium. Turtles are dirty little pets, and even with the filter running full time their tank stays much cleaner and healthier if we replace their water and vacuum the waste from the gravel once a week. I used to dump this water in the kitchen sink, but now I siphon it off into the 5-gallon jugs. My plants love this high-nitrogen fertilized water! Fish aquariums need to be cleaned this extensively much less often, but they, too, are chock full of goodies that plants need.

Reclaiming Shower Water
Now we get into greywater like most people think of – the water used for normal household cleaning that is still good for plants, but not good for drinking. I like to plug the drain while I shower, then fill gallon containers with the water and pour it into the 5 gallon jugs. This takes an extra 15 minutes in the morning, and while it has lower levels of shampoo and conditioner in it, it’s still great for the plants.

Reclaiming Kitchen and Bathroom Sink Water
I suppose it would possible to reach under the sink, detach the pumbing, and put a 5 gallon bucket to collect sink water. This would require a couple things from the user: (a) a handiness with tools and a confidence that the plumbing could be taken apart and put back together with no leaks or damage, and (b) diligence in checking the water level in the bucket before and during every use. At this point, we’re just not ready to gamble flooding the downstairs apartment on our abilities to carry out (a) and (b). Because we use very little water in the bathroom sink, we’re not even tackling reclaiming water from it yet. However, I have a nice plastic Tupperware that fits in one half of the kitchen sink. Vegetables, mostly-clean plates, and soapy pots with no oil or meats are rinsed into the Tupperware. Really gross stuff is washed into the other half the sink. When the Tupperware gets dangerously full, I drain it into a 5-gallon jug.

Using your Greywater

Watering Plants - This is the most obvious and easiest way to use greywater, and the only use we implement. As long as the water is not contaminated with extreme levels of soap or even low levels of herbicides, this is an excellent use.
Washing Stuff - Your dog probably isn’t too thrilled about getting a bath anyway, so he probably won’t mind too much if you get him wet with grey water for the shampoo part, rinse once with greywater, and do a final short rinse with freshwater. Likewise, your car won’t care if you get it wet with soapy water before you soap it up, and your pots will probably soak even better in water that was already soapy to start with. You get the general picture here – use greywater for soaping up and pre-rinse, freshwater for the final rinse.
Toilets - If you are hardcore about your water usage, you might be able to turn off the water supply to your toilet (there’s usually a knob near the wall at the base of your toilet) and use greywater to fill the tank of your toilet between flushes. We haven’t tried this yet, because our garden needs the water, and we’re just not quite disciplined enough for this option at this point.

Conclusions
Sometimes baby steps are the best we can take towards our goals of independence. If you've been contemplating greywater use as a step towards yours but aren't ready to invest in permanent systems, I hope some of these ideas give you a place to start. If you have ideas of your own, please post a comment with them!

A Few Thoughts on Brewing-Your-Own

2009-10-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

Aaah, the good life. I could wax poetically about the thrills of bringing in hand raised heirloom tomatoes, the joys of red peppers so hot you should be careful about using one hand for handling peppers and the other for taking out contact lenses, or of wearing a homemade item out in public and getting compliments on it, but tonight my contentedness comes from something else – beer. Yes, beer. That poison to the liver, not to mention the budget, brain, and moral compass. There is something so satisfying about the hiss of a blackberry wheat being opened on a warm October evening. Even more satisfying is that it cost only about $0.50 and was made by none other than yours truly.

