Being More Frugal with Eating, Clothes and Gas Buying

In the light of the economic instability of recent weeks, I thought some tips for us to become more frugal in our daily lives might be options for consideration.

1. Eating out: Split your order in half [some to eat now and half to eat at the next meal at home]. My parents like to go to Culver’s and split one fish dinner between the two of them and they feel satisfied. Order from the .99 cent menu for a sandwich option and supplement it at home with vegetables. Ask for iced water instead of pop option. Meier’s will give you a cup to get iced water any time; ask at the checkouts. It fills you up before you shop or makes you feel like not eating a lot at your next mealtime. Plus the drinking of water is much more healthy for you. Avoid the vending machines; pack a fruit snack and pop on your way to work. Buy a coupon book with 2fers (buy and entrée, get an entrée free). Dinner clubs allows you to prepare one special meal out of four meals each month. Find foods that give you same sensations that drinking provides. Family style serving for one price may be cheaper than individual tickets. Eat only twice a day if going to buffet. Early bird dinners are less expensive (ie.,Jumers). Adults can order the children’s happy meals too! Eat out with the kids (cheaper than getting a baby sitter). Use your parents for babysitting to go out to eat or form a kid coop for babysitting for dates. Kids eat free restaurants allow you to have your kids with you as you eat out. Sign up for birthday club certificates at your favorite restaurants. Give “eating out” credit coupons for gifts to family. Reduce the coffee breaks; order decaf options in coffee and tea.
2. Cooking in: Lentils, beans and rice are options to stretch your money. Combining meal plans with these foods adds more fiber and more nutrition. Farm n Fleet is a good resource for low nut prices. Have a day off work? Begin some pizza dough at beginning of day. Keep it ready for lunch, snack or supper meal in refrigerator once risen. There is a high markup for pizzas in stores! Use what you have in your freezer and be creative in preparation of stir-fries or the pizza toppings. Put leftover veggies in a frozen container to add to soups! Prepare your own broth….Freeze them in cubes to add to cooking for flavor enhancements. Use chicken tenders in large zip top bags as you need them in recipes; they defrost and separate more easily than the chicken piece bags! Because of their consistent size they uniformly cook to combine to favorite recipes. Make recipes more exact to servings you need (counts)to avoid leftovers and waist. Making your own plain vanilla yogurt is quite a savings. Combine it with koolaide, fruit pieces, fruit juices, grape nuts (for fiber & crunch), jams or marmalades for a different taste. Buy the 20# sack of potatoes and make meals in variety of ways. Cream beef over mashed potatoes, breakfast fritattas, hashbrown potato pancakes, baked potato, potato salad, potato annas, home fries (oven baked), colcannon, English boiled dinner of potatoes, cabbage and carrots, Parsley buttered potatoes, scalloped potatoes with ham bits (use dried ham slices), seasoned green beans n potatoes and seven layer casserole will use up that bag mighty fast! Shop stores only for the 2fers. Watch for the “lead in” items on weekly sale flyers. Krogers does a good job in posting the unit cost per serving. Back up your meals with a “poorer” family to receive fresh leftovers on regular basis. Store leftovers in store n save bags that take air out before freezing. Debbie Meyer “green bags” extend the life of fruits and veggies that deteriorate normally from the oxidation process. Fresh veggies seem to be least expensive at Aldi’s. Don’t forget those dollar stores….a bag of pretzels for a buck is a great snack. I can get corn on the cob for $4 for bakers dozen during corn season. Eat some; give some and store some for fall meals. Have a few fruits leftover? Make some jams, jellies, preserves, marmalades, or ice cream sauces. Angel Food Ministries provides people with $30 of groceries monthly [box contents slightly vary]. Check out in your local for this food cooperative (http://www.angelfoodministries.com/) and help yourself stretch your dollars. Refill reusable bottles with juices; freeze them and allow to melt in lunch to keep the lunch cool as well. Unite and swap items: white elephants, baked goods, coupons, etc. Cook on the weekend for the entire week. Grill all fish at once and bag it up for nightly meals (ie, fish tacos, fish sandwich, fish n chips, fish chef salad; fish casserole with pasta; fish steamed with veggie pouches). Robin Miller on Food Network demonstrates this concept very well in her weekly show. Ellie Krieger on Food Network demonstrates healthy foods for preparation. Go to food network.com to find recipes for items found in your refrigerator! Make smoothies from your fruit selections: mix strawberries (frozen), bananas (frozen), peaches (frozen), berries (frozen) with ice cubes, milk (we use soy) and whip up with splenda packet in a Magic Bullet. I think it is ice cream…the healthy way! To make it thicker, keep adding the ice cubes. Frozen water filled old milk bottles can be used for keeping foods cold in coolers.
3. Gasing up: Shop for the lowest gas in town. Gas up when the tank is low and the gas price is lowest. Gas cards or certain gas stations advertise a 10 cents price reduction for fill-ups as price incentives. Plan your trips to states with low gas prices. Car pool to work.
4. Clothing: Wear the jeans with holes. Find new combinations with outdated clothes. Learn to mend your clothes. Sewing is not always least expensive; shop for fabric sales. Sew home furnishings. Keep blankets in car to keep warm while traveling in those bitter winter months. Make capris out of longer pants. Buy at garage sales or thrift marts; swap clothing with others; shop end of season clearance sales. Make crazy quilts out of fabric of clothes your family wears. Layer your clothes to keep warm. A cotton poly blend will always be a more lasting fabric choice over 100% cotton or linen that wrinkles and has to be sent to the dry cleaners. Develop a basic color wardrobe in which you add assessories to mix and match other outfits.

