Freezing Cheese

May 20, 2013 2 Comments

We love cheese!  However, with only three of us in the family, a block of cheese in the refrigerator can get moldy before we finish eating it.  We came up with a cheese storage method that reduces the risk of mold, but it wasn’t good enough for those times when we have either a large amount of cheese in open packages or some cheese that’s been handled or exposed to air (for example, left over from church coffee hour) so that it probably has more mold spores on it.

The obvious solution is to freeze excess cheese, killing the spores.  But when I tried it, I found that a thawed block of cheese has a different consistency than one that was never frozen–it’s much more crumbly and seems more likely to get condensation on the surface.  However, grated cheese survives freezing and thawing just fine!  Once thawed, it gets moldy or dried-out more quickly than a block of cheese because of the greater surface area.  (This is true of grated cheese that was never frozen, too, unless it’s the kind that’s sold pre-grated, which is usually sprayed with a mold inhibitor such as the antibiotic natamycin, which is thought to be safe, as well as some kind of anti-clumping powder such as potato starch that I’d just as soon avoid; I think home-grated cheese tastes better!)

To make the most efficient use of our cheese, I leave no more than 1/2 pound in the refrigerator after the package has been opened, unless we have immediate plans for it.  I grate the extra cheese and freeze it in portions we can use in recipes: 2 or 3 cups for a big batch of burritos, 1 1/2 cups for Cheesy Walnut Burgers, 1 cup for Stuffed Shells, 3/4 cup for Mac & Cheese.  As with our homemade frozen vegetables, having convenient ingredients ready to thaw helps us keep cooking at home even in busy times. Read more…

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Easter: Is it just a believing?

May 15, 2013 1 Comment

Huh, why am I still talking about Easter on May fifteenth?  Everybody knows Easter was way back in March this year!  Well, yes, Easter Sunday, the commemoration of the day when Jesus rose from the dead, was on March 31, but Easter actually is a season that lasts seven weeks in the Episcopal Church and some other denominations.  Our Easter celebration doesn’t end until Pentecost, next Sunday.  Alleluia!

A few years ago at this time, when my son Nicholas was four, he suddenly asked me, “Is it really true that Jesus got killed dead and then came back alive again, or is that just a believing?”

I was shaken.  I had been so impressed at his developing faith and thought I had done a good job telling the Easter story so that he could understand it, yet he was doubting.  Did he think it was just another story like “Cinderella”?  On the other hand, the fact is that believing is the main point here; we believe because we believe, because we have faith, not because we have scientific proof.  Hmmm, how to answer? Read more…

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Healthy Alternative to French Onion Dip for Veggies or Chips

May 7, 2013 1 Comment

I served this dip at coffee hour last Sunday and got many questions about the ingredients and requests for the recipe, so here it is!  I actually developed this recipe for a coffee hour not long after I joined my church 17 years ago, when I was not as much into healthy eating as I am now–I had been planning to make the standard “stir a packet of onion soup mix into a pint of sour cream” dip, but then I found that one of my housemates had used the soup mix that I thought was in the pantry, so I had to come up with something….

This dip is healthier than one made with packaged soup mix because it’s much lower in sodium and doesn’t contain artificial flavor, artificial color, or preservatives.  The yeast adds some extra protein and B vitamins–though probably only a trace amount per serving.  UPDATE: I looked up the ingredients of America’s most popular onion soup mix and realized that it would be off-limits for people with several of the most common food sensitivities: It contains wheat, corn (probably genetically modified), soy (also probably GMO), and monosodium glutamate.  Furthermore, the soybean oil is partially hydrogenated=trans fat, and the mix also contains carcinogenic caramel coloring.  Yum yum.  I’m glad I discovered this alternative!

I usually make it with yogurt rather than sour cream because these days I eat lots of yogurt and always have it on hand.  Make sure to read the label of yogurt or sour cream; some brands contain surprising additives.  Buy organic if you can.  I like the organic yogurt from Trader Joe’s, and it’s reasonably priced.

To make a large bowl of dip, suitable for a party, you will need:

  • 2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt
  • 2 Tbsp. dried minced onion
  • 2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast flakes (Read more about them here!)
  • 1 tsp. dried dill
  • 1/2 tsp. dried oregano
  • 1/2 tsp. black pepper
  • 1 tsp. lemon juice
  • 1/2 tsp. yellow mustard (optional; I add this if the dip seems too bland)
  • dash of soy sauce, or salt to taste

Mix thoroughly at least 1 hour before serving, to give the onions time to soften.  Taste it and adjust the seasoning if desired.

