A Few Words About Water

I have realized that I have amassed quite a few little tweaks and life hacks that are fast, cheap, and good but are not full-scale projects, so I'm going to dedicate a few posts to some simple ideas.  The first is all about water.

1.  Of course, we've said it before and the frugal blogosphere will say it again, but please do everything you can to avoid buying bottled water.  It costs a lot to transport, both in money and environmental impact, leading to a big expenditure for you.  It also throws off a lot of trash, which you have to haul to the curb and someone else has to haul to the landfill or recycling center.  In this case, I'm going to advocate you spend to save:  Go out right now and treat yourself to a stainless steel or aluminum water bottle that you will fill from your tap and carry with you to work or wherever you need water.  If you don't trust your tap water (and most of us really have nothing to worry about), get whatever filtration system will make you feel secure about drinking your own tap water.  Long term, these purchases will save you money.

2.  While you're at it, stop buying bottled iced tea.  As you can see above, you can make iced tea in about 10 seconds of work and an hour or so of waiting, just by filling a jar with warm water and throwing in one industrial-sized tea bag.  (This is Lipton made for cold brewing, which I bought in bulk at Sam's Club.)  This batch of tea is probably 5 minutes into "brewing" by sitting on the counter; I was enjoying a glass (at work in my aluminum bottle!) about 20 minutes later.  Again, don't pay someone to transport water to you.  (For those of you extra-worried about bacteria growth in "sun tea," just let it steep in the fridge.)

3.  Finally, an odd water-related tip I read in a WWII-era home economics publication:  when you use a carton of cream (or half-and-half, or a can of evaporated milk), rinse the container out with an ounce or two of water, and add this reconstituted milk to your milk jug or use it in cooking as milk.  I thought this was a neat idea, and I've been doing this on the rare occasions that I have a container of half-and-half around.   It saves a couple of cents and gives me the jollies, which isn't a bad thing either.

Knitted Cowl

This questionable looking item above is a cowl.

For those of you not familiar with them, cowls are somewhere between a stand-alone turtleneck and a scarf.  If you knit them fairly narrow, as I did above, they cozy around your neck like a big turtleneck.  (This is critical for me, because if my neck and feet aren't warm, there is no hope for the rest of me.)  If you knit a larger circumference, you can pull it up over your head like a hood.

Plain English Cowl Instructions

You need:
1.5 skeins Lion Brand Nature's Choice Organic Cotton Yarn
Size 10.5 circular knitting needle with 24" cord
Size N crochet hook

Cast on 80 stitches.  This edge will curl when you wear it, which I think creates a neat look. 
Knit in the round until the piece is about 12 inches long, or however long you want it.  The longer it is, the more it will scrunch up around your neck.
Crochet off.  The piece above has a single row of double crochet, but in later versions I have done a double row, which seems to make that edge lay flatter when you wear it.  Obviously, you can wear either end at the top, or even wear it inside out.

You can cut the cost of this by choosing less expensive yarn, but I am addicted to this Lion Brand option.  It just feels so good in my hands! I started by buying it at my local yarn store for $7.49 a skein plus tax, making this cowl come in at $12.  I have since found several good online sales that bring the price per skein under $6.  Fabric.com currently has a good price, plus free shipping on orders over $35.  If you get the mailers from Joann Fabric, you will often see a 40% or 50% off coupon on regular-price items, which helps as well.

The Analysis

Fast:  I can finish one of these in two or three nights of knitting (at one or two hours a night), which means they are plenty quick to make a few for me, a few for hubby (they are unisex), and some for gifts.

Cheap:  As mentioned above, this cowl was $12, but I should be able to do future ones for around $8 if I'm careful.

Good:  As we head into fall, anything that adds some warmth allows us to keep that heat low or off for longer!

Fall Thermostat Challenge Update:  Typical for the Midwest, we just had a weekend during which I could hardly stand to turn off the AC, followed by a night during which I slept in socks!  So far, the whole-house heat and AC have been off 266 hours since Labor Day, or 11.08 days!

Grad School Casserole

The intoxicating thing about blogging about domestic issues is that one can make one's life sound as perfect as possible.  I figure this is what happened to Martha Stewart:  one day she was telling the neighbor how to repot African violets, and the next thing she knew she had a multimedia empire that required her to put little gingham hats on her Mason jars of home canning and tie them with rafia bows.

My friends, I promise you:  my Mason jars will never wear gingham hats.

Anyway, yesterday was one of those less-than-perfect days.  After a week of nearly no sleep and multiple client deadlines, I managed to get one of the worst allergy attacks ever.  I could hardly see or breathe for the majority of the day.  By the time I got home from the "second shift" job, I was pretty much ready to either call out for expensive, fatty junk or commit to making a dinner out of tortilla chips eaten over the sink.

Enter Grad School Casserole.

Developed back in the day that this was an economical meal or 5 for a graduate student, this is the go-to meal for complete melt-down days.  It is not healthy.  It is not even as cheap as lovingly sauteing veggies from the garden.  But it tastes like comfort food, is prepared from stuff you can easily keep on hand (because Heaven knows none of it will ever spoil with the preservative content), and it resembles a meal enough to keep body and soul together.

Grad School Casserole
1 Box Kraft Deluxe Mac n Cheese ($1.67)
1 Package Hot Dogs* ($3.99)
1 cup Kroger stuffing mix ($1.79 per box; 3 cups per box = 60 cents)

Prepare mac.  Cut up hot dogs.  Put in casserole dish, top with stuffing, and cover the dish.  Bake at 350 for 20 minutes until hot dogs are hot.

* I buy Hebrew National, a more expensive brand, because at least the kosher butchering process makes the company slow down during the meat production process, which means a cleaner overall product.  This is particularly important when you are buying what is functionally spiced leftover meat bits shoved in a tube.

Drink a lot of water, because you've just had your sodium for the week.  But, this casserole tastes like your favorite hot dogs and mac lunch from when you were a kid, and it keeps the family together long enough to live to fight another day.

The Analysis

Fast:  About 25 minutes, including prep and baking.  This is the point of this dish.

Cheap:  At $6.26, I've certainly made cheaper meals.  But it makes about five servings, and it is cheaper than the pizza I was about to order. 

Good:  Comfort food for those bad days and lunches the next.  If you want to reheat this one for lunch, you may want to add a splash of milk to keep it from drying out.

Zavory Peppers

Do you remember, way back in February, when I started my pepper plants?  Growing peppers is such a wonderful hobby for someone like me; it gives me some gardening to do just when I'm starting to be convinced winter will never be over, and then the little plants are pretty happy to be ignored until time for harvest.

This year, you may recall, I grew a new offering from Burpee called Zavory.  These are the pretty little red peppers you see at the top of the photos.  (The three darker green chiles on the left are Salsa Delight, and the lighter green one on the right is a Bananarama, both also from Burpee.)  At the time, I conjectured that the Zavory peppers would be hotter than I could handle, because my typical growing methods seem to produce very hot peppers.

