A really "green" freebie

So this has nothing to do with food, but here's another freebie for you...and I, personally, love this because it's totally in the spirit of my mother.  She wasn't exactly a hoarder, but she had hoarder-like tendencies.  She was very environmentally friendly, and couldn't envision sending something to the dump if she (or anybody, really) could get just one more use out of it.  Thus, we had a "junk pile" in the back of the basement that had some... unusual... stuff in it.  Like, a neighbor got a new TV, gave us his old, 25-inch one, but we still had a working 13-inch one, and she didn't want to send it to the dump... because it still worked... but she didn't know anyone who would want one.. and she could sell it, but it wasn't worth having a yard sale way out in the woods unless you had a big one.  And somehow, the "junk pile" never seemed to get to "yard sale" proportions.

So this thing here... she would have loved it.

http://my.freecycle.org/

You sign up with an e-mail address, pick your hometown from a list (unlike Craigslist, many small towns are on freecycle) and post to the group if you have something to give away.  In the e-mail newsletters, you'll see posts from other users.  I've given away a couch, a coffee table, a roll of carpet, and a box of books.

It's good for the environment.  It promotes the idea of "neighborhood".  And it's free!

Cheap family outings

I've written before about free family outings.  This is not to be confused with inexpensive family outings.  In the last two weeks, I've taken my kids on two "day trips".  Today I'm going to share one of them with you....




The first trip we took was to Watkins Glen State Park in NY state.  It's about 2 hours from my home, according to Google Maps.  Surprisingly, it actually only took 2 hours to get there.  FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, my entire family gained admission to this beautiful park, with cascading waterfalls...













....caves, a beautiful hiking trail lined with stone steps and stone walkways....









an olympic-sized swimming pool (16 feet deep in the deep end!) - no pics of the pool because water and cameras don't mix well in my experience...












....and one of the most incredible children's playgrounds I've ever seen, with some, shall we say, interesting designs....

The park is 91 miles from Coudersport each way, a total of 182 miles.  Assuming approximately 25 mpg, that's 7.28 gallons, and at the current gas price of $3.50/gal, that's a little less than $25.50 in gas.  So adding the $8 admission fee, it's $33.50 for a whole day of fun and exercise.  If you want to buy souveniers, or pay for lunch (instead of packing a picnic, for example), it's much more expensive.  A bottle of water in the park is $2.  We stopped at Dollar General on the way, bought some granola bars and bottled water, and saved money that way.  If you stick to the basics, this is cheaper than taking the kids to the movies, and it lasts all day.

And just in case you wanted to save money on something local, here's a few of my weekly "treasure finds":

This week at Jubilee, Armor corn dogs are on sale for $1 a pack.  Granted, they only come 2 in a pack, but kids love corn dogs.

And this week at Best Buys, Reese's Cups are 2 packs for $1

(so actually, you get 4 individual cups for $1.)

But if you wanted something healthier, this week at Costas,

Corn on the cob is on sale for a quarter an ear. 

How awesome is that?

Homemade Sweet Onion Sauce

My daughter LOVES Subway's Sweet Onion Sauce.  I thought I would try to recreate it but when I looked it up it was waaaaaay too complicated.  First of all, it contains 3 different kinds of vinegar: Red, White, and Basalmic.  So that wasn't going to happen.  I found a few recipes from people who had just tried to make their own, but the reviews were really varied, from "This tastes nothing like Subway's" to "This tastes just like Subway's!" on the same recipe.  I'm going to adjust the official Subway recipe to only allow for ingredients I have in my house.  Here goes nothin'....

Here's my "adjusted" recipe:
1/2 c light corn syrup
1/2 Tbsp onion powder
1 Tbsp + 3 tsp vinegar (I had cider vinegar)
1 tsp brown sugar
2 tsp milk
1/2 tsp lemon juice
2 dash salt
dash pepper
dash garlic powder

Combine all ingredients in glass bowl, microwave 2 minutes, allow to cool, and serve.

Final judgement from me: doesn't taste exactly like Subway's, but is still a VERY tasty sauce.  WIN.

Final judgement from my daughter will have to wait; she's on a playdate.  We'll see.

