Avivah Werner

Category: Intentional Spending

  • Patio costs

    We were cleaning up the yard recently and as I admired how nice the yard looks with the patio we put in, I remembered that the post I wrote about it was one of two that were only up for fifteen minutes before they disappeared with the hacking a couple of months ago.  Since this was a really nice project, I want to share what we did with you!

    As some of you remember, we decided to make our own brick patio.  There are two ways to lay a patio – one is set in cement, the other is set on a gravel/sand base. We decided to do it with a gravel/sand base, since it’s more forgiving to work with – you can pull something up if you’re not happy with it and do it again; it’s easier, and if you decide to one day use the space differently, then it’s not a very big deal.

    I can’t deny that making a patio is a lot of physical work – we hauled 14,000 pounds of bricks and 8000 pounds of gravel, both of which we got free on Craig’s List.  Do you have any concept of how much shlepping that is?!?  Trust me, alot! And then there the ground had to be dug up, which amounted to 10,000 pounds of dirt.  And 10,000 pounds of sand from where it was dumped behind our house to where we needed it in the garden….yes, lots of physical work!

    Because we started this project when the baby was six weeks old, the kids did most of the heavy hauling.  I found the supplies, did the driving, organizing, and my share of physical stuff, too, though I tried to do work I could stay in one place for.  Like chipping the mortar off of the reclaimed bricks that we used.   But the kids really get almost all of the credit, particularly my ds16, who took the project from the idea in my mind to reality.  He did the bulk of the heavy work, while also getting his younger siblings involved; they enjoy doing things with him.  Dh didn’t have the time to be involved, though once or twice he came home when we were working and lent a hand.

    We now have a lovely brick patio that is about twenty feet by 15 feet (about 320 square feet), that cost us under $400.  My inlaws had a patio and walkway done a year or two ago, which together were a bit under the size of our patio.  And you know how much it cost?  $4000.  Even though their patio looks more professional than ours, it doesn’t look ten times more profesional!

    Here’s how the cost broke down: sand – $220 – I ordered 4.5 tons and had it delivered, which was the main expense.  I got a half ton more than we needed to be on the safe side.  But it turns out that we needed another ton, and we ended up having to buy that the expensive way, in forty pound bags from Home Depot.  The additional sand cost us almost $80, whereas it would have been just another $30 if we had ordered more in the first place.  We also ran short of bricks, so I had to buy contrasting pavers.  That was another $60 or so.  We could have made the patio a couple of feet narrower, but the kids really wanted it to be the size they were planning on, so I was fine with it the extra expense and shopping.  We also had to buy a few tools, like a brick set, and a couple of diamond blades for our saw to cut the bricks on the end down to size.  For the frame that the bricks were set in we used lumber from the deck we took apart.  (The rest of the suitably sized lumber became raised garden boxes.)

    So all in all, under $400!  If I could have waited to get the sand for free (which I’m confident I could have eventually found), it would have been super cheap (saving $300 of the costs). But my yard was piling up with a mountain of excavated dirt, gravel, and bricks, and I didn’t want my yard to be a long term eyesore for my neighbors or (me!).  I didn’t know how long I would have to wait before I would find enough sand.  Plus, hauling is really a lot of work and we were all feeling kind of run down by the effort to bring the supplies home. Everyone felt the expense to have a truckload of sand delivered very worthwhile!

    I also could have saved on the expense of pavers by getting enough bricks when I originally got them, but the bricks had all been stacked in a huge pile, and the ones on the bottom were firmly stuck in the dried mud.  It was the heat of the summer, I was tired and running out of time to be away from the baby (since he was six weeks old so more than two hours was pushing it, and it was over a half hour in each direction to where the bricks were), and I wasn’t interested in prying them up.  So I told my kids we weren’t going to spend the time and energy on it.  They told me then I might regret it if we wouldn’t have enough for the patio, that they thought we’d need them.  I told them I’d take my changes and pay the price if necessary!  And that’s what I did.  🙂

    We all agreed that this was worth the time and energy, even though there was a point that it felt endless.  This is mainly because we had to stop for the Nine Days; you know how it is when you stop the momentum on a large project – it’s hard to get it going again.  If we could have had one more day before the Nine Days began to work on it, we could have had it all done without feeling like it was dragging out.  Thanks to everyone’s work, our new patio gave us the room to expand our sukka this year, it looks so much nicer, and the yard looks larger now than it did with the smaller platform deck.  I think it’s because the patio is flush with the ground, and there’s nothing to break up your line of vision when you look out.