Was I pleasantly surprised!  The Zavory have a little snap to them, but not a tremendous amount of heat.  Best of all, they have just the right spicy flavor to go perfectly on pizza, which is how we ate a handful of these this weekend.   Yum!

What did I do differently?

• I started my seedlings in newspaper pots filled with potting soil rather than in peat pellets.  I think this allowed me to let them stay put longer before their first transplant, and it didn't stress the young seedlings with looking for nutrients.
• I "abused" my peppers less.  I always say I abuse my peppers; I tend to expose them to the wind from a fan for several hours a day from the time they have their first real leaves until they go into the large outdoor containers where they live.  This year, I exposed them to shorter bursts from the fan to keep their stems strong and keep them from growing leggy, but I didn't make them stand up to wind all day.
• I moved them outside to harden off earlier.  This spring had a number of early warm days, and the peppers got a much longer period of sitting on the patio during the day and only coming in at night.
• I watered them much more regularly.

Combined, I think this kept my peppers from being overly-stressed, which I think keeps the capsaicin at a manageable level.

Ultimately, many things in the garden this year were disappointing due to some very erratic weather in the Midwest, and I didn't get nearly the harvest of many things I would have liked.  However, I got quite a few of these lovely Zavory peppers, and they are on my list for next year!

The Analysis

Fast:  Peppers are the biggest long-term commitment (you will note seven and a half month from  seeds to harvest here), but they don't require a lot of attention except during that time of year when you really need a garden plant to love!

Cheap:  Even with a relatively small harvest, I don't think I could have purchased the same quantity of Zavory peppers at the farmer's market for the cost of seeds.  For one thing, I didn't see any Zavorys at the market this year.

Good:  Seriously, these taste just like they were tailor made for a pizza. 

Is Organization Frugal?

"That's so last season!  I wouldn't be caught dead in it."

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

Somewhere between these two is where most frugalistas (and frugalistos) live.  But it is easy to see how frugal living can tip the scale and send you right into accumulating too many things you will never use again.

For me, it was my clothes closet.  I love getting new clothes, something that hasn't changed just because I want to live sustainably.  However, a quick look at my closet this summer showed that I had gotten rid of very little since the early 1990s.  Clothing was shoved, stacked, and stored in there:  everything from current favorites to out-of-fashion but expensive pieces to cheapies that had seen better days.  It was time to take action.

I was helped by two powerful forces.  First is the recent proliferation of television shows about hoarding; after watching about two-thirds of an episode about these poor folks with disorders that resulted in the inability to throw things away, I invariably need to clean something out.  More than one episode of such a show has ended with me holding a full trash bag.

The second, more powerful force is my wonderful Mom.  She encouraged me to get rid of anything in my closet that I don't love and that doesn't make me feel good when I'm wearing it.  No matter how expensive or how un-used (or, conversely, how loved-to-death), if it no longer works, it goes.  When I needed a push forward, she would look at a piece of clothing with wide shoulder pads or an androgynous shape and parrot a commercial from a few years back:  "So, where did you park your DeLorean?"  No one wants to look like they are tooling around town with Marty McFly, so out the offending garment went.

This doesn't mean everything hit the trash.  I tried to clean in a sustainable way, including:

• Items that were too worn to use became rags or quilt squares or hankies, as the fabric dictated.  I tried to limit this category so I wasn't just moving stuff from my closet to another pile.
• Items that were still good but just didn't look good on me went to Goodwill.  For example, I don't know how many mock turtlenecks I had to buy to learn the lesson that these shirts make me look like I have mono-bosom.  Yuck.
• Items that no longer work but are more valuable as a garment than a rag also went to Goodwill.  For example, wool jackets of a questionable cut were sent in the hopes that maybe they would be sold at deep discount to someone who needed the warmth more than the latest style.  However, I didn't send anything obviously dated that was also super-cheap, like a cotton blouse with shoulder pads.

All told, I took a substantial stack to the rag and fabric piles, and to date I have sent ten (count 'em, ten!) bags to Goodwill.

Is organization like this frugal and sustainable?  I think so.  Since the organization, I have been better able to find my favorite items, and I treat them better.  Now that clothes have room to breathe, I am less likely to pull something out of the closet only to find that it needs ironed before wearing.  I have also better been able to resist buying a new item because I didn't remember that I had one similar tucked away on the shelf. 

The organization has also carried over into my shopping.  Now, when I shop, I ask myself if I really love something, if it will look good on me, if it will make me feel good about myself.  If it is just OK or a "like not love," I put it back on the rack.  Someone else who loves the item can give it a home and "use it up, wear it out."  I will do likewise with my favorites before I shop for new ones.  I think that's sustainable.

Organize Those Coupons

I used to be a couponer of the first order.  Every week, I would clip the coupons from the paper (there was no such thing as online coupons at the time) and file them in a little expandable file that I kept with me at all times.  On the days that I was going to the grocery after work, I would take my shopping list and sort out the applicable coupons, noting a "C" and the number and brand of the item I had to buy.  So, if I wanted to buy toaster pastries and had a coupon for 50 cents off two boxes, the list would get a note that said "C Pop Tarts x2."

Did I mention that I had a really boring job at the time, and I was, um, multitasking at work?

Once I went full-time freelance, time at my desk was sacred.  If I'm sitting at my desk, I'm earning money, and couponing isn't typically part of the equation.  I still clip coupons from the paper and online, but it is increasingly hard to find the time to match them with my list.

So, I have devised the above system.  You will see that there is a single envelope for coupons.  This is because I no longer clip every coupon that seems promising such that I need to file them by category.  If I have clipped the coupon, it is because it is for something I would buy anyway.  This cuts waaaaaay down on the number of junk food coupons that accumulate; if a frozen dinner or convenience food isn't a good idea at full price, it isn't a good idea with a coupon.  (I make an exception for those favorite splurges that will get us out of the occasional jam.  For example, I try to make my own pizzas because I add more veggies and less meat, but having a frozen pizza or two in the freezer will save us from a complete meltdown on a really bad day.)

As far as grocery lists, you see three:  one is for Trader Joe's, the only place I can find a good selection of reasonably-priced organic meats and hormone-free cheeses, turbinado sugar, and cookies made without HFCS.  TJ's doesn't take coupons because they are almost entirely based on house brands, so when this list fills up, there is no need to sort coupons.

One list is for Dorothy Lane Market, our local upper-income, foodie-oriented bodega.  To save my budget, I only frequent DLM for locally-made organic butter and milk from grass-fed cows, plus some of the Bob's Red Mill grain items.  Buying anything else in DLM -- even a bottle of shampoo -- can be budget suicide, so unless I know I have a Bob's Red Mill coupon, I don't sort my coupons and I don't shop for anything other than the DLM-only items.

The big list is for Meijer, our local superstore.  Here is where the coupons come into play.  This list has everything:  food, health and beauty products, even basic automotive and household supplies.  When it is time for a Meijer trip, I sort the coupons, taking the ones for items on the list and the ones about to expire.  I add these last items to my list; remember, these are things I would buy anyway, so I will take the opportunity to stock up.  So, of all of my grocery trips, this is the only one that really involves couponing. 

