Category Archives: frugal strategies

Excited to be planning an intimate wedding

frugal strategies, parenting

Years ago, my husband and I talked about how we would like to handle wedding planning. Our ideal was to set aside an amount of money for each child’s wedding, and then let each couple determine how they wanted to spend it. If they wanted to spent it all on a one night event, that was fine. If they wanted to make a smaller or simpler event, they could keep the difference between what they spent on the wedding and what was remaining.

That was our ideal but we never had the opportunity to make that offer until now.

When you’re making a bar mitzva, you can do what you want because it’s only your family you have to consider. When you’re making a wedding, you need to take into account the preferences of another family.

Before each engagement, we meet with the parents of the other side and agree as to what our financial contribution will be for the wedding: what will be the overall budget and how will the expenses we distributed. We did that this time as well, and our baseline number was based on the sums we spent on our last two weddings.

However, the morning after the engagement, I was thinking that this would be the time when something smaller would be a better fit for the couple as well as both families. She is from England so neither she nor her family have a huge social circle that expects to attend.

Living in a small community in the north, we also don’t have a large number of people who will be attending.

The standard wedding halls have a minimum of 300 people for the meal, and 300 for the dessert buffet. We just don’t have a need for those numbers at all.

My husband called me from work the morning after the l’chaim and told me he had been thinking that this wedding could be smaller than our usual weddings, and reminded me of what we had said our ideal was: to give the couple the money to spend as they wished. It happens so often that we both think of the same idea at the same time without discussing it with one another, but he was still surprised when I told him I had been thinking exactly the same thing!

So what are we planning for this wedding?

Three years ago the son before this one got married on a Friday and it was a very good experience for us all for a number of reasons. When my daughter got married a year and a half later in the heart of the winter, a Friday wedding wasn’t an option since Shabbos begins so early. My son who is now engaged remembered how positive an experience it was, and talked to his fiance about it, who agreed to have a Friday wedding.

Next is the wedding venue. While the scale of the wedding will be adjusted (we’re thinking we’ll have about 100 guests for the meal), our new couple isn’t looking to do something radically different to save every possible penny, like having a potluck in someone’s basement. They want a beautiful hall with a nice catered meal. But once you aren’t having a very large crowd, there are many smaller halls that become an option.

Since smaller halls don’t have room for people to be seated at tables for the meal and to simultaneously have a large area available for dancing, we’ll be changing the standard wedding schedule. First will be the chupa, then the entire meal will be served, and then dancing will take place at the end. The tables will be cleared away at the end of the meal to make room for dancing, and dessert tables will be assembled around the perimeter of the hall.

After we made this arrangement, we realized that this set up will also cut the cost of the band, since their charge is based on the number of hours they need to be there. Usually the band arrives for the chupa and stays throughout the night until the final dance; this is around five or six hours. Since my son asked two or three of his younger brothers to sing at his chupa, and someone else will arrange for recorded background dinner music to be played for the meal on the speakers the musicians will set up in advance, we only need a live band for the dancing at the end.

We haven’t yet contacted a photographer but the photographer at our last Friday wedding gave us a discounted price because it was on Friday. Friday isn’t prime time for weddings so it’s likely there will be other costs that will be less than if the wedding was held in the evening.

The hall is located in the neighborhood where the new couple will be living, the same one where his yeshiva is located. This is incredibly convenient for his friends. This makes it possible for as many of the students who want to attend to come for the chupa, leave for the meal (other than his close friends), and return for dancing.

When I told a friend our plans, she said that when her daughter got married during covid, they were only allowed to have fifty guests total. She shared that it was the nicest and most meaningful of all of their weddings, and she wishes that all of her weddings could be like that. Every single person who was there was someone they were close to and felt emotionally invested in adding to the joyous atmosphere at the wedding. She also enjoyed being able to connect with all of her guests in a way that she couldn’t at a huge wedding with hundreds of guests.

I’ve heard a number of people say they regret that when the covid restrictions lifted, weddings went back to the same way they had been before. The smaller weddings were a beautiful blip on the social scene but seen as a choice people were forced to make legally and didn’t endure as a socially normative option when people had their choice of venues afterwards.

It will take some time to get an idea of what all the final costs will be, but I anticipate the savings will be substantial. I love that the couple will have a beautiful wedding surrounded by all of the people who care about them most, and at the same time have the benefit of the money saved to create some financial margin as they start their lives together.

Avivah

Shop early to reduce the financial pressure of the holidays

frugal strategies, homemaking, Pesach

This is an expensive time in the Jewish calendar, with Purim being followed soon after by Pesach.

I’ve wanted to write on this for a while and realize I’m a bit tardy in sharing thoughts on navigating this, but hopefully you can still utilize some aspect of the strategies I’m sharing.

When all of the expenses pile up at once, it can be overwhelming. For the week of Pesach, we usually spend 5000 shekels on food – an amount that’s close to our usual monthly total. Then there are the clothing related expenses and that adds several thousands more. Adding in nine or ten thousand shekels of expenses is quite a bit to swallow in one month.

