Avivah Werner

Category: Intentional Spending

  • The frugal pantry

    A well stocked pantry is crucial to keeping food costs under control, since instead of shopping for your menu plan, you shop to refill your pantry, and you can keep a stock of basic supplies on hand at all times (in whatever quantities appropriate for you).   Most of what I’ll share below doesn’t need refrigeration, but I what I call my pantry includes staples in my fridge or freezer.  Everyone will stock different things, depending on their tastes, but I said a while ago I’d post a list of what we like to keep our pantry stocked with, so here you go!

    Flours – whole wheat, rye (I use this for sourdough starter), white, coarse cornmeal, fine cornmeal, teff (currently trying it out, but don’t know if I’ll replace it when we finish it), tapioca flour; nut flours – almond, walnut, hazelnut, pecan

    Sweeteners – sucanat, honey, agave nectar, white sugar/brown sugar and powdered sugar (for baking for others)

    Fats – coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, cold pressed vegetable oils, butter

    Nuts – peanuts, cashews, walnuts, sunflower seeds, whatever else is on sale when I shop; dried fruit – usually raisins

    Misc. -yeast, arrowroot flour, cornstarch, potato starch, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, vinegars – Bragg’s apple cider vingear (acv), regular acv, white vinegar, wine vinegar, dried unsweetened coconut

    Spices – salt (regular, sea salt, celtic coarse, Real salt, kosher, and canning), Bragg’s amino acids, tamari/soy sauce, large variety of other spices – important to adding variety to food, especially ‘boring’ foods like beans and grains, miso

    Grains:

    • rolled oats, steel cut oats, quick oats, whole oats (for grinding into oat flour)
    • hard white wheat (for grinding into whole wheat flour)
    • popcorn, yellow corn (which I hardly use and has been around a while – won’t get this again)
    • buckwheat
    • millet
    • brown rice (white rice stays for storage purposes a lot longer but nutritionally it’s valueless so I don’t bother with it)
    • quinoa and amaranth (not always, but when I can)
    • barley
    • flax seeds
    • sesame seeds

    Beans:

    • kidney, red, pinto, black, large and baby limas, Northern, navy, black-eyed peas, pink, chickpeas, misc.
    • brown lentils, green split peas, yellow split peas

    Canned goods:

    • tomatoes (diced, sauce, paste, whole)
    • peas
    • corn
    • green beans
    • pumpkin
    • tuna, sardines, gefilte fish, salmon
    • fruit – pineapple, mandarin oranges, cranberry sauce; home dehydrated fruit
    • evaporated milk
    • home canned foods – chili, meat sauce, beef stew, beef chunks, turkey, broth, fruits, beans

    Eggs, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, hard cheese

    Peanut butter, jelly, jams (homemade), pectin

    Tea bags – mostly herbal, small amount of regular black – very low right now, bulk herbs for tea mixes

    Miso, mustard, mayonnaise

    As far as fruits and veggies that aren’t preserved, I’ve written before about keeping those items in a cool area of the house: potatoes, yams, onions, garlic, ginger, carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, cabbage.  We try to have at least the first few on that list on hand all the time, the others get added in when I do vegetable shopping and last until they run out.  I don’t rush to restock those.  Frozen vegetables usually include peas, corn, limas, green beans, and carrots.  As far as fruit, we get whatever is on sale and seasonal at that time: what keeps well out of the fridge are apples, pears, and citrus (oranges, grapefruits).  We also usually get a lot of bananas when they’re cheap.

    What I have on hand will change depending on what the sales are, but these are the basics off the top of my head (yes, I could get up and look but then I’d end up cleaning my kitchen instead of coming back here to finish this post!).  I shop according to price, so if potatoes suddenly became very pricey, I’d get a lot less of that and a lot more of something else.

    Avivah

  • Keeping cabinets closed from prying hands

    My baby is so cute – at 16 months, he’s on the go all the time.  And one of the things he love most to do is open any kitchen cabinet he can, and pull out everything in it. Then he moves on to the next one.  Then to the coat closet, then the end table, then the next surface he can reach.  All day long.