The beer in the picture is one blackberry wheat I crafted not long ago from 5 gallons of wild blackberries that I picked over the course of two Saturdays and the standard equipment in a brewing kit. I used only $30 of additional ingredients, and could have gone cheaper had I been willing to work more, but I was feeling inordinately lazy and self-indulgent after 10 hrs in the sun picking blackberries. Brewing is a craft, an art, and a science, but its surprisingly easy for the beginning homebrewer to pick up. You can pick up the essentials for your first of many brews for around $100 at your local brew supply or online. You’ll recoup your investment quickly, as the ingredients are generally around $30 a batch. A batch is 5-6 gallons, which is around 4 cases of beer, and if you’ve seen the $15 and higher prices for cases of decent craft brews, you’ll understand what I mean. An added benefit is that you can tailor your beer for your palate. You like hefeweisen and IPA? Brew an extra hoppy wheat. You like dark ales and fruit beers? Make your own combination of peach and stout. The possibilities are endless! If you make your initial investment in the basic equipment, it will most likely come with basic brewing instructions and an assortment of recipes, so I won’t even try to go into them here. Instead, I will share a few things I wish someone had pounded into our heads from the start:

Temperature Control
We began brewing in the basement of DH’s frat house about 6 years ago. We thought in the New England summers, the basement would have the most regulated temperature below 80 F. We were wrong, the closet we chose was too close to the boiler and we had a batch of beer we had to pay someone to drink. They had a hangover well before they got drunk. However, a caveat to this is that if you’re in a dry enough climate or one where mold spores are low enough to not immediately inoculate a brew, you might be safe up to 95 F. I tried a batch about 3 years ago in Oklahoma where it got up to 110 F all week. I stuck the beer in the storm cellar, because we had the AC set to 95 F. However, I checked the temp in the storm cellar, and it was the same as indoors. At night. I named it the “Clambake” because, well, of the obvious. It was still one of the best beers I have brewed, and I blame it on good yeast and lack of competition.

Good Air
Based on the above statement, you’d think our move to coastal Northern Cali where the temps are always between 50 F and 80 F would lead to the best brews ever. You’d be very hungover for thinking so. There is a lot of mold on the coasts, due to humid ocean breezes. When we finally moved inland, the carpet and walls were black with mold under the furniture. Our beer improved dramatically, as well. So far we’re operating at 100 % success rate in the dessert interior, and 100 % failure rate in the humid coastal. My guess is that the yeast just couldn’t hold its own against the severe mold spore inoculation it was exposed to just from transfer between containers.

Good Water
Rhode Island was excellent for brewing beer. Municipal water tasted great, and made excellent beer. Oklahoma was excellent for brewing beer. Untreated well water does wonders for promoting yeast development. California has had mixed results, coastal water being too mold-infested for decent brews, and inland water being so chlorinated it takes a fair bit for the yeast to take hold. If I had money, I’d only use distilled water for brewing. As is, I’ll use city water and complain about it. When we move, if we have serious issues getting a decent brew, I’ll probably try distilled water first just to rule out this possibility.

Good Oxidation Control
I’m probably at least an “intermediate” brewer at this point. You think I wouldn’t do everything wrong when I brew a batch. But I did. I picked 10 gallons of wild blackberries (yay!), but then I just washed and froze them without blanching to kill off bad bacteria. Then, when I brewed, I was too lazy to chill the wort with my wort chiller. I was also too lazy to even stick it in a bathtub of cold water. I blame this on DH being gone and my slipping while washing the fermenter, hitting my head and not remembering the rest of the night, but that’s another story. Then the seal on the airlock fell into the brew and disappeared for eternity. For all you brewers – duct tape and saran wrap just won’t cut it. When I moved the brew into the secondary, I neglected to boil the added water and to blanch the hops, and there was a leak in the tubing so lots of bubbles were introduced. However, it still turned out really darn good, and I’m enjoying the fruits of my labors tonight. The take-home message is: if something beyond your control goes wrong, don’t panic. There’s a reasonable chance you’ll get beer worth drinking in the end anyway.

Conclusions
Brewing is worth more than dollars saved on a batch. It’s about crafting a brew to your tastes, about enjoying the process of creation, and enjoying the friends who will drink anything no matter how terrible it is and even complimenting you on it. My blackberry wheat is wholly enjoyable this evening, and hopefully my next batch will be even more so. I don’t think I mentioned anywhere in this that I positively despise blackberries…. I just love to pick them. But that’s another story!

