Archive for March, 2007
March 28th, 2007 - Saling season!
Yes, the title is spelled correctly, or as correctly as I can. Garage sale season started last weekend. There were four going on in our fair city and I hit them all.
The first was a great hit: They had a beautiful 4T Easter dress; it’s a little too dressy for church, but there’s a chance it will still fit next spring as it’s almost ankle length: Perfect for a wedding! But she’ll need a sweater to match (I have the whole summer to shop for that now). Also picked up a size 6 dress, but it turned out to have a very torn hem that I can’t fix so it’s heading to the dress up box. Since she doesn’t fit her 2T clothes anymore, I was also delighted to find some 4T tshirts–thank goodness since with the warm weather earlier this week she wore them! Also found a step stool; it’s plastic but for 25 cents worth it till I find a wooden one. Maggie needs a stool in both bathrooms and next to her bed. We currently have two (three if you could her potty chair as one, but it might not be tall enough). The one next to her bed has very narrow steps and isn’t terribly safe for getting down. I’m hoping to find two wooden stools this summer. Two dresses, two t-shirts, and a stool for $4.25.
Then I stopped at a thrift store I’d not been to before (well, when it was a consignment store I had been there). They advertised a special $1 for clothes, toys, and something else. I was shocked at the cost of things. I kind figured the clothing deal wouldn’t be all that great because I rarely pay $1 for clothing, but I was thinking garage sales there instead of thrift. Even so, things were pricey. I did find one dress for Maggie.
Next was the $2/bag clothing sale at a church. Things were pretty well picked over for clothes her size. Got a few things, some dress up clothes, and a couple of older sizes that were too good to pass up (black turtleneck that won’t go out of style.
The last one was a total bust. Looked like the guy had pulled junk out of his garage/storage and set it on tables. Nothing was priced, nothing was set out nicely. It was weird.
March 28th, 2007 - Scaling Back - Running Totals
What a way to think about how much our lives cost us: Scaling Back - Running Totals.
March 27th, 2007 - Universal hotdish
[updated; all amounts are correct]
I have always loved hotdish (called casserole in other parts of the country, but I’m Minnesotan at heart, and it’s called hotdish there), but rarely make any. This past week, I made not one but two! Eric accidently made 2# of pasta about a week ago, and it was his least favorite shape. So I volunteered making hotdish. It was so yummy I made another one Saturday.
I used the universal hotdish recipe from Tightwad Gazette, which is now written on a recipe card so I don’t have to hunt for it (listed under recipes: universal). I doubled the recipe as that’s what fits in our casserole dish.
2 cups main ingredient (she says meat, but both of ours were vegetarian)
2 cups second ingredient (usually a vegetable)
2-4 cups starch (rice, potatoes, pasta)
3 cups binder (cream soup, spaghetti sauce, white sauce/variations)
1 cup “extras” optional (water chestnuts, almonds, pimentos)
topping optional (cheese, chips, breadcrumbs, etc.)
if too dry, add a little water or milk
seasoning to taste
Bake 30-45 minutes at 350.
The first was a homemade garlic/herb/cheese sauce with mixed veggies, topped with breadcrumbs in melted butter. This took at least 45 minutes after preheating. I didn’t add any seasonings other than the garlic and basicl in the sauce.
The second was a taco hotdish with cheese sauce and sour cream for the binder (with a couple teaspoons of chili powder for seasoning), some forgotten salsa one ingredient and corn for the other. I didn’t measure. I just put in what looked good! I topped it with crushed blue corn chips that had been forgotten in the pantry. This one was juicer than the first, but still held together well. I made this in the morning and cooked it in the afternoon. Since the container was cold, I put it in the oven during preheating. I put it in for 45 minutes total and it was definitely DONE at 45 minutes to my surprise. Maggie and I added more chips in before eating, since there were still some in the bag (Eric’s not big on crunchy things as toppings or I would have put them all on before cooking; I also wasn’t sure they wouldn’t burn).