    Now you can imagine that this doesn’t make it easy to keep things neat.  Usually, he’s busy pulling things out in the kitchen while I’m carefully walking over and around those things while I prepare dinner- I definitely have to watch my feet.  And while it doesn’t bother me since it’s just a stage and will pass, it does make for a lot more work and clutter.  So when my husband thought of a quick and cheap way to secure the doors (I didn’t want to install special latches – we already have magnets on each cabinet door), I was thrilled.

    Here’s what he did – he took some thick rubber bands, the  kind the broccoli comes wrapped with that he’s put aside, and simply fastened the door handles to one another.  If I want to open a cabinet, it takes me just a second to unwrap it, and another second to put it back on.  Very cheap, fast, and low tech. 

    The baby’s been a little frustrated that he can pull the doors but they only open a little bit (because of the give in the rubber bands), but I figure a little frustration isn’t a bad thing to experience while you’re young. 🙂

    Avivah 

  • Using oil lamps

    Yesterday I got my first order from Lehman’s, an online Amish store (I know, that seems like a contradiction, doesn’t it?); they have all the manual/non electric stuff you could imagine and a lot more.  In it were the supplies I need for oil lamps.  (Why would I want that, you wonder? :))  I thought it would be practical to have some back up lighting other than candles and flashlights for power outages, and the idea of a lamp was appealing.  It’s much more secure than a candle, and provides a lot more light.  And it’s so atmospheric!

    I did some research on oil lamps, but I wasn’t interested in breaking the bank, especially since it’s not something that I was intending to use for every day, and most of those I saw recommended were just too expensive.  When I heard about the possibility of using canning jars as the base for an oil lamp, and buying a converter so it could effectively be used as one, that very much appealed to me.  I don’t like having things around taking up space if it’s not necessary, and since I already have canning jars around, I appreciated being able to use them for more than one purpose. 

    It took me ages to find what I was looking for on their website – they have loads of stuff and I didn’t have a catalog number to search for it with, and if I hadn’t known they had it, I would have given up.  But I finally found it.  (Here’s the link in case you’re interested: http://www.lehmans.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=978&itemType=PRODUCT&RS=1&keyword=1310 )  I bought three adapters, chimneys, and burners, which would give me three lamps – it was about $8 per lamp.  And I got three extra packages of wicks.  I’ve read that you can make your own, but until I know enough to know what to do, I’ll stick with these.  So these supplies will provide lighting for three lamps, which means that if necessary, three rooms will have some light in it – carrying a lamp or even a flashlight from room to room isn’t so efficient when it means leaving 9 other people sitting in the dark!  (About six years ago, there was a hurricane here that knocked our power out for a week, and it was really spooky for my kids at night, even with flashlights and tea lights.  I think this would have helped a lot.)

    But why wait for a power outage to enjoy dinner by lamplight?  Last night we (well, I already told you I went out at dinner time, but everyone else) ate dinner by the light of our oil lamp.  I waited around to leave until it was lit to see how well it worked.  It was really nice and I think we’ll use it more often just for the special feeling it adds to a family dinner. 

    For fuel, we used the citronella torch fuel that is made for outdoor torch lamps, that I got for 50% off last week.  I can’t yet estimate how cost efficient this is in comparison to using electric lights (and I’m not likely to do all the necessary calculations, either!), but a jar of fuel is 55 oz, enough to fill the one quart canning jar we’re using as a base 1.5 times.  The amount of fuel we used was negligible, but I’d have to burn it all down, keeping track of exactly how many hours it lasted in order to really give you an accurate idea of the cost.  In any case, it’s a lot cheaper than the lamp oil they were selling at Lehman’s for 6.95 for 32 oz!  So maybe I really should go buy some more of that lamp fuel before they sell out. 

    Now I need to pull out those cheapy hurricane lanterns that I bought last week (the day after placing my order for these) for $2 each, and see how they compare.  Those will definitely be better for camping because I can hang them up.

    Avivah

  • Make a menu based on your pantry

    >>Do you plan your menus from the sale flyers in advance, or buy the sale items and then come up with a menu after?<<

    I’ve written about menu planning, and I’ve written about shopping to fill your pantry.  I do both.  But I suggest something else that I rarely see advocated, but is very advantageous to your food bill.