For once, I served a quantity of veggies that was almost perfect to satisfy the crowd and use up most of the dip, so here’s my suggestion for a veggie tray to accompany this dip:

  • 5 enormous carrots, peeled and cut into sticks
  • 1 large cucumber, cut into sticks
  • 3 bell peppers of assorted colors, cored and cut into strips

Visit the Hearth and Soul Blog Hop for more healthy recipes!  Visit Works-for-Me Wednesday and Waste Not Want Not Wednesday for more great tips!

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Saying “No!” to Toddlers

May 3, 2013 6 Comments

Today I received email responding to my recent article on child discipline and asking me to take a look at this article: 10 Alternatives to Saying No to Your Child.  That’s some good advice!  I’m glad to see it on a site that helps people find jobs as au pairs (childcare providers who live with the family, usually in another country) because I know that many people in that line of work have limited experience working with young children, so they need good, detailed strategies.  I agree with all the basic ideas in the article, but I also have a few tips on the subject to share.

The idea of “alternatives to saying No” is not that it’s bad to tell a child what she shouldn’t do.  There are many times when it’s necessary to stop a certain behavior.  The idea is to do it in a positive way when you can, instead of just hollering, “No!!” all the time.

Imagine living in a place where you don’t know the language or customs.  Dozens of times a day, people say a certain short word to you.  You hear this word in lots of different situations.  How long would it take you to understand what the word means?

That’s how it is for babies and toddlers.  It takes them a long time to understand that “No” sometimes means, “Stop pulling my hair!” and sometimes means, “Stay out of the kitchen!” and sometimes means, “Don’t sit on the cat!” and so on and so forth.  Using more specific words helps them to understand which word means what.  You can see this in a toddler’s response to a negative command that uses words he recognizes: You say, “No, you can’t have a cookie,” and he grabs a cookie–not because he is willfully defiant but because “cookie” is the only word in that sentence that has a clear meaning to him, so he’s thinking you just acknowledged his desire for a cookie.  Tell the kid what you want, not what you don’t want. Read more…

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What to Do When Your Child Witnesses Bad Discipline

April 24, 2013 3 Comments

If you have any opinions at all about the appropriate methods of disciplining children, and if you are ever anywhere near any families with different opinions, someday you will find yourself in this situation: Your child sees another parent respond to a child’s behavior in a way that your child recognizes as different, which may be shocking or upsetting to your child.  What can you say to help your child understand what’s going on?

My son Nicholas is eight years old now.  We’ve used a mostly gentle discipline approach that focuses on explaining, redirecting, and using these strategies:

We sometimes get fed up and start yelling or say things that aren’t so nice, but we do our best to avoid being really harsh and hurtful, and we don’t hit him.  That means that when he sees another parent using harsh or violent discipline, he expects an explanation. Read more…

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Fast, Frugal, Fruit-Flavored Oatmeal (or, how to use up the jam stuck to the jar)

April 17, 2013 5 Comments

When a jar of jam is depleted to the point that it’s difficult to gather up enough jam for a sandwich or a slice of toast, it’s tempting to just chuck it.  If you’re going to recycle or reuse that jar, though, you need to remove every bit of jam…and if you’re removing it, you may as well eat it, especially if this is not really “jam” but expensive organic juice-sweetened fruit spread…so maybe you stick that jar back in the refrigerator and open a new one to use in your sandwich.  Pretty soon there are a lot of almost-empty jam jars taunting you about how you never get around to scraping them.

Years ago I read in The Tightwad Gazette that the solution to this problem was to fill the jar halfway with milk and shake it, creating tasty strawberry milk (or grape milk or boysenberry milk or whatever).  It sounds good, but I found that cold milk doesn’t dissolve much jam; you still have to scrape the jar, and even then the jam tends to settle to the bottom, so you’re drinking mildly strawberry-flavored milk and then having a lot of cold clots of jam slide into your mouth.  Not so great.

I have now found a solution to the jam-jar problem!

  • Boil some water in your electric kettle or other boiling device.
  • Put some quick-cooking oatmeal in a bowl.  I don’t like to measure stuff before breakfast, but I use about 1/2 cup.
  • Pour boiling water into the jar until it is half full.  Don’t fill it more because you need to leave room for steam.  Hold the jar with an oven mitt.  Put on the lid and shake until all jam is loosened.  Alternatively, leave the lid off and stir the water with a spoon or butter knife until all the jam comes off.
  • Using oven mitt, pour jam-water from jar over oatmeal.  Stir.  If oatmeal is not wet enough, add more water.
  • Optional: Add some dried fruit, some milk, or some fat (butter, flax seed oil, coconut oil) to the oatmeal.

Making tasty fruit-flavored oatmeal and getting the jar clean without wasting water works for me!  Visit Waste Not Want Not Wednesday and Fabulously Frugal Thursday for other waste-reducing tips!

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Four Weeks of Pesco-Vegetarian Dinners (early spring)

April 16, 2013 5 Comments

A pesco-vegetarian is someone who eats no meat except fish.  That’s what we do when we’re at home and most of the time when we eat in other places.

