Of budgets & curried eggs with tomatoes

Keep your mouth from crooked speech, & your lips from deceitful talk. Let your eyes look straight ahead of you, fix your gaze upon what lies ahead. Look out for the path that your feet must take, & your ways will be secure. Swerve neither to right nor left, & keep clear of every evil thing. – Proverbs 4:24-27.



HOUSEHOLD HINTS:

Do you have a dried-out marking pen? Here’s another use for acetone nail polish remover. Pour a bit of the remover into its bottle cap, & give the tip of the marking pen a good though short soak in the remover. Cap the pen again, & wait overnight before trying to use it again.

When you plan a vacation to the city, try to time your hotel stay to be on the weekends, when rates are lowest due to the relative absence of business travelers. It’s just the opposite in the country, where bed-&-breakfast inns prevail. They are the busiest, & have the highest rates, on the weekends.

In the blog dated October 1, 2004, I told you that you can keep brown sugar soft by adding half of an apple to the container holding the sugar. Check that apple a few times a year – now is a good time if you put the apple in when I told you about it. You may find that it needs to be exchanged for a new one (it might have begun to “go bad.”).





BUDGETING BASICS:

Around this time of year, with tax time rearing its ugly head, many of us are planning to budget better for the rest of 2005 & beyond. This is not the only time that I’ll be addressing budgets, but here are several ideas to start:

First, WHERE to budget? If you enjoy working on the computer, & are frugal, a regular Excel spreadsheet will save you money over a specialized program. But I have a better idea for those of you who prefer paper-&-pencil. Do you still have in your house an extra 2005 calendar? So many businesses give them out free that you may well. Devote that calendar to recording all of your expenses day-by-day. At the end of each month, you can add up the totals spent in each category that is important to you, such as Mortgage/Rent, Household, Insurance, Transportation, Health-Care Visits, Prescriptions, & so forth, with the categories grouped by your personal outgo. (Just staple a piece of paper giving the items & their totals on the corresponding calendar page.) In 2006, assign a new calendar for the same expense accounting purpose, & so on each year. You will have an easy way to compare year-by-year, without needing a computer.

Secondly, HOW to budget? You’ll need to see how much money you have spent in the prior year in each category for which you have decided to record on-going spending. This can be done by looking back next year at your 2005 records. For this year, look at your checkbook, your credit card records, & use some guesswork on the uses you made of those ATM withdrawals for which you have no record. (Those should really be assigned to “personal allowance,” & they are the most discretionary of any money that you have.) Compare your total income last year with your outgo. If you are carrying debt beyond mortgage, such as credit card debt, you are likely to have a deficit rather than a surplus in your historical spending. Try to finesse savings in every category that is discretionary. These discretionary expenses can be both fixed (rent – you can move to a cheaper apartment) or variable (workday food – you can bring your lunch & your coffee). There are also non-discretionary expenses, both fixed (mortgage – you see, a similar housing expense can be either discretionary or non- depending on the type of contract you have signed for it.) & variable (groceries, which, next to personal allowances, is the single easiest category of expense to decrease. Another variable fixed expense is utilities costs).

You want to come up with a spending total for the year of 2005 that (a) takes into account the monies already disbursed last month & this, & (b) adjusts expenses for subsequent months so that by the end of the year you have a surplus that (i) you can save OR (ii) use to pay down debt. The second goal [(ii)] trumps the first [(i)]: there is no sense in gathering savings at a low interest rate while you are paying through the nose for the use of credit. Again, a mortgage is an exception, but, even there, you can generally pay down an amount in excess of the given monthly payment (unless your contract calls for a prepayment penalty.)

Thirdly, WHAT should come off the top of your budget monthly? If you are self-employed, you need to set aside monies for tax & social security assessments. If you have an employer, check to be sure that you are not having deducted from your gross pay more exemptions than necessary. (There is no reason to give the government a tax-free loan.)

Many financial advisors recommend taking 10% of your after-tax income each payday for savings, but I’d say that this is a minimum, & that it’s best to squirrel away monthly whatever you are able to amass through a variety of savings techniques, which we’ll begin to specifically address in next week’s issue. (Obviously, saving money is the leitmotif or constant theme of this blog.)

The Biblical idea of giving 10% of your income to charity such as your place of worship seems to spur many people on to prayer to be given more income, & a surprising number of folks do find such prayer to be answered affirmatively. And perhaps it is not all that surprising that “tithing” does that, since it is a type of prayer – as is that for good health – that reverberates in one’s own heart & mind, setting up a cognitive loop instilling ever-greater efforts towards the desired end.