    And it was hard to beat the cost! 😆

    Avivah

  • Traveling to save money

    >>A totally unrelated question- when you write how much you spend on your food budget each month, I know you’re able to do that because you travel far to get things. I know you mentioned how even with the traveling time and the gas it is worth it financially because of all the savings you get, but i’m just curious, if you included the gas for those trips, how much would your “food and going to buy the food” budget be?<<

    I’m answering this as a post because there’s a misconception here that I think other people might also have.  That misconception is that my budget stays low because I travel far to get things.  This is accurate only to a small degree.  I’ve shared about the possibilities involved in saving money by looking for grocery discount stores as one of a number of frugal strategies I’ve mentioned; staying within a budget requires more strategies than one, and this wouldn’t even be my primary one.

    So I’m going to clear this misconception up right now, because otherwise some of you will be thinking you can’t keep your budget down because you don’t/can’t/won’t travel to do your shopping!  There are many, many ways to save, and most of them will be useful to most people – I don’t want anyone giving up because they pick out a little detail that doesn’t fit them.

    My food budget is firm and always has been, regardless of where I shop.  I don’t stick to it because I can get great deals somewhere, I find great deals so I can stick to it!  Do you see the difference?

    About four years ago I started traveling two hours away once in a while in order to buy raw milk, which I can’t get in my state because raw milk sales are illegal.  (At that time, though gas was high, my fuel costs were inconsequential since we had converted a van to run on waste vegetable oil – we sold this almost three years ago, though.)  In order to maximize my time, I eventually began looking for shopping in the area of where I buy my milk that I could do, and after a couple of years it evolved into the way I shop now.

    I’ve been blogging for over three years and sharing ways I stay within a budget.  It wasn’t until less than two years ago that I started shopping monthly for the bulk of our food, so clearly this couldn’t have been my main strategy.  Now that I’ve been doing it so long and it’s part of my routine, I probably would continue doing it even if I wasn’t getting the milk; I find monthly shopping very efficient in terms of time, energy, and money.  But I’d still keep an eye on the expenses and savings involved to be sure it continued to be worthwhile.  I doubt I’d go more often than every 2 -3 months.

    I use 15 gallons of gas to do my ‘monthly’ shopping.  This is usually done every 5 – 7 weeks, never more frequently than once a month.  With gas currently at 2.50 a gallon, it costs me 37.50 for about every month and a half, which works out to a little over $6 a week.  So it would add another $24 per month to my food costs.  I have a monthly gas budget of $200, and this expense is budgeted for in that category.  When gas was up to $4 a gallon, I went about every 7 – 8 weeks instead, to keep the gas costs in check.

    I also have to remind you that though I say that I spend $600 a month, it’s technically less than that since most of the staples I buy last for at least 5 – 6 weeks.  So if I were going to be really accurate, I’d have to say I spend about $450 monthly, with another $24 in gas costs.  But I budget $600 a month and whether I manage to buy  a month’s worth of food with that or enough to last a bit longer, it’s still the same monthly amount that I’m spending.  (Anyway, it’s hard enough for people to believe that I can spend $600 on a family of eleven with a bunch of adult portion eaters without starving everyone; I can just imagine the disbelief a smaller number would engender! :))

    As you see, I have taken into account what the travel expenses are and determined that for my needs, it’s worthwhile.  But here’s something I often wonder about when getting questions like yours.  How many people have figured out how much they spend on gas by going shopping every day, or even more than once a day?  How much are they spending by going to several stores every week and buying the loss leaders?  How many people consider how much they spend running around to three different drug stores to use their coupons to buy things they don’t need or want to ‘save’ money?  I know that most people would mentally write off those gas costs without thinking of them as part of daily living, but it’s likely they’re not spending much less! (Most of my driving is highway driving, so it’s very gas efficient.  Lots of small trips in town use more gas because of the stop and go nature of driving locally.)  And how much time are they spending?

    I have absolutely no criticism of that approach, since until I started buying raw milk I used to hit three local supermarkets weekly to stock up on the loss leaders. But the above questions regarding gas costs and time/energy output are relevant for everyone consider when determining what their true costs are.