Here’s what we ate for dinner (plus weekend lunches) for four weeks in March and April, including Easter, trying to make the most of seasonal produce sales (mushrooms, sweet potatoes, string beans, kale) and leftovers from my church’s Easter receptions and Daniel’s family Passover seder.  I plan our menu up to a week in advance and do the weekend cooking and some ingredient preparation during the week; Daniel cooks our weeknight dinners.

Week One:

  • Sunday:
    • Lunch: Leftover Mexican Pizza.
    • Dinner: I made this Thai soup using vegetable broth instead of chicken broth, tofu instead of shrimp, kale instead of spinach, and regular orange sweet potatoes.  It was pretty good.  I liked it better than the guys did, so I had the leftovers for lunch Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday!  When I bring soup as my lunch for work, I put it in a reused salsa jar, which seals well and can be microwaved–I just need to use my napkin as a potholder when I pick it up because the jar gets hot.
  • Monday: Whole-wheat spaghetti, sauce from a jar with extra tomatoes (left over from a bag of frozen diced tomatoes that I’d thawed to make the Mexican Pizza), and sauteed mushrooms.
  • Tuesday: Tangy Honey-Apricot Tofu, Salty String Beans, and rice.  It’s unusual for us to have tofu twice in one week, but this time we did.  This is one of our favorite meals.  Daniel cooked extra rice to use the next day.
  • Wednesday: Fried Rice with carrots, mushrooms, and cashews.
  • Thursday: Spinach sauteed with garlic and olive oil and chopped pecans, over baked potatoes.  The spinach was frozen; I put it in the refrigerator to thaw the night before.
  • Friday: Bean Burritos.
  • Saturday:
    • Lunch: We attended the memorial service for a friend who had been an enthusiastic participant in our church’s many food-serving events, so of course the service was followed by a reception with sandwiches, fruit, orzo salad, and other goodies!
    • Dinner: I had the idea of trying to make a different flavor of baked lentils, using a lentil recipe as a guide for the ratio of liquid to lentils and using a tetrazzini recipe as a guide to flavoring.  Unfortunately, this didn’t work out so well.  The lentils absorbed all the water and didn’t burn, but they also didn’t cook completely, and they sank to the bottom while all the tasty stuff went to the top, so we had crunchy bland lentils with a yummy topping–and the guys liked it all right, but I was very upset!  I think that eating undercooked lentils may have a physiological effect that makes me anxious and depressed, because I have reacted like this before to lentil experiments that went wrong. :-(

Read more…

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The Temporary Fate of “Cute and Thrifty Scouring Powder”

April 10, 2013 Leave a comment

Hello, readers!  Click here for the real article about how to make your own scouring powder.

This post exists because, five days after I posted the original article, I noticed that it had totally disappeared!!!  Because I had connected it to a number of link parties, I hastily posted an apology and attempted to give it the same URL as the original post.  The fact that WordPress would not allow me to use that URL gave me a clue that the article still existed…somewhere….

At lunch break, I poked around some more and confirmed that the article wasn’t on my Published list or my Drafts list.  I looked at some help files.  Finally I noticed a Trash folder with one item in it.  There was my article!  When I opened it up, it had a Restore button.  I clicked that, and the article reappeared!  Yay!!!

Now, how did it get into the Trash?  I’m not certain, but this is my best guess: The article originated on my iPad, which my son used to take the photos for the article; I then uploaded the photos using the WordPress app and saved the post as a draft.  I remember feeling that the process was not quite complete, but we needed to get out the door to school and work.  Later, on my lunch break at work, I logged in to WordPress via Web and found the draft post waiting for me–so obviously it had saved okay, after all–and I wrote the text and published the post.  I think it was two days later that I was using the iPad when it alerted me to a new comment, so I went into the WordPress app to approve the comment, and there was the scouring powder article–and I forget exactly what text was on the only available button, I think “Cancel”, but at any rate I thought that because the post was already published via another computer, what I was seeing there was just an artifact of what I had been doing last time I used the app, so I pressed that button and got on with what I was doing….

That’s probably where I went wrong, huh?  Anyway, I am sorry that the article was unavailable for a while, but I’m relieved that it was so easy to get it back!

Thanks to Daniel for responding to my email about the mystery by calling me at work and “threatening” to investigate this for me, thus motivating me to look again while narrating about how I had already tried all the obvious things; that is, in my experience, one of the best ways to see the thing that was not obvious enough the first time! :-)

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Cute and Thrifty Kitchen Scouring Powder

April 10, 2013 6 Comments

My dishwashing method gets most food to wipe right off the dishes, but some things still need to be scrubbed–tea and coffee stains in mugs, blueberry-juice stains in bowls, and bits of pasta that stuck to the pot, for example.  I also like to scrub the cutting board really thoroughly after chopping onions.  Baking soda is a safe, affordable, environmentally-friendly scouring powder that does a great job!