Yet another freebie

 There is yet another free comoddity that we often take for granted here in northern PA:

Sunshine

In addition to releasing mood-boosting chemicals in our brains, the sun provides light and heat.

To raise the dough for these rolls,  I put them on the front seat of my van on a sunny day.

And my favorite use for a bright sun-shiny day? 

Hanging clothes on the line.  It's clean and green, it's free and easy, and it brings me home.

Money can't buy me love

I'm a big fan of free.  So here's a few endorsements for activities that are free and local that my kids love to do:

1.  Spend time at the public library.  The Coudersport Public Library's children's section has a toy railroad, a separate "kids" computer, magnetic puzzles, videos, and, of course, lots of books.

2. Go to Lyman Lake for a swim. Granted, there is gas money involved (Google maps says it's 16 miles. My Hyundai only gets 18 miles to the gallon, so we're talking roughly a gallon of gas, or $3.70, give or take.) But compare this cost: Less than $4 for a swim at the Lake, which has a sand beach vs $17 daily admission for my family of four at the town pool. Plus, the lake has wildlife. Salamanders, butterflies, bullfrogs, minnows, and ducks. 

3.  Play at the park.  Any park.  Or even better, pack a picnic for the park.  : ) 

4.  Hike the nature trails at Carp Park.  The entrance to the trail is below the baseball fields.


And, for what it's worth, all of these activities are funded by taxes.  Which means you've already paid for them.  Seems kind of silly not to get your money's worth.

Homemade Birthday Pinata

So this has very little to do with food, but my oldest boy's birthday is coming up, and, for the fourth year in a row, he's asked for a piniata.


Now, the last few years, I would see the "cartoon character" pinatas for sale at most large stores.  Kids could beat the snot out of Dora, SpongeBob, or Spider-Man.  While a large part of me also wanted to beat the snot out of those lovable characters, I was attempting to curb the violent tendencies in my children.  So, I went looking for some villain pinatas and couldn't find any.


So it turns out making a homemade pinata is actually very simple, as long as you're not too picky about it looking like a specific character.  Or if you have enough artist in you to see shapes in clouds, you can probably "see" the intended shape in the final product.  So I've made pinatas that look like: spiders, bats, and eggs.  This year is going to be a Super Mario Goomba.  Hopefully it will turn out well (seeing as it's not technically done right now.)

Basically, you blow up a large balloon in the basic shape you want: The spider's body, bat's body, and "egg" were all "balloon" shapes, but you can get long, narrow balloons to make, I don't know, a snake or a caterpillar or something.  Then you hang the balloon by a string somehow.  I just tied to to my ceiling fan.  With the fan off, of course.  Then, you cover the balloon in at least 3 layers of paper mache, made with flour and water, mixed into a liquidy paste (thinner than dough, about as thick as cake batter), with torn strips of newspaper dragged through the "paste" and laid on the balloon. 

NOTE: Allow each layer to dry completely before adding the next layer and ALSO: keep a hole at the string large enough to put the candy through.  When the 3 layers are on and dry, cut it down, pop the balloon, and you have... a hornet's nest.  Yeah, it's basically a hornet's nest.  That's why you add legs, wings, and paint until it looks like what you wanted it to look like in the first place. 

Then, poke 2 or three holes with a pencil and thread through your hanging wire or string.  Then, fill up with candy or small cheap toys (like tops or whistles, those are good *sarcasm*).  Then, close up the hole with some more paper mache  and finish painting. 

All in all, this is a multi-day project because of all the drying time.  This is what Andrew's Goomba looks like now:

I will post pics of the finished product when it's done.

The Great Debate: Pre-made vs Home-made

I had a conversation the other day with a woman who said eating around here is expensive.  I was confused.  She had moved here from a city, but, in my experience, food costs more in big city grocery stores.  The reason her bills were so high, it turns out, is because she doesn't actually cook.  She tends to buy pre-made dinners and "cook" them.  It's more convenient, it doesn't require any planning ahead or defrosting, and she knows that she and her husband both like the taste.  But since "everything is freezerburnt" (her words, not mine) she and her husband have been eating out every meal. 

Now, just about anything you buy pre-made can be made at home, but I will admit that there are some advantages to pre-packaged food. 