I try to rotate among the lists to address the longest one, and I try to only go to a grocery store once a week.  Currently, our grocery budget for two people is around $100 a week, which sounds high until you realize that that is not just food (and really, the only food we are buying right now in any quantity is dairy) but also shampoo, make up, OTC medications, any household cleaners I don't make myself, ingredients for the ones I do, and the occasional one-off purchase like the injector cleaner I just bought for my car or the water bottle my husband just bought to carry drinks to work.  Not bad, I'd say.

The Analysis

Fast:  My couponing time is reduced to a couple of minutes of sorting before I do the big Meijer run, and I'm still taking advantage of the cents-off as well as the planning to get my items at the most economical locations.

Cheap:  Couponing is still one of the easiest activities for saving money, as long as you have a system that works for you.

Good:  I love a good organization system!

Fall Thermostat Challenge Update:  Thanks to a few cool days, the whole house AC has been off for 128.5 hours since Labor Day, or 5.35 days.  I had to turn it back on to combat the allergens, but I should be able to take another run at it soon.

The Value of Stretching

Stretching is something of a lost art.  Your grandmother or great-grandmother did it during the Depression and WWII, taking a little bit of rationed foodstuffs and turning it into enough food to feed a family.  In fact, home cooks throughout history have primarily stretched their food -- making do with the scarce or expensive items and adding in cheaper or in-season items to add bulk, volume, taste, or nutrition.  Cookbooks from most eras explicitly or implicitly refer to stretching; it is only modern cookbooks that seem to imply that you can't make dinner unless you have the exact quantities asked for, down to the last bay leaf and quarter teaspoon of lemon zest.

Some of my favorite stretching tips:

To Stretch Meat

• Meat is the most often stretched foodstuff, because of scarcity in earlier eras and expense in all eras.  The best way to stretch meat is grind it up; buy a less expensive cut and grind it, or buy pre-ground chuck, turkey, or the like.  Stretch by adding approximately one egg per pound of ground meat and up to a cup of oatmeal, bread crumbs, rice, or cracker crumbs.  Behold, meatloaf!  Meat balls!  Just season according to your recipe.  This is the stretching tip you most likely remember from your granny, and it is the one you are most likely to still use, even if you don't think of it as stretching.
• Slice your meat.  With a better cut of meat, prepare it and then slice it and use it as a garnish on pasta, rice, or salads.  You will want less meat when it visually takes up more room, and this also means fewer calories in your diet.
• Use the scraps.  We keep a "stock bucket" in our freezer to collect trimmings and bones.  When it is full, I make stock and use that for a hearty soup.
• Make a casserole from leftovers.  If you have a few trimmings from a roast or even a few hot dogs from your last cook out, you can add them to a casserole for a little extra protein and a meal with less meat.

To Stretch Carbohydrates

• Carbs, like pasta, rice, or bread, are usually the thing we use to stretch.  However, in some seasons, they are the most expensive item on a very economical table.  When the garden is in full swing, suddenly that $1 box of pasta is your big expense for the meal.
• Stretch pizza crust and most baked goods by adding shredded zucchini.  I like to take a Jiffy boxed pizza crust and add about a cup of shredded zucchini (about one medium) and decrease the amount of water called for.  Add a little extra flour if the dough seems watery.  Often, this makes a small box of pizza crust mix become enough for two pizzas.
• Likewise, put a shredded zucchini in your next batch of bread and decrease the liquid a bit.  You will get more bread, and you have found a way to get rid of a zucchini and add some nutrition to your diet.

To Stretch Dairy

• Dairy is expensive, especially if you want hormone-free or organic varieties.
• Make yogurt.  Yogurt can take the place of many sauces, and it becomes a good way to get calcium without having to drink a lot of milk.  While an ounce of milk makes an ounce of yogurt, so no real change in volume, you tend to be happy with four to six ounces of yogurt and some fruit instead of an eight ounce glass of milk.
• Buy stronger flavored cheeses.  That way, you will use less and still be satisfied.
• Use cheese as a garnish on veggies, not as a main ingredient.

Basil Pesto

If I had to pick only two things to grow in my garden, they would be tomatoes and basil.  Tomatoes because nothing tastes like a home grown tomato, and basil because it functions almost as a cash crop for me.

Nothing could be easier than growing basil.  Packets of seeds of "Genovese" or "common" basil, the kind that is perfect for pesto and sauces, are readily available at the hardware and grocery store every spring for around $1.50.  (Yes, they are hybrids; if you want an all-heirloom garden, you will pay up.  But I promise, Genovese or common basil is the kind you want for pesto -- meaty, large leaves, strong aroma, dark green color.)  Start your seeds about 6 weeks before your last frost date; I usually dump about a quarter of a pack of seeds into each of four small pots and treat the resulting seedlings as four plants.  You could get more scientific.  Wait until your ground is warm and no threat of frost remains, and plant them in a sunny spot. 

You will wait forever to see a plant of any size, but when it starts to take off, prune the plant regularly at the leaf junctions, encouraging two more branches to sprout where you cut.  Pretty soon, you will have a basil plant of mammoth proportions.

I think the best way to preserve the bounty is by making pesto.  Pesto (coming from the Italian root for "paste," the same as pasta) is a sauce of any leafy green mixed with olive oil, salt, and frequently cheese and or nuts.  I use the term "pesto" to refer to basil and oil, to which I add salt when I cook.  I may or may not want to add cheese or other inputs, so I freeze it pretty plain.

In the store, small jars (3 oz.) of basil pesto are typically $3.39 (the most common price I saw when I looked this week at a few brands.  If you assume that each ounce requires 38 cents worth of non-basil inputs (like oil and salt), making your own basil pesto will save you 75 cents per ounce.  This can get into some serious savings quickly.  Last year, I froze 14 half pint containers of pesto (a half pint will cover a box of pasta, which is my most typical usage).  That means 112 ounces, or $84 in savings over buying a comparable amount in the store.  This year so far, I have put up 6 containers, for a savings of $36.  As you can see, most years the basil pesto alone will pay for a significant part of the garden seeds and plants (which typically run me around $250 a year).

To make pesto, wash your basil leaves and puree in a food processor with olive oil until you have a consistency somewhere between a sauce and a paste.  Put in a container and freeze.

You can use this to dress pasta, giving you a quick meal that also has a fair amount of leafy green veg in it.  Or, use it as a compliment to dipping oil for bread, or as a dressing between veg and bread on bruschetta.  When you use it, you can add salt, cheese, or nuts to your liking.  In the winter, I love to make a batch of pasta with basil pesto, sea salt, sun dried tomatoes, and a grating of Parmesan as a quick, healthy meal.

The Analysis

Fast:  Processing basil to be frozen takes a little time, but not as much time as, say, freezing strawberries or canning tomatoes.

Cheap:  See above.  Every 8 oz. container of pesto you freeze now saves you $6 over buying the cute little jars in the store.

Good:  Here's the kicker:  nothing tastes as good basil pesto frozen the day it was picked, so the expensive little jars don't even taste as good!

