Category: Homemaking

A few weeks ago my fairly new (bought on Thanksgiving) food processor broke.  Often I think it must be because I use things more than average that they break, but lately I’ve thinking more and more often that it’s because things aren’t made to last.  It bothers me that things are made so cheaply nowadays, and that it’s expected that you’ll just throw the old thing away and buy a new one – they call it ‘planned obsolescence’.  My last food processor lasted for 9 years, and was just an average model; this latest one was supposedly a much better one with more bells and whistles, but never worked as well as the old one.  And to top off not working well by breaking when never mishandled is really annoying. 

I use a food processor alot since it makes chopping or grating all the veggies we use for a meal a breeze – if I had to do it all by hand, we’d just eat veggie sticks.  I considered getting a food processor that wouldn’t need electricity, remembering I had seen something in the Lehman’s catalog.  I pulled out the catalog and when I saw the price (something like $189) I decided being power free wasn’t that important to me!  But it got me to thinking and researching, trying to find something else. 

I found remarkably little available, but I did find this.  I did some research on it and found it for a cheaper price, and decided to get two – one for dairy (so I can make shakes with milk or kefir) and one for meat.  Since I never did get my Bosch mixer repaired after my ds broke it when making a mega sized batch of chocolate chip cookie dough for his cookie business, I’ve been managing without it.  Surprisingly to me, it hasn’t been much of a loss – it’s not a big deal to mix bread dough in a large bowl by hand, we don’t make many cakes, and basically, I really don’t need it.  But the one thing it did that I sometimes miss having the capacity for is beating egg whites.  This little hand powered mixer does that, which is why I got a second one for non-dairy dishes.

It is a simple device, but works remarkably well.  The only down side I’ve so far experienced is it doesn’t beat things for a shake as smoothly as a blender would, and it doesn’t have a shredding capacity (which I knew when I bought it) – just chops- but it is easy to use, easy to clean up, and even the younger kids can use it by themselves.  A couple of days ago ds15 used it to chop four heads of cabbage and 15 large carrots, and he said it was great.  Not as fast as an electric model, but that’s okay with me; it’s still a LOT faster than chopping by hand.

I would have liked to have gotten two different colors so the meat and dairy mixers could be easily distinguished, but it only comes in red.  Not a big deal, we just marked one with nail polish.  I’d also like if it had a suction on the bottom to hold it down on the counter better. 

Now if the cap and trade bill passes (I think it’s a disaster and am perturbed that our government leaders think it’s a good idea to do this at a time of national financial distress; the president himself said, “”Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”), lots of people are going to be looking for ways to cut power costs.  This is a simple little solution for one appliance and I’m glad to have it!

Avivah

It was so nice to do a big shopping trip today and stock up on some things that I wanted!  I wasn’t exactly out of anything – except eggs, cheese, and some vegetables, which I picked up yesterday – but I felt like I didn’t have what I needed to make any dish I could think of.  And I wanted to add some things that I haven’t used much of before – specifically, I’m interested in using less grains and trying out nut/coconut flours for baking with, in addition to upping the kids’ intake of protein and good quality fats.  With that in mind, I bought a 50 lb bag of unsweetened dried coconut that I plan to grind up to use in place of coconut flour (it won’t be the same but it should be close enough to be comparable), as well as a 30 lb bag of pecan meal and 30 lb of almond meal.  And 25 lb of raw cashews.  After all, why bother with small amounts? 🙂

In addition to the regular stuff, like 50 lb of potatoes, 40 lb of yams, 50 lb of oats, 30 lb brown rice, and raw milk, I also got some nice fruits – 2 cases of blueberries, 1 case of cherries, 40 lb bananas, and 9 pineapples (they were $1 each).  I was out of butter (unless you count the butter that I canned, which I haven’t yet used), so I bought another 40 lb; 35 dozen eggs, 5 or 6 lb of cream cheese, 36 lb of ricotta, and 25 lb of organic unsweetened peanut butter.  I also got a lot of pecans (one of my favorite nuts), and four cases of frozen vegetables (okra, green beans, and peas and carrots).  I got some not so ideal food, too – 10 boxes of whole wheat/rice/flax pasta, and 12 boxes of blintzes (144 blintzes – half blueberry, half potato); it’s not the kind of thing I’d serve every night, but it’s nice for a easy dinner once in a while. 