    By the way, I integrate outings for my kids into my monthly shopping; I usually I make at least one special stop for them (last time I made two, one in the beginning of the day and one at the end).  I’ve taken them to parks, a chocolate factory, a potato chip factory, a motorcycle factory, a dairy, and a living history museum.  This is another way I maximize my gas expenses; spending the money to go to each of these places on their own would be cost prohibitive, but we can enjoy it as a ‘freebie’.

    Avivah

  • Develop an anti debt mentality

    A couple of days I spoke with a young woman about my philosophy towards avoiding debt, and yesterday posted something on a discussion board to another young woman already in debt a few months after her marriage.  I’ve always felt my position was so common sense that it didn’t need to be stated, but I’ve come to realize that I might be more of the exception than the rule when it comes to money management.

    Here’s what I do, and what I’ve taught my kids: you can only spend money you have.  And of the money you have, it’s a very, very, very smart idea not to spend it all just because you have it.  Having it now is no guarantee you’ll have it tomorrow, so setting some money aside for tomorrow is a good thing to do.  A financial cushion (this can be a savings account, a mortgage paid in advance, a full pantry) is very helpful in weathering the storms of life, and when large unexpected expenses come around, this is what keeps someone from needing to put these expenses on a credit card.

    It doesn’t really matter how much or how little money you make.  You can find people who make oodles of money who you would think have money for everything who are in debt.  You can find people living on tiny incomes who have all that they need and are entirely debt free.  It’s not about how much money you have.  It’s about your attitude towards spending, about what you think you deserve, and about when you think you need to have it.

    The problem is if you have no mental limitations on the money you spend and you have a credit card, then there’s no physical limitation either.  Thanks to credit cards, a person doesn’t need to have money in his pocket or even his bank account in order to buy what he wants, when he wants it.  By developing a clear awareness that there are limitations, then it’s obvious that you’ll put something back on the shelf when shopping, do without, cut down, wait until month, etc,  if your coffers are running low.  Having this mindset means you’ll avoid unmanageable debt and the accompanying anxieties that seem to be swallowing a huge percentage of the population.

    Avivah

  • Kosher turkeys on sale

    Yesterday I decided that this month I will try to buy organic chicken, at least in part.  I’ve only once bought organic chicken, as a splurge.  It’s generally at least $4 lb, which is a significant leap in price, considering that I generally pay .99 lb for chicken wings and 2.29 for quarters (those are sale prices).  With the amount of people I’m feeding in our home, that extra cost would add up quickly.

    I’m not one to stand on the organic label – when I can get something organic at a comparable price, I do.  I’ve spent some time thinking about what really matters most to buy organic, and my personal conclusion is the animal products because the antibiotics and hormones are concentrated in the flesh of the poultry/meat we buy, making it more problematic than vegetables.   So I thought this would be a good experiment to try (I say experiment because I have to see how it works in my budget).

    I called a couple of butchers to ask about their case prices, and I was thinking that I’d need to buy much less chicken than usual and have more broth to compensate if I go this route- I have a set amount that I’m prepared to spend on chicken, and when I hit that number, that’s it for the month.  However, to my delight when I stopped in at Trader Joes to get my monthly coconut milk (they were out – but I ordered 2 cases so then I won’t run low for a while), I saw that they have glatt kosher all natural turkeys for 2.29 lb (certified OU and another hechsher, too).  These turkeys were fed no animal by products (animals in the industrial food loop are often fed ground up diseased animals), and are hormone and antibiotic free.  I was totally thrilled, since the regular kosher turkey runs about 3.29 lb, and this was cheaper than I usually manage to find regular turkey on sale! (Though I did see it this week at Giant for 1.99 lb- a price to stock up if you’re not doing my kind of experimenting!)

    I asked the cashier about it, and she said they have their own line of (*edit*) turkeys, and only for the Thanksgiving season, they do a kosher run.  That’s why they can sell it so inexpensively.  They’re going to have them through Nov. 28, unless they run out (which they did the last couple of years).  I bought three turkeys, and will see if I can swing any more for this month after I do my big shopping on Weds.