Fall Thermostat Challenge Update:  As of today, 6 hours saved.  Yesterday was a cool day, and we were in and out of the house doing home improvement, so it made sense to turn off the AC.  We turned it back on for night and for an expected heat wave.

Frugality and Textbooks

(Full disclosure:  I am currently director of education for a small college, and I have spent much of my career working in and studying higher education.  My experience necessarily informs and colors my thoughts.)

If your back to school season includes college classes for yourself or a family member, you may have experienced sticker shock at the bookstore.  Because of relatively small print runs, among other factors, textbooks will never be as cheap as the latest Dan Brown thriller.  Additionally, some publishing companies appear to have cracked open their own marketing textbooks long enough to embrace planned obsolescence, releasing a new edition every year, obsoleting the old edition (which was probably perfectly fine) and killing the used book market.  What is a student (or parent) to do?

Choose your courses wisely:  I would never advise a student to choose their courses based solely on book costs; an education, no matter how expensive, is a bargain in improvements in earnings power and quality of life.  However, if you are ambivalent about your choice of elective course, you might let textbook cost be the deciding factor.  If you are deciding between courses to fulfill your literature requirement, Survey of Shakespeare at 2:00 p.m. with a $200 textbook may not be as good a deal as Intro to Dante at 8:00 a.m. with a $35 copy of The Inferno.  Set your alarm and save a little money.

Buy used:  Many college book stores offer at least a few used textbooks to round out their stock.  Get to the store early and select used books that are as unmarked as possible.  However, don't hesitate to buy new if your only other option is a book so highlighted that you will never be able to process the information on your own.

Talk to your professors:  Professors often make book adoption decisions without thinking about the price the student will pay.  Even the most well-meaning prof is usually wanting to get the information in front of students in a convenient way, regardless of cost.  And price sensitivity is often blunted by the fact that these profs typically have stable careers and paychecks, making it easy to think of throwing another $20 book on the pile just for completeness.  Talk to your prof and ask his or her honest opinion on your book-buying decisions, including:

1. Which of these books do you think I will want to keep after the course is over?  Does your answer change if this is not my major?  (Consider buying new or gently used copies of references in your field.)
2. Can I share a book with someone else in class?  With someone in a different section?  (If the prof gives open book tests, you won't be able to share a text.  Otherwise, you and a friend or roommate may want to split the cost and share the book.)
3. How much of each of these books do you use in class?  Is there one or more I could use from the library reserve? (Professors often put selected readings on reserve in the library, or sometimes these readings are available online.  If your prof has adopted a book for one or two readings, try to get by with the library copy or an online source.  Or, look for another book that has the reading; the Declaration of Independence doesn't change whether it is printed in a $120 history survey text or on the back of a freebie Fourth of July pamphlet from your state senator.)

Start a book fund:  You know that textbook purchases are coming each term, so save for them like you would a vacation or a special treat (yeah, I know, not the same).  Sell your aluminum cans and put the money in a jar.  Let family members know how much you would like a gift card to your college book store or online store of choice.

Shop around:  The internet makes it much easier to compare prices, and you should do this on textbooks.  Many university book stores will charge the suggested retail price for textbooks, while many online stores, lacking the expensive bricks and mortar overhead, will charge much closer to their own wholesale price from the publisher.   A few minutes checking prices (which you can do from your smart phone while standing in the college book store) could save you several dollars or more on each book.

Yoga Socks

First of all, my apologies.  This is one of my feet.  Yes, I desperately need a pedicure and a paraffin dip.  This is what gardeners' feet look like at the end of the season.  [Hangs head.]

OK, now, on to the project:  this is one of my new pair of yoga socks. 

I mentioned this spring that I was teaching myself to knit.  Let me tell you a little bit about myself as a crafter.  I am not someone who uses my crafts to challenge myself.  When I embroider, I do not want to do it on 24-count Aida cloth in 37 very similar shades of green.  I will not be knitting Fair Isle patterns.  I will not be crocheting from patterns at all.

I craft to soothe myself, primarily, which means that the project must be 1) repetitive and 2) practical.  I embraced red work embroidery because I don't need to pay enough attention to change colors.  I like to crochet a rib stitch that I use on almost everything.  And with knitting, I like repetitive rectangles that I can create while watching TV, reading, walking around the house (yes, my new skill), or sitting at my computer thinking about a thorny work problem.

Yoga socks are the perfect project for this.  All you do is create a rectangle from sock weight yarn (although I have had good luck with worsted weight cotton as well), sew up the area under the arch and behind the leg, and wear.  They are ideal for yoga class, when you need contact with the floor for traction but still want to keep warm.  I have gotten rave reviews wearing them to belly dance class, especially from the American Tribal fans who love hand-crafted pom-poms, tassels, and other costume decorations.  And, they are great in the fall and spring when you really want to go barefoot but need a little something to keep cozy. 

(Note:  I write knit and crochet patterns in plain English, too.)
Cast on 50 stitches of sock weight yarn on size 3 needles.  This fits my size 6 foot well; you may need to add or subtract accordingly.

Knit to your heart's content, or until you have the length you desire.  Remember, you are going from the base of the ball of your foot to a bit up your calf, so this will be shorter than a standard sock.  I just knitted; you can add cables or intarsia designs or anything else you want.  Heck, this can be your swatch to test the gauge for your next sweater, if you like.

Bind off.  Turn wrong side out to sew.  Sew with mattress stitch about three inches of sock to form a tube; this will go under your arch.  Leave a three inch gap, and sew the rest up.

Turn right side out and go hit the mat!

The Analysis

Fast:  These are not a sit-down-and-do-them project.  These are the kind of thing you knit in spare moments while you are waiting for your family to be ready to leave the house, while you are watching TV, while you are standing at the bus stop with your kids or are on the train on the way to work.  These thrive on stolen moments.

Cheap:  These take less than a skein of sock yarn, so use up your yarn ends this way.  And don't feel limited to matching; what would be more fun than a crazy pair of yoga socks made of leftovers?  That means free!

Good:  These are a blessing in cold yoga studios or on cold dance floors.  They also make that transition from fall to winter a little easier to take.

Fall Thermostat Challenge

I have a love/hate relationship with my house thermostat and all the heating and cooling equipment it runs.  On the one hand, hey, I've read The Long Winter; I know that without central heat I could be spending my winters sitting around the fireplace wrapped in quilts, praying for an early spring.  On the other hand, every time the heat or air kicks on, part of me thinks I should get back to work because there's a bill a-comin'.

Avoiding running either heat or air was easy this spring.  One day, it was warm enough to make it through with just passive solar heat and a nice pair of fleece socks, and I turned off the heat and never looked back.  Even on a couple of really chilly mornings, I felt like I could bring on summer just by refusing to turn the heat back on, and I opened the west and south facing blinds, put on a sweater, and said that summer was here whether the outside temperature knew it or not.  I made it a total of 49 days (7 whole weeks) running neither heat nor air.