As usual, putting everything away was the hardest part – I’m like the kid who’s eyes are bigger than his stomach – I see all these bargains and I buy it and hope that I’ll somehow find a place for it, even when it’s really unrealistic.  Before we left for our trip, I checked to see how much freezer space was available and there was just one empty shelf.  Dd14 rearranged the entire freezer to figure out a way to fit a lot more stuff in.  And I’m doing my part by using the turkey carcasses that were taking up freezer space to make more room for the new stuff.  Tomorrow I’ll be dehydrating some of the frozen vegetables that couldn’t fit (amazingly, only 5 lb) and canning the broth since the fridge is jam packed and there’s no possibility of finding an inch of space there, let alone room for a large pot. 

It was nice after all of that work unpacking to sit down to a quick and yummy dinner.  We heated spinach tortilla wraps (got a few packs today for a treat) and then the kids spread on mayo, added lettuce, pinto beans cooked in turkey broth (prepared yesterday), and some home pickled vegetables.  We finished off our meal with a big bowl of fresh Rainier cherries – I never bought these before (always got Bing) and the kids really liked them.

My husband was concerned when I told him I’d like to increase the protein and veggies for the family that I’d max out our food budget and it wouldn’t be sustainable long term.  I can’t say long term how it will work out because I don’t have the power to see into the future, but for now found that I was able to get all the nuts/nut flours and proteins that I wanted without going over my monthly budgeted amount.  It’s by continuously buying in bulk that this is possible – I didn’t need to stock up this month on a lot of grains and beans, for example, because I had plenty from last month – so that freed up money for these things.  Next month I’ll get the staples that I didn’t get this month, since I have enough of the bulk purchases from today to hold me over until then. 

At dinner my dd12 said that it’s so much work unpacking that she understands why people go shopping all the time instead of shopping like we do. I pointed out to her that while she’s right that it’s a lot of work unpacking so much food, it’s only a couple of hours once every 1 – 2 months, with a little here and there in between. But we’d be spending a lot more time on a regular basis dealing with buying and putting away food if we were shopping weekly. 

Now that I’m stocked up again, I’m looking forward to trying out some new dishes for the coming week’s menu!

Avivah

On Thursday night I tried something I’ve never done before – I used my pressure canner as a pressure cooker to make our chicken soup/stock.  I’ve known how much faster pressure cooking is, but for whatever reason never did it – probably because doing something new takes conscious effort.  For some reason on Thursday I felt motivated to try it and see how it went – and it was great!

Usually when I make stock, I let it simmer for hours to leach the nutrients from the bones.  Generally I start it before I go to sleep, and let it simmer overnight, then turn it off in the morning when I wake up.  It’s a pretty easy way to do it, and it doesn’t take much of an effort.  But it’s nice to learn to do things more efficiently, and this was a good opportunity to implement something I’ve known about for a long time.  (Often I feel I’m at least a year behind on my ‘to do’ list – so many new things to learn about and try!)   

My pressure canner holds 23 quarts, and I filled it 2/3 of the way full.  It took a long time to bring that amount of water to boil and then for the necessary 15 lb of pressure to build up, but once it was at that point, it only took ten minutes to cook the stock.  Ten minutes, instead of 8 hours!  That means it’s costing me 1/8 in energy costs of what it cost with my overnight method, and since gas/electric rates are rising steadily, it’s good to find ways to achieve the same results with significantly less energy. 