So we don’t.

I space out major purchases so it doesn’t feel overwhelming to pay for everything within a two or three week period.

I wanted to buy the four older boys (14, 16, 17, 21) new suits, and new hats for three of them. That’s a nice chunk of change to spend at once, but I made my purchases before Purim. There were several benefits to doing this: 1) the money for this was spent six weeks before Pesach and not on top of all the other Pesach expenses.

2) I don’t like shopping or vacationing or driving in crowds. That’s not to say I can’t tolerate it, but I’d rather have more peace and quiet in my life, and doing as much as I can do off-season adds to my serenity. In two weeks, every yeshiva bochur in the country will have vacation and will be Pesach suit shopping, together with his younger brothers and father – can you guess what the clothing stores are going to be like?

By shopping early, we had the store and staff to ourselves, with plenty of personal attention and assistance. It’s so much more relaxing and enjoyable to shop like this, rather than having to work hard to get the attention of someone who many other customers simultaneously want help from.

3) I really appreciate getting things that can be done ahead of time taken care of. My life is really full – whose isn’t? – and I would be fooling myself to push off tasks while thinking wishfully that it will be easier at a later time. It’s never easier later. There’s just as much to do later on, plus all the things that were pushed off! This is one thing that has been critical to me staying on top of all that I need to do – I try to minimize procrastination (although dealing with paperwork for Israeli bureaucracy is my weakness). There’s enough to do that can’t be scheduled in advance, so why leave this to a time when there’s so much to do?

So the clothing purchases were all finished by the beginning of March.

Now about food shopping. For our family, our biggest expenses are matza and meat. When I’ve gone to the store in recent weeks, I’ve been dismayed to see that the freezer section is very thin and the prices are very high – to me, shockingly high.

Since I buy meat by the case, I don’t need to shop at the supermarket more than once every four to six weeks. The rise in prices caught me off guard because when I last bought a case of meat two or three months ago, everything was normal. Every section in the meat freezers were full and if the sales weren’t amazing, they were nonetheless regular and the prices were fairly steady.

My infrequent shopping trips meant I didn’t see the meat slowing emptying out and the prices going up. I’ve gone every week for the last three or four weeks, and every week looks worse than the week before. I asked the person in charge of the meat section what is going on, and he said that there’s a supply issue. I asked if they expect the weekly orders to fill the gap and they said they’re making their usual orders but many items aren’t coming in. They’re hoping that some ships will come in with more supplies.

That wasn’t reassuring for me, particularly not with Pesach so close on the horizon. Even when there aren’t supply issues, prices go up for Pesach. None of this is a surprise and what’s good about that is you can plan around it. It really makes a difference to think ahead and plan ahead.

To mediate the effect of the high prices I utilize a strategy that I’ve written about in the past: stock up when the items you want are on sale. I buy my meat ahead of time when there are still bargains to be found in the meat sections; the closer it gets to the holiday, the fewer good buys there are.

I haven’t been able to buy the cuts I prefer for quite a long time, so three weeks ago I decided to buy twenty kilos of ground meat since there was plenty of that. When I went back the next week, it was yet another empty space in the freezer section with everything cleaned out – the woman working there remembered that I had bought a lot and told me how smart it was to do that.

The next week they had beef tongue at a thirty percent discount, though it wasn’t marked as being on sale – I only knew because I directly asked the person in charge of the meat section. While I usually buy a small quantity of tongue, this time I bought a much larger amount. (I used to buy brisket (#3) and chuck (#10) because they were the most affordable but several months ago I discovered flanken (#9) when it was on sale for the same price as brisket. Flanken is now my absolute favorite because it’s so much fattier than brisket; animal fat is not only delicious, but very important for body and brain function and is even beneficial for your skin!)

It’s not too late to spread out your expenses even though Pesach is just a month away. Think about what your anticipated Pesach expenses are. Are there items you can buy now? I don’t buy groceries in advance because I prefer to have my home clean for Pesach before bringing in food items (other than meat), but maybe getting your Pesach staples now would work for you. What about housewares? Do you need another pot or set of silverware? (I bought two new sets of silverware for Pesach a couple of months ago when they were on sale and put them in my Pesach cabinet.) Go ahead and do some early shopping!

How do you keep your Pesach spending from becoming overwhelming? I’d love to see your tips!

Avivah

My new financial goal – focus on paying off mortgage early

frugal strategies

This past May, the engine on our van went out and we didn’t want to invest in putting a new engine into a 2006 vehicle. Though I was planning to upgrade our vehicle, I hadn’t yet built the ‘new car account’ high enough to buy what I wanted.

We brought the twins home four days later, and almost immediately needed to take them to appointments. It was an incredibly hectic time and we had not even an extra moment to shop around for car loans so we did something out of character – we took a loan for the car through our bank since it was automatically approved, with monthly payments for a year.

The interest rate started off at 11% and was up to 11.5% two months later.