Fall is trickier for me.  In the first place, seasonal allergies make it difficult for me to throw open the windows while everything alive is busy throwing pollen, ragweed, and mold into the air.  Secondly, I have no desire to mentally rush the onset of winter and sweat my way through the last few weeks of summer, waiting through the end of air conditioning season and going straight to a delayed heating year.  Finally, and this is one of those individual things that makes you crazy about your own house, but our master bedroom is the great heat collector of the whole house.  This is great in January, when a load of laundry in the laundry room downstairs can take the chill off the bedroom for several hours, in spite of the fact that my night time house heat is set at 55 degrees.  On the other hand, this means that we supplement that room with a window air conditioner in the summer, because that extra 5-10 degrees makes a huge difference in that room in July.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that today, I turned the whole-house AC off for an unseasonably cool day, and I don't plan to turn it back on until night (when I need to cool that bedroom).  So, here is my challenge for myself (and you, if you'd like to play along):

The Fast, Cheap, and Good Fall Thermostat Challenge
1.  Starting Monday, September 6 (Labor Day), put away your white shoes and get out a sticky note.  We are going to track the amount of time we can keep both the AC and the heat off, until the day that we can stand it no more and turn the heat on until spring.

2.  Tallies will be kept in hours.  I will probably be able to turn off the AC for 10-12 hours at a time during the day and live off the cool air that accumulated at night.  You may be able to stand turning off the AC at night and opening a window.  It is all up to your comfort threshhold and your allergies.  Remember, we're saving money and resources here, but not at the expense of our health and sanity!

3.  Single room electric heating and cooling devices, like fans, window air conditioners, and space heaters, are allowed, but only in one room at a time.  (That is, no fair turning off the whole-house air and turning on 5 window units.)  Non-electric options, like open windows and fireplaces, are strongly encouraged, as are passive re-captures of heat like venting a drier indoors or catching up on your baking.

4.  I will keep you updated with periodic tallies of my hours, and I encourage you to do the same, either in the comments section of this blog or the comment section on the Hilltop Communications page on Facebook.  I will let you know when I give up and turn on the heat for good.  For those of you in more southern parts of the country, I expect you will be able to post when you turn the AC back on early next spring.  I love stories like this, so share them.  Northerners, I know you won't have as long a heat-free season, but that is OK.  We are all doing what we can.

Are you ready?  Let's give those thermostats -- and wallets -- a well-deserved fall vacation!

August Pasta

There it is:  Still in the pan, with steam curling off.  August Pasta.  AKA, the cheapest meal of the year.

Even though this is not a gardening year for the record books, we still have an abundance of garden produce this August.  So, every August, I cook a meal or two that relies heavily if not solely on veggies.

What you see above is:

6-8 medium tomatoes, chopped (from garden)

2 medium leeks, chopped (from garden)

1 handful basil, chopped (from garden)

(You can also add peppers, zucchini, oregano, or pretty much whatever is ripe.)

Saute these until the flavor blends.  Mix with:

1/2 package angle hair pasta (Sam's Club, 89 cents per package)

Add sea salt and ground pepper to taste.  Serve.

That's right.  This meal comes in at 45 cents for the batch (remember, I paid for garden seeds and plants from the grocery budget in February, so the produce is a "pantry supply), or 15 cents for each of 3 big servings.  And, if you have lots of veggies, I can assure you that August Pizza and August Rice are equally yummy.

The Analysis

Fast:  The pasta version of this is the fastest, with just less than 20 minutes of prep and cook time.

Cheap:  45 cents a batch!  15 cents a serving!  Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

Good:  With produce this fresh, you don't really need oil or cheese to pump up the flavors.  It is low in calories but quite filling, and did I mention it is 15 cents a serving?

WWII Chili Sauce

August is undeniably tomato month.  Although I think the heat and variable amount of rain has crippled our crop a bit, there are still enough tomatoes to put up a few of our favorites.  One of these is affectionately known as "WWII Chili Sauce."

This recipe derives its name from its origins in Grandma's Wartime Kitchen by Joanne Lamb Hayes.  Although Hayes has devised a way to make this sauce in about a half hour of cook time, I am going against the "Fast" of "Fast, Cheap, and Good" by reverse engineering it to cook longer, making for a thicker sauce and deeper flavors.  It is worth the investment of time.

DH loves this sauce.  On a cold winter night that he is cooking for himself, I can assist by thawing a pound of hamburger and letting him use this like sloppy joe sauce.  It makes a great topping for bread, noodles, or potatoes, and it makes about 4-5 servings of sloppy joe-style chili.

3 lb tomatoes

½ cup chopped onions

½ cup chopped pepper (I uses salsa delight and bananarama chiles, but the recipe calls for green bell peppers)

¼ cup cider vinegar

¼ cup packed light brown sugar

½ t. salt

¼ t. ground cloves

¼ t. ground allspice

Wash and stem the tomatoes, cutting into reasonable size chunks and cutting out bad spots. Place in large pot and cook until the tomatoes are juicy and boiling. The longer you cook, the more juice and pulp will be available to you.

When the tomatoes have released their juice, pass the juice and pulp through a ricer (also called a food mill) to remove the skins and seeds. Return the tomato pulp to the pan, and add the remaining ingredients. Return to a gentle boil, and cook until the sauce is as thick as you would like – depending on the tomatoes you have used and the size of the batch, this could take up to 2 hours.

Refrigerate for use within a week, or spoon into a sterilized pint jar, leaving 1/4-1/2 inch headspace, and process in a water bath canner for 20 minutes (25 minutes for quarts). Makes one pint.

The Analysis

Fast:  Well, I did make the cook time longer on this by virtue of cooking the pulp down, sending it through a ricer, and then cooking again.  I think it is worth it.

Cheap:  Depending on your garden, this could be quite cheap indeed, with the cost coming mostly or entirely from pantry supplies (like cider vinegar and spices).  I always have to buy onion, which are 75 cents each  at my farmer's market.  I grow tomatoes and peppers.

Good:  Once you've had this, I promise the sticky, HFCS-laden sloppy joe sauce in a can will hold very little appeal for you.  And, as a bonus, the house smells wonderful while you cook it!

Knowing How

My husband has a great story about an engineer who is called into the factory late one night to diagnose a problem with a machine that has stopped working, halting production.  (After observing my husband's work schedule, I might add that I am sure that it was late on a holiday or vacation evening, and that the engineer in question probably had to leave his wife to do this.)

He arrives and goes straight to the machine.  He looks at the workings, takes a few readings, asks a few questions of the operators and the skilled trades folks, and then takes out a Sharpie and makes a big black X on the side. 

"Open her up right there, and you'll see the problem," he says, giving directions about the part that needs replaced.  He then packs up and, five minutes after he arrives, departs.

The next day he sends a bill for $5,000, and the client is irate.  "What is this all about?  You were only here for five minutes and made an X!  I can't send this in for payment without some explanation of why it costs so much," the supervisor fumes.  So the engineer writes a revised bill and sends it right over:

Making an X:  $5
Knowing Where:  $4995

So, I hope you will see the connection when I point out that today's photo is of our air conditioning unit, which is humming along and cooling the house just fine, thank you.  That wasn't true a few days ago, when it stopped working in 95 degree heat.  Because my husband is, in fact, an electrical engineer, he went out, took a few readings, and diagnosed that we needed a new capacitor, which he ordered and installed.  Total cost, $37.  I'm sure I would have paid the HVAC service I use at least ten times that for the service call.