RECIPE:

Curried Eggs & Tomatoes:

2 T canola oil
½ large onion, diced
1 carrot, grated
1 T curry powder
1 tsp salt
freshly-ground black pepper to taste or ¼ tsp ready-ground black pepper
2 T flour
28 oz canned tomatoes, chopped in can with scissors, drained but reserving the juice
2 c fluid – juice drained from the tomatoes plus water to bring total to 2 c
8-10 hard-cooked eggs, sliced

Place oil in Dutch oven. Saute onion & carrot for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add curry powder, salt, & pepper, together with flour. Saute 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add fluid, bring to a boil, reduce heat, & stir constantly while the sauce reduces in volume & thickens. Add tomatoes & eggs, & heat through. Serves 3.

Of frozen juice, popcorn salt, watch batteries, & more

Hell is a state of mind …. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind – is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken & only the unshakeable remains. C.S. Lewis, THE GREAT DIVORCE (pb, 1973, pp 70-71).






REASONING ON AN INVESTMENT CLOTHING BUY:

No, this is not an essay on purchasing a mohair sweater! I recently got tired of buying a dozen pair of run-resist pantyhose annually, or sometimes even more often. (I generally wear skirts.) I felt that there just had to be a better way – one that would save money, as well as the annoyance of dealing with pantyhose: you know, how they seem to always fit either too tightly or too loosely.

I “shopped” in several catalogues to find an alternative that would satisfy the style-conscious me as well as the budget-conscious me. (I live in a warm climate, so did not need to satisfy the cold-weather-me.) I eliminated in sequence each of the kind of tights that I could find, & all the types of knee socks & knee-highs. I was attracted again & again to Buster Brown® anklet socks, but was unhappy with the color selections offered. Finally, I found in the VERMONT COUNTRY STORE™ catalogue a choice of 8 colors sold in 2-pair packs. A dozen total pair works out to $3/pair. These should have a life of several years or longer. Compare the $2.58/pair best-price for run-resist pantyhose, which as I noted above, have only a one-year life, & that only if you are blessed in this “walk of life.”






PREPARING RECONSTITUTED JUICE:

You may have noticed that, generally, the 16-oz size of frozen juice is cheaper than the 12-oz size, ounce for ounce. I further economize by reconstituting the juice with 4 times the ounce size, instead of the 3 listed on the label instructions. But this means that I have to use 2 pitchers, as my larger one will only hold 2 quarts. The following system works perfectly. You want to put 12 oz of the concentrate into the bigger pitcher, & 4 oz into the smaller one. The easiest way to do this is to pour the concentrate into a 16-oz glass measuring cup. Keep the concentrate container. Pour 4 oz from the cup into the smaller pitcher. Pour the balance of the concentrate (12 oz) into the larger pitcher. Then fill up the container that the concentrate came in with water (this cleans it out, & guarantees that you get every smidgen for your money), & pour it into the smaller pitcher. That’s a 4:1 ratio of water to concentrate. As to the larger pitcher, fill up the 16-oz measuring cup 3 times, & pour all of that water into the larger pitcher. Again, that’s a 4:1 ratio of water to concentrate. Stir before each use, enjoy, & save!





THE POSTAL SERVICE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO ….

In the blog dated January 27, 2005, I told you about using USPS Express Mail envelopes to store sewing patterns in. This week, the USPS has announced that it prohibits the use of these envelopes for anything other than mailing purposes at the Express Mail rate.





DO YOU LIKE SALT ON YOUR POPCORN?

I’m assuming that you pop your corn on the stovetop, rather than in a microwave (more expensive, &, to hear some talk – & I believe them – the rays may be dangerous to your health). Here’s how to get salt evenly distributed & on every kernel. When you pour your oil into the pot – such as 2 T canola oil for ½ c raw kernels to make 2 quarts popped – just add 1 tsp salt to the oil. You’ll notice a slight sautéing sound. Wonderful taste & no waste of salt!






THE CHEAPEST WAY TO REPLACE YOUR WATCH BATTERY:

Go to a dollar store to buy a new cheapo watch, & remove the watch battery. Replace the one that is in your good watch with the battery from the cheap watch. Enough said.





A PARTY THAT SHE’LL OR HE’LL REMEMBER:

Do you have a friend over the age of 50 whom you would enjoy remembering at a party? Here’s a star gift. Find out all the towns where she or he has ever lived, & write to the Tourism Bureaus or Chamber of Commerce of each. Ask for picture postcards of the loveliest sights in the region. Prepare a scrapbook for the honoree of the postcards.




RECIPE:

Beans & Greens with Turkey:

2 T olive oil
½ c water
½ large onion or 1 medium, diced
1 large or 2 small cloves of garlic, minced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 c frozen greens (collards, turnip, mustard, or kale), thawed

1 tsp EACH:
celery seeds
basil
salt
freshly-ground black pepper to taste OR ¼ ready-ground black pepper
1-3/4 c your favorite beans (I used chickpeas) – (that you have baked & thawed if frozen, as per the September 10, 2004 blog, OR one 15-oz can of beans, drained & rinsed)
1 c shredded turkey, thawed if frozen

Heat oil & water in a Dutch oven. Put in the veggies & seasonings. Over a medium flame, stir-fry f 10 minutes. Add the beans & turkey. Cook until the beans & turkey are just heated through. Serve hearty portions to 4 diners.

