Of #2 pencils, sandpaper for needles, & Deb's chili

Jews are celebrating Shavuous this week, commemorating the giving of the Torah/Law of Moses to the Israelites.

The law of the L-rd is perfect & revives the soul.
The L-rd’s instruction never fails, & makes the simple wise.
The precepts of the L-rd are right & rejoice the heart.
The commandment of the L-rd shines clear & gives light to the eyes.
The fear of the L-td is pure & abides for ever.
The L-rd’s decrees are true & righteous every one,
More to be desired than gold, pure gold in plenty,
Sweeter than syrup or honey from the comb.
It is these that give Thy servant warning,
& he who keeps them wins a great reward.

Psalm 19, second portion






HOUSEHOLD HINTS:

Did you know that an old-fashioned #2 pencil can write 15-30 times as far as the typical ballpoint pen? Use a pencil whenever you can, therefore.

Don’t have a furniture dolly? If you have a helper, you can improvise a dolly out of a household broom. To move something the weight of a 4-door filing cabinet, have your helper tip the object towards him. Insert the broomstraws underneath, as far across the floor as possible. Have your helper put the object back in place, but covering the broomstraws. Then you pull the broom while your helper pushes the object. (You can also use a piece of carpeting in place of the broom, but it needs to be narrower than the object while being about 4-5 feet in length.)

The cheapest moth-repellant sachets are those that you fill with black peppercorns.

You should be keeping track of your expenditures, comparing them with the amounts that you have budgeted for each category of spending. Make it more fun when you total the figures – give yourself “a gold star” or a “green light” if you stayed within your budget, a “yellow caution light” if you were right on target but had no room to spare, or a “red danger sign” if you overspent.

When you are ready to buy a used car (the only type that a frugal person should buy), & have run it through http://www.carfax.com/, there’s another step that you need to take. Bring along a magnet. You don’t want to be buying a car that has been repaired with plastic instead of metal. You want stick-to-itness!

To keep a soap-filled steel-wool pad rust-free, & to be able to use one for many months without a care, freeze it between uses. You’ll need to run it under hot water for each use, treat it to more dish soap every time, & be particularly careful to wash off from it bits of the food that you have cleaned off the pots & pans.

Do NOT run a fan so that it circulates air in the direction of a smoke detector, lest the air interfere with the proper functioning of the alarm.

The best way to clean glass is with plain, unadulterated water. You can recycle it in that bottle of window cleaner that you wasted money on. If you want a stronger product, add a tablespoon of ammonia to the bottle. If you want flair, & have food coloring on hand, add a drop of blue!

Do you shop at a market where the produce is drenched with water? Shake it off before you leave the produce counters, so that the water will not inflate the price per pound charged at the register.

Did you just get a little burned, say by picking toast out of the toaster? Next time, try this: grab one or both earlobes. It sounds weird, but there are so many blood vessels in the surfaces of the delicate tissue of your earlobes that the lobes conduct heat quickly.

If you have shoes that are particularly hard to get on – they are beyond shoehorn-utility, try using the flat handle of a long metal cooking spoon to urge your feet in.

Tired of having to change sewing machine needles so frequently? Here’s a cure. Take the finest sandpaper that you have, & sew along it for a few inches. (By the way, something called “crocus cloth” – an extremely fine sandpaper – is sold for this precise use. Try a sewing store.) Your needle will be sharpened & will remain sharp for a good long time!





RECIPE:

Deb’s Chili:

Textured Vegetable Protein (“TVP”) is a very cheap meat substitute made of soy. It takes on the flavor of anything that it is seasoned with, & it has the texture of ground meat. It reconstitutes easily. Just add ¾ c boiling water to 1 c of the TVP, stir with a fork, & wait 5 minutes.

Here is a recipe utilizing TVP. Yes, there are many ingredients, but the well-rounded resulting taste is worth your time in the kitchen.

½ large or 1 small onion, diced
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 T canola oil
1 T water

Saute for 10 minutes, covered, in a Dutch oven. Stir every few minutes..