Sometimes, it's cheaper.  Factory-made pizzas and pies are made in extremely large batches, literally hundreds a day, and the factories can get bulk flour and yeast a lot cheaper than you or I can.

Sometimes, it's tastier.  A lot of the folks in my generation grew up with fast food more often than once a month, and we enjoy the taste of Kraft Mac N Cheese more than a home-made version.

Often, it's faster.  Occasionally not, but Often enough to consider it "Always".  Yes, it is faster to open a can of soup than to make soup from scratch.

Sometimes, of course, you don't have the equipment to make it yourself.  Even though I really enjoy cooking, I still don't own a vegetable steamer or dehydrator.

So, food I buy, that I could make myself: loaves of bread, cans of soup, mac n cheese, and cake mixes are the big ones.  I make cookies and frosting from scratch.  I think I buy cake mixes because I despise washing all those measuring cups.

And sometimes, I do make home-made soup, and pizza, and steam vegetables in the microwave.  There's something to be said about doing things for yourself and your family, and knowing exactly what went into those cookies that are disappearing by the minute.  Ummm... gotta go.

A failed experiment

Not every cooking experience results in good food, or even edible food.  But every experience results in knowledge, and that means that no cooking experiment is ever a complete failure.  Even when you turn something semi-edible into something not at all edible, you haven't failed, as long as you learned what not to do in the future.

This last Monday was a day off of work for me.  I spent some of Sunday night looking for green peppers in my house, possible pre-diced and frozen and just waiting at the bottom of my freezer.  I did not find any peppers.  What I did find, however, was a box of Steak-Ums (pre-packaged cheese steak meat) which had been opened and dropped in there sometime in the last several years.  The meat itself did not look freezer burned, but I knew I hadn't bought any in years, and this box was open.  Rather than just toss it, I thought I would try to salvage it by turning it into jerky.

My dad had built a home dehydrator out of (I am not kidding) plywood, chicken wire, and lightbulbs, and made venison jerky with the first deer of the season every year.  He would portion it out into seven baggies: two for each of the 3 kids and one for him and my mom.  We'd get our first bag immediately and the second bag at Christmas.  And my dad's jerky recipe was delicious.  The meat always marinated overnight, so that's what I did with this. 

I took the pack of steak-ums, put them in a pyrex bowl, marinated them in what was left of a jar of Kraft Honey Barbeque sauce (good stuff, honestly, and I had a third of a jar in my fridge) overnight on Sunday. Then, on Monday, slow-cooked them on cookie cooling racks over top of baking sheets (so the BBQ wouldn't just drip into the oven.)  I had to do an internet search to find out how long and what temp, and all the websites suggested that I slice a roast "into 1/2 inch thick strips" or "into 1/4 inch thick strips".  Steak-ums are much thinner than that, and the idea with jerky is to slowly dry out the meat.  The websites I found suggested an oven temp of 200 degrees for anywhere from 4 to 8 hours.  I lowered the oven temp to 175 (as low as mine would go) and left the meat in for 3 hours before "peeking", flipped it (it should have dried evenly but I was just being cautious) and then, because it didn't seem "done" (it was still "floppy") upped the oven temp to 200 and gave it another 2 hours.

Well, it was absolutely horrible.  Literally.  Horrible.  I would not recommend this to anybody.  I am still not sure if it was because I was starting from years-old meat, if it's because the meat was too thin, if I had the oven temp too low for the first 3 hours, or what. But it was nas-tay.  As I said, an experiment is not a failure if I have learned something. And the only materials lost were a third-bottle of sauce and the meat (not even a whole pack) which I would have thrown out anyway. 

If I wanted to know what went wrong here scientifically, I would have to isolate each factor, and repeat this experiment several times.  But since I don't want to waste actually edible steak-ums that I would have to buy with real money just to satisfy my scientfic curiosity, I think I'm just going to go with: this was bad, and my dad's is good.  Therefore, IF I ever make homemade jerky again, I will start from an actual, proper cut of meat, and use my dad's marinade recipe. 

Minus ten points from Gryffendor

Rhubarb! (again!)

In my TANSTAAFL post, I mentioned rhubarb as a "practically" free local (northcentral PA) food.  As a general rule, you want to pick your rhubarb mid-May, before it flowers.  If you notice that it's already flowered, all is not lost; just harvest it as soon as you can.