    Most people make their menu, and then plan their shopping list.  And that’s really good – it’s a huge step above what most people do, which is to not plan much at all.  But what I like to do is stock my fridge, freezer, and pantry first.  I buys lots of whatever is a good price, buy a variety of fruits and vegetables (no pricey non seasonal veggies), and whatever else rounds out my basic pantry list for the month.  (I’ll try to share a list of what I try to stock my pantry with another time.)  Then, and only then, I make my menu, by looking at whatever I already have in the house.

    How does this help?  Firstly, you’ll always have the ingredients you need on hand – you know you have them, and that’s why you planned each particular meal!  Secondly, and more importantly, is that you are always eating sale priced items.  Let’s say that thanks to buying only sale items, your monthly discounts on groceries average out to 30% less than what you would have paid at full price.  That means that you are either a) saving 30% of what you would have otherwise spent, or that b) you’re spending the same monthly total on food, but getting 30% food more than you could have otherwise, which can last you 5.5 weeks instead of 4.  That adds up to a big difference, don’t you think?

    Some of you may object, saying that you can’t buy a lot of what you need ahead of time.  But I think running out daily for milk and bread is a habit more than anything.  And then people get used to it and can’t imagine shopping differently.  But even items like bread and milk can be purchased in advance.  Bread can easily be frozen and then defrosted before needed, or toasted if you prefer.  Milk can also be frozen, and if you’re not buying raw milk, then the consistency when you defrost it will be the same as before it was frozen.  Raw milk is fine to freeze, too, but the consistency changes – the cream will be in tiny chunks.  Meat and chicken can stay good in the fridge for several days, in the freezer for a lot longer.  Fish is kept the same as the chicken or meat.  Cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, butter, yogurt, and hard cheese can be frozen (I’ll do a separate post soon on some specific suggestions for freezing hard cheeses), and all of them easily stay good in the fridge for at least a week.  Don’t freeze sour cream, though – I tried this recently and when it defrosted, it was liquid.  So I used it for cream style grits for breakfast. 🙂

    Root vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage, carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas) can all be easily stored in the winter without refrigeration.  Fresh vegetables that are more perishable don’t need to be purchased more than once a week. And of course, frozen vegetables are nutritionally pretty good and can be bought much more than a week ahead.  Winter fruits store well in cold weather, too, like apples, pear, and citrus.  If you like to buy fruits out of season, then just refrigerate them.

    So buying food ahead shouldn’t be too hard – just shop the sales, and stock up.  It’s a different way of thinking about shopping, and will take some time to get a full variety of pantry items stocked, but not nearly as long as you think.

    Avivah

  • National Wholesale Liquidators – going out of business

    My husband told me last night that National Wholesale Liquidators is going out of business – his coworker told him that he got a bunch of stuff at great prices.  Well, I don’t like to shop just because there’s a sale, but if there’s something on my ongoing list of things to keep an eye open for, then I’ll get it.  So this afternoon, I headed over to check things out.

    The store was getting to be pretty well cleaned out, and I wasn’t incredibly impressed with the deals.  Then again, I’ve developed an attitude of only buying things that I need, not lots of cutesie tootsie things, so most of the things I wouldn’t buy even if they were almost free.  Actually, if they were giving it away I wouldn’t want it if I didn’t have a use for it.  But, a couple of aisles down, I found something I do use, canning lids – they looked untouched, unlike most of the shelves in the aisle that were mostly empty.  At 40% off, I figured it would be worth getting some, and it was – the regular mouth lids were .89 a dozen, the wide mouth lids were 1.19 a dozen.  It’s the kind of thing that I’d buy all they had if I could, but it gets expensive pretty quickly, so I only bought about 12 dozen small and 8 dozen of the large.  I’ll check in there again in a few weeks and see if they mark them down anymore. 

    Then I got a couple of kerosene hurricane lamps.  Just last night I ordered some oil lamp converters (I’ll tell you more about them when they get here), so I didn’t really need many of these lamps, even though they were just $2 each.  I bought 10 bottles of torch fuel at $2 each (I’ll check if there’s more of that in a few weeks, too), after calling the company I bought the oil lamp converters from – they said that kerosene and oil can be used interchangeably in the same lamps, just the wick has to be changed between uses.  That was good to know, since I have no experience with these things and didn’t want to buy something that wouldn’t be of any use.  I’ll  keep them as backup lighting for emergencies and to take camping.

