Meet a reader: Beth C. from NJ.

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The reader standing in front of a whole bunch of Falkland Island penguins is Beth C., a retired lawyer from South Jersey. I have had the good fortune to meet with Beth C. on two occasions while visiting family. Next year I may get another chance, as I will be traveling back east for my 50th (!) high school reunion.

Beth got her undergraduate degree in American Studies from a small (“but awesome”) liberal arts college in upstate New York, and then got a law degree. She spent the first seven years of as an attorney with a federal government agency in New York City, and the remaining 30-plus years in a private law practice in suburban New Jersey. Her specialty was health care regulatory and transactional work.

“I kind of fell into health care, since I got out of law school during a recession and the government agency that was hiring at the time needed people to work on health care issues,” Beth says. She loved working with people in that industry “because of the work that they did to help others.”

Now retired, Beth lives with her husband in a home they’ve owned for 29 years. Her two kids live nearby, and she’s able to see her grandchildren regularly. She delights in frugal hackery like using rewards points and airline miles, and taking surveys for extra money.

Being careful about her finances allows her to have fun in retirement and also to contribute to a program called Impact 100 NJ. She and others make an annual donation, and the cash is given out as grants to local nonprofit groups.

“I never would have been able to make that annual donation before,” she says. “It’s something meaningful, and I’ve enjoyed being a part of it.”

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Garden 2025: The ag grant year.

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The peas are still flowering and (slowly) filling up pods, the tomatoes are still reddening in the greenhouse, and, weirdly, our strawberry plants have a ton of new blossoms and a few ripe specimens. Yet I consider summer officially gone, because I’ve finished up the state agriculture grant.

I had until Sept. 30 to create a report on:

  • How much I spent ($1,950.53 out of a possible $2,250)
  • How much food we grew (372 pounds)
  • How much food we preserved (258 pounds)
  • How many direct beneficiaries of the garden (DF and me)
  • How many indirect ones (119 – relatives, friends, residents at a family shelter, and all the people to whom we gave seeds and plant starts)

The ag grant people pleaded with us to turn in reports before Sept. 30 if possible. I sent mine (along with a photo of the garden and a list of receipts) on Sept. 15. It took a lot longer than I thought it would to whip this report into shape, but now I can finally relax.

About time, too. It was a busier spring/summer than usual, because advertising and coordinating pickup of all those seeds and starts took way more time than I’d imagined. Of course, that was because most of the people who stopped by also got a garden tour. Yes, I like to show off our little paradise. Sue me.

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Heading to Portland soon.

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It’s been a long minute since I posted, and for that I apologize. Things are still in flux and I am trying to find balance.

Maybe I’ll find it in Portland?

That’s Portland, Oregon, not Portland, Maine, and it’s the site of FinCon25. I’ll land on Tuesday, Sept. 9 and go home on Sunday, Sept. 13. Anyone interested in a meetup?

That could be for coffee (in my case, an iced tea), breakfast, lunch or dinner. We could also just meet at (or somewhere near) the Oregon Convention Center, which is where the conference takes place.

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Rewards programs FTW!

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(Happy Throwback Thursday! Yeah, I’m a day late. Time for an update because I’ve joined a few more rewards programs since this piece was originally published on June 11, 2021. Rewards programs have been a huge help to me: for gifts, for household items and for donations to those in need.)

Recently DF tore down the old woodshed next to the house. He’d long planned to replace it and in fact had the roofing materials all picked out: metal, so that in the spring and summer we could fall asleep listening to the sound of the rain hitting the roof.

This was the year, and it took him just part of a day to disassemble the thing. It would have been much faster to hit it with a pickax and crowbar, but he couldn’t rip and roar because the “new” shed would use parts of the old one.

More of it than he thought turned out to be usable, so all we had to buy was a couple of treated 2x6s, some special screws and, of course, that metal roofing.

I covered those purchases by cashing in at least $135 worth (lost count at some point) of Lowe’s gift cards from several different rewards programs. So many rewards, in fact, that we were able to buy some more potting soil as well.

Rewards programs for the win! Cheapest rehab ever.

I know I talk about rewards programs a lot, but that’s because they work. They earn us free household items, food, gifts and garden supplies. Which is why I think everyone should at least take a look at these programs. 