The trouble with baking soda is that it’s packaged either in a cardboard box or in a gigantic plastic pouch.  The box isn’t damp-proof, so storing it anywhere near the sink is just asking for clumped-up baking soda.  The pouch, although it costs less per ounce than the little boxes, is just too huge to keep around our tiny kitchen.  Either type of package tends to dump out a huge amount of baking soda, whereas for scouring you need just a little sprinkle.

That’s why I decided to make my own shaker-top bottle with dampness protection, custom-decorated to coordinate with my pink 1950s kitchen!
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Read more…

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What to Serve for a Big Reception or Party (specifically, Easter)

April 1, 2013 4 Comments

I noticed my article What to Serve for Coffee Hour drawing more readers as Easter approached–probably people looking for ideas to make their church coffee hours following the Easter services particularly festive.  I have often taken charge of coordinating my church’s reception after the Easter Vigil (the night before Easter Sunday), and this year’s went particularly well, with the contributions of several parish chefs and the assistance of my extremely helpful eight-year-old Nicholas.  I’m going to explain what we served, where it came from, and where the leftovers went.  This might be useful in planning any kind of party for about 100 people. (We didn’t have that many at the Vigil, but we did on Sunday, and as you’ll see, the food stretched!)

The interesting thing about the Easter Vigil reception is that this festive, late-night party is just one of the events of Holy Week.  Our church commemorates the Last Supper with a simple meal of bread, cheese, fruit, and wine on Maundy Thursday, and the leftovers from that meal can be used in the Vigil reception.  Then, leftovers from the Vigil reception may be suitable for serving at coffee hour after the Easter morning service, when we have a big crowd to feed!  However, we can’t count on specific leftovers, so we have some people sign up to bring food specifically for the Vigil and for Easter morning.

According to the Gospel of Luke, when the resurrected Jesus came to visit his disciples, he said, “Do you have anything to eat?”  I bet if I had just come back from the dead, that would be the first thing on my mind, too!  So when we get to the end of the long Easter Vigil service and “The Lord has risen indeed!  Alleluia!”, I want to make sure to have a good spread.

This year, here’s what we served after the Vigil: Read more…

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Saptappers

April 1, 2013 2 Comments

Happy April Fools’ Day! Today we present a crosspost from our sister publication on another world, The Pyqan’s Handbook.

The saptapper is a small waterfowl whose long neck ends in a large mouth. Its small, glistening eyes bulge up like beads around the neck.

Saptappers are purple, in bands shading darker, bluer, grayer from mouth to tail. Bright yellow speckles decorate the neck in a pattern unique to each individual.

Saptappers feed on the root sap of trees that grow along the riverbank with their roots partially exposed in the water. The saptappers swim in among the roots, puncture a root with serrated lips, and rapidly slurp its sap. The sated saptapper then releases the root and drifts about placidly.

The saptapper trappers trap saptappers in September to tap their sap to make syrup.

A trapped saptapper claps its flappers to warn the others.

The serenity of September Saturdays is shattered by the clatter of the clapping flappers of trapped saptappers.

You will find saptappers napping, in the aftermath of trapping, amid roots where water is lapping.

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Coffee Bags as Raw Material for Tote Bags

March 28, 2013 6 Comments

You know those metallized plastic bags that are often used to package coffee?  Those have been bothering me for years: They’re not recyclable and not biodegradable, so when I throw them in the trash I know they’ll be in the landfill forever.  And Daniel and I drink a lot of coffee!

About a year ago, in the comments on someone’s blog about difficult recycling issues, I met up with Alessandro DiLella of Italian Coffee Handbags, a Dutch company that is making fashionable tote bags out of coffee bags.  This gives that metallized plastic a new use and creates reusable bags that people can use for their shopping and other carrying needs, instead of single-use plastic or paper bags.  (The Website is in Dutch, but if you write to the email address there, Mr. DiLella can correspond with you in English.  I work for natives of the Netherlands who occasionally forward me emails in Dutch, so I’m accustomed to trying to read Dutch and find it pretty easy–knowing some German helps–and amusing, but here is a free online translator if you want to read it in English.)

I collected empty coffee bags until I had enough to fill a box, packed tightly; that was about 100 bags of various sizes.  No, we don’t drink that much coffee!  I hung up flyers in my office and my church encouraging people to give me their used coffee bags, and those were more than half of my collection.  The flyer at church has actually attracted bags that I find thumbtacked to the bulletin board next to the flyer, possibly brought in by people attending other activities in the church building during the week.  I appreciate that people want their bags to get repurposed!