    I bought 116 packets of vegetable seeds.  Yes, really.  I’ll have to really expand my garden this year to use all of that!  Well, I’m such a lousy gardener that I won’t have to expand it the way someone who was more competent would, since I seem to have to plant a lot to get a tiny yield.  They were .07 each, and I couldn’t resist; I’ve been looking at seed catalogs online, and though I’d love to only buy open pollinated varieties, it’s not cheap.  I also got canvas and heavy duty work gloves, 8 pairs total.  My husband informed me when I told him what I got that we already have enough work gloves.  Oh, well. 

    Then I found a menorah for my dd14 for next year ($4), and Chanuka candles for .15 and .23 a box, depending on the company.  I bought 20 boxes since at that price it was worth it to stock up for the next couple of years.  🙂  I bought the girls a bunch of ponytail holders – they were 70% off and someone always seems to need something around here, so I figured I’ll get enough that we won’t have to think about running out for a long, long time, like until their daughters come visit and want to use some.  🙂

    Otherwise it was mostly small odds and ends, like a couple of can openers and 4 multi purpose tools; even with all the discounts, I ended up spending more than I would like.  But my dh was glad I got things that we’ll need and use, and he thought it was all very reasonable.  It was really interesting to see what was sold out and what wasn’t touched – I obviously have different taste than most people, since the things I was interested in all had full shelves.

    While I’m not recommending any one store over another, if in your area you have stores that are drastically discounting their prices right now, use this opportunity to buy things that will be useful later on.  But don’t buy things you don’t really need just because it’s ‘such a great deal!’.

    Avivah

  • Slash your food bills with reduced produce!

    I’m overdue on my monthly shopping – I should have gone last week (didn’t because I don’t like to shop at crowded holiday times and I almost always go on Tuesday or Wednesday); and because we have the monthly homeschooling gathering on the day that I planned to go this week, I’m pushing off our trip for one more week – my kids really enjoy it and I don’t want them to miss it.  That means it will be six weeks since I did any shopping, so I needed to a bit more careful than usual when planning this week’s this week’s menu since I usually have more vegetables to work with.  The advantage of this long stretch between shopping trips is that my freezer is getting empty and it will be easy to find room for whatever I buy next week.  The disadvantage is that my freezer is getting empty and it will be easy to find room for whatever I buy next week.  🙂

    This morning I popped out to get some things to hold us over until the big shopping trip.  Officially I restart my food budget on the 15th of each month, but I really prefer to do the big shopping first and then add to what I need after that (which usually is very minimal, if anything), so though usually I wouldn’t go out for a little trip like this at the beginning of my shopping period, I decided to reverse things for this week.

    I got four dozen eggs and some milk (we only have a couple of gallons left in the freezer and were totally out of eggs – I can’t remember how many months it’s been since I ran out of eggs), plus some cheese (this is something I never can find kosher at my bargain shopping stores anyway) and then stopped at the vegetable store.  My veggies are the area that I’m really low at this point and I absolutely can’t wait another week.  It’s a privately owned store, and I go first thing in the morning when all of the discounted produce is out.  This morning I spent $27.30, and got a shopping cart full of stuff – here’s an approximate rundown: 17 lb bananas, 43 lb vegetables (this is mostly tomatoes, onions – purple and white, mostly; baby potatoes, a couple of zucchini and carrots, parsnips, eggplant), 2 heads of celery .79 each, 7 heads of cauliflower, at .39 each (usually 1.99 each).  The bananas and most of the vegetables were .29 a pound, the tomatoes were .49, and the eggplant was my big splurge at .69 a lb.  🙂  So that worked out to about 72 pounds of produce, not including the cauliflower, which I plan to stretch for another week – we use a lot of veggies.  🙂  That does sound a little monotonous and I probably should have gotten some carrots and cabbage, but together with the sweet potatoes and potatoes that I still have plenty of, I think we’ll do fine.  Oh, and I do have some corn and green beans in the freezer.  And some oranges and grapefruits, plus some frozen blueberries. 