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5 money tips from “Jurassic World Rebirth”

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My niece and I dropped in on Cinemark’s “Secret Movie Series” screening the other day. Each month the chain* does a $5 top-secret screening of an upcoming film. The only thing you know going in is the film’s rating – not even a hint of the genre. When I left the house I said to DF, “Wouldn’t it be fun if it’s the new Jurassic movie? But it won’t be.”

It was.

“Jurassic World Rebirth” stars Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett, a covert operations specialist (read: mercenary) who puts together a team to sneak into an isolated equatorial country to get dinosaur DNA. Seems that their giant hearts may hold the key to a medicine to cure heart disease in humans.

But…Didn’t all the dinosaurs die in the last movie?

Of course not. This is Hollywood. They always leave the door open for a sequel.

The film provides lip service to a couple of serious topics, such as climate change (dinos now thrive only in the equatorial region because it’s closest to their original habitat) and Big Pharma (a character cynically notes that any medical breakthroughs will be wildly expensive and thus available only to the well-off).

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The rhubarb tattoo.

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It’s been all rhubarb, all the time lately. That’s not the only reason I haven’t been posting, but gardening in general and rhubarb in particular are a big part of my recent radio silence.

I’ve boiled a ton of the stuff into compote, which is a several-step process:

  • Chop and simmer in a small amount of water, then roughly smash with a potato masher.
  • Drain the slurry through a cloth-lined colander.
  • Puree the result in a blender to remove any stringiness.
  • Can it in pint jars (eight of them so far).

The liquid that drained out was used in smoothies. DF also mixed it with rhubarb simple syrup (more on that in a minute) and ginger ale.

I diced and froze 27 cups of rhubarb, which will become nine cakes in the year to come. That is a lot of dicing, and resulted in the rhubarb tattoo mentioned above:

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Easter tomatoes.

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Despite what the president says, egg prices have not dropped by 87 percent. They’re still so costly that some folks suggested dyeing potatoes instead of eggs for Easter.

We didn’t dye anything this year, but on Easter we did enjoy a couple of brightly colored roundish objects: fresh tomatoes.

They were from plants that DF wintered over in the basement and brought upstairs about six weeks ago. Life wasn’t easy for them with temps at 40-something degrees, even with six to eight hours of artificial light per day. Yet they somehow put out flowers and started forming teeny-tiny fruits, along with a couple of volunteer marigolds that have us mystified.

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Giveaway: Alaskan artisan chocolate.

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Why should kids have all the fun at Easter? To even the playing field, I’m giving away some more of those lovely Chugach Chocolates.

The company is a “bean-to-bar” chocolatier in our neighborhood, specializing in dark chocolate. It features some interesting flavor combos, including but not limited to Alaskan kelp and cayenne and Alaskan birch syrup toffee. One of their current limited editions is dark chocolate with spruce tip/lingonberry marshmallows. Not making that up!

You can see why their slogan is “traditionally made for the modern mouth” – if someone had offered me kelp chocolate 50 years ago, I would have run screaming from the room. But it’s pretty tasty stuff.

Here’s a look at what’s up for grabs – winner’s choice:

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7 uses for old/odd canned foods.

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I’m in the middle of a stealth trip to Phoenix to see my daughter. As always, I offer a second pair of hands for big chores* and/or to take on any tasks she wishes were done but hasn’t had the energy to complete. This time around, canned foods are involved.

Her small pantry cupboard has needed reorganizing for a long time. Some of the dried and canned foods in there were from my COVID-era visit. Did I throw them away? Nope. I made soup.

I took some of the oldest canned foods and drained, combined, spiced and slow-cooked them into a kind of prepper ragout. Use what you’ve got, right?

The stew included two cans of chicken tortilla soup, a can of crushed tomatoes, a can each of kidney and red beans, a can of whole-kernel corn and a small jar of turkey gravy. Abby was thawing some chicken for a lemon-garlic-yogurt dish, so I sliced off a bit to add to the crockpot. I cooked up some old** rice to add to each bowl, and garnished each serving with a dollop of yogurt or a bit of grated Monterey jack cheese.

Was it super-delicious? Only when I was really hungry.

Was it pretty good, though, along with being filling and frugal? You bet.

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