This is not to criticize the HVAC service or any other.  (In fact, my HVAC guys have talked me through a few crises gratis before coming out and charging me, so kudos to them.)  Instead, it is to point out that when you see the service charge on a bill, you are seeing the cost of "knowing how."  And this should give you a good idea of the skills you may want to acquire.  You don't have to learn electrical engineering, but can you learn enough basic wiring to install a new light fixture?  (Obligatory warning:  when messing with electricity, make sure you are doing it right.)  Can you learn to change the oil in your car?  Can you learn to make a meal so yummy you don't want to go out to eat as often?  Can you sew on a button and mend a hem?  Can you care for your body and reduce your health care costs?

Take a look at that service fee on your next bill, and see what skills you need to learn.  Can you be the one that "knows how?"

Sustainable Tool: Mortar and Pestle

A few years ago, Hurricane Ike barreled up from the Gulf and continued north until it hit Ohio as a Category 1 Hurricane.  Most of you probably laugh at the idea of a category one storm being memorable, but let me assure you that a mostly-landlocked Midwestern state has done very little hurricane preparedness work.  We were left without power for nearly a week, and that event kicked off my interest in finding tools that can be used off the grid.

One of my favorite such tools, although it wouldn't have done much in a temporary power outage like Ike caused, is the mortar and pestle.  You may recognize the iconic shape from apothecary signs at your local pharmacy, and that is no accident.  A mortar and pestle is the original grinding tool.  It can be used to grind and compound (mix) medications, hence the link with pharmacies, but it has traditionally been used to grind herbs and spices and crack grains and nuts.  I use mine several times a week during food preservation season for just these tasks.

I can't tell you the pleasure that this tool brings me.  It allows me to quickly and easily grind, powder, and crush herbs, seeds, and herbal medications in a way that has been done for millennia.  Think of that -- you are doing a task that someone could have done before electricity, before the railroad, even before writing.  This tool is so basic, just picking one up links you with history.  (That kind of gives me a little chill, but I am a history nerd that way.)

It also does the job well.  I recommend you buy one made of stone; mine is marble, but there are granite ones available.  Get one with a smooth interior, although it doesn't have to be polished.  Place a little of what you are grinding inside, then take the pestle (which I just learned derives from the Latin for "pounder") and start by pressing against your substance, then working up to something slightly more intense than tapping.  You don't want to imitate the Flintstones and pick the pestle up and slam it against the mortar. 

Also, with a mortar and pestle, you can forget about the conventional foodie recommendation to buy a separate coffee grinder and use it just for grinding spices, so the spice flavor doesn't contaminate the coffee.  With a stone mortar and pestle, you can grind any flavorful substance and then wipe it clean with no flavor residue.  You may want to use a drop or two of dish washing liquid if you just worked with hot peppers, but otherwise you can clean your mortar and pestle with water and a clean towel.

I have a possibly unreasonable love for this tool.  With proper care, it will be with me for a lifetime.  Maybe in a millennium, someone else will think of me while they preserve their food using a mortar and pestle.

Search Amazon.com for mortar and pestle

Yogurt

I tend to think of making dairy products as something of an advanced sustainability skill.  I have made cheese, and it requires a fair amount of thought (and a good source of milk that has not been overly pasteurized, which is harder to obtain than you might think).  I have made sour cream, and it is fairly easy, but I have typically wound up with enough sour cream to stock a small Mexican restaurant.

However, I just made yogurt, and this project officially joins the DIY laundry detergent and making your own pesto as a superstar in both the budget and the end product.

It couldn't be easier.  Take your milk (I used a half gallon, but the recipe is totally scalable to the amount you need; there is no reason why you couldn't make anything from a pint to a gallon) and scald it, which means bringing it to a temperature of 180 to 190.  I have a dairy thermometer to measure this, but you could use a candy thermometer in a pinch.

Then, let the milk cool to between 110 and 120 degrees.  Stir in a couple of tablespoons of yogurt; I bought a container of organic vanilla yogurt to get my batch started, but future batches will be made from the last couple of spoons of the existing batch.  Put it in a covered container (I used a half gallon Mason jar), wrap with a towel, and let sit where it will drop no lower than 95 degrees.  This may take some doing in the winter, but right now I just tote it outside and sit it on a high plant shelf on the patio.

Don't disturb it; you are waiting for the good bacteria to grow to the point that they culture the entire batch, at which point it will be thick.  This takes about 4-5 hours.  Refrigerate.

DH notes that he likes this yogurt better than store-bought varieties.  I'm not much of a yogurt-eater, but I like this a lot.  It is milder than the store varieties.  And it is a yummy vehicle for some blackberry preserves.

(Note:  If you are packing a lunch, you could take a half pint Mason jar, add yogurt and preserves, and have your own little fruit and yogurt snack with very much the look and feel of a conventional yogurt container.)

The Analysis

Fast:  I'd say this batch took about 20 minutes of active scalding and cooling, plus the 4-5 hours of letting it sit.  And it is so easy to make, even a covert operative based in Afghanistan can probably still get his yogurt fix.  (Apologies if you aren't a Burn Notice fan and this makes no sense.)

Cheap:  I bought a half gallon of milk for $1.77; this is the only input you have to purchase if you use yogurt from the previous batch to start the new one.  This means $1.77 for 64 ounces.  By contrast, the cheapest store brand yogurt I saw on sale was $0.40 cents for one of those 6 ounce containers, which means you would pay $4.27 for just under 11 little containers of store yogurt.  That is a savings of $2.50 per batch!

Good:  Light, mild, and creamy, this may be my new favorite homemade food.

Pesto-Dressed Pasta with Garden Veggies and Mizithra Cheese

Remember when I said that garden veggies make for great frugal opportunities to try artisinal cheeses and meats that are normally so expensive if they are the feature of a dish?  This is a technique called "stretching."  Your grandmother or great-grandmother did this during WWII or the Depression, and it is how you take a pound of hamburger, add an egg (frequently from at-home laying hens in the era, even in suburban homes) and some oats or crackers or bread, and get a meatloaf that feeds a family of 6-8.

Here, I am using my garden veggies to stretch some yummy Greek Mizithra cheese I got at Jungle Jim's International Market, a northern Cincinnati institution.  Seriously, if you are at all in the area, make a trip to Jungle Jim's.  Bring a cooler and ice, and wear walking shoes.  I've been looking for Mizithra cheese basically since I first tasted it at the age of five, and the quest has, um, been a few years in duration.  Jungle Jim's had it.

Anyway, the cheese is pretty expensive, at $10.99 a pound, not normally a price I would willingly pay for cheese.  However, let's see how I stretched it:

Pesto-dressed Pasta with Garden Veggies and Mizithra Cheese

1 box pasta ($0.79)

2 oz Mizithra cheese ($1.37)

1/2 pint pesto (frozen from garden last year; free)

6-8 medium tomatoes (garden; free)
2 small leeks (garden; free)
2 cloves garlic (garden; free)
1 mild chile (garden; free)
sea salt and cracked black pepper

Cook pasta until al dente.  Coat with basil pesto, add salt to taste, and set aside.