    Since the turkeys are fresh, I’m hoping to roast all of them today (I’ll start as soon as I finish posting this :)).  I’ll put one in in the freezer for Thanksgiving and can the other two.  Then I’ll use all the bones for a huge pot of broth, and can that, too.  I haven’t done much canning recently, and the empty jars are building up  as I’ve been using up my home canned foods and not replacing it!  (I’ve been using the meat I canned last winter for cholent every week.)  Turkeys are too bulky to keep them in the freezer, particularly before my big stocking up trip.  So this is a great way to take advantage of this once a year price on good quality poultry.

    I love seeing how H-shem (G-d) is constantly working in my life!  Isn’t it wonderful how I was sent this super priced turkey just when I wanted to upgrade our diets in this specific way?  If you have a Trader Joes near you, check it out!

    Avivah

  • Introducing solids and making baby food

    >>When you start your baby on solids, would you mind to blog about your approach and how you introduce different foods?<<

    This was an incredibly timely request, coming less than half a day after giving my baby solids for the first time!

    Generally, my babies start eating solids between 6 and 8 months.  My oldest started at eight months because I had the idea then that the longer you waited, the better.  That wasn’t the case with him; I should have started him sooner but didn’t recognize that and his weight dropped before I realized he needed more food.  My last baby (now two years old) also didn’t really start eating solids until eight months.  In his case, he wasn’t interested, despite being given opportunities periodically from six months and on.   All the others started at six months, at which point they were all showing significant interest.  Last but not least is the current baby, who is starting younger than everyone else at 5 months and one week – and he is sooo ready!  (I think that being born three weeks past his due date is relevant here, since if he was born ‘on time’ he would be exactly six months now.)

    A few days ago, my dd was eating something and commenting on how the baby kept trying to grab her food and stick it in his mouth.  (He’s been doing this for several weeks.)  So she asked if she could try giving him something to eat, and after looking in the fridge, asked if she could give him yogurt.  Generally I don’t give dairy from the start, but after my initial hesitation, told her to go ahead since it was homemade yogurt from organic/hormone free milk.  He loved it!  If we had any doubt about if he was too young or not, those doubts were gone within about two minutes.  He kept eating, and eating, and eating – until he had eaten two cups of full fat yogurt.

    This is the only time I’ve ever started with dairy.  Generally I start with banana mashed very well, followed soon afterwards by baked (and mashed) yam that has coconut oil mixed into it.  I look at solids as supplemental to nursing, not as the source of their main nutrition.  Avocados and other fruits and vegetables soon follow, all cooked if necessary and then mashed well.  Gradually I mash the food less finely, to give the baby  exposure to food of different textures.  By the time they are a year, they are eating almost everything we eat, albeit in a somewhat mashed form.  I also add in milk, butter, gravy, and stock to their foods, depending what they’re eating.

    After a few months, I add in foods like oatmeal.  I don’t feel that cereal grains are ideal foods for a young baby, and when I do serve them, try to be sure they’re properly prepared to maximize absorption of vitamins and to minimize the negatives.  One grain that I very much try to delay is wheat.  Wheat gluten is a very difficult to digest grain, and if I could, I’d keep it away from my babies until they are two years old.  But it’s not so easy when others in the house eat wheat based foods, since they end up finding something and stuffing it into their mouths, or seeing everyone else having some and naturally also wanting some.   This time around I’m planning to  be more proactive and bake biscuits/crackers with alternative flours, keeping them in the freezer so I can pull out a similar looking non-wheat option when he sees his siblings eating something that he wants.  (I have a few months until this will be necessary.)

    For a very short time when my oldest started solids, I gave him baby cereal mixed with formula.  I know, I know, the absolute ignorance of youth can be frightening.  🙂  That’s what the nurse at the well baby clinic recommended (additionally, she also told me to give him chocolate to fatten him up – which was probably somewhat better than the recommendation a friend of mine was given, to feed her baby oil) and that’s what I saw other mothers doing so I thought it was the right thing to do. After less than a month, my husband told me he didn’t like it – “I feel like we’re feeding him plastic”, so that was the last of store bought food for our babies.  From there we switched to what I described above.

    Aside from that very short foray into factory created baby food, I haven’t bought processed baby foods for any of our nine children.  Besides my skepticism about the nutritional value, it’s incredibly expensive.  How much does a banana cost – thirty cents?  That’s a lot cheaper than a jar of baby food that holds a similar amount of food, and with a banana there’s a lot less likelihood of contamination.