I don’t like debt but that interest rate was extra motivating. I buckled down hard on getting this paid off, throwing every bit of extra money that came in at this loan. I was so relieved and gratified to make the final payment less than three months after we took the loan.

Our success in paying down the car loan inspired me to set a very ambitious goal that I’m excited about: to have our mortgage paid off by December 2025.

When we made aliya twelve years ago we started over financially at the bottom of the ladder. It was really tough and it took a few years until we began to get some traction. That has built slowly but steadily, thank G-d. When we bought our home in Israel, I felt acutely aware that taking a thirty year mortgage in our late thirties/early forties meant we would have a mortgage years after my husband’s official retirement age. By taking a home loan at a time in life that many people had paid their mortgages off, or were close to paying them off, we were financial late starters.

Though I always wished we could pay off our mortgage early, it wasn’t until we made the decision to move to Yavneel that we were able to make any progress on this goal. When we made the decision to buy a home in Yavneel, we could have purchased at a comparable cost to what we sold our previous home for, or since we qualified for a higher mortgage amount, bought something more expensive.

That didn’t fit our goal of going into retirement mortgage-free. I was adamant about buying below our budget. When we looked at different homes for sale, we chose a large home with a beautiful view, opposite fields and next to an orchard, and very easy walking distance to the shul. In was also a fixer-upper in a rundown neighborhood; there wasn’t a single indoor picture of the house shown on the online listing, or even a close up of the outside. There was a reason for that – there was no good picture to be had!

My daughter who viewed the house with us said she didn’t see what made us want to buy it, and when we moved in in March 2020, my kids looked around and later told me their first impressions were that it looked really bad. It wasn’t horrible, but there was nowhere you laid your eyes that didn’t need fixing or replacing.

We did the necessary renovations ourselves and fortunately the neighborhood has improved quite a bit since we bought. We took the difference from what we made on the sale of our previous home and what we bought our new home for, and by putting it toward our mortgage loan, we were able to pay down a third of our mortgage.

Our remaining mortgage is split into two parts: the first is the original fixed mortgage payment, set at 4.2% interest, to be paid off in 2037 (we were fortunate to get a mortgage when rates were super low). The second payment is the portion of our mortgage that we refinanced in January 2023 from a loan linked to inflation to a fixed rate of 5%. That loan was also initially set to end in 2037 but when we did the refinance, we slightly increased our monthly payments in order to shorten the length of the loan by five years, so it was reset to end in 2032.

As a homeowner in the US, it was easy to regularly put money toward the mortgage principle using a simple online payment. It didn’t have to be a large amount; I regularly put a hundred dollars toward the principle. That’s not an option here; at least not at our bank. When we asked the bank about how to make extra payments, they told us we can only do it for large amounts. I asked how much, and she told me a minimum of 50,000 shekels. We put money aside until we had enough for a payment of that amount. The process was not quick and easy and they charged us several thousand shekels as a fee for the interest they were losing. But it did bring down our mortgage some more.

After making that prepayment, I felt daunted about making more early payments. In any event, our daughter got married soon afterwards and our ‘extra’ funds were being put towards that. Then the twins came soon afterwards and we had the car to pay off. When I started actively thinking again about how to prepay our mortgage loans, I mentioned to my husband how frustrating and intimidating I found the prepayment process.

He informed me there’s a webpage on the bank site where you can easily prepay whatever amount you want. I was delighted to hear this and checked it out right away, only to find the webpage was down – and has continued to be non-functional for months. Apparently making it convenient for borrowers to pay off their mortgages even a bit early isn’t a priority.

Fortunately my husband and I are a good team; I comb through our budget to put towards the extra mortgage payment and he takes care of the hassle of making the payment. I’m going to share what’s involved and if you’re interested in making a one time or regular prepayment on your mortgage, knowing what is involved will make it more doable for you.

One huge thing I learned is that we don’t have to put down a very large amount, despite what I was previously told. It seems that the minimum payment you can make depends on the loan amount so you can’t throw five hundred shekels at it. And there is a fee of 60 shekels each time we make a prepayment, so it’s worth waiting a little longer and paying a larger amount to save a bit on the fee. I have no idea why we had to pay a penalty fee of thousands of shekels in the past when we prepaid a large amount.

First you have to call the bank to request a link to make the payment. It can take a long time to get someone on the phone but if you stick with it you’ll eventually get a representative. You let them know you want to make a partial mortgage payoff (siluk chilki), and choose to either make your monthly payment smaller to shorten the length of the loan. We choose the second option. They’ll send you a link to a form that tells you where to make the transfer.

Then you make the transfer, and fill out the form they sent with the details of what part of the mortgage you’re paying, the amount, the details of the transfer and upload the pdf from the bank of the transfer.

Once you do this, it will take three days until your mortgage will show the funds being credited to your account.

While this is annoying when it could easily be automated, it’s also not nearly as involved or as costly as I initially thought.