Of punching holes, & Yum-Yum Stretched Burgers

From the Jewish Talmud (Berachos): Accustom your tongue to say “I do not know.”







A GOOD BUY:

I put fat-free sour cream into my potato-&-egg salad yesterday instead of light mayonnaise. Why? The mayonnaise had cost me $4.19 for a quart (32 oz), or 52 cents for a half-cup. I had bought a pint of sour cream (16 fluid oz) on sale yesterday for $2. I had a 55-cent-off coupon, which was doubled. This made my final cost for the pint 90 cents My cost for a half-cup of sour cream? 23 cents. And, by the way, the extra tang of the sour cream tastes wonderful. (This comparison is probably exaggerated, since I rarely purchase anything other than produce without a coupon &/or a sale -- I bought the mayo too long ago to recall the details. BUT I also rarely shop at the double-coupon store, since its prices TEND to be high on items other than its on-sale “loss-leaders. I only shop once monthly, spending under $10 at a produce store, & the balance of my food budget at a supermarket within walking distance.)






HELPFUL HINTS:

I seemed to have ruined a one-hole puncher by trying to punch light-weight plastic with it. I tried a tweezers to get the plastic out, to no avail. Then I thought of a solution written about in various YANKEE books, as well as in Amy Dacyczyn’s TIGHTWAD GAZETTE. The idea is to straighten out a regular-sized or large paper clip & use the wire for various fixes. I found that the straightened large clip was a perfect pusher-outer. It took less than 5 minutes to put the hole punch to right!

Speaking of punching a hole, what if your belt has become too tight? To punch a hole in leather, lay it on a scrap of wood. Use a pen to mark the place where you want the hole –the belt will look best if you maintain the spacing used on the rest of it. Put a large nail on the place that you marked, & strike it with a hammer until you have pierced the belt.

You probably know that you can easily stretch shampoo or other soap by mixing it with water half-&-half. But do you know the easiest way to do this? You need a glass measuring cup with a capacity that exceeds one-half the number of ounces in the original bottle. You also need a funnel. Finally, you need an empty bottle that had contained the same amount or greater ounces as the original bottle. Here’s what you do:
(1) Pour the soap carefully into the measuring cup until you have filled the cup with the soap to the measure that is one-half the capacity of the original bottle. (That is, remove one-half of the soap from the original bottle.)
(2) Using the funnel, pour the soap from the measuring cup into the empty bottle.
(3) Top off each of the bottles with water, ending 1 inch from the tops.

If you want to start a nifty part-time business, may I suggest the second-hand trade? Just rent a truck for the days that you wish to work. Advertise that you pick up junk & that you will empty basements, garages, & attics. People will actually pay you for doing this. Then you sort out what you have gathered. The good pieces you sell yourself (classified ads are good), & the balance you sell as a lot (perhaps to a flea market vendor).

I live in a studio apartment – big so far as they go, but without any access to a storage facility. Still, I save scrap items that look to me as though they may come in handy. I bought 20 yards of 1/8” piping cord today to sew welting from for a variety of projects (for a total expenditure of $4.40). I wanted to make a reel for it that would keep the cord from tangling. I had a plastic rectangular tub & the popped-out back end of an old kitchen timer. I cut a square hole in the tub (it only needed a regular scissors), & wound the cord around the timer piece, then placed the cord reel inside the tub. There it is! – a perfect solution from totally free parts.






RECIPE:


Yum-Yum Stretched Burgers:

The ground cloves is the secret ingredient that flavors these burgers so wonderfully.

1 pound hamburger meat
¼ tsp ground cloves
1 c oatmeal
2 eggs, beaten
½ large onion, diced
¼ c ketchup
1 tsp salt
freshly-ground black pepper to taste OR ¼ tsp ready-ground black pepper

Mix thoroughly with hands. Form into 6 balls of equal size. Flatten into 6 burgers. Heat up a 10” skillet. Cook 3 burgers at a time, waiting to turn until the top of each burger turns a bit brown in color. If there is any fat exuded, remove burgers from skillet when you are ready to turn them, & drain the fat completely. Turn burgers & again drain any fat that may be exuded. Yields 6 burgers.

Of a marketing ploy & a 3-ingredient recipe

All issues of this blog are © Deborah Michelle Sanders 2004, 2005.





From the portion “Derek Eretz” in the Jewish Talmud:

Regard as trifling the great good you did to others, & as enormous the little good others did to you.





