Every now and then, there's a story about how frugality--specifically do-it-yourself--doesn't pay. These are the tales of home repair that necessitate a call to the professional, plumbing efforts that lead to a flood followed by a ceiling collapse, falls and broken limbs caused by efforts to catch dropped items, and so on. These stories are exceedingly silly, because--of COURSE--some efforts at frugality fail, but in a lifetime of (prudent) choices, you save more with DIY than with not-DIY.
Today though MR FS--a DIYer to a sometimes ludicrous degree--came gasping into the house. He explained: "I put some soap and bleach in a bucket to wash the canvas window blinds. A weird film formed. Then I felt I couldn't breathe."
Somehow, I bet, Mr. FS created chlorine gas. There was no ammonia in the soap blend, so we don't see how this could be, but still...He donned a gas mask (!) and got rid of the offensive blend.
But those buckets! They are a sore point with me. I know I shouldn't complain, because Mr. FS cleans a lot more than I do, but...If Mr. FS had his way, we would have buckets in every room, with some article or other soaking in them. These would seldom be emptied, because the soap was still good and could be used for another item. YUCK! I frequently have to insist that a bucket be emptied and removed from wherever it has taken seemingly permanent residence.
OK. I've gotten my hatred of buckets off my chest. Aside from the fact that Mr. FS almost killed himself, this story is revealing in another way.
Both Mr. FS and I have moments of too-frugal mania. With Mr. FS this is his bucket obsession and his use of items beyond the "expiration" date. Those ancient blinds--which were in the house and then in the back building Mr. FS has fixed up as a study--were past the expiration date. i will not divulge my own maniacal moments at this time.
After making sure he was OK, I chided, "You should never have washed those blinds! I TOLD you I got replacements at Habitat last year and that when the blinds got dirty, you should get rid of them."
And indeed, last year at Habitat I acquired a set of never-opened roman shades from JC Penney's for $3.00 each.
So here we have the collision of two styles of frugality. MR. FS the DIYer and washer and Ms. FS the thrift shopper. Together we have frugal synergy. Usually. As today, we have frugal conflict, bickering, and even, near-disaster.
Go ahead and share your near-disaster tales. Also, are you a bucket person or not?
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Frugal Athletes: Make Your Own Sports Drinks.
By Mr. FS
It’s summer, and the sales of various sports drinks are certain to increase dramatically. But even during the coldest days I see people toting their bottles of Powerade, Gatorade, and so forth. Are they worth it? Of course not. (As part of the research for this posting I was going to look at brands and prices at our local grocery store, but I decided it wasn’t necessary: they’re overpriced, for sure.)
Current research indicates that sports drinks aren’t even necessary except when exercising intensively for an hour or more. In most cases water is as good, or better. And in any case, what are you paying for? What adds the “power” or “sport” to these drinks? Basically two things: simple carbohydrates (often as high fructose corn syrup) and “electrolytes” (mainly potassium), and in some cases a few vitamins (which you could get for pennies in a multivitamin) or caffeine (which you could get with a nice espresso).
So if you really do need a “power” or “sport” drink, why not make one yourself? It’s couldn’t be easier. All you do is add sugar and Morton Lite salt to water (or tea), and flavor it however you want (generic unsweetened “koolaid,” etc.). Morton Lite salt (or any “lite” salt) is half sodium chloride and half potassium chloride—and so provides the potassium that’s the backbone of any so-called sports drink.
Here’s one recipe:
10 tbs sugar
¾ tsp lite salt (i.e., with half potassium chloride)
2 litres of water
Koolaid or whatever to taste
What I like about home-made sports drinks is that you can vary the amount of sugar/potassium. If it’s very hot, and I’m going on a long, hard bike ride, I cut back on the sugar, since what I want is a higher proportion of liquid to carbs. You can only absorb a limited number of calories per hour, so you don’t want more than you can burn during and shortly after the exercise. If it’s cool, I may up the sugar content, but lower the potassium, since I’m using the same amount of energy, but sweating less. I’m not sure that it really makes much difference, to tell the truth, but it’s fun to play around with, and helps—if only psychologically—to keep you in touch with your body. The best part, of course, is that this sort of sport drink costs literally pennies, and there are no bottles or cans to recycle or clutter up landfills.