And it is so exciting to see the progress we’re making on the mortgage! I wanted to have a way to visually see our progress, so my husband made a chart that we keep on the fridge, with each block representing 5000 shekels paid off.

When I checked our mortgage balance before making our last prepayment, I was surprised to find it was ten thousand shekels less than I thought it should be based on the amount we paid off. When I did my original calculations, I forgot to take into account that our regular monthly payments were also paying off some of the principle. It was fun to be able to color in two more blocks on our chart – it felt like a freebie.

We’re working on first paying down the higher interest loan, and by making these early payments, we’ve already cut off four additional years off this loan since last year (the one that we shortened by 5 years when we refinanced last year) so after just a year, we’ve shaved nine years off the loan. It’s now set to end in 2028 versus 2037. My goal is to finish paying this one off in the next six months; assuming that happens, it will shorten the loan by thirteen years. That’s a lot of years of interest payments we’ll be saving.

Then we plan to tackle the remaining mortgage loan, using the monthly payment we previously paid for our first loan to accelerate our payments.

I was hesitant to set such an ambitious goal because I don’t like setting a goal and then not achieving it, and there are so many variables that are out of my hands that can affect my plans. But then I decided to set a goal that would energize and really motivate me, which this one does.

I talked to our teens before we did this, letting them know I’d be doing budget cutting. They were very supportive. One recently told me he thought we’d be eating rice and beans, sitting in the dark, and was disappointed by how ‘normal’ life felt. I laughed and told him we don’t have to give up all of our quality of life to do this! I’m thankful that all of our older children feel very abundant at the same time that we continue to live frugally.

I know that some people would say that the money could be invested in something that earns more interest than the interest we save by prepaying. While I’m sure there’s merit in that approach, I’m a financially conservative person and find comfort in the thought of having our primary residence paid for in full. The emotional benefits combined with the financial benefits make this a good choice for us. d financial benefits are worth it for us.

Have you paid off a mortgage early, or is it something you’re currently working towards? I’d love to hear your experience!

Avivah

This week in the kitchen – compote, apple cider vinegar, sauerkraut and pickles

canning, frugal strategies, lacto fermentation

This morning I wanted to get an early start in the kitchen this morning. I needed to take dd6 to an introductory meeting at her kindergarten at 9:45, and I was hoping to get some traction on some food preservation before then.

My husband brought home a bunch of apples yesterday. Sometimes I don’t get to fresh produce right away and I always regret it, because it’s so much easier to process food when it’s fresh and blemish-free. I have a apple corer-slicer-peeler but my apple corer sections apples into six pieces and is so much faster that I’m willing to use apples with peels on them. I wasn’t looking at the clock but I felt mighty quick in filling up two large pots with the prepared apples.

I haven’t done much food preservation lately, and today decided to make apple compote, which translated into fifteen quarts/liters once it was cooked. I add a little water, some vanilla and let it cook down slowly. It’s so flavorful and as it was cooking, several times dd6 and gd4 asked me what that good smell was! Usually I add cinnamon but I didn’t feel like it this time. Of course I canned all of those lovely jars so I can keep them on a shelf instead of in a fridge. It makes me smile thinking of pulling them out in a few months for dessert for Shabbos dinner.

The next logical step was to do something with all the beautiful cores, so I decided to make apple cider vinegar.

Making apple cider vinegar is really easy: first fill a jar halfway with apple scraps.

Add water to fill the jar until about an inch from the top. Add a tablespoon of sugar per cup of water you used.

Cover it with a cloth and stir it once a day for a couple of weeks.

Then let it sit for a couple of months until it’s ready, and strain it out. That’s it.

I keep mine on the counter for the first couple of weeks so I can stir it daily to be sure everything stays submerged under the liquid , then put it away somewhere out of my immediate kitchen zone to finish fermenting. Last year I was really happy with how delicious the apple cider vinegar was. I told you then that it was so good I wanted to drink it by the cupful!

I got all that finished and had about forty five minutes to spend with my grandchildren before I needed to leave with dd6 at 9:40 am.

Later in the day, I turned my attention to the cabbages.

I wanted to turn them into sauerkraut, but I don’t have a cellar or basement or even a home that is usually air conditioned to keep the temperature low for an extended time. If I would shred the cabbage as I usually do, it would ferment within three days. Everything ferments much more quickly in the heat. I decided to chop the cabbage coarsely for the next batch so it would take a longer time to ferment. I made two four liter buckets full, which will be much less once it breaks down and compacts, but will still be a nice amount.

That was enough food preservation for today, first of all because I was tired and secondly because then I needed to make dinner, put the kids to bed early and leave to ds6.5’s introductory school meeting, this one only for mothers. It was on arriving there that I learned he’s going to be going into first grade, not gan chova (pre1A). His teacher looks wonderful, as all of the teachers in this school have been. I’ve been very happy with this school and feel so fortunate that by moving here, our boys have a great place to learn.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with ds6 and his new teacher. They started hiring staff a week ago and it looks like the gan is actually going to start on time on September 1st! Since my husband and older boys won’t be home at that time of day, I’m going to be taking the other three kids with me to this meeting. It will be short and everyone will enjoy seeing his school – the twins went to Siblings Day at ds11’s school and saw his class and ds6/5’s gan. And then I took everyone to see dd6’s gan prior to the meeting today.