Both times I made a sauce from the Better Homes & Garden cookbook (doubled). It was amazingly easy! The recipe includes half a dozen variations, two of which I combined for the first hotdish. Counting making the sauce, it probably took less than 20 minutes to prep start to finish, with pasta cooked days earlier. This is just like my fruit bread machine recipe–basic ingredients, modify depending on what you want to make/have on hand. I’m excited to make more of these. Or, well, to let Eric do it. This is our kind of easy recipe.
Oh, and unlike other experimental recipes I’ve tried, we ALL liked both hotdishes!
March 27th, 2007 - Bye-bye worms
Sunday, I got rid of my worm bins. I had such a hassle with them this winter: fruit flies, some nasty little worm-like thing, more fruit flies, noxious smells, etc. Frugal Veggie Mama has her worm bin in her kitchen. I couldn’t imagine it with the way mine went.
So Sunday, I hauled the three of them out of the basement and dumped them in the compost pile. Given their weight and the stairs and the distance to the pile, this wasn’t terribly easy for me. (I’m still feeling those muscles, too!) So I didn’t clean the bins up yet–just couldn’t stand to be near them anymore. I’m going to offer them on Freecycle in case someone else wants to give it a try. I spent about $75 (counting the fruit fly larvacide) and a lot of time on them….Maybe I’ll wait to clean them until someone accepts the offer. Why bother if I’m going to put them in the garbage anyway?
So next winter, it’ll be back to carrying the compost bucket out to the back of the yard again. i think it won’t be as bad this year, however, due to the larger bucket we have. With the little one, as soon as I’d notice it was getting full, it was time to take it out. With the bigger one, if I forget for a day, we’re still okay. I just have to get in the habit of grabbing it on my way to work. (I don’t shovel the snow on the garden path to the compost pile. So I could only go out with my boots on. I never wanted to put them back on after taking them off after work so generally didn’t do it. Maybe I’ll start shoveling the path to make things easier as well.)
March 27th, 2007 - Celebrating the vernal equinox
Last Wednesday, I took a day off work to celebrate the first day of spring. In the morning, I started some seeds indoors. This year, I’m actually starting early! Starting seeds indoors was dangerous last year because Shmi loved plants. She didn’t eat them, but instead would tug at them. With plants and flowers, these usually meant knocking them over. We had fresh flowers in the house only a couple times during those four years…. We don’t know how Pi will be yet; although since he gets into everything, I’m betting the plants won’t be safe. We’ll see.
On Sunday, the cabbages and thyme had sprouted–only 5 days! This morning, a fw more were up as well. It’s so exciting to see them growing.
Starting Saturday, Spring weather arrived as well. It was quite damp those days so I never got the drive to get started on cleaning up the gardens. But Maggie and I did go for quite a few walks, something she now adores. I estimate we walked about 2.5 miles over the weekend. Sunday morning, she barely ate breakfast, simply talking about “walk” and “mee-oo”–her word for music, which is what the birds were playing on our walks! So we went for a 20 minute walk before leaving for church. We’ve never had time for that before, because she normally takes 30 minutes to eat. But since she only ate her banana, we had plenty of time.
Last night, I started in on cleaning: attacking the bush out front that I’d decided to take out. It probably just needed pruning, but I’d like to replace it with something that will feed us. After changing my mind half a dozen times, I decided to bite the bullet and take it out. I’m proud to say that I dug it out all on my own! I got the main roots out, too. Last year, I asked on a gardening board about how to remove bushes without using Round-Up. I got a resounding impossible. I can’t imagine that this bush will come back and all I used was muscle. (Which I could feel in the morning. I don’t feel so bad now about missing my personal training appointment this afternoon.)
My next step is to prune the backyard bushes. Some of them I might tear out, but we’ll save that for another year. The currants, in particular, need pruning to produce well. In the 7 years we’ve lived here, this wil be the first time I’ve pruned them. And the berries grow best on 1-2 year old branches. The confusion for me is that although all the pruning guides say things like “Prune out the 3-year-old branches” they don’t tell you how to tell what’s older. So I guess I’ll be guessing. I think I may also prune the lilac tree. It’s pretty overgrown. I’ve been looking at others on my walks, and they look quite nice pruned back to main branches.