By the way, there are also many great substitutes for those ludicrously over-priced ”power” bars, which are, like the sports drinks, just carbs and salt. Best is probably the humble banana (because of the potassium), or the equally humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but almost anything with complex carbs, a bit of sugar (simple carbs) for quick energy, and a bit of salt does just fine.
It’s summer, and the sales of various sports drinks are certain to increase dramatically. But even during the coldest days I see people toting their bottles of Powerade, Gatorade, and so forth. Are they worth it? Of course not. (As part of the research for this posting I was going to look at brands and prices at our local grocery store, but I decided it wasn’t necessary: they’re overpriced, for sure.)
Current research indicates that sports drinks aren’t even necessary except when exercising intensively for an hour or more. In most cases water is as good, or better. And in any case, what are you paying for? What adds the “power” or “sport” to these drinks? Basically two things: simple carbohydrates (often as high fructose corn syrup) and “electrolytes” (mainly potassium), and in some cases a few vitamins (which you could get for pennies in a multivitamin) or caffeine (which you could get with a nice espresso).
So if you really do need a “power” or “sport” drink, why not make one yourself? It’s couldn’t be easier. All you do is add sugar and Morton Lite salt to water (or tea), and flavor it however you want (generic unsweetened “koolaid,” etc.). Morton Lite salt (or any “lite” salt) is half sodium chloride and half potassium chloride—and so provides the potassium that’s the backbone of any so-called sports drink.
Here’s one recipe:
10 tbs sugar
¾ tsp lite salt (i.e., with half potassium chloride)
2 litres of water
Koolaid or whatever to taste
What I like about home-made sports drinks is that you can vary the amount of sugar/potassium. If it’s very hot, and I’m going on a long, hard bike ride, I cut back on the sugar, since what I want is a higher proportion of liquid to carbs. You can only absorb a limited number of calories per hour, so you don’t want more than you can burn during and shortly after the exercise. If it’s cool, I may up the sugar content, but lower the potassium, since I’m using the same amount of energy, but sweating less. I’m not sure that it really makes much difference, to tell the truth, but it’s fun to play around with, and helps—if only psychologically—to keep you in touch with your body. The best part, of course, is that this sort of sport drink costs literally pennies, and there are no bottles or cans to recycle or clutter up landfills.
By the way, there are also many great substitutes for those ludicrously over-priced ”power” bars, which are, like the sports drinks, just carbs and salt. Best is probably the humble banana (because of the potassium), or the equally humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but almost anything with complex carbs, a bit of sugar (simple carbs) for quick energy, and a bit of salt does just fine.
Monday, 12 January 2009
Kimchi and Me: Part II (with recipe!)
This is the final installment of my two-part kimchi post. If you haven't done so yet, check out Part I and then try out the recipe I've included at the end of this post.
--Frugal Son
Kimchi was originally developed as a method of preserving fresh produce through the winter and many Koreans—including Julie’s grandmother—continue to make it today much as it was made hundreds of years ago. Traditionally the kimchi was made in ceramic pots that were then buried for as few as three days in the summer when fermentation was rapid or for many months in the winter when the cold ground slowed the process. In Louisiana, however, where it is warm even in the winter and ceramic kimchi pots are nowhere to be found, I still found a way to capture the essence of Korea in a homemade kimchi.
While kimchi is certainly not a staple food in the United States—and I’ve also noticed that Korean cuisine in general is conspicuously absent from the landscape of restuarants in America—it is something that I think is inherently appealing to almost everyone: it’s like a pickle but with way more character.
My long awaited opportunity to make kimchi finally presented itself shortly after New Years when cabbage went on sale for $0.25 a pound. An interesting side-note: the cabbage was so cheap because it is a Louisiana tradition to eat black-eyed peas and cabbage on New Years for good luck. The kimchi preparation was simple and took only about five minutes of combined effort by my father and me. In addition to the cabbage we added some scallions, turnips, and hot peppers from the garden while sugar, salt, fish sauce, soy sauce, and garlic rounded out the potent brew.