Using Every Part of the Buffalo

2009-10-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I had a conversation that must be as old as mankind. I imagine the first conversation went something like this:
“Awww, [grunt that means female that is my permanent mate], mammoth marrow stew again? Haven’t we had that every night this [grunt that means 1/4 the time for the moon to go full twice]?”
“Hey, [grunt that means male recognized by the tribe to be my permanent mate], mammoth isn’t cheap you know? In this cave we use every part of the buffalo!”
“Uhhhh, honey, what’s a buffalo?”
“What’s honey?”

Well, okay, it went more like:
“Why are you making chicken stock? Can’t we just buy it? Isn’t it cheap?”
“Because it’s easy and otherwise we’d just throw away food with some value in it and have to buy something of lower quality to replace it. Hey, mister, in this house we use every part of the buffalo!”
“Hmm, I wonder where we can get a buffalo…..”

So, a few short thoughts on using every part of my buffalos:

Clean your veggies well before trimming. First remove any truly “bad” parts, i.e. the parts that carry bad flavors like any partly rotten or generally damaged bits. Then pull out your “veggie stock” freezer container, and put your carrot peels, tomato cores, onion skins, wilted cabbage leaves, etc. in it. Place said container in freezer. Pull it out and repeat the next time you prep veggies. Add leftover cooked veggies to your container. When you fill up your container, make a stock.
Buy your meat with the bones in. Either de-bone prior to cooking, or pull the bones out after cooking. The reduced price-per-pound more than makes up for the weight of the bones. Stick these in your “beef stock,” “chicken stock,” “etc stock” freezer container. Stick this in the freezer, treat as you do your veggie stock freezer container. I use chicken skin the same way I use the bones; they are mostly fat but are packed with chicken flavor. The only difference: keep your raw meat bones separate from your cooked meat bones. Add leftover scrap meat to your cooked meat container.
Raw meat bones ought to be cooked prior to making a stock. The browning that ensues will enhance flavor and cut back on any potential for food-borne illness. I tend to toss them into a stock pot with a bit of oil, no water, over medium heat, stirring oh, every once in a while, until all the meat remnants are brown.
Making stock is basically the same for all varieties: add contents of your stock freezer container to a stock pot. Cover barely with water. Lid the pot and simmer for as long as you have time and patience. I like to strain through a colander lined with cheesecloth to ensure that all bits of grit or marrow are not present in the final stock, but a colander will work just fine. Store meat stocks in the fridge overnight so that the fat will solidify at the top and can be easily removed with a spoon. Freeze your stock in portions you are likely to use. Since I only make soups in bulk, I store mine in quart-sized yogurt containers wrapped in aluminum foil.
Animal fats… should you store or discard? We don’t eat pork in this house, but we love bacon! Bacon is the only pork product that crosses our threshold, partly because I have a semi-religious fear of pork and partly because DH doesn’t like the flavor. We’d substitute beef bacon for pork if it was available in this region, but don’t try to tell us turkey bacon is the same. We know the difference. All that bacon grease could go down the drain and add to water treatment problems, or it can be used in any recipe for hard fats are called for (shortening or butter). I like to drain mine into a small, old, sour cream container and store in the freezer. I use this for making biscuits and gravy on Sunday mornings (Saturdays are out for pork, even bacon). In theory, I could use chicken fat for chicken dumplings or the crust of chicken pot pie, and beef fat for beef dumplings or biscuits served with beef where a beef flavor would be appreciated. In practice, I’m only enterprising enough to make bacon-flavored biscuits and gravy.
Bread crumbs happen. They are the necessary product of cutting your own specialty breads, store-bought or homemade. Most of us toss these into the trash, but recently I’ve started tossing them into an old pickle jar and tossing the jar into the fridge. They add up slowly, but I don’t use breadcrumbs very often, so I don’t need to buy them anymore.

So, those are a few of my thoughts on using all of the buffalo. How do you use all of yours?

Car Troubles – A DIY Dilemma

2009-10-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

DH’s car has some issues. Well, that’s an understatement. DH’s car has some areas in which it works perfectly. In all other possible areas, it’s seriously messed up.