Earlier this month, I mailed my box to the Netherlands.  Postage was $27, which is disappointing, but Mr. DiLella may be able to reimburse me or compensate me with some free tote bags.  I’d like that, but if it doesn’t work out, I don’t mind putting some money toward responsible disposal of packaging.  Next time I’ll send a larger amount at once to get a better deal on postage.

Here’s Mr. DiLella’s photo of the array of exotic American coffee bags I sent, which he promptly posted on Instagram! (I can’t copy the photo into my post–is that something about Instagram, maybe?)

If you live in the Pittsburgh area and have coffee bags you want to give me, or if you live elsewhere in the United States and want to mail me your coffee bags at lower domestic postage rates, post a comment or email me!

I’m also very interested in hearing about any companies that are repurposing coffee bags in the United States.  It seems like an obvious thing to do–think how many coffee bags must be discarded every day!–but I’m not aware of any.

Of course, one solution to the coffee-bag problem is to buy bulk coffee in your own reused containers.  We do this a lot.  But it’s hard to resist bagged coffee when it’s fair-trade and organic and on sale for less than the bulk price!

Visit Your Green Resource for more environmentally friendly ideas!

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My grandmother is blogging from beyond the grave!!

March 27, 2013 1 Comment

My paternal grandmother wrote a lot of poetry in her twenties, some of which was published in a poetry column in her local newspaper and some of which she read on a local radio program.  After she passed away in 1991, my dad compiled her published poetry into a little booklet which he printed and gave to her family and friends.

Recently I read this booklet again, and it occurred to me that if my grandmother were still around, she probably would be sharing her poems online.  After discussing the idea with the rest of her descendants, I set up her blog:

Poems by Janette Stallings

Every time I reread these poems, I am struck by how, simultaneously, they set you right into a vivid, fleeting moment yet describe experiences that are just the same now as they were seventy years ago.  I hope that readers today will find these poems still very relevant and inspiring.

It’s a funny feeling, though, arranging a blog for someone who never saw a blog or any sort of Website and who regarded computers as a somewhat suspect newfangled thing.  I chose a background color and clip art that remind me of her personal style, and I put them into a WordPress theme that is relatively plain because all the fancier ones just looked jarring.  I tried to use the sidebar widgets she would think were neat rather than unseemly.  It’s so strange–and yet it gives Janmother her own space, like her own little magazine with pretty borders, which is something she never had in the newspaper.  I think she would like that.

Another oddity of this project is that the person whose work I’m publishing is not, exactly, the Janmother I knew.  The newest of the poems I’m going to publish was written 29 years before I was born!  My first idea for the blog background was to use a digital photo of one of her gorgeous afghans–but the poetry-writing Janette was an earlier version of the person who became my crocheting Janmother.  I’ve written about the Janmother I knew and my growing perspective on her life.  The poems, all of them, were written when she was younger than I am now.  So I’m trying to imagine that younger Janette, daydreaming with her hands in the dishwater, and what she would have done with the opportunity to create pages for the whole world to read.

I bet that if the young Janette were alive right now and browsing the Web, she’d be appreciating Works-for-Me Wednesday for the wealth of homemaking tips and the sense of connection with other women that it brings to us each week.  Take a look!

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How I told my child the Easter story

March 20, 2013 3 Comments

I am an Episcopalian, raising my son Nicholas (now eight years old) as an Episcopalian, but I was raised Unitarian myself, so I’ve had to figure out a lot of this Christian parenting stuff as we go along.  I’ve talked with some other parents in the same boat, as well as some who don’t belong to a church but want their kids to understand who this Jesus guy was and what it all means–and one issue that comes up a lot is, How do you explain about Easter?

The rest of the story of Jesus is easier: He was born, and he was so, so special!  He brought hope to the world and reminded us to love one another, and we give each other gifts to celebrate that.  Jesus grew up and traveled around teaching the people to love and forgive.  He helped sick people be well.  He taught about generosity and trusting God.

But then the story gets scary and gruesome, and then this complicated thing happened which is often explained as, “God sat back and allowed his own son to be brutally slaughtered two thousand years ago because YOU are bad!!!” which might not seem to make a lot of sense but sure can make you feel guilty in a helpless sort of way, and then this even more complicated thing happened which easily comes across as, “He was only temporarily dead, so rejoice!!  Never mind about those sins,” and somehow it all has to do with bunnies and jellybeans and tulips, and–well, it can be a bit confusing!  I’m still learning to understand it a little better every year, and I am 39 years old.  So how did I explain it to my kid?

I started a few weeks after he was born.  Read more…

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Mexican Pizza

March 11, 2013 2 Comments

I mentioned in my most recent multi-week menu post making Mexican Pizza, an easy and versatile meal that my mom makes frequently.  As I wrote that, it occurred to me to ask Mom if there is a recipe for Mexican Pizza or she’s just been winging it all along!  She has no written recipe, but with her input, I’ve written some guidelines for making Mexican Pizza.

