Of June hot buys, & thrift-store appliances

THE PENNY ORCHID – “Thrift with Flair” is copyright Deborah Michelle Sanders © 2004-2005. All rights reserved. You must seek permission to copy any portion of this blog or its predecessor print newsletter.





Engage in the study of Scriptures, & do charity, even with an ulterior motive, for that habit of right doing will lead also to right motivation. -- The Jewish Talmud




HOUSEHOLD HINTS:

Tired of the high price of oil cooking spray? Have you tried with no luck a regular spray bottle? Here’s a hint for you. All you need is a pastry brush. Put ½ tsp of oil into your pot or pan (before you start cooking). Then, use a pastry brush to spread the oil around.

If you are selling a car, be sure to ride along with a prospective buyer who wants to take the car out for a road test. Otherwise, your prospect may turn out to be a thief….

The beginning vegetable gardener should plant kale to have a most nutritious and VERY easy-to-grow crop.





HOT BUYS FOR JUNE:

Groceries for picnics (soda, beer, potato chips, charcoal, paper goods, marshmallows, & ketchup & mustard) are all on sale this month. So are beets, corn, okra, English peas (peas that need to be shelled), dairy products, local onions, tomatoes, apricots, blueberries, cantaloupe, cherries, figs, plums, STRAWBERRIES in abundance, & watermelon.

Regarding items that are not found in your neighborhood supermarket, here’s the list:

Tires
Furniture & home furnishings/floor coverings & bedding
Refrigerators
Tools & building supplies
Storm windows
Summer clothes & clothes for boys
Televisions
Fishing & camping gear
For the dads: ties & aftershave
Swimwear & summer clothing IN TOURIST AREAS ONLY






A SAMPLE APPLIANCE BOUGHT AT A THRIFT STORE – HOW-TO’S

It can be iffy to purchase an electrical appliance at a thrift store. Sometimes, the store has an electrical outlet available for you to use to ensure that the appliance’s motor works. But you still don’t know whether the appliance will do what it was originally manufactured to do, in a safe way. Let me recount for you how I handled the purchase of a CrockPot®.

I got mine for $4 – it was marked at $8, but I got it at Salvation Army on a half-price sale day. The regular price for a new one is $40.

However, I knew that the prior owner had to be dissatisfied with something. In this day & age, slow cookers have returned to fashion, so it couldn’t have been the mere desire to clear out clutter.

Most likely, I figured, the calibration (temperature levels) was off. And so I found. All you need to do in such a case is to measure the scope of how far off it is, & then adapt.

This is what I did. I wanted to make my experiment by cooking only veggies in the CrockPot®, to avoid any chance of food poisoning (from cooking eggs, poultry, dairy, or meat). I cleaned the unit thoroughly – I’m sure that you know not to let water touch the metal housing. It is also vital to only run hot water into a heated slow cooker, lest the cooker’s crock crack (say that 3 times fast!).

I cooked 3 cups of sliced carrots in 1 cup of hot water with 2 T of oil & 1 T of dried dillweed, at low temperature. According to my cookbook, that should have taken 2-1/2 hours to cook to the point of making the carrots crisp-tender. They were NOT ready, so I continued to cook the veggies, & checked them every half-hour. They actually took 4 hours. I did some calculations & figured that my slow cooker needs to be on for 160% of the expected time to cook at the low temperature.

I then tested a recipe calling for high temperature, & found that the cooker worked as calibrated, without needing to increase the time that recipes give.

So, I can only assume that the last owner had given up on the slow temperature setting, & decided to “throw out” the cooker for that reason.

Test & test again, that has to be your mantra when you have purchased an appliance at a thrift store or a garage sale.





RECIPE:

Confetti Stuffed Potatoes

4 large Russet potatoes:

2 T canola oil
1 small bell pepper of a color that is cheap when you market, chopped
1 small bell pepper of another color, chopped
½ large or 1 medium onion, minced

1 c lowfat cottage cheese
2 T milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Pierce potatoes, & bake them for 50 minutes.

Meanwhile, sauté the veggies in the oil for 10 minutes, covered. Stir occasionally.