After letting it sit overnight and stirring it around a few times to make sure the brine reached every crevice, we took off the plastic bag covering the top of the bowl and lo! Kimchi! Enjoying the kimchi took the combined effort of the whole family and under such an assault, it was gone within a day. Next time, I’ll make more so that I can see how it changes taste and texture as it continues to ferment—in this respect kimchi is a living, evolving organism—and maybe there will even be enough left for me to incorporate old kimchi into some dishes.
Making kimchi really encapsulates everything that I love about cooking: it brought together the family, transported me to another place, and allowed me to enjoy the ethnic foods I so enjoy for a pittance. Even if kimchi isn’t the kind of thing you’d want to eat, there are so many amazing and simple dishes which are a lot cheaper, better, and family oriented than eating out.
The recipe for kimchi, which is very flexible, is one that I created by combining the aspects I liked of three different recipes. Also note that none of the quantities below are set in stone...adapt the recipe as you like: make a smaller amount, use different vegetables etc. Kimchi is a food that is meant to be played with!
2 cabbages
1-2" of ginger root
10-12 cloves of garlic
Scallions (quite a few, at least 8 bunches I'd say)
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup fish sauce
about 1 tbs sesame oil
2 tbs sugar
1/2 to 3/4 cup pepper flakes (I used 1/2 cup of pepper flakes for the 1.5 cabbage batch just to give you a reference point)
Salt for brine
2 – One gallon glass jars with plastic lids.
Chop up the cabbages into chunks about one or two inches long. To brine them you can put the chopped cabbage in a large mixing bowl or pot and add enough water to cover. Alternately, you can stuff the cabbage into the jars as tight as you can and then pour water over them. Whichever method you use, add salt and mix it up so that the salt dissolves. I don't have an exact amount of salt to use but the brine should be about as salty as tears. Let the cabbage soak in brine for at least 24 hours.
Next, drain the cabbage but do not rinse it. Try to get as much water off as possible. Shake it out, or transfer it to a large, dry pot, let it sit for 10 minutes and then scoop it out by hand which should leave most of the water behind. At this point, mince the garlic and ginger into fine pieces about the size of a grain of kosher salt. If all that chopping sounds too tedious or if you are too pressed for time to do it by hand, you could just put the ginger and garlic into the food processor with the red peppers and blend it into a paste / flakes mix. That is a totally acceptable method. Also, cut your scallions into pieces about one inch long. Pour the fish sauce into a mixing bowl and add the sesame oil, ginger, garlic, pepper flakes, and sugar and mix it all up.
Add scallions to the cabbage and then divide the sauce amongst your chopped cabbage and jar it. Make sure the brine / paste mixture is evenly distributed on the cabbage chunks. You will probably want to toss it around with your hands but either wear gloves or wash your hands afterwards because the red pepper flakes can cause painful burning if you touch your eyes or nose long after you are done cooking. Push the cabbage / sauce mixture into the jars, stuffing it as tight as you can because the cabbage will shrink during the fermentation process. Now all you have to do is let the jar(s) sit for at least 24 hours and resist the urge to snack.
This recipe is really quite flexible. I think the main things I would fool with are the amounts of fish sauce and pepper flakes (especially for non-Louisianans the amount of pepper I added might be too much). The fish sauce gives the kimchi some of its pungency and salt but I'm not sure what the proper amount is. The pepper flakes obviously add heat but NOTE that the pepper flake sauce seems (to me at least) hotter when it is first made but it then mellows out as it is aged and fermented. Thus, a pepper sauce that is the right heat at the time of jarring may be too mild after fermentation. Experiment!