Fats and Cholesterol

Harvard School of Public Health has a series of well written articles on the topic of keeping the cholesterol low. In brief, the general idea is to keep reducing the saturated fats found on grocery labels that are often found in beef or animal products and increase the good fats of monosaturated and polysaturated fats that help us rid of cholesterol. Cholesterol is that which clogs our arteries and leads to heart disease. Most monosaturated and polysaturated fats are from plant sources. Nuts of all kinds are good source. A handful of nuts a day is a good dietary habit. We keep sacks or cans of various nuts by us for our nightly snack. Avacados are one of those vegetables that may be high in calories, but are good in cutting cholesterol. Onward with the guacamole! Canola oil or olive oil are the best choices for frying foods. It is better not to fry food at all. Restaurants that have used and reused their oil in deep fat fryers are good at giving us trans fatty foods that are bad for those watching cholesterol. It was advised to keep this under 2 g daily or better yet, none at all. If you smell or sense any oil to be rancid....destroy or toss the food. Hydrogenated oil like Crisco shortening is not a good choice. Consuming oil that reaches high temperatures in the cooking process is not a good choice. Eat your egg whites; go sparingly on the yolks. Yolks are where your cholesterol is stored. You are allowed one egg per day, however, not the three-egg omelet! If making omelet with three eggs, use the whites of all eggs and the yolk of one. Jim eats his eggwhites with fat free cheese in his egg mcmuffin. Eat one or more good sources of omega-3 fats every day—fish, walnuts, canola or soybean oil, ground flax seeds or flaxseed oil. Replace the beef and pork meals with fish or chicken without skin meals to three times a week.

Lasagna Gardening

Answers of the cooking terms vocabulary: BAADCBABAC

It is time again to build garden beds for spring, several has asked me what is lasagna gardening. Sounds like the cooking process one does when you cook lasagna but you are layering to the ground various substances that will help you grow things in your garden the next planting season.

The following are notes that were taken from a book I read on the topic. Other books have been written if you cannot decifer the how to's I recorded at the time of reading. I have tried it, but save up alot of papers before you attempt these procedures!

LASAGNA GARDENS: a neat and organized system of layering organic material in a raised bed that decomposes without mess or smell in your garden beds!