Combine all other ingredients well.

When potatoes have baked, cut in half & use a metal tablespoon to scoop out the pulp. Add pulp to the veggie/cheese mixture. Stir thoroughly. Return the mixture to the potato skins. Return to the oven for 10 minutes to warm the filling.

Serves 4.

Of Children's Allowances (Revisited), & Tarragon Pasta Salad

“When men talk too much, sin is never far away; common sense holds its tongue.” Proverbs 10:19






CHILDREN’S ALLOWANCES, REVISITED:

Two intriguing responses to the discussion of the blog issue of 4/14/05 appear below. The first is from loyal reader Tamar Gold:

“Interesting discussion on children’s allowances. We start each child with an allowance at age 6, but they start doing chores around age 3 or 4. I am in agreement with you about not tying the allowance to participation in family responsibilities. (Some of my children might disagree, however!) We start them at 50 cents & it stays there until they reach age 10 when it goes up to a dollar. As you can tell, we don’t expect them to buy much with this allowance. It is for the extras …. Like a lipgloss for my high school junior or baseball cards for my preteen boy or a cheap toy for my little girl. Mostly, they just let the money accumulate, without a specific goal in mind. When they find something they just “must have,” they check to see how much they’ve accumulated (sometimes over years!), & see if they can afford it.

“What’s interesting about how we do allowance is that we don’t actually give them the cash. We keep a running tally of their allowance, &, when they want to spend it, it is deducted from the accounting & we do the actual buying. It got too hard, when I had only 2 getting allowance, to come up with the 4 needed quarters every week! We stop giving allowance, by the way, when they go to college.”


For another take on the issue, read what Beth Sovern, another loyal reader, has to say & show:

“Just chiming in on allowance. Our children get half their age for allowance, but it’s pretty much for them to allocate as they wish. They get allowance every other week, on my husband’s payday.

“They all chip in at holiday time for a charity of our choosing. Last year we did something through the high school where we answered children’s letters to Santa from a needy school.

“Usually, the kids save their allowances. My 12-year-old is allegedly saving for a car. But he only has $70. Should be interesting. My high school junior uses hers for food out with her friends. They’re pretty frugal.

“We have an involved chore chart with rotating chores on a weekly basis. Supposedly they don’t get allowance if they don’t do their chores. But we don’t check the week’s chart before ponying up the money. They’re good about doing the many jobs, but only if we remind them. I make a chart (see below) so that I don’t have to hear, Why can’t he do it? I just say, whose turn is it to empty the dishwasher? That way, they can’t complain that I ask one of them to do more than the others. Hope this is useful to you.” [Boy! Is it ever!]


No chores = No allowance!

Rotating Chores

Garbage
Week of:
2/28
3/7
3/14
3/21
3/28
4/4 (Each child's name is listed for each chore, in rotation.)

Bring in recycling bins: Wednesday

Bring up cans: Monday/Thursday

Empty small cans into bag: Saturday



Kitchen
Week of:
2/28
3/7
3/14
3/21
3/28
4/4

Sponge/Sweep

Help prepare dinner/set table

Wash/Dishes


General Household Chores

Week of:
2/28
3/7
3/14
3/21
3/28
4/4

Help with Laundry

Empty kitchen garbage/Put in garage can

Empty dishwasher


Daily Chores

Ø Make Beds
Ø Pick up dishes
Ø Cups and snacks in dishwasher/garbage
Ø Backpacks & debris put away
Ø Shoes in bins
Ø Coats hung up
Ø Dirty clothes in hamper
Ø Clean clothes put away
Ø Towels hung up
Ø Bathroom clean up-toothbrushes/ hairbrushes etc. put away
Ø Feed pets







RECIPE:

Tarragon Peas with Spaghetti:

This is a most unusual pasta salad.

In a Dutch oven, place
1 large onion, minced
2 T canola oil

Saute until lightly browned. Remove from Dutch oven.

1 lb. spaghetti (preferably totally whole wheat – or partially – Healthy Harvest brand)

Cook in the Dutch oven for 2 minutes less than package directions call for.