Here are the issues as of today (tomorrow more might be added to the list, but as of right now….)

The battery goes completely dead during the drive-in movie, when all we’re doing is listening to the movie over the radio.
The AC only works when the outside temperature is less than 50 F.
The heater only works when the outside temperature is greater than 90 F.
The passenger’s door only opens from the inside.
The breaks pulse really hard when you try to stop (as though the anti-lock feature is always on).
The automatic transmission can’t pick an appropriate gear until you get up to about 50 mph on the highway.
It leaks about a quart of oil over the course of 3 months.
The antenna, because it is a luxury car, after all, has a motor to make it go up when you turn on the radio and makes it collapse into the car when you turn off the radio. However, the motor is broken, so instead, the antenna stays up all the time and the motor makes a terrible racket for about a minute and a half after you turn on or off the radio. (Update, DH informs me that the motor has given up the ghost and no longer makes the racket. However, it can’t go through an automatic car wash because the antenna is now only hanging on by a thread.)
There are no interior lights except for one next to the mirror hidden in the passenger’s visor. Fortunately, there is still a mirror to accompany it.
As of yesterday, big black clouds of smoke billow out the tailpipe and the hood.

Although we’ve been talking about fixing these items ourselves, and even took a peek at the brake pads and rotors just to make sure they weren’t shot (they are fine, it’s a different problem, possibly with the computer?), we can’t do much about the transmission. We just don’t have the tools, skills, or time to invest in seriously messing with it, and DH can’t really afford to have his car up on blocks while we accumulate the tools and skills over the amount of time it would take us to do so. I think the black smoke coming out of the hood really scared him, though, because we’re paying a mechanic $120 just to do an evaluation of all the little problems with the inner workings of the vehicle. I’d be interested in hearing advice on what you’d do in this situation, whether you have no experience fixing old luxury cars, and perhaps even more so if you do.

The DIY Fleece Pull-over Experiment

2009-10-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

The goal is to use one of my favorite hobbies to make a fleece jacket out of the softest fleece material I can find and to make it better and more cheaply than a store-bought jacket. The general breakdown of the experiment is (1) estimate costs, (2) detailing the work involved, (3) evaluating end results.

Step 1: Estimating Costs
Since materials were purchased over a year ago, it’s very difficult for me to accurately detail the costs involved with this project. The pattern was purchased at Wal-Mart before the local Wal-Mart seriously downsized its crafts and fabric department for about $5 (I got it on sale, generally patterns run fairly expensive in the $10-15 range). The fabric was purchased from Jo-Anne’s at about $7 a yard, also on sale for the excellent plush fleece. The estimated cost of the fleece is therefore about $20, once you include thread and the zipper. The estimated cost of a nice fleece pullover ranges from about $10 at the super discount clothing stores, but to select the exact feel and color of the fleece would probably drive you to a specialty shop, where you’d be looking at anywhere from $30-100. We’ll have to wait until the evaluation of the homemade fleece before doing this comparison.

Step 2: Work Invovled
All I can say is, WOW. The basic process for sewing from a pattern is pretty easy: Check your size against the sizing charts on the back of the pattern envelope. Choose a size that fits you. Open the pattern paper and cut out the pieces you will be using, leaving a wide berth around the actual pieces, you’ll do the accurate cut once the pieces are pinned to the fabric. Use the guide in the pattern instructions to place pattern pieces on your fabric, pin them down, then cut out the fabric. Test out your sewing machine with a scrap of the fabric you’ve chosen. Adjust settings until you’ve got a decent stitch you are happy with. Follow instructions. Show off your handiwork. If only it were that easy.