    I think parents have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to marketing of baby foods – there’s hardly anything easier than making your own baby food.  You don’t need a scientific formula.  You don’t need a lot of time.  You don’t have to do anything extra to ‘make’ baby food.  You can buy a food mill to grind food up or a blender to blend it, but a fork works just fine.  Since I start with soft and easily mashed foods, there’s no difficulty in manually mashing it immediately prior to serving it.  (The main exception that I’ve had is brown rice – I don’t generally add this in until the baby is very comfortable with texture unless I blend it, since it’s very hard to mash it well with a fork.)

    Some parents like to make a big amount, blend it, and freeze it in ice cube trays for small portions.  I’ve never done that, but can see how it would be a good idea.  This would be especially convenient when they get to the point they are eating something like chicken with carrots and rice blended in, since you’re not going to make a recipe of only one cup.

    I try to give vegetables like carrots and zucchini fairly soon after they start eating, within a month or so, since it’s easy for babies to get used to the sweetness of fruits and after a period of time, often will turn down anything not sweet since it isn’t a familiar taste.  I’m very fortunate that none of my kids have ever been picky eaters, and part of that probably stems from when they are very little, when they eat a variety of  foods.  I still remember when we had a couple of teenage boys for Shabbos/Sabbath lunch, watching in awe as my then 1 year old infant daughter gobbled down three servings of cholent – “Whoa, your baby is awesome! She can eat more cholent than me!”  Maybe cholent isn’t typical baby food, but all of our babies have enjoyed it!

    Avivah

  • Using coupons

    For years I’ve resisted using coupons because I was very skeptical that the time and energy spent would justify the savings.  But last August (fifteen months ago), I finally decided to do some research and try using them for a while in a organized and strategic manner to see how much money I could save.  I heard of people getting significant savings, or even getting things for free, on things that would be helpful for our family.  So I set about learning how to work the system for CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid. 

    First, I did my online research, reading and figuring out the lingo and system for each store.  Then I asked a relative in the area for the insert of their Sunday papers, and started clipping the coupons in them.  And then I headed to the stores.

    The first visits to each store weren’t fun.  It took a long time, I didn’t know where anything was located (I didn’t shop in any of these places before), and it took time to learn how to apply for rebates, what order to present coupons in, etc.  But after the first couple of visits, it got easier, and it got to be more enjoyable.  My kids got to the point that they expected me to walk in from these stores telling them I paid nothing for all my items.  🙂

    Yes, you can definitely save money by using coupons.  If used well, you can come home paying small amounts for your items or even getting them for free.  I had fun doing this with particularly with shampoos and soaps; since these are things that we always need, it was nice to get them significantly discounted.  I also got some things that were nice gifts for extended family members last Chanuka. 

    But after a few months, I felt I had given coupon usage a fair shot and decided not to bother anymore.  Yes, even though I figured out the system and knew how to use them very effectively.  Why?  I felt it was using way too much time for insignificant things.  I really don’t use a lot of consumer items.  I don’t like constantly thinking about buying or sales or having to shop.  I don’t use processed foods.  And alot of the health and beauty aids I don’t want, even if they’re free.  I didn’t see any benefit for us in using coupons for our food bills, because the foods we eat are rarely discounted and I have yet to find anyone with a family our size that spends less than we do by using coupons (or even smaller families spending proportionately less). 

    Too many store clerks have no clue how coupons work and it’s a pain to spend an hour having your transaction cancelled, speaking to a manager, having it rung up again, having to explain to those who work there why their store rules allow you to use your coupons to get items for free (it got to the point I’d buy an inexpensive item so they wouldn’t realize that I wasn’t paying anything out of pocket for everything else).  Even when everything goes smoothly, you still need to drive to the stores, stand on line, etc.  My life energy and time is worth much more to me than the piddling amount I saved (piddling referring to the amount saved on things I truly needed, not the amount I supposedly saved by getting things for free that I wouldn’t have otherwise purchased).  