My daughter helped me harvest my plant this year.  You break off the stems as close to the dirt as you can, and break off the leaf.  Then, wash your stems and rub the dirt off (similar to celery or carrots) and dice into pieces.  I usually cut mine into half-inch long chunks, "sideways" (perpendicular to the direction of the stem).  Then, I (usually) bag and freeze it.  My mother's rhubarb crisp recipe is here, and today, on my day off from work, I made a rhubarb pie.

Peeling Potatoes!

I was hanging out with a friend tonight, when she told me she had to peel potatoes for potato salad. I offered to help and she said, "I have to cook them first." 

Now, I kind of gave her my "confused cocker spaniel look" where I tilt my head to one side and raise my eyebrows. Thankfully, she elaborated.  She asked me if I'd ever heard this joke:

A woman is preparing a pork loin and she slices off either end, puts it in her pan, and puts it in the oven.  Her husband asks why, and she replies, "I don't know; that's just the way my mother always did it."  So, she calls up her mother, and asks her why she always cut the ends off the roast.  Her mother replies, "I don't know, that's just the way gran always did it."  So the woman calls up her gran and asks why she always cut the ends off the roast.  

Her gran replies, "Because my pan was too small."

I have always peeled and diced my potatoes raw, then cooked them.  Cooking the potatoes, then cooling them off in cold water, then peeling and dicing them, is WAY easier.  I couldn't comprehend why I hadn't thought of this, but it was just the way my mother always did it. 

Leftover Chicken Meat

Occasionally, you can get a cheap whole Roasting Chicken.  This one was purchased last week, and I cooked it for my family of four. 

We ate the meat from one breast and one thigh. What this meant for my family was leftovers.

I used the meat from the remaining thigh and the wings to make Chicken Cacciatore.  This left me with one breast.

So, I have several ideas for the last of this chicken meat, which can be used on top of salads, ground up and mixed with mayo to make chicken salad, or frozen for a future occasion.  I made chicken burgers with mine.  Right now, however, I'm just going to share with you how to prepare this chicken for future use.  This may seem obvious, but I would not have known how to prepare chicken were it not for my big sister teaching me 6 years ago, after my daughter's baptismal party left me with half of a leftover turkey.

1. Remove the chicken from the bones.  You can do this immediately after everyone is done eating on day 1, or wait a day or two until you've had enough chicken to satisfy your tastes for a while.  I've already passed that point.  I just took the chilled chicken out of the fridge and removed it from the bone with my fingers.  If you're squeamish, you can buy "dietary gloves", like what they use in your local deli when preparing food.

2.  Dice or Shred it.  Because you don't often use leftover chicken as an entire breast, I dice or shred it when I remove it from the bone.  This gives you "bite sized pieces" for future use.  If you shred it finely, and mix it with raw egg and italian mix, you can form it into patties for chicken burgers.  This is what I did with mine.

3.  Store it.  You can freeze cooked chicken meat in zipper baggies, or, if you plan to use it within 2 or 3 days, you can store it in a sealed container in your fridge.  I placed my chicken burgers with my beef burgers in between 2 sheets of waxed paper, on a cookie sheet, in my freezer.  The single breast that I had left gave me enough chicken meat (mixed with 2 eggs and about a tbsp of generic "italian seasoning") to form into 3 patties.  Since I have a family of 4, I will probably serve the kids the regular burgers and save the chicken patties for myself.

When NOT to buy bulk

It's common sense that the bigger packages are cheaper in the long run, right?

3 pound bottle for $2.65 vs 6 pound tin for $5.50

Maybe.

I think there must be some bizarre "sale" urge that causes us to buy completely unnecessary items (or unnecessary quantities of items) simply because they are cheap.  I recently bought a nice "date" dress (too short for church, but still nice looking) because it was $4.  Even though I haven't had a date in 2 years.  I just couldn't resist the sale.  In the same way, we "shoppers" see these irresistable bargains at bulk prices and just cannot pass them by.  So here are some common sense interjections to keep in mind when the urge to buy a 20 pound sack of potatoes next overcomes you.


