groceries

Extreme frugality: Putting food by.

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We spent parts of yesterday and today putting food by. Specifically, we turned seven or eight pounds’ worth of rhubarb into fruit leather.

First we chopped and simmered, then let the soupy stuff drain through a pair of colanders before glopping it into the dehydrator. We saved some of the juice to drink as a tonic; anything that tart has to be good for us, right?

The rest of the juice was frozen into chunks (which I insist on referring to as “Rhubik’s Cubes”) and set aside for my homemade smoothies. Made with free rhubarb and raspberries, marked-down “red band” bananas, half a cup of bulk-bought rolled oats, an egg and a big scoop of my homemade yogurt, these things are cheap as well as healthy. (And since I’m having the second part of my dental implant work done next month, I foresee a few liquid meals in my future.)

The last of the fruit leather finished dehydrating this morning. Like the other batches, it was rolled up inside paper scavenged from two sources: cut-apart cereal box liners and waxed paper saved from my sister’s annual tin of homemade peanut brittle. Flavored with sugar and a bit of ginger, the leather is a tangy, chewy treat that I must stop sampling or there will be none left for winter.

A previous batch of rhubarb had been turned into a compote sealed in pint jars, to be added to future dishes of yogurt. Not sure how many hours it took to do all this, but to us it doesn’t matter. We don’t put a dollar value on our gardening and food preservation, for two reasons: 

  • We don’t get paid for every minute we exist, and
  • We enjoy the process of turning home-grown produce into something we can enjoy next winter.

Some people would rather buy their veggies than grow them. I get that. Not everyone has the physical ability, the time or the real estate to garden. And fact is, the average person buys most of their stuff. We pay someone else to raise meat and produce, bake our bread, sew our clothes, build our homes.

For us, gardening is entertainment – and we don’t have to dress up or drive anywhere to enjoy it. Watching tiny green shoots grow into delicious foodstuffs is a reliable annual miracle. If you’ve ever grown so much as a pot of herbs on the windowsill, you understand what I mean.

Preserving the results is a natural progression. Making raspberry jam, cutting up carrots for canning, picking peas to freeze, plucking greens to dehydrate, slicing beets to pickle, peeling apples to cook into sauce – it’s all fun for us, even when we get tired toward the end.

The greeny smell of dehydrating kale, the sneezy scent of cloves, the sharp bite of vinegar, the soothing aroma of slowly simmering apples all keep us going: This is sustenance. This is satisfaction. This is safety.

 

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Bringing in the weeds.

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We had a cooler-than-usual May, which made us reluctant to put things out early. It’s only in the past week that our planted lettuces were big enough to start semi-harvesting.

(Why “planted” lettuces? Because we’ve been startled by rogue lettuces – and Asian greens and quinoa – popping up everywhere. More on that in a minute.)

Longing to eat something, anything, that was fresh, I started bringing in the weeds in the first week of June. Some were actual weeds, such as the fireweed in the illustration. Epilobium angustifolium was consumed by Alaska Natives long before we got here. I’d been reading about its edible qualities and decided to give it a shot because nothing else was fresh at that point. (Except dandelions, and I find them too bitter.)

So I picked some of the smaller plants, sautéed them in olive oil with garlic and ate them on some of DF’s amazing rustic bread. They tasted mostly like oil and garlic. No surprises there. Underlying it was a slight sweetness, similar to cooked spinach.

Here’s an amuse-bouche view of how they turned out:

At first glance, my friend Linda B. thought it looked like an insect. It does, kind of.

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Why you need a freezer.

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Before DF was in my life, there was another: Chester. Cool and calm, he collected great deals for me: manager’s-special meats, gleaned blackberries, bread from the bakery outlet, and on-sale veggies, flour and butter.

Chester was – and is! – a 5.5-cubic foot chest freezer. Right now he’s crammed mostly with on-sale meats; there’s room, because we finished up last year’s raspberries. Recently we’ve found some pretty astounding prices on late-date carnivore bait: ground beef for a dollar a pound, a three-pack of bratwurst for about 68 cents a pound and shank-end hams at 49 cents a pound.

About that last: It is not a typo. I can’t remember when I’ve seen ham at a price that low. Maybe…Never? And thanks to Chester, we were able to get three of them.