    I feel my time is spent much more effectively by stocking up when there are sales, cooking from scratch, and minimizing my use of health and beauty aids.  There’s almost nothing left that we buy in the drugstores.  I mentioned buying a fifty pound sack of baking soda  six months ago, and since then have been meaning to share with you what we do with all of that!  I’ll write a more detailed list sometime, but in short it replaces almost everything I would have bought or got for free with coupons.  And it benefits our health and the environment to boot!

    While there may be couponers who spend less than we do on health and beauty aids a year, we don’t spend very much.  I’ve seen what the cost to saving money with coupons was and it wasn’t a true savings for me.  Now I’m back where I love being most, home with my family, focusing on things that I enjoy!

    Avivah

  • How to make grape juice

    At the end of last week I found a great deal on boxes of wine grapes.  There were two kinds, Concord and a yellow grape that another shopper told me were called Niagara.  I tasted one of the Niagara grapes, and as I did, the memory of being a kid eating grapes in my grandparents’ backyard suddenly flooded over me.  These were the grapes they grew, something that I had entirely forgotten about.  They were so good!

    The grapes were super cheap because they were so ripe – the Concord grapes had some clusters that had mold on them and since I wasn’t interested in having to pick through them, I decided to get 2 boxes of Niagaras instead (they looked very ripe but in basically good shape).  The price was $7.50 for two boxes, and each box had about 18 pounds in it, so .21 lb.

    They made for great eating and we enjoyed the grapes for our picnic right after our shopping, but we decided to reserve some of them to make some homemade grape juice, something we’ve never tried.  When I got home I learned from reading online that it takes about 20 lb of grapes to make 7 quarts of juice – if I’d had any idea of that when buying the grapes, I would have bought a lot more.  We used about a third of a box, about 6 lb. of grapes, which made enough to fill a 64 oz jar plus a couple of cups more, about ten cups in all.  So my estimate on cost is that it was $1.25 for ten cups; when I get it on sale, I pay $3 for 8 cups.  That means that making my own grape juice cost me less than 1/3 of the price I can get it on sale. 

    Here’s how you make grape juice – this is soooo simple!  First you wash the grapes, then blend them slightly in a food processor or blender to break open the skin (yes, this means with the seeds and skins, but make sure all the stems are off, because it will make the juice bitter).  Put all of them in a pot with enough water to cover them, and cover the pot.  Then heat it until boiling.  When it reaches boiling, turn it down to medium low and let it simmer for about fifteen minutes.  Then line a strainer with cheesecloth or muslin, and set it on top of a cleanpot where the juice can drain in. Pour the grape mix through the strainer, and bottle the strained juice.  If you make a large amount, you can can fruit juice by water bathing it.

    This didn’t look or taste like the grape juice in the store; it was much better!  It was so amazingly good!  Everyone loved it and we all are sorry we won’t have any more.  When I encountered the sale, I didn’t want to buy lots of grapes (not that 36 lb is a small amount) that needed to be dealt with immediately, since I didn’t know how much time would be involved and was concerned that it would be a big project that would compromise the commitment I’ve made to myself to be ready for Shabbos by Friday afternoon.   (I already had a lot of unpacking for Thursday afternoon to do from my monthly shopping which was putting me on a tight schedule.)  Now that I know what’s involved, I won’t hesitate to buy up a bunch more if an incredible sale comes my way again! 

    Avivah

  • How to make yogurt

    Yesterday I made a large batch of yogurt, something I haven’t done in a while. I had forgotten how extremely easy it is to make, and it’s about a third of the price of the least expensive store yogurt!  I made a very large recipe of 1.5 gallons (24 cups), but the recipe below is for a more moderate amount.

    Homemade Yogurt

    • 2 c. milk
    • 2 T. yogurt to use as bacterial starter (look for any plain yogurt at the store that says it has bacteria in it – eg. acidophilus- you can get the smallest cup size sold)

    I used organic whole milk, but you can use any kind of milk you want.  Put the milk in a pot, and heat it until almost boiling, 180 degrees.  I have a candy thermometer for this, which eliminates the guesswork.  Once it reaches that heat, turn off the heat and let it cool down to between 105 and 110 degrees.