We hope the pruned braches dry out nicely and we’ll burn them in our little firepit.
March 9th, 2007 - Storage-homes
Storage-homes - New York Times
We used a storage unit while not buying a house last spring. It made us do the opposite of those in the article: We realized we could live without the stuff and vowed to pare it down when we brought it back into the house. Sadly, we didn’t pare as much as hoped, but we did pare some. And in the process, we’d gotted rid of two bookcases which forced some paring of books!
March 9th, 2007 - The Local Multiplier Effect
According to Yes! Magazine (Winter 2007 p 35; data from Sustainable Seattle and Civic Economics):
* “For every $1 spent at a local business, 45 cents is reinvested locally.
* For every $1 spent at a corporate chain, only 15 cents is reinvested locally.”
I’ve maintained that buying from local businesses, did this, but others have argued against it. One major claim is that chain stores employ more people and have more money to donate back to the community. My argument in return includes that chaings tend to emply people at lower wages and lower levels (IE, a local business will include higher level managers as well as the owner here). And while they have more money to give, it’s not all given here (for instance, Target might donate $100 million dollars, but that’s given to a whole bunch of communities; the local JJ Keller company only donates money around the Fox Valley). And I suspect, although do not know, that big companies tend to donate to their home communities more, just like Miles Kimball does for Oshkosh.
Bonus information: “A study by the Leopold Center found that 16 common crops that frow in Iowa travel an average of 1494 miles to reach chain grocery stores there. Bought from local growers, they travel only 56 miles.”
Is it worth driving farther to patronize a local company? Eric and I are disagreeing about that one for our pharmacy. I like to use the local, NEW (NorthEast Wisconsin) pharmacy, but it’s on the other side of town. With our decreasing errand-running in general, we don’t get over there as often as we used to. So he switched his medications to the Walgreens which is less than a mile away. (Interestingly, Morton’s has two closer pharmacies, but we got used to the other one because it’s at our clinic. Why don’t we use the other ones as much even though they are closer?)
March 9th, 2007 - Lot size
Impressed by Pathway to Freedom’s urban homestead on 1/5th acre, I wondered how much land we have. My quick estimate is 5.7% of an acre. Far less than their 20%! So even if I were to put all of it into production, there’s no way I can get to their level of self-support. And I don’t even want to put it all into production; I want some yard for the dogs and Maggie to run around in. And I’m not about to uproot the tree and bushes (well, some of them I want to!). Some is unusuable, such as the 30 sq ft between the garage and the fence which is covered by the garage roof (little sun or rain). The strip down the driveway next to the fence is also unusuable. I think about putting bushes (such as cranberries) in there, then I remember that if I did that, we couldn’t ever get out of a car in the driveway, which is of course necessary such as for closing the gate as we drive away!
My figuring: lot is 50 x 100 = 5000 sq ft. House footprint is about 900 sq ft, garage ~500sq ft, driveway ~800 sq ft. This leaves 2500 sq ft for the yard.
And, as we all know, an acre is 43,560 sq ft. (What?!? You didn’t know that? Well, neither did I. That’s why I love the Web! And that web site sounds perfect for this job.)
March 9th, 2007 - Window specs
This is just a note for myself for the future. The windows we installed this winnter have the following stats:
U Factor: .32 (Ranging from .2 to 1.2, the lower the better.)
Solar heat gain coefficient: .32 (Ranging 0-1, lower numbers mean less solar heat transmitted. Good in summer; not so good in winter up here.)
Visible transmittance (PDF): .52 (Ranging 0 - 1, most values are between 0.3 and 0.8. The higher the VT, the more light is transmitted.
A high VT is desirable to maximize daylight.) (This looks like a good overall guide to energy efficient windows.)
Air leakage: unknown.
March 1st, 2007 - Beyond Sanity — Oprah and the Oracle
I really love these thoughts from MoneyDummy. It’s a great reflection on desiring less than the world tries to tell you you need and feeling good about it.