Back to food preservation: a couple of days ago, for the first time in ages I made lacto fermented pickles. In the past I’ve sometimes made amazing, delicious pickles, but it’s so unpredictable how they’ll turn out – sometimes they are just not good. I finally decided to try it again, this time using bay leaves as the tannin source (tannin being the ingredient that keeps the pickles crunchy). Grape leaves are recommended and I have loads of them on my vine, but I have another year until we can harvest the grapes, and I don’t know if the grape leaves have the same status. No, it wasn’t important enough to me to call a rabbi to ask.

I wanted to use tea bags but I didn’t know where my husband put them and when I saw that bay leaves are a tannin source, figured I’d use them. I bought a kilo bag of bay leaves over a year ago. Do you have any idea how huge a quantity that is? I’ve hardly made a dent in them. So if these work well for crunchy pickles, there’s a lot more I need to use up. If you live locally and want some bay leaves, I’m happy to share. 🙂

After a day and a half, I put them in the fridge. I hope the experiment will be successful, since most of us in the family really like pickles, and they’re so much healthier, tastier and cheaper when you make them yourself.

Avivah

This week in the kitchen

frugal strategies, homemaking

It’s been months since I’ve done any canning. I did some pantry organizing this week and was surprised at how many empty jars I have. That’s a good thing, since it means that I’ve been regularly using up all that I canned!

I did a quick inventory and saw what hasn’t been getting used. There wasn’t much of a surprise there – I canned delicious clementines that were bitter after canning, then turned them into clementine jam. However, we don’t use regularly use jams, so they’ve been mostly sitting. That, along with some canned grapefruit and lychees, are not getting much attention. Fortunately it’s less than ten jars so I’m going to think about what to do with them in the next few weeks to clear the shelf space for something more useful.

I had a bunch of cabbage that needed to be used, so I decided to make a large pot of meat cabbage soup. I sauteed a few onions, added two kilos of shredded carrots, two large heads of shredded cabbage, a kilo of green beans, 3- 4 cups of meat gravy (I pour gravy off roasted meat or chicken and keep it to cook soups and stews with), a liter of home canned tomatoes, and two liters of home canned tomato juice. My son didn’t have a chance to grind the meat I was intending to add so I left that out; it didn’t need any additional seasoning because the gravy was so flavorful.

I did an experiment when making this – I had a number of large cucumbers that were beginning to turn yellow. I figured that since they’re in the squash family, I could use them as a substitute for zucchini. I’m pleased with how it worked out: since it has a higher water content than zucchini, it dissolved and became more of a thickener than recognizable on its own.

While I prepared this I thought a lot about my aunt. She was one of my most beloved people and passed away several years ago. I remember her making a vegetable soup using vegetables from her garden, serving some for dinner and then canning the rest all up – just like I did yesterday.

I canned 14 quarts and 7 pints of cabbage soup, the smaller jars for ds17 to take to yeshiva with him. I also canned seven quarts of beef stew for him. I told him to think about what dishes he’d like me to prepare so I can make them for him in the next couple of weeks, so he’ll have variety, but he said he’s not picky and is happy with whatever I make him. Sending canned meals for him this last year has made a huge difference for him.

(Ds6 and dd5 in background peeling cucumbers)

I also canned 14 quarts of chickpeas, since it makes it very easy to prepare chumus from scratch. I have other canned beans that I use much less frequently, but I use lots of chickpeas. I had about six cups of soaked chickpeas that didn’t fit into the canner so I decided to cook them and use them this week. Unfortunately, as happens too often when I cook chickpeas, I didn’t keep a close eye on them, so the water boiled down and they got a bit scorched. It made me think that perhaps I should stick to canning all the chickpeas I want to cook.

———————-

During the year I get up by 5:30 am and often much earlier, but during vacation it’s nice to be able to sleep in. The younger kids wake up before six in the morning; I don’t like hearing or seeing young children when the hour is still 5, even 5:59 am. 6 am is fine. Yes, it’s completely psychological! But since they continue to get up earlier than my mental settings would prefer, today I decided rather than starting my day feeling put upon, I’m better off getting up earlier like usual.

This morning I continued to channel my aunt, who made biscuits for breakfast every morning. Hers were always delicious, light and flaky. I substituted butter for the Crisco she used to use, and spelt flour for white flour. Then, not being fully awake, I accidentally measured out baking soda instead of baking powder. I realized the mistake before mixing it in and tried to take it out, but some remained and the final result was perfect except for the taste of too much baking soda. Oh, well. They were edible, but not the delicious biscuits I remember from my aunt.

