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.
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.
posted by THE PENNY ORCHID -- "Thrift with Flair" at 7:58 AM
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