    Stir in the yogurt.  Don’t let the temperature go below 105 degrees before you pour into a jar, then cover the jar with a lid.  Now put the jar somewhere warm where it can incubate overnight.  An oven set to 100 degrees is perfect, but you can also put the jar into a picnic cooler.  If you’re using a cooler, line it with a towel, put the jar in, and cover it with a towel.  Some people put a heating pad set on low on top of the towel, or a hot water bottle, to keep the temperature constant, but if you make several jars of yogurt, then the heat from the jars will keep all of them warm without anything extra.  It should be ready within eight to twelve hours.

    I did a couple of things that made the process even easier.  First of all, I left the yogurt to incubate in the covered pot I heated it in.  Then I removed the trays from my dehydrator and put the entire pot inside (set at 100 degrees).  And that was all we had to do, except eat large quantities of it for breakfast. 🙂

    You can add flavorings if you like. This morning I had mine with some fruit spread that I canned a while back, and it reminded me of a healthy version of the yogurt cups with fruit at the bottom when mixed together.

    Avivah

  • Paying extra for unnecessary certification

    Today I did my big shopping, and even though I didn’t feel like I really needed much, came home with the van stuffed.  I often marvel at all the things I can buy while staying within my budgetary constraints – today I got a good amount of quinoa,  raisins, dates, walnuts, and sliced almonds, along with the usual other items (eg 50 lb onions, 50 lb potatoes, 40 lb yams, 20 lb.cottage cheese). My shopping would seem totally imbalanced to the casual observer, since I buy large amounts of a small number of items each month, but it all balances out when taking into account the current pantry holdings.   

    I came upon a super bargain when shopping – I found a dried bean mix for .50 a pound.  Being me, I scooped up all that there were into my shopping cart (all 43 pounds worth :));  bean prices usually average around.99 lb, and since beans stay forever it’s not like they’ll go bad waiting to be used.

    When I got home, I mentioned my purchase to my husband, but when he looked at the package, his attention was attracted by something other than the price.  These beans were marketed as a specialty item, called cholent mix.  Most of you know what this is, but it’s basically just a mixture of three different  beans used for a traditional Shabbos/Sabbath lunch dish.  Where I was shopping they were being passed over as unfamiliar.  My husband laughed when he noticed that the packaging displayed no less than three separate kosher certifications.  He works in the field of kosher supervision, and commented on how unnecessary even one of those certifications were – dried beans don’t need any supervision!   

    So many times people pay  a higher price because of certifications or assurances of quality.  Sometimes that’s worth it; often it’s not.  Be a conscious shopper.  I see so many items that are very inflated because the marketers have found an effective way to manipulate your emotions or thoughts regarding a product without actually doing anything to increase the value.  

    As an side note, a neighbor came by and asked if I had a package of cholent beans she could borrow.  Umm, yes, one package or forty….:)  This was the first time in seventeen years that anyone came to borrow this item from me, and the only time in seventeen years that I had them on hand (you don’t think I’d buy this at the usual inflated price, do you?).  Very timely, wasn’t it?!  

    Avivah

  • Food stamp challenge

    Every so often I see various food stamp challenges – the idea is to see if you can eat healthily within the dollar guidelines that the food stamp allotment your family would receive.  Sometimes it’s for a week (which imo is a joke) and sometimes as long as a month.  I have yet to see a challenge like this that is encouraging and helpful (that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there, just that I haven’t seen it).  I think the point of a food stamp challenge should be to see how to eat healthily with limited dollars and then show people what you’ve done. 

    Instead, the consensus of the 3 or 4 challenges I’ve noticed over the past couple of years has been basically the same: it’s impossible to eat well on such a small amount, food stamp participants are penalized with bad health because they are limited to low quality food, and the government needs to do more to make high quality food available to everyone.  Yada yada yada. 

    Well, I don’t agree- at all – and that’s why I’m finally posting on a topic I’ve considered writing about for two years.  I think the US government food stamp amounts tend to be very adequate, even generous, particularly when people know how to budget or shop well.  The problem lies more in the lack of nutritional education and accountability than anything else.  And most people really don’t have much of a clue about how to effectively budget their food dollars well – teaching people how to make their dollars stretch in additional to nutritional education would end the supposed problem.  But that’s as political as I’m going to get about this topic, because this gets overtalked all the time and I think it’s a lot more valuable to focus on how to use food stamp dollars well than why it’s impossible to manage. 