Before going to bed, I made a batch of flaxseed mixture to bake into crackers today. I intended to put them in the dehydrator first thing in the day since they need three hours to bake on low to be ready, then they’d be finished before we left for our trip. However, my seventeen year old son is in the middle of building a playhouse for the kids and left the transformer I need for the dehydrator in the backyard.

I didn’t feel like going outside at that moment so chose to try out another cracker recipe in the meantime. While the kids were having biscuits and scrambled eggs for breakfast, I mixed up the new recipe for crackers. I’m not a pinterest cook and don’t care about rolling them out perfectly; they taste great and we’ll take them on our trip later this morning.

Next I’m planning to make a large batch of plum compote, if I can keep the kids out of the plums long enough! They’re gobbling them down. What I’ve done in the past that has worked really well for us is to can compote in quart sized jars, then have it available for a Shabbos dessert.

We’ll also be hosting a kumsitz for men and boys Thursday night, so this afternoon the boys will be preparing food for that. I took ds17 shopping and he bought some good stuff! I’ll stay out of the kitchen while they work. My daughter and her husband will be coming for Shabbos and will hopefully arrive with my husband in time for the kumsitz.

I had hoped my older two married sons would be here for the kumsitz as well – I love when all of our sons sing together – but one changed plans and won’t be coming at all during this vacation period, and the other one is coming with his family on Friday.

Avivah

Baking bread with my fast and easy whole grain bread recipe

frugal strategies, recipes

Late last night, I realized that we didn’t have any bread for sandwiches for the children going to camp (at their schools). Since the bread locally is sold out by the morning, there wasn’t any to buy. I could have gone to the store early in the morning to buy their overpriced bread, which is what I did a couple of weeks ago when I was in the same situation (teen boys eating the bread that was intended for the younger kids school lunches).

This time, I decided to bake some bread instead of making another early morning run to the market. The only problem was I was too tired to start baking at that time of night, so instead I set my alarm for 4:50 am.

My husband woke up at the same time and seeing how tired I was, very generously offered to make the bread for me so I could sleep a bit longer, but when he couldn’t find some of the ingredients I got up. It’s just the getting up when I’m tired that’s hard; once I’m up I enjoy the early morning hours.

It’s a quick recipe to put together so in a few minutes I mixed it all up, then made one loaf and a bunch of rolls.

My oldest daughter had an early morning driving test (which she passed her first time!), and at 6:15 am her three children arrived, joining me and our four youngest children. With seven children who all wanted to eat, play and talk at the same time, and three of them needing to get dressed and ready to leave the house between 6:45 and 7:20, it was busy.

Pro parenting tip: everything goes much more smoothly when there’s food ready to eat as soon as the kids are ready! Hungry kids are cranky kids, and having freshly baked rolls to offer the kids definitely helped keep that busy first hour enjoyable for everyone.

————————–

The last time I ran out of bread, I got up at 5 am, got to the local market by 5:15 and bought a loaf of spelt bread for 20 shekels. Small markets are always more costly, but I needed it and was glad to be able to get it.

However, this time I realized it wouldn’t even save time to buy it. It takes longer to go to and from the store than to spend five minutes of hands-on time mixing the dough. Of course, it takes time to rise and bake, but that’s passive so as long as you start an hour and a half before you need it, you can make it fresh for a significant price savings.

Avivah’s Fast and Easy Whole Grain Bread

  • 4 c. warm water
  • 2 T. yeast
  • 2/3 c. honey, date syrup or sugar
  • 2/3 c. oil
  • 4 t. salt
  • 8 – 10 c. whole wheat or spelt flour

Mix the warm water and yeast. Then add the remaining ingredients in the order listed. Mix in flour until the dough is slightly tacky but able to be handled without sticking to your hands. Form into loaves or rolls and let rise until doubled. (This went very quickly today in a non-air conditioned kitchen with outdoor temps over 105 degrees. :)) Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit/180 degrees Celcius.

This recipe yields three large loaves.

————————

Here’s a breakdown of my costs:

  • Sweetener – I used date syrup, 20 shekels a kg. 2/3 c. is about 4.5 shekels.
  • Coconut oil – 17.5 shekels a liter; 2/3 of a cup is about three shekels.
  • Spelt flour – 7.5 shekels a kilo (I buy by the case), I used one bag.

The cost of salt and yeast is minimal but let’s say it’s another shekel, so 16 shekels for three loaves of spelt bread, of much higher quality than one store bought loaf.

Avivah

Grind your own meat for quality and savings

frugal strategies

I was at the supermarket this week and asked at the meat counter about when they would have ground beef in. They won’t, I was told.

Since it’s been months since it’s been available, I asked about what’s happening. They explained that the Ministry of Health no longer allows them to grind meat because a fly could get in or something unsanitary like that.

Ground beef is a staple that so many families use to stretch a meal, in a way that you can’t do with a roast. I have so many ways that I use ground beef, and not having it as an option was very limiting for me. I asked the butcher to cut up a few roasts so that at least I could use it for stews, and he asked me if I was planning to grind it myself. That possibility hadn’t crossed my mind, but after he made that comment, I was determined to see if it was something we could do.