The finished product:
--Frugal Son
Kimchi was originally developed as a method of preserving fresh produce through the winter and many Koreans—including Julie’s grandmother—continue to make it today much as it was made hundreds of years ago. Traditionally the kimchi was made in ceramic pots that were then buried for as few as three days in the summer when fermentation was rapid or for many months in the winter when the cold ground slowed the process. In Louisiana, however, where it is warm even in the winter and ceramic kimchi pots are nowhere to be found, I still found a way to capture the essence of Korea in a homemade kimchi.
While kimchi is certainly not a staple food in the United States—and I’ve also noticed that Korean cuisine in general is conspicuously absent from the landscape of restuarants in America—it is something that I think is inherently appealing to almost everyone: it’s like a pickle but with way more character.
My long awaited opportunity to make kimchi finally presented itself shortly after New Years when cabbage went on sale for $0.25 a pound. An interesting side-note: the cabbage was so cheap because it is a Louisiana tradition to eat black-eyed peas and cabbage on New Years for good luck. The kimchi preparation was simple and took only about five minutes of combined effort by my father and me. In addition to the cabbage we added some scallions, turnips, and hot peppers from the garden while sugar, salt, fish sauce, soy sauce, and garlic rounded out the potent brew.
After letting it sit overnight and stirring it around a few times to make sure the brine reached every crevice, we took off the plastic bag covering the top of the bowl and lo! Kimchi! Enjoying the kimchi took the combined effort of the whole family and under such an assault, it was gone within a day. Next time, I’ll make more so that I can see how it changes taste and texture as it continues to ferment—in this respect kimchi is a living, evolving organism—and maybe there will even be enough left for me to incorporate old kimchi into some dishes.
Making kimchi really encapsulates everything that I love about cooking: it brought together the family, transported me to another place, and allowed me to enjoy the ethnic foods I so enjoy for a pittance. Even if kimchi isn’t the kind of thing you’d want to eat, there are so many amazing and simple dishes which are a lot cheaper, better, and family oriented than eating out.
The recipe for kimchi, which is very flexible, is one that I created by combining the aspects I liked of three different recipes. Also note that none of the quantities below are set in stone...adapt the recipe as you like: make a smaller amount, use different vegetables etc. Kimchi is a food that is meant to be played with!
2 cabbages
1-2" of ginger root
10-12 cloves of garlic
Scallions (quite a few, at least 8 bunches I'd say)
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup fish sauce
about 1 tbs sesame oil
2 tbs sugar
1/2 to 3/4 cup pepper flakes (I used 1/2 cup of pepper flakes for the 1.5 cabbage batch just to give you a reference point)
Salt for brine
2 – One gallon glass jars with plastic lids.
Chop up the cabbages into chunks about one or two inches long. To brine them you can put the chopped cabbage in a large mixing bowl or pot and add enough water to cover. Alternately, you can stuff the cabbage into the jars as tight as you can and then pour water over them. Whichever method you use, add salt and mix it up so that the salt dissolves. I don't have an exact amount of salt to use but the brine should be about as salty as tears. Let the cabbage soak in brine for at least 24 hours.
Next, drain the cabbage but do not rinse it. Try to get as much water off as possible. Shake it out, or transfer it to a large, dry pot, let it sit for 10 minutes and then scoop it out by hand which should leave most of the water behind. At this point, mince the garlic and ginger into fine pieces about the size of a grain of kosher salt. If all that chopping sounds too tedious or if you are too pressed for time to do it by hand, you could just put the ginger and garlic into the food processor with the red peppers and blend it into a paste / flakes mix. That is a totally acceptable method. Also, cut your scallions into pieces about one inch long. Pour the fish sauce into a mixing bowl and add the sesame oil, ginger, garlic, pepper flakes, and sugar and mix it all up.
Add scallions to the cabbage and then divide the sauce amongst your chopped cabbage and jar it. Make sure the brine / paste mixture is evenly distributed on the cabbage chunks. You will probably want to toss it around with your hands but either wear gloves or wash your hands afterwards because the red pepper flakes can cause painful burning if you touch your eyes or nose long after you are done cooking. Push the cabbage / sauce mixture into the jars, stuffing it as tight as you can because the cabbage will shrink during the fermentation process. Now all you have to do is let the jar(s) sit for at least 24 hours and resist the urge to snack.