    You might think that this is moldy and half rotten produce if it’s so cheap, but it’s really not.  The bananas are ripe, but not overripe or mushy.  They aren’t even speckled yet.  But they aren’t green like the full price bananas.  I’ll keep them in closed plastic bags to delay them ripening and they’ll easily last until next week (if my kids can restrain themselves that long!).   The tomatoes are ripe, but not mushy.  The cauliflower doesn’t look super fresh, but only one of them has a small place that will need to be cut off.  Basically, produce has a short shelf life, and when a new shipment comes in, all the stuff sitting on the shelf has to be sold quickly or thrown away.  Selling it quickly for a discount makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

    And on top of saving money when you shop like this, there’s the fun of the cashier’s disbelieving voice when he/she tells your total and sees your cart loaded up for a fraction of what he expects.  It  never fails.  🙂 

    Avivah

  • Defining frugality

    As a sign of the times, a local magazine just came out with an article about how to save money.  And it was interesting to note two things: a) most of the suggestions were nice but weren’t going to radically change anyone’s financial situation (eg – occasionally don’t have your cleaning help come in and do the cleaning yourself); and b) no one interviewed for their tips wanted to use their name, other than the shopping maven who buys designer suits for $400 instead of $1200.  This got me thinking about why people are embarrassed to identify themselves publicly as practicing frugality, and how differently I view frugality.

    I think a lot of people equate saving money and frugality with doing without, being low class and needy, and being cheap or a skinflint.  Who wants to proudly call themselves cheap, when it carries such a strongly negative connotation?  Not me, and obviously everyone interviewed who wouldn’t share their name must have somehow shared this association with saving money.  

    However, I love having a frugal lifestyle and am very comfortable talking about it, because to me, frugality is not about being cheap at all.  Being frugal means being able to create a lifestyle where you can have all that is important to you, without compromising other things that are important to you.  People many years ago had a lot less materially than we do today, and do you think that we’re a significantly happier generation than all of those past were?  Statistics actually show the opposite, but the point is that having more stuff doesn’t equate well with being happy, even though those who make their living in marketing would like us to think so!

    It can be a challenge, living well within your means and not feeling deprived, but the challenge is mental more than anything.  Living within your means is not about deprivation and doing without.  Living frugally is about clarifying what really matters to you, assessing what gives you joy, and then making choices every day that support that.  It’s about attitude – do you feel sorry for yourself that you don’t have what it seems everyone around you has, or do you feel good to have a clear vision of what you feel is most important, and honor that every time you spend money?   

    For example, it’s a huge value for my husband and I that our children are raised by us, and that they have a full time stay home parent.  So we gladly forgo the supposed benefits of having two incomes (very overrated and a myth that could stand to be debunked) because we have so much more pleasure from raising our family than having a few dollars more each month.  It’s a value for us to have the money to buy what we want, so I don’t mind sometimes waiting a month or more for larger purchases if that’s when the cash will be available.  Basically, we spend our money in a way that supports our values, and that’s a good feeling.

    When you can find fun wherever you are, and enjoy all that you have to the fullest, that’s being frugal.  It’s not about doing without – it’s about identifying what really matters to you and finding ways to achieve that, while staying in your budget.  It’s exciting and fun to live within your means, and to live well!  Our family can squeeze enjoyment about of a small trip or activity, a special food or – well, anything, really!

    So much of living outside of our means is about trying to impress others, and just as often, trying to impress ourselves.  When we define ourselves by what we have instead of who we are, there’s a feeling of inadequacy.  We can never have enough, because no matter what we have, it doesn’t give us value.  So people keep spending, trying to push away that feeling of inadequacy.  We’ve become a society of people focused on how we look, rather than our character.

    There’s so much joy in living without the burden of debt, of not having to keep up appearances to impress others (with the internal knowledge that the lifestyle we present to the world is a house of cards), that I wince to hear those in debt say that they’d hate to have to count every penny, to budget – because it’s clear they haven’t made the connection between the emotional and financial stress they regularly feel and the way they spend money. 

    Avivah

  • Hot water bottles

    Last night I gave all of my kids a Chanuka present – their own hot water bottles!  Now, this isn’t a very glamorous gift, and I didn’t expect incredible enthusiasm, but I thought they’d appreciate them.  I was so wrong.