Two years ago, following another very long period of not being able to buy ground beef, I bought a meat grinder attachment for my Bosch mixer. Unfortunately, the one experience we had with it caused me to mentally discard using the grinder as an option – the meat couldn’t be ground when frozen, but once it was defrosted, it came out of the grinder mushy. I chalked it up as an unfortunate purchase and waste of money.

After the butcher asked me if I was going to grind the meat myself, it jolted our grinder back into mind. I wondered if there was something different we could do to get a better result, and resolved to do some research about it. I quickly found out that a basic principle of grinding meat is that the meat and the grinder blades should all be very cold.

We put both the meat and the grinder attachment in the freezer for an hour, and then my fourteen year old son ground everything while I took a nap. He ran each batch through the grinder twice, and the resulting meat looked perfect. Though unfortunately the piece that pushes the meat down has disappeared and not having it made the job harder than necessary, it was still doable and it’s so nice to know that now this is a viable option for us.

Meat grinders can be bought fairly inexpensively. In my case, I opted to buy an attachment for a mixer that I already had, rather than get a freestanding grinder that would take up more space.

Since the ground meat I can purchase from another source is more than twenty shekels a kilo than the roasts I can buy and then grind, the potential savings are significant. Since we regularly use ground beef (when we can get it :)), it won’t take that long until the cost of the grinder will be offset by the savings.

Avivah

What to use as a substitute for eggs in baking

frugal strategies, homemaking

Long, long ago I explored veganism, and my recipe notebook still includes different egg substitute options.

Though I use eggs – lots of them, actually! – sometimes I run out and it’s helpful to have options to substitute for them. None of these replace eggs that you’re eating as eggs: hardboiled, omelettes or sunny side up. But they’re great for replacing eggs in baked goods.

With eggs jumping in price and in some countries in short supply, it’s even more helpful to know alternatives.

To determine which replacement will work best in the recipe you’re making, it’s helpful to understand what eggs do in a recipe: they add moisture, they bind the ingredients together, and they add lightness/fluffiness to a recipe. I’ve made a note as to what purpose each replacement serves, so you can match it with the desired results are.

  • 1 T. ground flaxseed and 3 T. water = 1 egg. This forms a gel like substance when blended together. It’s a good binding agent and have a pretty neutral flavor.
  • 1 T. chia seeds + 3 T. water= 1 egg. Like flaxseed, the mixture forms a gel-like substance. I prefer to mix it with water, then blend the mixture, and lastly to add it to the recipe. This is also a good binding agent and has a neutral flavor.
  • 1 T. cornstarch + 3 T. water = 1 egg. This is good as a binder but if you need some fluffiness, it’s not the option to use.
  • 1/4 c. applesauce (preferably unsweetened) = 1 egg. Adds moisture and binds.
  • 1/4 c. mashed banana = 1 egg; use in recipes that the banana flavor will blend with. Adds moisture and binds.
  • 1/4 c. pumpkin puree = 1 egg. Like banana, use in a recipe that the flavor blends well. Adds moisture and binds. I discovered pumpkin as a substitute years ago when I did a no-shop grocery challenge and was forced to look at the items in my pantry with a creative eye.
  • 3 T. aquafaba (water left from cooking chickpeas) = 1 egg. This can be beaten and used as a replacement for beaten egg whites in meringues and mousse.

Avivah

What the chief financial officer explained after firing 30% of staff, and what we’re doing about it

frugal strategies, homemaking

My husband was hired by a startup in Tel Aviv a year ago. A month after he was hired, a number of people were let go and they closed down one of the two floors they had rented in a large building.

A couple of weeks ago, thirty percent of his coworkers were let go. My husband went in for the special meeting held with the remaining employees to explain what is happening.

The chief financial officer of my husband’s company was one of the first in the Israeli tech space to be interviewed and talk publicly about the assumption there will be an economic recession over a year ago. He now explained that investment money used to go to start ups that were spending money hand over fist. No one wanted a company on a budget; they wanted to see growth.

Now the investment money is looking for companies that are lean, in order to get through the financial dip that is expected. He explained that they are making these cuts in advance, to prepare for what is coming with the hope that the company can make it through. They also have shut down their large spacious offices and are moving into a smaller space. He said that most companies still don’t see what’s on the horizon, they aren’t changing their spending or projections and a lot of them aren’t going to make it.

I was paying attention to what he said a year ago, and I’m paying attention now. Sometimes you don’t want to hear something negative like this, because it makes you feel anxious and worried about what your own future holds. But I try to move beyond my tendency to be avoidant of what I don’t want to hear, and learn from it.

If the chief financial officer is taking steps to buffer the company for an economic downturn by turning to frugal strategies, it seems prudent for us to take steps to buffer our families by doing the same.

Obviously I’d prefer to think we’ll be minimally affected by the economic bumps that are anticipated. Don’t we all?