To make one pan–a meal or main dish for 4-6 people–you will need:

  • 1 batch of freshly mixed cornbread batter, the amount that normally would bake in a 9- or 10-inch square/round pan.  Use your favorite recipe, but consider decreasing the sugar.  You could add a little chili powder if you want.  If you don’t have a favorite recipe, see below.
  • 1 1/2 cups (or 15-oz. can) cooked Mexican-flavored beans.  These might be left over from another meal, prepared by your favorite Mexicanating process, or  just plain beans plus 1 cup salsa.  Mom suggests this: Drain and rinse a can of pinto or red beans; combine with 8 oz. (1 cup) tomato sauce fortified with chili powder, dried diced onion, oregano, garlic powder to taste.
  • 1-2 cups grated cheddar or jack cheese.
  • Optional ingredients: peppers, olives, etc.
  • 9″x13″ baking pan, or cookie sheet with sides.
  • Grease for the pan.  I like coconut oil.
  • Optional cold toppings to add after baking: guacamole, plain yogurt or sour cream, shredded lettuce, cilantro.

Preheat oven to 425F.  Grease the pan.  Pour in the batter and spread it to cover the bottom of the pan.  If using a cookie sheet, start from one end and spread batter toward the other end until you begin having trouble getting it to stay together–it should be about 1/2″ deep and may not fill the whole cookie sheet.

Sprinkle beans and optional ingredients evenly over the batter.  Sprinkle cheese evenly on top.

Bake 10 minutes.  Check to see if you can lift the edge of the crust easily with a spatula.  If not, keep baking and checking every few minutes until it’s done–typically 15-20 minutes.

Cut into squares and serve with optional cold toppings. Read on for the cornbread recipe!

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My Coupon Organizer

March 6, 2013 2 Comments

This is a project similar to our recipe binder, using reused materials to make something that does not look perfectly polished but is cheerful and works well for our household’s specific needs. One difference is that this project started with a purchase of something specifically for the project: I bought this nylon thingy (specifically marketed as a coupon organizer) in about 1994. Originally I used it with the stiff paper tabbed dividers that came with it.

After about a decade, though, those tabs no longer made much sense with the kinds of food I was buying. I mean, it had a separate section for cookies–we hardly ever buy those, because we don’t need them, and when we want some they are fun to bake. Chips and candy also were separate categories. And there was one for meat, but now that we eat less meat that seemed silly. There was no category that seemed appropriate for beans, so I kept forgetting where I had put the bean coupons.

If I had realized this project would be so quick (about 20 minutes) and easy and fun, I wouldn’t have waited so long to get around to it! I was finally inspired 4 years ago when my son’s preschool chucked out a bunch of barely-used file folders in nice bright colors. We used them in all sorts of crafts! The cheery colors of my improved coupon organizer make me happy every time I use it!
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Read more…

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Liebster Award: 11 Great Blogs!

February 27, 2013 6 Comments

Pary Moppins nominated me for a Liebster Award!  I am honored to be recognized by this perfectly practical blogger who offers such tips as a mnemonic for teaching kids to set the table and 20 very useful kitchen tools and how to make smelly shoes smell better.

The funny thing is, when I received a Liebster Award last year, the rules were different!  I smell a folk process at work–like one of those games of “Telephone” in which each person along the line attempts to repeat the same thing but winds up changing it a little bit.  Oh, well, at least this will be fun to write….