Meanwhile, cut tomatoes into chunks and saute with leeks, garlic, and the chopped, de-seeded chile.  When the tomatoes have cooked down, but are not mush (about 10 minutes), strain the juice off and top the pasta.  Add about 2 oz. of mizithra cheese and serve.

Makes 4 large servings.  It refrigerates and reheats well, so if you have a small family or live alone, you can easily make dinner and then package up the leftovers for lunch at the office or dinner the next day.

The Analysis

Fast:  I made this twice over a single weekend, so enamoured of it were we.  It takes about 30 minutes total of active cooking. 

Cheap:  I spent $2.16 making this meal, which was $0.54 per serving for a really gourmet taste.  Note:  The reason I count garden veggies as "free" is that I count the seed order and the plant purchase each year as part of the grocery budget.  In a sense, the garden then converts to a living pantry.  Yes, I know that it is theoretically possible to put a price on each tomato, but it becomes a moving target when every tomato you bring in lowers the cost-per-tomato that much more.  So, I more or less treat the garden veg as equivalent to sea salt or olive oil; it is something I just pay to keep around.

Good:  Try this with your favorite gourmet cheese.  A strongly-flavored cheese like Mizithra doesn't require a lot to pack a punch, so you will be enjoying this yummy meal all the way to the bank!

Why Aren't You Canning?

It is August, which means prime canning and food preservation season here in the Midwest.  However, there are always those who find out that I can my garden produce and feel that it is something beyond their abilities, so I have decided to address a few common myths about home canning:

Myth:  Canning is difficult.

Fact:  OK, you do have to pay attention to what you are doing, and the first few times you will feel like everything is happening at once, but very quickly you will hit a rhythm.  I think canning is very relaxing, in the same way I enjoy knitting and crocheting, and others enjoy assembling model airplanes.  And, just like these hobbies, you can start with something relatively easy and work your way up.  I recommend starting with jam or pickles.

  

Myth:  Home Canned Food is a Huge Botulism Danger
Fact:  I kind of blame the USDA and other typically helpful agencies like state and county extension services, which tend to sound vaguely alarmist in their canning instructions.  Even my beloved Putting Food By takes an extremely cautious tone.  Botulism is certainly nothing to mess with, as it can kill, so instructions on home food preservation urge you to take every precaution.

But really, according to Grit magazine, there are 145 cases of botulism in the U.S. each year, about two dozen of which come from foodborne sources.  And how many people are eating food in the U.S.?  All but the three that are presumably on a hunger strike at any given time (yes, you can get botulism from Master Cleanse, so Demi Moore was until recently still at risk).  Twenty-two cases divided by the U.S. population is an incredibly small risk per person.  Avoiding home canning because you are afraid of botulism is like not shaking hands in this country because you are afraid of Ebola.

Myth:  I can't make anything of value.
Fact:  This myth burns me up, especially when I saw a recent article that predicted that interest in home canning would wane because all you can make is condiments.  Yes, pickles and jams are the most common products to can, and they count as condiments.  However, this overlooks the fact that almost every culture on the planet has found a way to make pickled vegetables and include them as a food source; it is our food culture that mandates that pickles are used as a slice on a burger rather than a pile on a plate.  And, water bath canning is an easy method for preserving tomato chunks, sauce, and juice, none of which are condiments and all of which are dead easy to make.  Finally, let's not forget the economic (and enjoyment) value of avoiding buying all those condiments in the store and instead enjoying your own.

Myth:  I'll just lose money and fail spectacularly.
Fact:  If you have to start your canning operations from scratch, you will not be making money the first year.  You will have to buy jars, lids, a canning funnel, and a water bath canner (stock pot with rack) at minimum.  However, you will reuse all of these every year except the lids, which I think are about $1.49 a dozen.  After that first year, you will be saving money.

As far as failure, we have quite a little sub-genre of books that address the spectacular failure angle of home sustainability, supposedly to humorous results.  The $64,000 Tomato, Farm City, and My Empire of Dirt are all variations on the theme of innocent person who decides to embrace sustainability all at once and winds up investing 16 hour days and a life savings into rehabilitating a residential lot and trying to live off it.  The protagonists fail or have only limited, possibly Pyrrhic, victories.  No wonder people think this is hard. 

Remember, though, that sustainability is all about taking one step at a time.  I started gardening on my current property with only a small garden patch, and we did not pay off the mortgage from pickle savings that first year.  However, I now grow and preserve enough food to take about $2,000-3,000 off our food bill every year depending on how you do the math.

So there you have it.  I urge you to give home canning a try; here are some resources to help you out:


 

Almost Frugal and Your Tip for the Day

Click here for my interview on Almost Frugal

First, my thanks today go out to Kelly at Almost Frugal, who published an interview with me in her regularly-occurring feature "This is What Frugal Looks Like."  I love Kelly's blog, and I especially love this feature, which demonstrates that frugality doesn't have to mean a life of monastic deprivation living off the grid and away from society (although it can, if that is your choice).  In fact, there are as many different ways to be frugal as people who consider themselves such.  Kelly does a remarkable job giving these various perspectives voice.

And....to round out today's column and give us a bit of a break from the gardening and cooking ideas that are so easy to focus on during summer, let me share a quick tip that saves time and money:  one-cloth cleaning.

A little history:  I am the type of person who likes to clean a room top to bottom.  I used to dust the walls (yes, I need an intervention), vaccuum the rugs, dust the furniture, and polish the metal and mirror (another intervention, please) before I would call a room "clean."

Then, I had a part-time job that required me to wake up before my husband.  I would get ready, sneak downstairs, and want to do some household chores before I left.  I couldn't vaccuum, because that would make too much noise, so I started doing one-cloth cleaning challenges on the main level of our house.

Basically, I would take a dust cloth, put on my dusting oil of choice, and see how far I could dust before the cloth was ready for more oil and the cloth was dirty.  That was it:  the cloth went in the laundry, and I stopped.  I did the same thing with reusable floor cleaning cloths by putting one on the old Swiffer handle, putting on whatever floor cleaning liquid I needed (or none, if I was dusting), and seeing how much dirt I could collect before the cloth was ready for the laundry basket.  Same thing with cleaning mirrors.  I do use paper towels for that, so I put my window cleaner on no more than two paper towels and see what I can get done.

I find that this approach keeps me from over-using any cleaning chemicals, because it eliminates the desire to re-wet a cloth every time you move from room to room.  It also limits paper towel use, for those times you choose to use them (I'm down to buying about two "bales" of paper towels a year, the equivalent of about one roll a month.)

And hubby slept through the whole thing.

Dried Tomatoes

When people talk about food preservation, they usually talk about canning and freezing.  These are two of the most entertaining, time-honored food preservation techniques, but they are also the newest.  What we call canning goes back to what used to be called bottling, when homemakers would place food in glassware and seal it with fat, cloth, dough, corks, or later parafin or canning lids.  Freezing is even newer in most locales, going back primarily to Clarence Birdseye and his work in getting consumers to accept frozen foods.  Prior to that, freezing really only was used in areas with naturally frozen areas, so places with permafrost or places where one could easily build an ice house, and it was not widely used for a complete range of products.