Compost Materials: Smaller pieces break down most quickly…so chop it up w/ blender, lawn mower or mulcher, shredder for paper
Adding carbon: BROWN, dry materials such as leaves, straw, hay
Adding nitrogen: GREEN, grass clippings, kitchen waste, lettuce, vegetable trimmings and manure (do not add fat, meat or bones, oil)

Create two wire bins (use one to build and the other in baking process). This is best done in fall when leaves are falling. Mix one part NITROGEN material with 4 part CARBON and layer to 3-4 ft high. Allow at least two weeks before the heating up process (soil will be HOT) has completed and you can use to mix with your soil. Covering it with plastic will help the process along. Fluff it up before adding to the soil in containers, when you plant the plants. Distribute using gloves. Carry in large bucket to area you need it. Collect more materials for composting with a tarp.

Layer in this order: Peat is Sphagnum peat moss
Newspaper, 2” PEAT, 4”compost, 2”peat, 4”grass clippings, 2”peat, 4”chopped leaves, 2”peat, (optional: 4” of barn litter –sawdust and manure)…..and on and on with dusting of wood ashes on top.
Sprinkle some bonemeal on pile…..it adds PHOSPHOROUS
Sprinkle some bloodmeal on pile…..adds NITROGEN
Sprinkle some lime on pile……..adds CALCIUM, raises pH level
Sprinkle some powdered sulfur ….lowers pH level

Find out pH level of soil….test it yourself or send it away for analysis. 7 is the perfect number…above is alkaline, below is acidity soil.

Draw your plan of where the garden is to go. Create it so you do not have to step in the garden to care for it. Usually 3-4 foot is enough! Use climbing plants toward the back of the bed.

To start a garden that has grass on it: Begin when soil has dried out a bit in spring. Wet a thick pad of newspaper overlapping in your design plot (this will smother the existing grass and weeds. Then add 2-3 inch layer of peat moss to cover newspaper. Add 4-8” of the organic mulch you made above. Repeat layers. Looks somewhat like lasagna. Sprinkle some bonemeal and wood ashes on top. You can plant and water the day you create the garden. Make the garden beds in fall and plant in spring is a good strategy. The method is easy and helps the plants grow healthy and big. This type of garden beds is easy to maintain. Remulch the bed in the fall after each year’s growth. A tiller is absolutely unnecessary with this method!

From weekend after Labor Day to Thanksgiving: Proceed with one marked off area at a time! 1) Lay down thick pads of wet newspaper on top of sod, 2) 2” layer of peat moss (use wood chips in area that will be used for paths), 3) 4-6” layers of chopped leaves, grass clippings, compost, manure, other organic materials and sand (alternate each layer with peat moss). You can raise the beds from 18-24” high. 4) use the wood ashes from your winter fires to top off the bed (just a sprinkle)…I believe this is an optional step. Your bed is now ready for planting in spring.

After planting: add manure/sawdust mixture to mulch in and around plants.

Climbers: tomatoes, cucumbers, scarlet runner beans, nasturtiums

Self-Sowing Flower Garden: Perennials: Yarrows (3-4 ft), Hollyhock (4-6 ft), Columbines (18-30 inches), Silver King Artemisia (24-30 inch), Sweet William (12-18”), Foxglove (3-4 ft), Purple Coneflower (2 ft), Dames rocket (2-3 ft), Blue Flax (1-2 ft), Lupines ( 2-3 ft), Rose campion (2-3 ft), Oriental poppy (3 ft), coneflowers (2-3 ft)- all can be in full sun! In the garden bed place sand lines around one kind of plant; sow different seeds in the sections; design can take on any configuration.

Herb Gardens: Use lasagna method in raised beds; likes to be mulched after planting and throughout the summer. Try some herbs like: Angelica plant from stores can grow 3-7 ft tall and 3 ft wide in cool moist soil (partial shade) shows a giant greenish white flower (this is grown a lot in France for flavoring), Basil grows to 18” height; choose Spicy Globe or Purple Ruffles as choice; pinch off shoots of basil every week or two and it will get bushier, Chives get about 1 ft tall; perennial, divide every 3-4 years; sow indoors, Dill will grow to 30” and have yellow flower; likes full sun; plant outdoors when danger of frost is over 8-10 inches apart; mulch around, Florence Fennel can grow to 5 foot from plant state 6-12 inches apart;

NEEDS SUPPORTING
Beans: plant every two weeks for 6 weeks. Blue Lake Venture, Golden Rocky or Jade Royal Burgundy are good bush beans; pole beans are climbers that grow up trellises poles or strings. Blue Lake, Kentucky Blue, Kentucky Wonder, Blue Lake, Violet Podded Stringless. They grow up anything! Beans grow best in pH level of 7-7.5 or 6.5. Have the trellis in place when planting. Beans grow best in HOT weather. Don’t plant beans or peas in the same place two years in a row to avoid buildup of soil dwelling pests and diseases.