HELPFUL HINTS:

Freeze your bread crumbs to use in place of the sky-high-priced commercial ones. If you bake your own bread or buy it unsliced, transfer the crumbs from cutting the bread to an 8-ounce (or so) freezer container. If you buy sliced bread, take the crumbs out of the bag when it is empty & put them in the same freezer container. You will be surprised at how quickly you fill the container. If you want to be truly a gourmet, you can separate sweet crumbs (challah, cinnamon bread, & such) from savory, using 2 freezer containers. Then you can add crumbs of cookies, cakes, piecrusts, & doughnuts to the sweet-crumbs container, which probably should hold 16oz (or so).

If you need to make a hotel reservation, besides searching the web or calling toll-free, phone the hotel in question itself to inquire about its specials. Sometimes, the specials are too temporary to be listed on the web or too local to be known to the national toll-free phone center.

My grandmother taught me to keep boxes of facial tissue out for company, but to use toilet paper (SO much cheaper!) within the family for sneezing & a runny nose. Just fold 6 or so squares over your hand & smooth out; you’ll have a very useful “handkerchief.” I always keep one in a pocket of each of my street clothes, & one in the utility drawer of my desk.

Two great uses for acetone nail-polish remover:
(1) To liquefy thickened nail polish so that it will last longer & not look puffy on your nails;
(2) To get further use out of your liquid correction fluid (mostly used today for pen-&-ink changes, since relatively few Americans use typewriters any longer).
For both purposes, use a couple of drops, which you can transfer with a cotton swab. Then, shake the bottle well, & dab a bit of the nail polish or correction fluid out to see whether you have added enough of the acetone. Better to add too little than to add too much & end up wasting what you were trying to salvage!

When you hard-cook eggs, place a teaspoon of vinegar in the water before bringing it to a full but not rolling boil (and then removing the pot from the flame & letting the eggs sit, covered, for 25 minutes.). This keeps the whites from migrating into the water if eggs get cracked. (I buy a gallon of white vinegar at a time, & transfer some to a small jar.)





READ THOSE LABELS – REGARDING A MARKETING PLOY:

A name-brand line of pretzels sells all varieties at $2.39 in my local market. Almost all of the varieties contain 15 oz. However, one is being marketed as being “Heart-Healthy,” due to having no trans-fats, & the bag contains only 10 oz. Guess what! Just read the labels on all the other varieties – NONE contain trans-fats …. (The "Heart-Healthy one also contains less sodium, but the manufacturer does NOT advertise that fact.)





DON’T BUY CANNED COMPRESSER AIR FOR YOUR COMPUTER!:

All you need is a turkey baster to blow air into your keyboard.





RECIPE:

A 3-ingredient recipe, perfect when you know that you’ll be getting home late the next night (you just have to remember to freeze the tofu & then defrost it & the frozen spinach in the fridge the night before – if you are using frozen spinach..). It takes longer to describe the dish than to cook it!

Teriyaki & Spinach Tofu:

Preliminary steps to make tofu taste more like meat:
Using 12 oz firm or extra firm tofu,
Freeze it in the package for at least one day;
Defrost it.
Open it up & drain out the water.
Wrap the tofu snugly in a clean tea towel.
Place the towel & tofu between 2 dinner plates (the top plate should be upside-down.). Put at least one full canister of food on top of the top plate to weight the tofu down & get all the moisture out of the tofu & into the towel. Let sit at least 1 hour.
Cut into 16 pieces. (This is 4 cuts across & 4 cuts perpendicular to the first 4 cuts.)


The dish itself:

4 oz washed & trimmed spinach (about 1 lb before you remove the stems). You can also use a 10-oz package of frozen, chopped spinach, thawed but not drained. Check in your market to see which is cheaper (in this season).

¼ c of Veri-Veri Teriyaki ™ sauce – This is worth having on hand for this dish alone! But it is also very good as a marinade for chicken, as seasoning on brown rice, & in many more ways. If you don’t have it on hand, you have 2 choices:
(1) You can purchase a different brand of ready-made teriyaki sauce – I cannot vouch for how this will taste, or
(2) You can experiment at duplicating Veri-Veri’s taste by mixing soy sauce with garlic, sesame seeds, sugar, onion, ginger, soy oil, and Asian sesame oil, but note that the Veri-Veri sauce itself is cheaper than your experiments will be (since Asian sesame oil costs so much).
Buying this Veri-Veri sauce is my little luxury; try it & it may become yours, too. Assuming that you have the sauce itself on hand, SHAKE WELL (about 50 times).

Place the sauce & the spinach in a 3-quart pot. Mix thoroughly. Cook briefly over medium heat, just until fresh spinach is wilted, or until thawed spinach has a bright aroma (about 2 minutes).
Add tofu to the pot & stir to coat the tofu with the sauce. Cook 5 minutes on low, stirring frequently.
Serve as an entrée to 2, or as a side dish to 4. Scrumptious!