As uncomfortable as it was to consider, my husband and I had a discussion about what would happen if we were to experience job loss. We decided that it would be prudent to scale our expenses down now. The intention is twofold: to create more savings, and to know that we could live on less if we needed to. It’s much easier and less stressful to do this as a response to a proactive and thoughtful decision than to suddenly and reactively need to cut expenses from a place of deprivation.

Though my husband has been managing the finances for many years, a few months ago we agreed that it’s time for me as the frugality ninja to step up to the helm since I enjoy rather than tolerate the minutiae of money management, and taking the above steps means looking closely at all outgoing money.

It’s taken a lot of time but I’ve been enjoying this purposeful and focused work, and have been gratified by the progress we’re making. Some of my efforts have been on cutting expenses, while sometimes it means spending more money now, so we won’t have to spend it later (eg replacing our old energy guzzler freezer with an energy efficient chest model).

We don’t have any debt other than our mortgage, as I’ve consistently stuck to my hard and fast rule of not spending money that I don’t have. This includes making five weddings in five years. If I did have debt, I would be focusing on getting it paid off.

Here are some steps we’ve taken:

  • cut expenses in different spending categories
  • looked for ways to increase income
  • increased our savings rate
  • paid down a chunk of our mortgage
  • refinanced our mortgage to a set rate
  • took care of non-urgent repairs on our vehicles rather than delay to when they become necessary
  • withdrew pension funds (a recession would affect the stock market) and reinvested the money
  • been generous with charitable giving while we have the ability to do so

Rather than being negative or alarming to think about, considering less cheerful possibilities has helped us make choices that have led us to feel more empowered and relaxed.

Expenses (energy, food, gas) are expected to continue to rise in the coming year – some financial experts say that they’re going to rise significantly. Increased job loss is also being predicted.

I don’t know if that’s what will happen. But I do know that if it does, the combination of rising costs and decreased income isn’t a good match for a relaxed home. I’m sharing some of what we’re doing to proactively buffer our family with you in the hope it will inspire you to take actions that will likewise empower your family.

If you’re already taking actions of this sort, I and other readers would love to hear about it! Please share in the comments. 🙂

Avivah

Ancient Roots Israel herbalism conference – starting today!

frugal strategies, health, home remedies,

When I learned that the Ancient Roots Israel herbalism conference would be held this year in Poriya, not far from my home, I was excited that I’d be able to attend on a day pass. I could put my kids on the school van in the morning, daven, milk the goats, and make the fifteen minute drive over in time to join others for breakfast!

Then my daughter got engaged, and with so much to be done in a short time (the wedding will be the end of February and we have a short engagement period of just seven weeks), and I wondered if it was responsible of me to take two days out to learn about plant uses when there were so many pressing things to attend to.

Last week I concluded that busy or not, I would regret giving this up if I didn’t go. (Have you ever noticed how we parents so often give up the things that are important to us, to do the things that are important to other people?) Just a week before the conference was to begin, I registered.

There’s a lot I know about health and healing, but I enjoy continuing to expand my knowledge, and learning about the medicinal qualities of the plants all around us is empowering. I remember when I learned on a nature walk in Maryland about the ability of plantain to instantly soothe bee stings, and soon after used that knowledge when a boy next to us at my son’s baseball game was stung. (We were sitting on the grass, so I quickly picked some plantain growing right on the ground next to us, told him to chew it and put it on his sting. He was amazed that right away it felt better.) It’s not just for my own family but to help others that I want to learn more, though I have no desire or intention to pursue healing at a professional level.

Some of the compounds in plants have been isolated and used to produce pharmaceutical products, but many more remain unknown to most, despite having been effectively used for thousands of years in cultures across the world. Last year I went on a foraging hike and enjoyed learning about the plants growing locally, and my interest in learning more continues to grow.

Here’s the schedule of events for the Ancient Roots Israel herbalism conference. I’m planning to attend two of the plant walks, in addition to other talks. (They have also done free virtual plant walks, the videos of which can be found here.)

Since my younger boys get home at 2 pm, I’m going to be hiring my thirteen year old to take care of them during the afternoon hours I’m gone. My husband will give everyone dinner and put the younger boys to bed, and I’ll get up in the morning with them to get them ready for school. Initially I thought I might come back home during the extended breaks, but that may be stressful so I have the option of staying there for the entire day. The conference begins 5:15 pm today, and concludes on Tuesday at the same time.

I really wanted to let you know about it in advance, knowing that there are those of you who would be interested in attending, and am sorry that my time constraints didn’t allow me to share about it sooner. At this point, all the rooms are taken and only day passes are available.

Having said that, in the event that someone is spontaneous and wants to attend even though it’s the last minute but the last of room at the hotel room leaves you without a place to stay, be in touch with me (avivahwerner at yahoo dot com). I have guest rooms available for a small fee and will be driving back and forth daily, so you’re welcome to join me. 🙂

Avivah