1 c TVP, prepared with ¾ c boiling water, mixed with a fork, & allowed to sit in the bowl by itself for 5 minutes
Tomatoes, total of 29 oz canned, cut in can(s) with kitchen scissors, UNDRAINED
6 oz tomato paste
1-3/4 c of red or red kidney beans, prepared as described in the blog of 9/10/04 & defrosted, or 1 can of red or red kidney beans (drained & rinsed)
12 oz canned corn, UNDRAINED

Add to the onion & garlic. Cook, uncovered, on medium-high heat, stirring frequently. The chili should be simmering.

1 T chili powder
2 T cocoa
1 bay leaf
1 c strong coffee
2 T brown sugar
2 tsp oregano
1-1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dry mustard

Add. Stir thoroughly. Cook together (uncovered, on medium-high heat, as before) for 15 minutes. The chili should be at a rolling boil now. Stir frequently.

½ c cilantro, minced with kitchen scissors

Add to the cilantro at the end of the cooking time. Remove the bay leaf. Serves 7.

Accompany with corn tortillas, heated as the package directs.

Of cheap haircuts, a substitute for saffron, & zesty salmon loaf

The heavens tell out the glory of G-d,
The vault of heaven reveals His handiwork.
One day speaks to another,
& this without any speech or language
or sound of any voice.
Their music goes out through all the earth,
Their words reach to the end of the world.
In them a tent is fixed for the sun,
Who comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
Rejoicing like a strong man to run his race.
His rising is at one end of the heavens,
His circuit touches their farthest ends;
& nothing is hidden from his heat.

Psalm 19, first portion






HOUSEHOLD HINTS:

You can get a cheap haircut & styling (& coloring, if you want that) by becoming a model at a hair salon. (Look for signs in the window, or for ads in the paper.) You can get an even cheaper cut & so forth by going to a cosmeticians’ school. (Look in the Yellow Pages.)

Invest in a kitchen scale, ideally one that shows both the metric & U.S.A. conventional weights. You can use the scale to weigh packages (so that you don’t put on too much postage & waste that money). Of course, you will also use it in the kitchen. It is invaluable in weighing produce & meat so that you can follow recipes – mine generally specify produce in terms of units of the veggies (! Medium onion, for example), but this is unusual. Even in my recipes, I ask often for such items as ½ lb of pasta, & it is far better to weigh that out than to guess. (If you do guess, & you make 2 recipes from the package of 1 lb., you are going to be wrong in a way that may make a difference in at least 1 of the recipes.)

If you sew, save up empty cardboard rolls (toilet paper, paper towels, food wraps) for storing your trims. Notch one edge to hold the beginning of the trim, another on the other end to hold the other side of the trim.

The rolls from food wraps can also be used to mail documents. Roll up the document until it fits inside the roll. Replace it in the food wrap box, seal, tape all over, & address & stamp.

Put on rubber gloves to open a stubborn jar lid.

To determine how thrifty – or how liberal – your spending on groceries is, click on the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Planning & Promotion website, www.usda.gov/cnpp/foodplans.html The thrifty plan for 1 woman of age 51 or over is higher than what I spend, but only by a little less than $20 a month.

A tip for gardeners: removing weeds is easier after a rainstorm.

Inexpensive cold cream is just as good as commercial leather-conditioning lotions. After applying the cold cream, rub it in. Then wipe it off with a clean rag.

Always run a used car that you are considering buying through http://www.carfax.com/ to ensure that it isn’t a rebuilt wreck.

Do you have a fireplace? Next to chopping your own wood, the cheapest source is from a lumberyard (their warped boards, or other pieces that they wish to discard) or from a sawmill (again, pieces that they wish to discard).

OR, make your own logs! Roll newspaper’s black-&-white pages (no colored pages, please, as they produce dangerous fumes). You’ll need to roll the log to be approximately 5” in diameter. Tie it tightly with string.

Saffron is MUCH too expensive to buy & use, right? And turmeric doesn’t taste anything like it (though it provides the right color). A better substitute is marigolds from your garden or from another organic source. You’ll need to dry the flowers first.






RECIPE:

Zesty Salmon Loaf:

2 stalks celery, minced
1/4 of a large onion or 1/2 of a medium one, chopped
1 large carrot, grated
1 14.75 oz can salmon (use the bones & liquid as well as the fish pieces)
2 eggs
½ tsp salt
freshly-ground black pepper to taste, or¼ tsp ready-ground pepper
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp lemon juice
1c milk
1 c uncooked rolled oats

Spray loaf pan with oil. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients thoroughly in a bowl, but be careful to leave the salmon in fairly large chunks. Spoon into pan.