    I think that most of those doing these challenges are somewhat guilty of nutritional elitism.  And I think that it’s good that there are those who are looking at the larger political picture and trying to make improvements.  But as wonderful as it would be if  we all had affordable mainstream options for local organic produce, grass fed beef, etc, people aren’t doomed nutritionally if they can’t afford it.  How to manage well within less than the ideal options is something that seems to get glossed over.   Most of us have to face non optimal choices sometimes, and we do the best we can with the resources that we have.  

    Over time I’ve shared a number of strategies I’ve used to keep our family well fed on a limited budget ($600 monthly for our family of 11).  Eating healthfully is important to me (we eat according to traditional foods guidelines – aka Weston Price/Nourishing Traditions), and I have the additional challenge of keeping kosher, which limits many of the bargains that a non kosher shopper could take advantage of.  The huge majority of the suggestions I make could be used by food stamp participants as well as everyone else.  So I’ll do a quick overview of some strategies that are applicable –  my apologies for being redundant for those of you who have been reading a while and know all of this already!

    First of all is where to shop.  Since the first food stamp challenge I read about a couple of years ago, I’ve made mental notations about which stores I shop at take food stamps.  All the major supermarkets take food stamps, including Trader Joes and Whole Foods.  Hitting the loss leaders and stocking up when things go on sale is the way to go.  An obvious caveat is that like anyone else with a limited monthly food budget, even if something is on sale, a food stamp shopper would have to buy smaller amounts in the first month, gradually building up the amounts they can stock up on as their sale stocked pantry builds. 

    I like to buy vegetables at a small ethnic grocery store (they also accept food stamps).  Their prices are better than the big supermarkets, the produce is fresher, and they often have vegetables that are marked down because of blemishes.  I’ve spoken to the manager there and a number of times bought cases of what I’ve wanted at an additional discount.  I rarely go to farmer’s markets, but I’ve heard that some of the larger stands are set up to accept food stamps.  The prices are best if you go at the end, since they often will lower the price so that they don’t have to pack up their veggies and take them home.   When buying any kind of produce, seasonal is usually cheaper than out of season produce.  You can load up on the inexpensive vegetables instead of the high cost ones.

    The discount grocery stores and salvage stores I shop at are a mixed bag – the Amish owned stores don’t take food stamps, but the rest I’ve gone to do-  regardless of who owns them, they basically all have the same prices.  These stores are a nice bonus to the budget, but I wouldn’t say someone who doesn’t have access to these is doomed financially (many states don’t have them, including my own) – they allow me to buy some things I would otherwise would avoid for the most part.  Most of what they sell is processed food, which I avoid.

    I buy in bulk through regular supermarkets and health food stores – as mentioned, these stores accept FS.   This is how I buy wheat berries and sucanat, for example, since we don’t use white flour or white sugar.  I also get coconut oil in this way.  I don’t recommend shopping at warehouse stores  because I don’t think they’re economical, but it seems that although most of them don’t take food stamps, one or two do.  I couldn’t check this out personally since I don’t shop at these stores. 

    Buying directly from the source, as I do for my raw milk and pastured eggs, won’t be an option.  However, there are other options at health food stores that may not be ideal but are still much better than the mainstream – they tend to be pricier than the less healthy option but by shopping frugally it makes room for the items that are more expensive.  I’ve even found organic milk (and even grass fed, though all homogenized) from time to time at the discount stores.  And you know what?  If someone buys regular milk and eggs, then that’s okay, too.  That’s not the main thing destroying the health of this generation. 

    Then there are other things that may be cheaper directly from the source but are available in the stores, like the raw cheese I recently discovered.  Someone using food stamps would be better off buying it in the store instead of buying at a cheaper price directly from the source so they don’t have to take money out of their pocket. (By the way, Trader Joes has raw cheese at a great price for non kosher consumers.)   Use these pricey foods as condiments instead of as a main dish, and a little can go a long way. 

    Processed foods are always going to be more expensive than buying the ingredients yourself, and  buying the ingredients instead of a more ready to eat version is always going to be where you save the most money.  There are the obvious things like beans and grains which help a food budget go far, and especially when soaked and prepared properly, are very nourishing and good for you.

    There are so many more possibilities to mention, but I think I hit the main ones.  So while the food stamp challenges continue, know that eating healthfully is within the reach of the vast majority of us, even when our budgets are very limited!

    Avivah