First off, the fleece fabric I chose is incredibly difficult to work with. Its thick, which makes my machine groan when I stitch over 4 or more layers, and I broke a needle stitching the collar. The material does not stick to itself at all, but sticks to everything else, so it’s difficult to align pieces with any reliability. On top of that, the fleece is stretchy, so the bottom layer sticks to the machine and stretches while the top layer glides over and I keep ending up with a gathering effect on the bottom layer. The fleece loses little bits of itself off the edges when cutting or working with it, and the living room had to be vacuumed three (count them, three!) times before I finally gave up getting all the baby blue tufts out of the carpet. Finally, I either chose the wrong size, or, more likely, my stupidity in not reading seam allowances (READ THESE) gave me a pull-over big enough to fit my dad. He’s over 6-feet tall.

Step 3: Evaluate End Product
Overall, I had several enjoyable evenings working on this project. I learned a lot about sewing and working with difficult fabrics. For that, I might say it was a $20 well spent. In terms of the end result, I have to say it was $20 almost wasted. DH won’t wear the fleece, because it’s a little large on him, and it’s such a soft baby blue he says it looks girly. However, I wear it when I’m reading or writing in the garden at night when the temperature gets chilly in the winter, and it is unbelievably warm. So, in the end, I am satisfied with this project. I wouldn’t recommend it to others, however.

Overview of Tips Based on This Experiment

Check your sizing thoroughly before cutting a pattern.
Read instructions and follow them when using a pattern, unless you know enough about the pattern and what you’re making to make intelligent changes. Don’t just make random changes without fully thinking through the consequences.
Consider the intricacies of your fabric. If you are a beginner at sewing, choose lighter weight fabrics with little to no stretch. If your fabric is likely to unravel or lose bits at the edges, work in a tiled area and clean as you go.
Keep a sense of humor and remember sewing your own is largely about gaining experience and skills. Sometimes, that’s about all you gain!

The Beef Stroganoff Experiment: Scratch vs. the Box

2009-10-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

Beef Stroganoff: Which is better in the categories of cost, ease, nutrition, and taste - Hamburger Helper or Scratch?

The Experiment

DH wanted beef stroganoff last night. I’m in charge of the food budget and cooking, so I get to decide whether to buy the box or try from scratch. I’ve always used the box, so I look up Paula Deen’s recipe on foodnetwork.com. DH hates the texture of mushrooms and onions, so I quickly make a few modifications. The ingredients I don’t have but need are: sour cream, egg noodles, and cream of mushroom soup. So the first step of the experiment is to determine whether I can get enough of these ingredients for one batch for less than the cost of one box of the cheapest Hamburger Helper or store-brand stroganoff mix. The second step is to determine whether the work involved is less, the same, more, or prohibitive for the scratch recipe as compared to the boxed recipe. The third step is to evaluate the final result in terms of its taste and nutrition. Lastly, I will score each in these categories and announce the winner.

Step 1: Cost

The total scratch recipe, modified from Paula Deen’s:

0.75 lb ground beef

½ onion

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp flour

½ can condensed cream of mushroom soup

1 beef buillion cube

½ lb egg noodles

½ c sour cream

Salt to taste and water to cover

The hamburger helper recipe, modified slightly from the box:

0.75 lb ground beef

Box

Water (we leave out the other ingredients, because it makes it better when reheated and doesn’t significantly affect the taste)

The box was on sale for $2.59 (usually $2.99). The ingredients I needed to purchase were $1.29 for 1 lb of egg noodles (0.65 for the recipe), sour cream $0.99 for 8 oz ($0.50 for the recipe), and $0.79 for a can of cream of mushroom soup ($0.40 for the recipe). If I account $0.30 for ½ onion and $0.10 for a buillion cube, the total cost of the scratch recipe is $1.84, about $0.75 cents less. So I decided on the scratch recipe. I’m leaving the cost of beef out of this, since it’s the same for both recipes.

Step 2: Work Involved
Box Recipe

Brown the beef. Stir in sauce mix. Add water and egg noodles. Cover and simmer for 12 minutes. Eat.

Scratch Recipe

Brown the beef in olive oil and butter. Chop the onion finely, add to beef as its browning and cook until beef is completely browned. Stir in flour. Add buillion, soup, stir. Add noodles, add water to cover, stir. Simmer uncovered 12 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in sour cream and salt to taste.