Not only does it save in cooking time, but it also doesn’t get the kitchen as hot as having the pot simmering for hours.  Usually there’s a plume of steam rising from the simmering pot of stock, but when pressure cooking there isn’t a significant amount of heat that escapes, so the kitchen stayed cooler while cooking it than it usually does. 

The next thing I’d like to try pressure cooking is beans – that’s the other thing that I cook that takes a long time – maybe this week I’ll have the chance.  When I bought my pressure canner a year ago, I had no idea how economical a purchase it would end up being – I keep finding more and more ways to save time and money with it!

Avivah

>>Do you have any tips for how to make a low cost bris?<<

Well, everyone has a different idea of what they consider low cost, but I’ll share what we’ve done. 

Generally, an important principle in saving money is to look ahead and plan in advance.  If you know you’re having a boy, you can think about what kind of menu you’ll want to serve, and take advantage of sales to buy the non perishables.  You can do the same with paper goods and any decorations. 

But we don’t know what we’re having until the baby is born, so planning ahead isn’t something I can do.  I mentioned a few weeks ago taking advantage of a sale on turkey and commented at the time that if we had a boy, we would use it for the seuda.  We had talked about making a late afternoon bris if it was a boy, and serving fleishigs.  But you know the saying – ‘man plans, and G-d laughs’ – since our bris was on erev yom tov, the late afternoon idea was changed to the typical morning dairy spread and the turkeys stayed in the freezer. 

But what you can do is minimize your costs by doing whatever you can yourself.  If you hire a caterer to do the set up, food preparation, serving, and clean up, it’s going to cost you a lot more than if you do any or all of those yourself.  We do all of the preparations ourselves, and can serve foods comparable to what the caterers serve for a lot less.

 What do we serve?   We had bagels, rice cakes, and whole wheat matza (dh and I don’t eat bread and we have friends who also don’t), egg salad, tuna salad,  hard boiled eggs, cheddar and muenster cheese slices, sliced tomatoes and purple onions, salad, cream cheese, butter, fruit salad, and a bowl of whole fruit.  We put out orange juice, milk, coffee, and herbal teas.  We decided against cake and cookies this time, though in the past we’ve also put out a variety of danishes and cookies.  I considered serving scrambled eggs, but it decided to keep it simple and not worry about how to keep the eggs hot without getting rubbery if they sat in the warmer for a while.  Basically, it’s your typical bris morning spread. 

Food preparation for us was making the egg and tuna salads, cutting up the fruit (pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew) for the fruit salad and slicing the veggies for the platters.  The biggest expense was the chalav yisroel butter and cream cheese – we bought way more than we needed and I usually wouldn’t spend more than $2 a pound for either of them.  Because there was a sale last week, the sliced cheese at the take out counter happened to be less than buying a block and slicing it ourselves, but I would have bought it sliced even if it was more.  There are times when it’s worth it to pay a little more and have a little less to do! 

Setting up the room and cleaning up take a solid chunk of time, but it’s not hard and generally it’s the kind of thing our family enjoys doing together.  Because there was a non family member there who was involved and very, um, instructive towards my kids, it made it a lot less enjoyable for them than it would usually be.  But as far as the money saving aspect, that was another way to keep costs down.

We bought paper goods at the local dollar store, so that wasn’t very expensive.  My mother in law took my girls shopping for those items, though, and covered the costs, so I can’t include that in what we ourselves paid for. 

Since my dh did the shopping for the food and I haven’t seen the receipts, I can’t share the breakdown of how much we spent.  It was around $200 for the food, and less than $100 for the rental of the room from the shul (less expensive because we’re members).  We set up for 50 people but could have easily fed double that number (except for the cheese, which was almost finished).  These milchig leftovers came in handy on Shavuos, since people sent food for two of the four yom tov meals, and when an hour before yom tov we realized that’s all there would be, we didn’t have any last minute pressure because we were able to supplement for the other meals with what I had in the freezer and what we had from the bris.  I don’t know whether to consider the extra food costs for the bris as bris costs or my food budget costs, but either way, it all evens out.