You don’t have to be an omnivore to appreciate a freezer, though. When frozen vegetables are available at fire-sale prices, you can get six or seven (or more) bags instead of being limited to one or two. Vegetarian/vegan frozen foods are increasingly varied in scope, so you don’t have to do everything from scratch. (Although my vegetarian sister makes and freezes a big batch of refried beans on the regular.)

And no, the electric bill hasn’t gone up noticeably. (At the time of purchase, I estimated the cost at 78 cents per month.) And even if today’s freezers weren’t super-energy-efficient, I would still want one. Here’s why. 

 

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Does refinancing a car hurt your credit?

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Sometimes stuff happens: illness, job loss, divorce. When things get super-tight and you’re casting around for a cash influx your eye might fall upon that fairly new vehicle. Maybe you should sell it. Or you might wonder, “Does refinancing a car hurt your credit?”

Yes, it can. But in some cases it might be the best – or only – option for when things go sideways. (Looking at you, COVID-19.)

I tackled this topic recently for Self.inc. “Does refinancing a car hurt your credit?” covers the good, the bad and the WTF of this complicated topic.

On the face of it, refinancing a car isn’t a great idea. But sometimes it could be the right thing to do.

The most obvious reason to refinance is because interest rates dropped. This is especially true if you financed with the dealer rather than looking around for loan options. Given that the average new-car loan is $34,635 and the used-vehicle loan is $21,438, even a loan rate that’s just 1 percent lower will make a big difference over time. (Not-so-fun fact: The average used-car loan is 65.15 months long and the average new-vehicle loan is 69.68 months.)

You could even get some cash in-hand if you do something called a cash-out auto refinance, which is similar to a cash-out mortgage refi. If having cash is vital, this might be the right choice for you at this moment in your life.

For example, if you couldn’t make the rent during a COVID layoff, a couple of months’ worth of payments might stave off eviction. Or if you have credit-card debt at 18 percent and were eligible for a cash-out refi at a much lower interest rate, you would be able to pay off the card and improve monthly cash flow. (Ideally you’d use some of that money to start an emergency fund, because the only thing certain is uncertainty and we need to positions ourselves to punch back at it.)

As always, you need to look at the big picture – and to look at it from all angles. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. 

 

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Frugal hack: Homemade yogurt.

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I’m having a bone graft today, to prepare for a dental implant some months down the road. Generally I look at dental work as God’s way of saying, “Oh, go ahead – have a milkshake for lunch.” But since this isn’t just a filling or a root canal, I have no idea how long it will be before I feel like chewing. One milkshake is fine; several days’ worth sounds cloying. That’s why I made a fresh batch of yogurt over the weekend.

Greek yogurt with some of the rhubarb compote I put up last fall is a fairly satisfying meal substitute. Protein, with no need to chew! Turning some of the yogurt into a healthy smoothie is another option that I think will help get me through the owie-mouth days to come. (Seriously: No idea whether it will be one or two days, or lots longer. This is my first bone graft and, I hope, my last.)

As I put the new batch into the fridge, I was reminded once again how simple it is to make the stuff. Draining it adds an extra layer of complexity, but it’s not that complex.

And the cost can’t be beat. I can get about two quarts of Greek yogurt, plus almost two quarts of whey (more on that later), for $2.61 to $3.14, depending on whether the milk is on sale. When the milk is so close to its sell-by date that it’s 50 percent off, then I pay as little as $1.57.

By contrast: A quick search of supermarkets shows one quart of Greek yogurt going for anywhere from $4.29 to $5.99.

If I hadn’t drained it I’d have gotten almost a gallon* of regular yogurt. But I prefer the thicker texture and milder flavor of the Greek-style product.

Ready to learn how to do this? Keep reading. I’ll also provide a life hack for making Greek yogurt the easy way. 

 

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National Agriculture Day begins at home.

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Today has been proclaimed National Agriculture Day, so what better way to celebrate than with a picture of dirt?

Whoops. That’s soil, not dirt. As a master gardener once told me, “Dirt is what comes out of your vacuum cleaner. Soil is a living organism.”