Evaluation

The extra work is mainly finding the ingredients. Chopping the onion was no big deal, since I usually hover over the beef while it’s browning anyway. A decent substitution for those averse to chopping onions would be onion powder (not onion salt). This recipe is recommended as a “try it once” for those averse to assembling ingredients or planning to use the remaining mushroom soup and sour cream in future meals.

Step 3: Taste and Nutrition

The taste was surprisingly equivalent to the boxed recipe. I was mildly disappointed because I hoped to decide to never go back to the box based on taste alone. However, DH gets attached to one flavor, and since this was identical, he was enthused.

I think the nutrition information is a bit misleading. First, one serving of the home-made stroganoff was almost double the size of a serving of the box stroganoff. Second, we never add butter or milk to our box recipe, so if you do these things your boxed meal is going to be worse for you. Third, I used whole wheat noodles with higher fiber than the noodles listed on Spark Recipe’s recipe nutrition calculator. Based on these numbers and these conditions, I would say there is not a huge difference between the nutrition involved in either recipe. However, if you are on a low-sodium diet, choose homemade so you can control your salt intake. Here is the nutritional breakdown (assuming each batch makes 4 servings, given the caveats above):

Box:

Calories 273

Fat 7 g

Sodium 938 mg

Carbohydrates 28 g

Fiber 1 g

Protein 22 g

Scratch:

Calories 507

Fat 22 g

Sodium 572 mg

Carbohydrates 46 g

Fiber 2 g

Protein 28 g

Final Evaluation

Cost: Box 4/5; Scratch 5/5

Work: Box 5/5; Scratch 4/5

Taste: Box 5/5; Scratch 5/5

Nutrition: Box 3/5; Scratch 3/5

Total: Box 17/20; Scratch 17/20

Summary:
Scratch ingredients are cheaper, but some people may find it’s worth the extra $0.75 to have all the ingredients in one place and non-perishable. There was no change in taste or and only minor differences in nutrition, but nutrition in the scratch recipe can be further improved by leaving out the oil and butter and substituting (for a mild cost) fat free sour cream. Since I enjoy cooking and when the box goes off sale the price differential will be higher, I will probably avoid the box and make this dish from scratch in the future.

How to Keep Racoons from Stealing the Sweet Corn and Squirrels from Digging up the Saffron Bulbs

2009-10-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

The Situation

My neighbor warned me several months ago that I would probably begin to have problems with squirrels digging in my garden pots, as they had been digging in her potted plant until they killed it. Somehow, I managed to avoid this problem until just the last few weeks. I didn’t mind too terribly when they dug by the sweet corn, or over by the peppers, because they are hardy plants and can handle a little digging. However, when they started pulling up my saffron bulbs, I was pretty upset.

Imagine my frustration a few days later when I walk out to water the garden and generally bask in the glory that is raising vegetables for food, I notice that one of the ears of corn has been pulled off the stalk. Then another. I find the ears a few feet away, one big bite out of them, and the rest left for the ants. This is completely unacceptable! So I turn to some “experimental treatments” for my small mammal problem.

Chili Pepper

I did what I always do in times of emergency – Google! I found plenty of information suggesting sprinkling chili pepper around potted plants to prevent squirrels digging. So I used up my entire spice rack of chili and cayenne powders. This didn’t even work for a day.

The Magic Powder

I gave in and went to Home Depot. My trip started off spectacularly – I found someone to ask within minutes. Actually, I found two people. They were standing by some flowering plants, watching and talking about the bees that were swarming them. Just as I walk up, a bee flies right at the guy, and he jumps about a mile back! I say, “I’m looking for some squirrel repellant, can you help me out?” He says, “Yeah, get a pellet gun and some peanut bait!” We all laugh, the lady goes back to her outdoor checkstand, and he walks me indoors. Right inside, where I should have found it on my own, is tons of pest repellant options. He points at this one package, and tells me its 89% dried blood, the rest is chili powder. I’m feeling pretty despondent because I already tried chili powder and it didn’t work. He assured me that the blood smell mixed with the chili powder pain can do the trick. If that doesn’t work, he holds up a giant mousetrap. I giggle, and he says, “Nah, you can put the little mousetraps around and they’ll get a sting but it won’t kill them.” Armed with this knowledge I went home, put on some nitrile lab gloves, and liberally sprinkled the stinky pain on everything but my plants. I don’t want blood on my babies! Then I set a number of mousetraps where they’ve been digging the hardest and right at the base of the corn.