First, I’m supposed to tell 11 random things about myself.  I’ll try to make these things that aren’t already mentioned somewhere in The Earthling’s Handbook.
  1. My Myers-Briggs personality type is ENTJ.  I am very close to the center of the extravert-introvert continuum, though: I strongly prefer being with people to being alone (except in the bathroom!) but I often have various elaborate things going on inside my head at the same time.
  2. If I were suddenly offered a month off work, I would go to London and thoroughly explore it, as well as taking some trains to other parts of Europe.  I’ve always wanted to go there, but it never seems quite feasible with the amount of Paid Time Off available.
  3. I collect Sears catalogs.  Actually, some of them are JCPenney catalogs.  I have about 20 of them, from 1902 to 2004.  (I do not have one from the 1950s, if anybody wants to get me a present!)  It’s a lot of fun looking at what was available, and what it cost, in each era.  Sometimes the written descriptions are unintentionally hilarious, especially in 1902 when Sears sold medical devices and there were not yet any restrictions on the claims one could make about what a product could do for the user.
  4. From age 11 to 15, I self-published a little magazine called House on Jimae Lane and sold subscriptions.  (I also produced about a dozen issues of House on Jimae Lane between ages 4 and 11, but I drew those by hand, so there was only one copy of each.)  It was a lot of fun but also a lot of work!  Writing online is much easier.
  5. I am mostly ambidextrous.  (Brushing my teeth or using scissors with my left hand, or screwing lids onto jars and bottles with my right hand, is very difficult.)  It’s a huge advantage in my work as data manager of a social science research study–I can operate the computer mouse with one hand while writing down numbers with the other hand.  When I worked as a dishwasher, I saved a lot of time by being able to gather forks in my left hand and spoons in my right, simultaneously, from giant trays of mixed silverware.
  6. I never write in cursive, except for my signature.
  7. I detest 3/4-length sleeves and capri pants.  They remind me of sixth grade, when I grew six inches in eight months.
  8. I have been a Star Wars and Doctor Who fan since I was five years old.
  9. If I need to draw something–just to test some drawing materials or because somebody is asking me to draw–I draw a panda standing under a rainbow.  This has been my standard picture for about 30 years.  In general, though, I’m much less interested in drawing pictures than in drawing diagrams like floor plans, flow charts, and family trees–or, if I want a soothing artistic experience, I fill a whole page with colorful plaid or similar methodical patterns.
  10. I like peeling things, such as sycamore bark or old paint.  It is amazing to me that, among the many lumpy-trunked sycamores along Pittsburgh’s streets, there are some with layers and layers of old bark just hanging off them–how can all the other passersby resist the temptation??
  11. Spelling comes very naturally to me, but every once in a while I have trouble with a word, and even when I’ve double-checked the correct spelling it still just doesn’t look right to me.  See recipient, below.  I want to put another E in it somewhere.
Next, I’m supposed to answer the 11 questions the nominator has asked me.  Since she didn’t say otherwise, I’ll assume these are to be the same questions she answered.
  1. Favorite book?  I have a lot of favorite books!  How about, What’s the last book you read?  Quite a Year for Plums by Bailey White, a novel about a bunch of quirky characters in south Georgia.  The next book I am going to read is The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.  The floor-plan book I’ve been gazing at most recently is the Aladdin “Built in a Day” House Catalog of 1917.
  2. Cats or dogs?  Cats.  I am allergic to dogs, and I don’t care for their typical personalities, although I occasionally meet a dog I can really respect.
  3. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?  I wouldn’t be surprised if I were still working as data manager of the Pittsburgh Youth Study!  We keep getting grants for more rounds of interviews with our participants, who are now in their thirties.  One of these days we’ll have to rename it the Pittsburgh Middle-Aged Guy Study or something.  Speaking of aging guys, in 10 years my son Nicholas will be a high school senior–wow!
  4. What is your favorite form of social networking?  Gee, I guess blogging–I enjoy hopping around reading stuff, commenting, and linking things together.  I love the Web, and I find that most people who enjoy writing enough to set up a blog are clearer thinkers and better spellers than the general population that’s been online since Eternal September began.  I don’t do Facebook or Twitter.  I recently started using Pinterest for my “check out these interesting things!” links, but I’m kind of peeved with some aspects of Pinterest and don’t spend a lot of time there.  Overall, I’m disturbed by how “social networking” seems to be replacing “socializing” in a lot of people’s lives these days.
  5. What are you most excited about in 2013?  Continuing some positive trends in my life that began in the summer of 2012: streamlining some of my data management processes at work (complicated to explain, but it’s very exciting for me to be making things better) and improving my relationship with Daniel.  Also, having completed my three-year term on the church vestry means I will have some extra time available, which I hope to use for wonderful activities that do not involve taking on another major volunteer commitment right away!
  6. Favorite holiday?  Hmmm…I like each holiday in its time and enjoy the cycle of seasons coming around each year.  Over the years, the church holidays have come to mean more and more to me, especially Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday.  I also love the family celebration, decorations, and carols at Christmas–but not the glitzy advertising.
  7. Coffee or Tea?  I love both!  I drink coffee every day.  I always have a cup of peppermint tea at the beginning of my workday, and if the office is chilly (as it usually is, year-round) I drink more herbal tea during the day to keep my fingers from going numb.  At home in cold weather, I like rooibos tea to warm me up.  I like green and black teas, too, especially pineapple-ginger green tea.
  8. What do you do in your spare time?  I play a lot of number-based games–for example, I draw imaginary family trees in which birthdates and relationships are determined by random numbers, and I have many simpler games I can play in my mind without needing to write anything.  I feel weird about playing these games so much, but over time I’ve come to realize that they are a form of data management and that playing them undoubtedly sharpens my skills for work!  Also, I like to play Rambling Sprawl Estates or play other games with my family and friends.
  9. Any weird habits?  I always chew my first bite of food on the left side of my mouth, next bite on the right, and continue alternating, making it come out even.  Probably this prevents uneven wear on my teeth, but my real motivation is some half-conscious idea of “fairness” that developed before I can remember.  No, it’s not Obsessive Compulsive Disorder–if for some reason I have to chew more on one side, that doesn’t bother me in any lingering way.
  10. What’s your favorite smell?  Lilacs.  Or grilled onions.  Not at the same time.
  11. How many siblings do you have?  One brother, Ben, who has written guest posts for me about turning annoying ragweed into useful fertilizer and rewiring an old house.