Food that goes bad before you use it:   Sometimes, you don't use that 6-pound jumbo can of applesauce, and it grows mold in your fridge.  Of course, not in my house.  A 6-pound jumbo can of applesauce disappears within 48 hours of its being opened in my house.  But jumbo purchases that have gone bad before they're used in my house are most often fruits and vegetables.  I've bought canned pumpkin in a large can because it was on sale, used a cup's worth for some pumpkin bread or muffins, put the rest in the fridge, and before I know it, it's forgotten in the back and turned into compost. The smaller can would have been all I needed.  I've also had canned peaches turn before I eat them all, and when loaves of bread are "buy one get one free" you'd better plan on eating a lot of sandwiches or making homemade stuffing if you expect to use two loaves of bread before it molds.

Items that you don't need so much of to begin with.  It's that "shopper's desire" again - you can't pass up such an incredible sale.  For example, I very rarely drink alcohol.  I might have one beer in a week, if I have company or get out without my kids.  In January, I had company, so I went out to buy a six pack of bottles.  The six packs were $8 and the cases of 24 were $26.00.  4 six-packs would be $32.00!  I was so overwhelmed by the "sale" moment that common sense COMPLETELY left me and I bought TWO cases.  A little bit of math would have told me that I was only saving a quarter a bottle, and was spending $44 more than was needed to satisfy me and my guests.  As a result, I'm left with a whole lot of beer that I'm drinking about a bottle of a week.  Now, it's not going to go bad, really, but I could have spent $8 and been just as much the hostess.

Here's another example of a trap that I've fallen for in the past; same principle, smaller scale.  My local grocery store put a display at the end of the aisle: Lay's potato chips: Buy 2, get 1 free.  Now, this is a good deal, you think.  The normal price is $3.99 a bag, and the sale price is usually $3 a bag.  For this price, I can get three bags for $7.98, which is $2.66 a bag.  What a bargain!  But insert a little common sense here: How often do you buy chips?  I, personally, only buy a bag of chips once every other week or so.  They're not very healthy, or filling, considering their cost.  So I might have spent $4 a month on chips, buying them at full price.  Instead, by succumbing to this "I can't pass up such an incredible deal", I have now tossed 3 bags of chips in my cart, and now I've spent $8 instead of $4.  I will still (to the detriment of my diet) eat all 3 bags, I am sure, so I haven't "wasted" the extra $4 I spent, but I wouldn't have spent it in the first place if I'd had a little more self-control.  Like the beer, I could have purchased a smaller amount and been just as happy.

When you don't have the storage space for 50 pounds of potatoes. Or 10 pounds of onions.  I live in an old, beautiful house, but the "pantry" was converted to a bathroom sometime before we bought the house, so I have to be careful with how big the bulk packages are.  A good rule of thumb is, when in doubt, buy a "medium" sized package.  In the grocery store, you can buy onions individually, or in bags of 2 or 3 pounds, or in sacks of 10 pounds.  I buy a 2 pound bag most of the time, and find that's just right for me.  If I've got nowhere to put it, it doesn't really matter how much money I've saved.



When it's actually just cheaper to buy the smaller pack.  When I buy cat food, for example, I buy the medium-sized sacks of Dad's Original.  At my local grocery store, it's 15% cheaper than buying the largest bag available, even when the jumbo bags are on sale.  I discovered this just by comparing the price per pound.  Most of the time, it pays to check the "price per unit" on the tag.  Some aren't helpful, though, (one brand may list price per pound, another, price per ounce) and you still have to do some basic math. 

So one suggestion for calculating, when whoever printed those stickers at the stores decided to be most unhelpful, is to multiply, rather than divide.  I know that your junior high math teacher told you to divide to get price per serving.  Technically, this is correct.  To calculate a 6-pound can of applesauce, at $5.50, you divide $5.50 by 6, and get 91.67 cents per pound. A 3-pound jar, at $2.65, is 88.33 cents per pound.  But I have a calculator on my computer, and I don't usually have one at the store.  So I multiply, rather than divide:  2 of the 3-pound jars would be the same as one 6-pound jar, and 2 x $2.65 = $5.30.  So the smaller jars are cheaper (but not by much).