President Joe Biden proclaimed National Agriculture Day in order to recognize “our commitment to and appreciation for our country’s farmers, ranchers, foresters, farmworkers, and those who work in the agriculture sector across the Nation.”

Well said, sir. But may I suggest that we also appreciate the nation’s fruit and vegetable gardeners along with the big-time growers? After all, they are providing food for themselves and, often, for lucky relatives and friends.

And, dear readers: May I suggest that you join us? 

 

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Our daily bread.

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Bread-baking became a U.S. preoccupation during the pandemic. In some regions you couldn’t buy flour or yeast, not even for ready money*.

That wasn’t an issue for us, as we’d stocked up on both at Costco before the lockdown began. In fact, DF had been buying flour by the 50-pound bag for some time now. After all, he’d spent some of his formative years living in the Alaska Bush, with groceries delivered once a year. Having 50 pounds of ground grain just made sense.

In early summer we finally got around to trying a recipe I’d been meaning to check out for years: no-knead rustic bread. After we took our first bites, we understood exactly what the Internet has been bleating about since back in the oughties.

Damn, is it good. And damn, is it simple: four** ingredients, a bit of stirring, an overnight nap, a quick shaping and into a superheated oven.

The result is the best bread I’ve ever had. And we’ve become happily addicted to the stuff. “Daily bread” isn’t that far off: DF has been known to bake six times a week, depending on whether his grandkids have visited. Those two girls can eat more than a quarter of a loaf between them, with a slight gloss of butter (the preschooler) or with olive oil, salt and pepper (the sophisticated 8-year-old).

They stop eating only because we stop offering it. Yep, it’s really that good. 

 

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Quarantine soup.

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I don’t like to waste food, especially since it’s been harder to find lately. It’s not that we’re food insecure, but that we could be.

Pandemic-related shortages have been reported in stores nationwide, and meat-processing facility closures have led some producers to slaughter animals rather than wait out the pandemic.

In addition, an expert I interviewed for a recent COVID-19 article noted that there will likely be some food shortages in the coming year. Mostly those would be specialty items, or high-maintenance crops that farmers aren’t sure they will have the manpower to nurture and harvest. (It can’t all be done by machine.)

Too, some farmers are plowing crops under right now because their biggest-ticket buyers – hotels and restaurants – aren’t buying. An analyst quoted by U.S. News & World Report notes this could lead to shortages (and higher prices) in the supermarket.

Not wasting food has always been a goal. But now it seems more important than ever.

 

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Don’t throw it out until you’ve smelled it.

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(Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Throwback Thursday! In honor of all the food that will be prepared — and perhaps wasted — over the next few days, I’m republishing this piece from May 12, 2012. It’s my hope that a little judicious leftover prep and/or freezing will cut down on waste.)

I didn’t get to the supermarket for a few days after my arrival in Anchorage. Until then, I used the milk and oatmeal my hostess already had. When I mentioned that I’d be replacing what I used, she looked surprised.

“Uh, that’s really old milk. I meant to warn you off it,” she said.

It had tasted fine to me. That is to say, it tasted about as good as nonfat milk ever tastes – like the water they used to wash a cow. All that mattered to me is that it loosened up the oats in the bowl.

I nearly changed my tune when I checked the “sell by” date: April 5. It was then May 6. I was drinking milk a month past its prime.

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The lettuce tree.

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It’s been 11 days since my last post. Not dead, just dazed: by work deadlines, by the ever-increasing daylight and, lately, by the lettuce tree in our living room. (See photo at left.)

Yep, that’s lettuce. It began its life late last year as a romaine seed in a pot in our kitchen, because DF wondered whether it would grow indoors.

Spoiler alert: It did.

Initially the pot stood by a big window on our kitchen table. The lettuce likely wouldn’t have made it on daylight alone, thanks both to short days and low winter light levels.

They can get pretty darned low; as this Facebook post from Alaska Climate Info notes, on winter solstice the sun was 5.5 degrees above the horizon. Compare that to winter sun angles in Florida, which are as high as 38 degrees.

Fortunately, the lettuce stood right next to the Aerogarden hydroponic setup in which DF was growing Tumbling Tom cherry tomatoes. This setup features lights that are on for as long as we are up.

Although the romaine wasn’t directly under those grow lights, it got enough to survive. As you can see.

 

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