    They loved them!  Two of the kids told me it’s the ‘best Chanuka present ever’!  All of them used them right away, took them to bed with them, and walked around all day with them.  And it’s not even so cold inside or outside right now – I think they like the snuggly coziness of it.  My two year old saw them and started asking for his own hot water bottle (I did buy enough for everyone in the family, but I think he’s a little young to have his very own).   I didn’t end up making the individualized fabric covers that I planned, and when I mentioned it, the kids said they don’t want covers.  They like having it against them.  They each wrote their names on their bottle with a Sharpie marker (I was thinking about the covers as a way to distinguish one from another – I’m glad my kids simplified this so much for me). 

    I bought them because I thought it would be good to have a low technology way to stay warm.  Dh and I used them for years when we lived overseas, with little heat and in a stone apartment with no insulation.  They came in very handy.  But somehow over time, the one we had disappeared, and we replaced it with an electric heating pad, since we couldn’t find hot water bottles locally.  But I’ve never been totally comfortable with the heating pad, and when I was thinking about various things I could do on a low budget to help everyone stay warm through the winter, this idea popped into my mind.  Fortunately, we’re not limited by location anymore, and can buy what we need on the internet, so I got ten of them from an ebay seller at a very reasonable price. 

    (I also used to find hot water bottles very useful when pregnant and having lower back pain.)

    Avivah

  • The first night of Chanukah and my present 🙂

    Last night was the first night of Chanuka, and sooo nice!  We had eight different menorahs being lit, and gave our six year old his gift – the new menorah – before lighting so he could use it.  He was so excited – it was very sweet to watch him; he kept going back to it after he lit and stroking and touching it.  After we light the menorahs, we sing, and then my husband dances together with all of the kids; it’s been our ritual for many years, at least since my oldest was three.  Then we give presents, if there are any to give that night.

    The kids and my husband all liked the taffeta gift bags that I made to put the gifts in – most of them hadn’t seen them yet.  We try to organize things so that on each night, each person doesn’t get more than one gift, everyone gets one, and everyone gets to give one.  That’s a lot more complicated than it sounds because of the number of people involved – last year I remember thinking seriously about making a chart to keep track of who was doing what, each night!

    But this year because we’re simplifying even more than usual, the kids haven’t gotten each other too much, which is good.  My oldest son, 15, gave me my Chanuka present from him last night – a beautiful solar oven!  He’s spent 20 – 30 hours building it – I knew he was building it, but I had no idea how nice it would be.  When he initially asked if there was a link of what I wanted that he could look at, I gave him a site to check out (http://www.cookwiththesun.com/solar.htm – the oven at the top of the page).  But he made some improvements that really added to the look of it, like making an adjustable prop for the lid, painting the outside black, and building a bumper so if the lid slammed, the mirror wouldn’t break (important keeping in mind how things go around here :)).

    When we redid our kitchen last year, we replaced our regular oven with a double oven, each of which is much smaller than a standard oven, and my turkey roaster no longer fit.  I didn’t give it away, though, because in the back of my mind I thought it would be the perfect pan for a solar oven since it’s black (the recommended pot color for solar cooking because it absorbs heat).   That was the pan he based the size of the oven on – most solar ovens are too small for our needs.

    He recycled as many materials as possible – the plywood came from the neighbors who remodelled their basement three months ago, the plexiglass for the lid from my inlaws (it wasn’t quite the right size, so he built a frame for it so it would fit), the mirror was one we had in the house that we weren’t using, and the insulation was newspaper and cardboard.  He used some leftover black foam pipe insulation to frame the top lid. The main costs were: black bbq paint – $8, aluminum flashing for the interior – $8, aluminum tape – $3.50, hinges – $3, and having the mirror cut down to the size we needed – $10.  He’s planning to put wheels on the bottom, since it’s pretty heavy, due to the weight of the wood, glass, and mirror.  So whatever that costs will get added to the total, but in any case, it’s a bargain!   (If you’ve ever priced solar ovens, you’ll understand how pricey they can be.)