Even older, however, are cellaring and drying, both methods that control bacterial growth by using temperature or water content.  Drying is one of my favorites, because it requires almost no attention, and the end product is typically much smaller than the original food to be dried, a bonus when you are storing multiple crops.

The traditional way to dry foods is to hang them on a rack or place them in a solar drier.  Rack drying is great for herbs if you are processing them in small amounts, which is not true in my house; I regularly grow and store at least enough dried herbs to supply my family, my parents, and my in-laws.  Solar drying, which I haven't tried, appears to work best in areas with lower humidity than the Midwest.

That leaves the electric drier as your best option.  (You can use your oven on a low heat setting, but I dislike having the oven run all day.)  The one I use is a $40, five-tray model from Ronco (yes, that Ronco) that I bought at the local mega-mart about five years ago.  It works like a dream, and I figure since it is basically a low-wattage element at the bottom of a plastic bowl with trays on top, I should be able to keep the thing running more or less indefinitely.

What we have above is a tray of tomatoes waiting to be dried (plus some marjoram to round out this tray).  Dried tomatoes are one of the best products you can make in the summer, as the jars of "sundried tomatoes" are uber-expensive, and a few add a lot of flavor to dishes.  I like to chop up a handful and add to pizza and pasta dishes in the fall until they are gone.  There are never enough dried tomatoes.

To dry tomatoes:  Select salsa-type or other fleshy tomatoes.  Above, you can see I have used some salsa-type paste tomatoes (the ligher colored ones) and some black tomatoes (Black Truffle or Black Russian), the darker tomatoes.  Wash and cut into half inch rounds.  Place on dryer tray and salt with sea salt.  Then put them in the drier and wait.  Depending on the water content, it could take a day or two until they reach leathery consistency; flip them periodically to hastent the drying and keep them from sticking to the try.

Your drier does not need to run continuously; just unplug it at night or when you leave the house.  Store in a freezer container in the freezer, and pull out this winter when you need a concentrated burst of summer.

The Analysis

Fast:  Drying takes a while, but you don't have to participate very much.  It takes me about 5 minutes to cut tomatoes for drying and then store them on the other end. 

Cheap:  Dried tomatoes from your garden are very low cost, depending on cost of plant (mine were $2-3 depending on variety, so if I get at least two dozen tomatoes per plant, I am down to about 10 cents per tomato) and amount of electricity you use in drying (minimal).  By contrast, a small jar of dried tomatoes in oil is usually $3 or more.

Good:  Dried tomatoes are sweet, a little smokey or deep in flavor, and a few go a long way.  You really can never have enough.

Salad Days

As I pull up my chair to my desk for another morning of writing while eating, it occurs to me that my lunch, which you see above, teaches us two important lessons about sustainability:

1.  Bounty is about what you have now, not what you think you need.  As you can see, my lunch plate is filled with cucumbers; if you aren't eating cucumbers at every meal in this house right now, you aren't doing your job!  But there are also red, yellow, and grape tomatoes, a couple strawberries, and some really nice salami.  With the exception of the salami, these are all products from the garden, and I didn't pay a thing for them beyond the sunk costs of deciding to grow the plants.  I can either complain and say "I wish I had more tomatoes by now," or I can say "thank heavens for the bounty of cucumbers that are filling up many a plate right now with basically free, healthy food."  (Disclosure:  I grew the cukes from seeds I had languishing in my seed box, for which I think I paid $1.50 per pack, so $3 worth of seed.  By now, I am well below 10 cents a cuke in seed costs.)

2.  The inexpensive stretchers are what allow you the little luxuries.  The above salami wasn't terribly cheap, but since I filled a plate with garden veggies, I can put a few slices of protein on the plate and still come in at a lunch cost of less than $1.  (This is always my goal for the main part of my lunch, although I may add a dessert.)  If you are enjoying the bounty of your garden right now, use that cost flexibility to allow yourself to try artisinal cheeses or specialty meats with them.  A bonus for me is that having one primarily-veg meal a day (avoiding adding things like bread or pasta) typically lets me shed a few pounds in summer.

The Analysis

Fast:  No cooking required with a meal that is garden veggies and some meat or cheese.

Cheap:  As I said, this plate is less than $1, a bargain for any budget.

Good:  Healthy, filling, and yummy.

The Perfect Mojito

It is HOT in the Midwest, which means that it is time for the Caribbean's favorite cocktail:  the mojito.

A mojito is, at its most basic, a rum and club soda concoction flavored with mint and lime.  Occasionally, it will contain lime juice and cane sugar or syrup.  In our travels, we have discovered that the farther south one travels, the more likely one is to get a very dry mojito, without juice or sweetener.  In Maryland, we had some delicious mojitos that were more like really sweet rum soda pop than anything else; hit the Southernmost key in the union, and a mojito is very likely to be more along the lines of a gin and tonic, with the garnishes flavoring the mix as they sit and combine. 

With much experimentation for the benefit of you, my dear reader, I believe I have come upon the Perfect Mojito.  You will need:

2 oz white rum (I prefer Ten Cane)

2 oz club soda

2 oz lime juice (look for Nellie and Joe's Key West Lime Juice)

2 oz simple syrup (Make your own:  it is a 1:1 combo of cane sugar and water.  Heat until combined and keep a jar in the fridge.)

1 lime (Key limes are best, but you can use Persian limes in a pinch, as I did above.)

2 sprigs mojito mint (Grow your own from Richters, or use spearmint if you must.)

In a rocks glass, muddle the lime (cut in half and retain a slice for garnish) and one sprig of the mojito mint.  You  need to muddle, or crush, these elements to release the oils from the lime skin and the flavor of the mint.  Mojito mint, as I have mentioned, is a more robust, less sweet Cuban mint that gives a more authentic flavor.

Add the rum, lime juice, simple syrup, and club soda, and mix.  Garnish with the remaining lime wedge and sprig of mint.

Enjoy, and dream of the tropics!

The Analysis

Fast:  If you have all your inputs in one place, you should be able to mix this pretty quickly.  If you need to make mojitos for a party, cut your limes ahead of time and keep your mint sprigs in a glass of water.  Mix the club soda, lime juice, and simple syrup ahead of time in a pitcher, then add the rum individually to the cocktails.

Cheap:  Um, no.  A bottle of Ten Cane is north of $35.00 around here, and this is before you buy the premium lime juice and start growing your own mint.  The cocktail above is easily $3-4 in ingredients, which is about half the price for which you can get them in local restaurants and is far less than the $10-12 for a mojito in Key West, which is usually made with far-cheaper Bacardi or Mount Gay rum.  There is, however, that beach element that makes it worthwhile.  However, for those of us trapped north of Cayo Hueso, I am not going to recommend any but the finest mojito I know how to mix!

Good:  Yes.  Oh, yes.