This recipe is really quite flexible. I think the main things I would fool with are the amounts of fish sauce and pepper flakes (especially for non-Louisianans the amount of pepper I added might be too much). The fish sauce gives the kimchi some of its pungency and salt but I'm not sure what the proper amount is. The pepper flakes obviously add heat but NOTE that the pepper flake sauce seems (to me at least) hotter when it is first made but it then mellows out as it is aged and fermented. Thus, a pepper sauce that is the right heat at the time of jarring may be too mild after fermentation. Experiment!
The finished product:
Monday, 1 December 2008
How to Pay For Your Entire Life by Mowing Your Lawn
(by Mr. Dr. Frugal Scholar)
When I was in fifth or sixth grade, my mother learned how to cut hair. My brother and I were her guinea pigs, and even though we had crew cuts in those days—what seemed to be a very simple enterprise—my mother managed to do considerable damage her first few times. But eventually she became quite the expert. She cut her children’s hair until they left home (and even after), and my father’s until she died in 2003.
The consequence of this was that she saved enough to pay for almost everything we bought. If, for example, we bought a new television, she would comment that it had been more than paid for by all the years of hair cutting. Ditto a painting, a vacation, a dinner out. There were a few limits; hair cutting didn’t pay for my college tuition, although it paid for a lot of the extras.
I have been faithful to this lesson in my own life. In fact, I cut my own hair (more about this another time), but more importantly, I cut our lawn.
Most of the people in our neighborhood use a lawn service (the “mow/blow/go” crowd that my sister-in-law, a dedicated gardener, so despises). But this doesn’t come cheap—I priced it once and for us it would be $40 to $50 a pop. Figure that it’s a weekly expense for at least 45 weeks a year (in Louisiana), and that’s $1,800 minimum. One thousand, eight hundred dollars! Just for mowing the lawn! This doesn’t count any real gardening, the work that makes a yard look good--I can’t imagine what that would add up to.
A basic mulching mower costs about $225; gas about $12 for the season. Throw in a string trimmer for another $200 and it’s still only $425. Subtract that from $1,800 and there’s enough for a round-trip ticket to Paris and three or four nights in the Hotel Saint-Andre des Arts (great location; cool building; no elevator or air conditioning). And that’s just one year! If you’re creative, like my mother, you can use it to pay for your entire life. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
When I was in fifth or sixth grade, my mother learned how to cut hair. My brother and I were her guinea pigs, and even though we had crew cuts in those days—what seemed to be a very simple enterprise—my mother managed to do considerable damage her first few times. But eventually she became quite the expert. She cut her children’s hair until they left home (and even after), and my father’s until she died in 2003.
The consequence of this was that she saved enough to pay for almost everything we bought. If, for example, we bought a new television, she would comment that it had been more than paid for by all the years of hair cutting. Ditto a painting, a vacation, a dinner out. There were a few limits; hair cutting didn’t pay for my college tuition, although it paid for a lot of the extras.
I have been faithful to this lesson in my own life. In fact, I cut my own hair (more about this another time), but more importantly, I cut our lawn.
Most of the people in our neighborhood use a lawn service (the “mow/blow/go” crowd that my sister-in-law, a dedicated gardener, so despises). But this doesn’t come cheap—I priced it once and for us it would be $40 to $50 a pop. Figure that it’s a weekly expense for at least 45 weeks a year (in Louisiana), and that’s $1,800 minimum. One thousand, eight hundred dollars! Just for mowing the lawn! This doesn’t count any real gardening, the work that makes a yard look good--I can’t imagine what that would add up to.
A basic mulching mower costs about $225; gas about $12 for the season. Throw in a string trimmer for another $200 and it’s still only $425. Subtract that from $1,800 and there’s enough for a round-trip ticket to Paris and three or four nights in the Hotel Saint-Andre des Arts (great location; cool building; no elevator or air conditioning). And that’s just one year! If you’re creative, like my mother, you can use it to pay for your entire life. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
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