2 lb. regular (English) peas, shelled

Add to spaghetti in its last 2 minutes of cooking.

Drain peas & spaghetti together very well. Return to pot.

Add:

2 tsp dried tarragon (If you have a garden & have fresh tarragon, use 2 T, minced.)
1 T butter or margarine

Stir thoroughly. Serves 6.

bOf Inter-Library Loans & Fresh Squash with Chicken

If a Jew breaks a leg, he thanks G-d that he did not break 2 legs. If he breaks both, he thanks G-d that he did not break his neck ….





HELFUL HINTS:

If you have a gas oven, you have a built-in food dehydrator! Just leave food such as herbs on a baking sheet overnight. The pilot light will do all the work. If not thoroughly dry in the morning, continue the drying process while you are not heating the oven. Store the dried food in tightly-sealed jars.

If you have an older dog or cat, whose teeth have worn away, add water to its regular food instead of buying special (& expensive) “senior” food.

Place one oven mitt inside another when you will be handling steaming food. An example is if you use a “Theatre” popcorn maker, in which the temperature exceeds 450 degrees.

Egg shells adhere to egg shells. So, if you’ve dropped a piece of shell into your mixing bowl, just scoop it out with a larger piece of shell.

Speaking of eggs, if you don’t want to use them & want a substitution, try 1 heaping T of soy flour with 1 T of water, for each egg that you would otherwise be using.

When buying a used car, check the label on the door on the driver’s side, to learn the date when the car was manufactured. You’ll find bargaining easier on older cars.






THE PLEASURES OF INTER-LIBRARY LOANS:

Loyal reader Terry L Jackson wrote to me this week about how much enjoyment comes from the Inter-Library Loan service that every library I know of provides. “One of the things that I discovered, many years ago, was the interlibrary loan service at my local library. If my library doesn’t have a book that I am interested in reading, I can request that they borrow it for me from another library…. This service has … helped me to reduce my book buying ‘addiction.’ … If [after reading the book that I have borrowed,] I feel that the content is something that would be good to have for future reference, I buy the book & add it to my personal library.”

I could not agree with Terry more. Each month, I order about 8 books through Inter-Library Loan. If a book is a reference book, like a cookbook, I do exactly what Terry does, & read through it to make sure that it is great before I seek it out to buy. I buy most of my books at the sales that the library holds for the public, & I keep a list of titles that I want – I bring the list with me to the sales so that I won’t buy items “sight unseen.”

The main way in which I find out which books I want to borrow through Inter-Library loan is to find authors’ names in bibliographies of the books I have already been reading. Then I check BOOKS IN PRINT (which is online for cardholders of my library in San Francisco, CA) to find out the titles of all the books that the author has written. The only books that I cannot borrow through ILL are those that were published within the prior 12 months.

Of course, if I know of an older book that I would like to read (an out-of-print one), I give the library as much information as I have been able to ferret out about the book. I have noticed that it is harder for the Library to find out-of-print books than those that are still in print.

The Library requires that, as a 1st step, you check the Library’s own catalogue to ascertain whether the book you want is already in the collection. If it is, the catalogue indicates whether there is a copy on the shelf. If there is not, you can reserve the book.

ILL’s have made both me & Terry very happy -- & we hope that you, too, will try these loans out.





RECIPE:

Fresh Summer Squash with Chicken:

1-1/2 pounds any type of summer squash (including zucchini), sliced in 1” pieces, then cut in half if pieces are wide, steamed for 18 minutes (including the time to get the water boiling).
1 jalapeno pepper (this is optional), sliced (Remember to use gloves), with seeds & ribs removed
1 tsp EACH dried thyme, dried rosemary, & dried sage – crushed (The easiest way to crush dried herbs is to put them in the mixing bowl when the bowl is still empty, & use the back of your spoon to crush them.)
1 c chicken
1-1/4 pounds tomatoes (about 3 medium)
½ tsp salt
2 T lemon juice (from 1 medium lemon)
¼ c olive oil (“extra-virgin” has the best flavor)

Mix thoroughly for 3 entrée servings. Serve immediately (does not keep well).