One last suggestion for price comparison: The price per unit isn't always as helpful as the price per serving.  For example: Those "snack packs" of crackers are divided into individual servings of 6 cracker sandwiches.  The unit price on the tag lists price per ounce, and they cost more per ounce than a large box of cheeze-flavored crackers.  However, when my kids get their hands on one of those large boxes of cheeze-flavored crackers, the three kids eat the whole box.  When the crackers are pre-packaged into servings, they eat a serving each at a time, and so the smaller box, which costs more per ounce and contains less, lasts longer.

In the end, ask yourself:
Do I really need this much? (2 cases of beer vs a six pack)
Would I be buying this much anyway? (3 bags of chips vs 1)
Is this going to go bad before I use it? (large tin of pumpkin)
Is the larger package actually cheaper? (cat food)
and Do I have the storage space for this much? (will it fit in my freezer/cupboards or not?)

TANSTAAFL

If you've never heard of TANSTAAFL, it stands for 'There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch', and is a concept from Robert A Heinlein's science fiction classic, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress".  (Recommended reading for history buffs and computer geeks alike)  The idea of TANSTAAFL is that even if something is "free", in the sense that it costs no money to obtain, it is never truly free, in that it must cost something: labor, time, or energy. 

You can plant tomatoes for $1 worth of seeds and potentially harvest $30 worth of tomatoes, but only after growing them.  You need soil, water, protection from insects, all of which cost you something, even if it's not cash.  And there's the $1 you spent on seeds.
 
I even once bought one of these.  I planted it a foot away from the corner of my house, and my "kind" uncle mowed my lawn for me, not knowing that the six-inch "weed" had cost me $13.95. 


But back to the point: saying that nothing is ever truly free, well, that's just kind of splitting hairs.  And here's why: ask a statistician what the chances are that you win the jackpot with the scratch-off ticket you found in the parking lot, and she'll be able to calculate the mathematically correct answer.  However, ask anybody else and they'll tell you "zero".  Technically, the answer isn't zero, but it's so incredibly small that it may as well be zero.  So, you can say TANSTAAFL, but as far as I'm concerned, if something cost you so very, very little, in the way of money AND time AND effort combined, then you may as well call it "free".

So here's a few of the "free" items you can get in north central PA:

berries -many varieties of berries grow wild in my area, including raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries.  You just have to know where to look.  You can also buy blueberry plants and grow them year after year with no extra work.  The only catch is that you have to buy more than one so they can pollinate each other and produce berries.  A single bush by itself will grow, but will not produce.  I bought raspberry bushes from Walmart 8 years ago, two little stalks that grew and seeded, and grew some more.  These are my older two kids 3 years ago picking berries in front of my house.  Blackberries and raspberries will need weeded every other year or so, otherwise the roots will grow so thick they'll choke themselves.  I wait until they begin to produce leaves every spring, then pull up by the roots anything without leaves.

fish - There are two free fishing days every year in PA, when you don't need a license.  These are Memorial Day and Labor Day.  So if you're lucky, you can get some free fish.  If you want to buy a license, and fish the rest of the summer, it's $22.50 for a season license, which only saves you money if you catch at least 6 fish.  Otherwise, it's cheaper to just buy them.

apples -  There was a time when people had apple farms all over these hills, which were then abandoned or sold.  Many apple trees grow wild now, and the apples are free for the taking every fall.  They are ugly, unlike the apples from the store, usually misshapen, with "hunchback of Notre Dame" bumps on them, but they taste just as good, and are free for the taking.  The downside:  like wild berries, you have to find them first.

zucchini - zucchini grows so much from so little investment that it may as well be free.  If you live around here, you've probably noticed that in the fall, many people are giving it away; they've grown much more than they need.

rhubarb - If you plant a single rhubarb bush, you can harvest it once a year (mid-to-end-May) and have roughly a gallon of frozen rhubarb.  Unlike berries, you don't need more than one bush for continual growth, since the part of the plant that is eaten here is the stalk, not the "fruit" (the seed-bearing part).  True, the original plant costs money, but since you can harvest one plant indefinitely, it's "practically" free.

So that's it.  Go fishing, go picking, don't ignore the free food that grows in abundance around you.  And have a good week.