Peas: plant in cool area of garden that drains well; add bonemeal and wood ashes; can grow in cool weather; add supports (every 3 foot) for vines; stake each end with string from pole to pole and zigzag to top string and ground; keep by a plant that is south of this plant to keep it cool; mulch, keep weeded; help vines to grow up poles; keep them picked every day. Good choices are Oregon Sugar Pod 11, Mammoth Melting Sugar, Dwarf Gray Sugar, Sugar Snap, Sugar Daddy, Sugar Ann.

Cucumbers need good drainage; plant on mound so can drain; needs rich soil with manure; do not plant in same spot as year before; a HOT loving plant; plant indoors 3 weeks before planting; set seeds 1 inch apart; have poles for support in place; no cultivation necessary; keep soil moist (1” a week); picking the fruit keeps more fruit coming. Lemon and Marketmore are two good choices.

Squash: need good drainage; plant on mound so can drain; one to two planted in a hill; need 3 foot square for growth; start indoors with two seeds per peat pot; sow in garden three feet apart; check daily for harvesting of flower to 4-5” growth. Good choice is Early Prolific Straightneck or Hybrid Jackpot or Hybrid Crescent.


ROOT VEGGIES
Beets: prefer full sun; pH level of 7; likes bonemeal; do not like manure; plant 2” apart; plant short rows every two weeks; give them plenty of mulch; do not allow to dry out. Kleine Bol or Little Ball, Monopoly and Chioggia Striped and Golden and Sangria are good beet choices. Similar care to that of a bean!

Onions: keep well drained; like 6-8 hrs sun; plant bulbs one inch deep with 4-6 inches apart. Onions like to have their tops out of ground; keep mulching and weed free; spray with water if you find little black bugs; harvest when leaves are just turning yellow; cure on top of soil after pulling for a few days; clean off dirt. Perennial Welsh onions are dependable and prolific; Egyptian onions are another good choice.

Shallots: keep well drained; use as edger; plant depth of 1 inch 4-6” apart; sprouts in two weeks

Radishes: keep soil evenly moist; likes cooler weather. Plant one inch apart 2” depth in a short row every two weeks; use fine mulch around plant when you see 1-3 leaves. Easter Egg variety is a nice choice.

LIKES COOLER WEATHER; DOUBLE HARVEST
Broccoli: prefers full sun; can start indoor 4 weeks before planting; they can grow in colder climates; plant 18-24” apart; make a 2” deep trench along the rows, adding a sprinkling of bonemeal to the trench, and cover with soil. Add a 2” layer of mulch, and lay a sheet of floating row cover over the plants to protect them from the cabbage looper moth.

Spinach: like a more nitrogen rich soil; likes cool environment; wilts down a lot when cooked; plant seed ½ inch deep and 2 inches apart; thin plants to stand 4” apart; water in dry season.

Turnip: plant early spring on peat moss/seed/ more peat; Water with fine mist; thin plants to 3” apart; add more mulch to keep soil cool and moist; water more in dry weather; harvest greens when 4” high; root at 3 “ round.

Endive: easy to grow! Plant in partial shade or sun; Make good border plant; plant near end of frost date; thin plants to 8-10 inches apart; keep constant moisture; mulch heavily; water once a week; harvest outer leaves first when few inches long.

Lettuce: like cooler weather; plant indoors ¼ “ deep in early spring. Can double crop this in garden! Thin to 10-12 inches apart; harvest in early morn or late evening. Good choices are Italian Red Perella, Merveille des Quatre Saisons, Red Oakleaf, Rouge, Rubens Romaine.