    Today was freezing – the wind chill factor brought it down to below zero early this morning when the boys walked to shul (synagogue), and though it warmed up slightly, it wasn’t exactly a toasty day.  Since there was sunlight, the kids wanted to try out the solar oven, despite the low temps. I don’t know why they decided to fry an egg, but it wasn’t the best choice – slow cooking is the watchword for solar cooking, and frying eggs is a quickie dish.  The cooker steamed up and the edges of the egg cooked, but it was so cold that the kids quickly lost the desire to go outside and readjust the mirror so it was angled toward the sun (since obviously the sun is always moving), so the egg didn’t end up fully cooked.  Like I said, it wasn’t the best day or best food to try to cook, but we’ll try again when it’s a little warmer.  For the sake of the people involved, not the cooker – apparently what matters is that the sun is out, not the temperature of the air.

    I wanted a solar cooker for when the weather is hot, because it seems like a shame to have all that natural energy of the sun wasted, and have the house heated up when extra heat is the last thing you want (unlike today, when we wouldn’t have minded extra heat!)  I also like the idea of having a back up cooking source that isn’t dependent on store bought fuel.  When it gets warmer, we’ll get busy experimenting!

    And as nice a present as it was (and it really is nice!), what touched me most was the love and thought my son put into it, to make something I would enjoy and appreciate.

    Avivah

  • Gifts in a jar

    My kids were brainstorming things they could give their grandparents for Chanukah, and finally decided to make them food gifts in a jar.  Since one set of grandparents are trying to avoid sugar, it knocked all their plans for homemade breads, cakes, and jams out of running.  So they needed to think more creatively.

    Today they decided on holiday bean soup mix, and cornbread mix. They layered ten different kinds of beans in a quart sized jar, and are going to prepare the seasoning mix and put it in the top in a small plastic bag.  On top of the jar, they wrote the name of the recipe, and then instructions for how to prepare it.  When their grandparents are ready to have it, they’ll have to soak the beans overnight, then throw all the ingredients together with a can of tomatoes, and they’ll have a nice healthy and filling pot of soup.

    For the cornbread mix, the kids mixed all the ingredients but eggs and oil together (using powdered milk instead of regular for this purpose), and again, wrote up instructions and taped them to the top of the jars.  The jars look very pretty and I think that they’ll be enjoyed.

    For the jars, I used some jars that I recycled from matza ball soup and gefilte fish (I put them aside a couple of months ago, thinking they might be useful for holiday gifts).  When I first washed them out and noticed that the jars were’t the size of a standard canning jar, I thought that it seemed like a waste (a lot of spaghetti sauce and mayo jars are).  But then I realized they’d be perfect for gifts in a jar, and I wouldn’t have to give away the canning jars that are so useful for me but which would probably be thrown away by the recipients after one use.

    If this is something that interests you, there are loads of possibilities out there!  You can make drink mixes – coffee, tea, cocoa; soup mixes (with dehydrated veggies added, or with instructions to add the vegetables afterwards); cake or cookie mixes; candies (I love the idea of making candy – like fudge and sour cream walnuts – but think it’s almost unfair to give anyone something so irresistably good :)).  And if you know how to can things, then you can give canned soups or stews that are ready to eat.

    Food gifts are nice because they are useful, attractive, and are appreciated by just about everyone, particularly when dietary concerns are taken into account.  It also doesn’t confer a huge feeling of reciprocal obligation by the recipient – it’s not a very expensive gift, despite being attractive and being enjoyed so much!

    One son is starting to make some cinnamon rolls right now – I have an amazingly good recipe that I think my mom will love.  Another daughter is brainstorming more ideas; she doesn’t want to give something very similar to what some of the others are planning –  I don’t have the ingredients in the house or she would make up a vanilla coffee mix for her grandfather.   At the moment of this writing (things can change quickly here), they’ve decided to give a joint gift basket from all of them – with a bread, a jam, a soup, a side, and a dessert.

    I have some chutneys that I prepared in the beginning of the fall for my husband’s coworkers, and will probably bake something to send along with each jar.  I have other things that I’ve canned with the intention to give them as gifts also, but I have to go through the shelf where I stored them all and remind myself what I have. 🙂

    I found this link after we finished preparing our jars, but I think they give some good ideas for how to decorate the jars so that they look festive – I’m a big believer in the value of presentation (you know, the nicer something looks, the better it is received!).  http://www.budget101.com/jargifts.htm

    Happy Chanukah!

    Avivah