We considered having the bris in our house, but felt that space constraints would make it less comfortable for everyone, and therefore the cost of renting the shul space was worthwhile.  But if someone had a large enough home, they could save on that cost by having it all in their home.

The rav/mohel who performed the bris doesn’t charge and refused to take money when we tried to get him to accept payment.  Since we’ve asked the same rav for all of our brissim since living in this city, I don’t have personal experience with other mohelim.  Just last night a Christian women at the homeschool curriculum sale asked me about mohelim and their costs; she was asking for a friend with who wants to circumcise their son ritually though they aren’t Jewish, who had gotten quotes of $600.  I have no idea if that’s standard, though it seems expensive to me.  If that’s actually the going rate, then using the mohel we did obviously was a big money saver, though that wasn’t our primary motivation.

Avivah

Today I was inspired to declutter and reorganize my basement.  What?    You’re wondering how it could possibly need to be cleaned if it was done thoroughly just eight weeks ago for Pesach?  Well, the reality of my home is that spotless stays that way for about three minutes, longer only if the kids are all sleeping.  Maybe some of you can relate. 🙂

Lest you think that I’m nesting and that’s why we did this today, I was actually inspired by a couple of new (to me!) aquisitions.  A preschool upgraded some of their indoor climbing equipment, and I’m now the new owner of 2 extremely well made solid wood climbing structures as well as one slide.  We put one in the living room – my kids’ idea, not mine – and one in the basement.  (I got the third with the intent to give it to my inlaws, for when my kids go there to play, but they decided they don’t have the space for it.  So I’ll have to find someone else to pass it along to – feel free to contact me if you’re in the area and interested!  *Update – taken!  Enjoy it, M!*)  Because our basement isn’t huge, when something new comes in, something else has to go.  So we are giving away the puppet theater my kids built last Chanuka for a performance they did for a large visiting family, along with some other small things that we decided to pass along when we uncovered them.  And once you start moving one thing, then you end up moving everything else around, too!

The structures are very sturdy – they are made of solid wood and well made.  One is made by Creative Playthings, the other is made by Community Playthings.  They are actually 40 years old and have been used in a preschool all that time, but look like they’ll easily last through my children and grandchildren!  When my dh saw them, he commented that we’re used to thinking of everything as disposable and cheaply made, but seeing something that has held up to significant use for years and still is in great condition is a reminder that things used to be built to last. 

We did a search out of curiosity to see how much things like this are selling for from these companies, and it’s alot!  Of course, the newer models are much fancier than what we got.  But fancier doesn’t mean better, and when we got home, ds10 exclaimed over what a great toy it was.  He said the mother of a friend of his has the exact same thing for her daycare, and though he and his friends are much older and bigger than what it’s intended for, they climb all over it and it’s very strong. 

My ds15 wanted to know how we were able to get them, since I told him what the woman in charge told me, that they had 40 responses in a very short time, and I wasn’t the first one.  Here’s the answer – I took the initiative to call them.  There was no phone number in the post, but based on the email address, was able to make a pretty good guess what the name of the preschool was and looked it up.  When I called yesterday, the person in charge had left for the day, but the secretary told me there were so many emails that they were overwhelmed and hadn’t answered any of them yet.  I asked if it would be okay if I called in the morning, and because she said ‘yes’, I did.  I got the woman I needed just a few minutes after she got in to work, and she was very glad to have me come over right away and take them home with me – she said it saved her having to call people, leave messages, wait for someone to come (or not), and just generally drag the process out.  She was really a lovely person and told me how happy she was to see them going to our family.   

My little ones are already enjoying them so much!  My ds20 months is particularly a climber, and he was very excited when he woke up from his nap and saw the climbing structure in the living room.  And he stayed busy on the slide in the basement while we were reorganizing.  Surprisingly, the kids ages 6 – 12 are really enjoying it, too – they think it’s a great place to sit and hang out.

Wasn’t that a good reason to reorganize the basement?

Avivah