Bake for a half-hour. Serves 4.

Of petroleum jelly, worms, & creamed spinach

Gossip kills 3: the speaker, the spoken of, & the listener. – Samuel ben Nachman





HOUSEHOLD HINTS:

Here are 2 uses for petroleum jelly, which you may know better under the brand name of Vasoline®:

Avoid buying more glue, honey, or anything else that has a cap that sticks to the bottle. Once you DO have the tube or bottle open, spread a little petroleum jelly over the threads of the cap.

At bath time, keep the soap out of Baby’s – or Fido’s – eyes by rubbing a thin layer of the jelly around the perimeters of his eyes – making sure, of course, that you don’t get too close to his eyes themselves!

Use a cooling rack – generally for the purposes of cooling baked goods – as a partial shelf in your fridge. In this way, you can make the most of your fridge space using this “double-decker.”

Burning your home-made muffins is like burning money. This happens particularly often when some of the cups are empty. Here’s how to avoid that outcome. Just fill any empty cups halfway with water!

MEASURE the amount of water you need to brew a cup of tea, herbal tea, or coffee. I measure 12 oz out for a mug of brewed coffee. Doing this saves money on energy costs, whether you use a range, an automatic coffeepot, or a microwave oven.

When you bring radishes home from the market, cut off the greens before storing the radishes. Wash & dry the radishes, & then place them in a covered plastic container. It’s best to line the container with a piece of paper toweling. The radishes will last much longer.

Make worms work for you! In addition to their obvious use as fishing tackle, the worms can also till your soil before you plant a garden. Just lay 10 sheets of newspaper over each area of your intended garden plot. Set on top of the papers about 2 inches of kitchen scraps (produce & coffee grounds only, please). Water the garden plot twice a week gently, with a watering can. Wait a month altogether. Make holes directly through the mulch with a small shovel or a spade, & then plant. There will be earthworms all through your garden plot!

Do you wear plastic-lensed eyeglasses? If they become scratched, here’s a potential fix. Apply a small amount of furniture polish to each side of the lens. Wipe dry with a clean, soft cloth such as a chamois. It often does the trick!

If you think ahead to your funeral, you can save your family hundreds or potentially a couple of thousand dollars. Look in the Yellow Pages to find a local memorial society or office of the Funeral Consumer Alliance. Those associations will help you to save big.

A good resource for those looking to furnish a home for the 1st time (read: newlyweds), for that ONE item that will give the living room punch, is the back rooms of a local interior designer.

Many people try to restrict their decorative planting to perennials, in order to save the money that new plants would cost each year. But, did you know that if you let certain annuals go to seed at the end of the season, they will generally flower again next year? These plants are Johnny-jump-ups, marigolds, petunias, poppies, & sweet alyssum.

To reduce your car’s gasoline costs, take off or out of the car everything you don’t need now. In particular, if you have a roof rack, it certainly doesn’t need to be on the car all of the time.






RECIPE:

Southwestern Creamed Spinach:

Spinach, chopped, thawed frozen (10 oz)
Onion, 1 medium or ½ large, chopped
Garlic, 3 cloves, minced
Peppers of your choice:
Jalapeno pepper, 2 medium, minced, if you want a spicy-hot result OR
Jalapeno pepper, 1 medium, minced , if you want a medium-spicy result
(Wear gloves while handling jalapenos. Remove the seeds & veins.) OR
Bell pepper, 1 small, if you do not want any heat
Canola oil, 3 T

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Using a Dutch oven, saute the veggies in the oil for 10 minutes. Remove the veggies from the Dutch oven

1 T canola oil
2 T flour
2 c milk
4 oz Monterey Jack cheese, shredded

Brown the flour in the oil in the Dutch oven. Add the milk in 3 parts (about 2/3 c each part). Stir until you see small bubbles at the perimeter. Add the cheese. Stir thoroughly, & continue to stir until the cheese sauce thickens.

Stir in veggies. Bake for 40 minutes or until browned. (There will be some liquid left in the Dutch oven when you remove it from the range’s oven, but that will solidify as the spinach cools.) Serves 3.