The Results

As I said, plain chili powder didn’t work. At all. However, the combination of dried blood, chili powder, and numerous mousetraps has worked like a charm for weeks now. I think it may be the dried blood, since I tried the chili powder once and got negative results and none of the traps have been sprung yet (except the one I stepped on in flip flops – OUCH!). I actually get to put more than half the garden’s produce on the dinner table. I’ve never been happier in my life. While this may not work for you, I would definitely recommend giving it a try.

State of the Homestead

2009-10-01T21:55:00.001-07:00

Today is an interesting day. Today DH and I re-combine our households and finances after spending the last 6 months apart. We’ve each accumulated some credit card debt during this time, so today is also the first day of our budget and paying those down. Soon we’ll be looking for a “real” house as opposed to my one bedroom apartment, which is great in every respect but it really is insufficient space now that DH is back. Here’s a snapshot of what you may find here in the future:

Frugal Cooking Tips

We currently have a pretty high food budget: $100 a week. However, we use every part of the buffalo in this house, so you’ll have access to our wild and crazy strategies for making every meal stretch. We eat well and I love to cook, so don’t expect endless discussions of dried beans and rice (although I do only use dried beans – so much cheaper than canned!). I’m also pretty adventurous and like to try to make tasty things healthy, so you might find a wealth of “well, I tried this but it didn’t work so well,” posts.

Remembering Old Traditions

There are a number of forgotten home traditions we have been re-learning to prevent spending extra money on the little pleasures of life. We’ve been brewing our own beer for the past 5-6 years, and have accumulated a fair bit of stories on what works, what doesn’t work every time, and what never ever works and makes you want to cry when 5 gallons of good beer gets skunked. I’d like to branch into wine-making, so you’ll get all kinds of fun stories when we face trials and tribulations with this new DIY task. Other things you’ll find: cheesemaking, pickling, canning, sewing, crochet, knitting, the list could go on as I find more and more fun things.

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Tips

Although we have no big home-improvement projects to provide tips on, I come from a family where everything is done at home instead of done by a paid professional. Since DH’s car has been suffering some these past 6 months, you’ll hear the fun stories of our attempts to make it work without paying a shop thousands of dollars. Other minor home repairs will be tackled, and furniture repair and refinishing may also be addressed. Basically, as it comes up and takes over our lives, you’ll hear about it!

Urban Homesteading

Did I mention we’re living in a one-bedroom apartment? Did I also mention that our garden currently provides all the heirloom tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and radishes we need? Since the garden has finally been found by tomato worms, raccoons, and squirrels, you’ll be hearing an awful lot about my attempts to humanely and organically control these evil critters. Evil too strong a word for a squirrel, you say? Let me tell you, they may look cute and cuddly, but those little things turn into a hissing ball of teeth and claws when they break into your apartment and you want them out. We’ll be bringing in winter squash, turnips, and lettuce soon, and also planting new items as the winter growing season approaches (Northern Cali just has the hot, dry season and the cooler, wetter season. You can grow early spring crops all winter here).

General Savings and Personal Finance Tips

DH is something of an investing buff, he really enjoys researching and following the market. Unfortunately, we don’t have extra capital to invest yet. Hopefully, I’ll get him talked into posting some of his thoughts on what he would do if we had the money, and some of his thoughts on what we’re avoiding at all costs, even if we do have enough money for them. I’ll also be posting updates on our budgeting and progress on paying off the debts, so you can see what works and what doesn’t for an average couple on a lower income in a high-cost-of-living area.