Radicchio: does not like to stand in water; grows in cooler shaded area; space 8 inches apart in transplanting after sowing; keep soil moist with grass clippings. Tamp soil down during sowing.

Potatoes: Place your potato bed in full sun; avoid too much lime; lay the wet newspaper down, then pototoes then cover them with layers of hay through the summer. Use halfed 30 gallon garbage cans and plant 4 containers of potatoes for planters in SUN; place drainage holes in the bottom
PLANT LAST

Rhubarb: Plant in a depression in bed and set in roots; Fill in around the roots with compost to cover them. Give them lots of water in FULL SUN; mulch heavily. ; First year, do not pick harvest; second year pick half to harvest; next year you can harvest all of them; Never take more than 1/3 of the stems at one time. Allow for 3 ft spread for plant!

Tomatoes: buy the plant to save time or sow 8 weeks before planting indoors; wire cage or trellis in place for growth and tie for support on extra weight of tomatoes; continue to add more mulch; keep it watered; use liter pop for dripless watering system; add fish emulsion diluted according to package directions; harvest in 55 to 100 days after you set plants in garden. Good for cool climate is Sub-Artic Plenty, Oregon Spring, Prairie Fire, Cold Set or Stupice. Midseason ripeners Carmello, Porter Improved, Delicioius, Long Keeper, Big Beef Beefsteak, Taxi. Others Old Flame, Oregon Star, Sweet 100, Sweet 1,000 or Sweet 1,000,000

Pepper: they like HOT radiant weather; sow indoors or by plants; add bonemeal and dolomitic limestone to soil; plant when night temperatures reach 50 degrees; plant 2 feet apart; water well when planting, then mulch. Add black paper to go over plant in soil, add aluminum foil circle at base to reflect heat to the leaves on mulch as base of each plant; if in windy area, you may stake; needs steady supply of water; likes the drip irrigation. Put a pinhole in bottom of empty plastic milk jug and plant near the plant; top of milk container shows at top and can refill with water in opening; leave stake in container to measure fullness; keep the cap off; refill weekly using funnel; could poke four holes for four plants at each corner and just refill more frequently.

Carrots: scatter seed evenly; do not crowd; takes long time to mature. Baby Spikes and Little Fingers can grow in normal planting season. They have short roots.

Eggplant: plant in FULL sun; well drained soil; make add some sprinkles of dolomitic lime; don’t plant all plants in one area in garden; plant after no chance of frost. Give extra compost when the flower appears. Little Fingers and Rosa Bianca are good choices.

Kale: full sun; pH7; likes dolomitic lime; space 12-18” apart; keep soil mulched, cool, moist and weed free. Red Russian variety is pretty

Mini Pumpkins: Need full sun; plenty of water; well drained soil; plant three in one hill; remove the weaker looking vines on each hill. Pretty Mini choice is a Jack Be Little or Small Sugar or Hybrid Bush Spirit pumpkin. Allow the biggest ones to flourish.

FALL CROP

Garlic: MUST have good drainage; full sun; give a lot of compost and mulch; allow three years inbetween planting of garlic plants; use seed garlic; plant in late summer to early fall in rows; harvest when stems turn brown; gather in bunches and tie with string or rubber band and hang to dry.

Watermelon: takes 80-120 days to harvest. The Sugar Baby variety will be ready in 80-90 days.

.

I'm Back Again!

It has been one fast-paced six months at my work! I have changed supervisors and our office has responsibility for the ECE Clinical I, II and III placements as well as ELED clinical placements. Next week we are getting ready for Fall 2009 placements for ECE and ELED. The office has given up the ML placements to another office in return for the increase. With changes more work was required in anticipation of change. Today I worked on making a self-governing Application scripts for a Camtasia program, which may or may not work out.

I will try better to keep up with my blogging. I am usually more active during the summer months! The family is getting ready for a trip to Wisconsin Dells, the waterpark capital of the USA at the Glacier Canyon Wyndam. It should be a good time!