Finally, I’m supposed to nominate 11 bloggers with less than 200 followers to receive the Liebster Award.  Eleven!!  Last time it was 5.  At this rate, not only will everybody in the world receive a Liebster Award, but a few years from now just one recipient will be forced to nominate all other blogs in the universe….

After mulling over this for a while, I decided I will nominate 11 blogs that I feel are worth a look that are not to my knowledge wildly popular–I will not bother looking up exactly how many followers they have–and that have not received a Liebster Award already from me or from anyone else so far as I have noticed.  (For a research professional, I seem to be a bit lazy at doing research sometimes….)

  1. Click Clack Gorilla is an American-born musician, writer, and mother now living in a Wagenplatz (kind of like a hobbit-style trailer park) in Germany.  Here’s a recent day in her life.  She also writes about interesting things like gender differences in country-music ballads about murder and who’s better than Harry Potter.
  2. This (sorta) Old Life is the story of Rita and Cane fixing up the house where they live with their children from previous marriages.  It’s part how-to manual, part eye candy, part philosophy, and always grounded in the uniqueness of these particular five people and the things they find to make their home.  I normally find home-improvement blogs pretty tedious.  Here’s what makes this one different.
  3. My Sister’s Pantry is written by two sisters who like to cook healthy, frugal, mostly vegetarian food, working from the basic principle that keeping a variety of good ingredients in stock makes it easy to cook good meals.  They cheerfully talk us through the process of improving kitchen habits, with plenty of encouragement and recipes.  We recently tried their Mac & Cheese Without the Box, and it was every bit as easy and tasty as promised!
  4. Green Idea Reviews evaluates various ideas for reducing one’s environmental impact.  Victoria, who is employed outside the home and expecting her third child, finds time to try a lot of little things that make a difference, and she writes them up in a consistent format that’s pretty objective while also giving her personal opinions and experiences.
  5. Small Steps on Our Journey is Rachel’s story of her family’s ongoing efforts to be good stewards of God’s Creation while still enjoying good food, fashion, and fun!  She has an even easier way to use up the bread heels than any of my unwanted bread tricks. (I think her kids must be a little less annoyingly observant than mine is!)
  6. Unintended Housewife was a woman who was unemployed and working out how to be a housewife, when I first saw her blog.  Now she has a baby and is in more of a typical stay-at-home mother role, but I still really enjoy her perspective on life, especially her Are You Freaking Kidding Me?! series.
  7. Hyperbole and a Half is a dead blog–the author is no longer posting to it–and that’s why I’m not linking to the homepage.  But if your sense of humor is anything like mine, you’ll want to read every post in this hilarious collection of personal stories, many of which are illustrated with the author’s own cartooning.  [WARNING: Some posts contain effusive profanity.  Some are unsuitable for children in other ways.]  These are just a few of my favorites:
    • Sneaky Hate Spiral: A hilarious yet perceptive explanation of how a few little annoyances can add up to overwhelm you with rage.
    • This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult: An excellent depiction of the relationship between responsibility and morale, complete with graph.
    • The Alot: A handy strategy for coping when you see terrible grammar and punctuation on the Internet.
    • Skeleton Man: Unusual temporary school building + inappropriate Halloween story = months of torment for a second-grader.
    • PLEASE STOP!!!: An extremely effective strategy for controlling children’s behavior…and the work-around.
  8. ? Oy.  You know what?  In order to list 4 more not-so-popular blogs that I really think are really worth reading–overall, not just for one or two specific posts–I’d have to browse around for a while, and I honestly don’t have time–it’s already taken me weeks to write this post, a little at a time, and I have a deadline approaching at work, and I’ve just got to accept this award already!  I will come back later, as I discover new blogs or rediscover good ones I’d forgotten, and fill in the rest of this list.  I promise not to give any awards to blogs that are not worthy.
  9. ?
  10. ?
  11. ?

So, there are 7 blogs, anyway, that work for me for lunch-break reading! Uh oh, it’s 2:00…back to work!!

Filed under Handbookery

Could you feed your family on a food-stamp budget?

February 19, 2013 3 Comments

Food on Fridays linkupIn her Ash Wednesday sermon, my pastor mentioned someone’s suggestion to fast for Lent by eating only what you can purchase with the amount of money allocated by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“food stamps”) to needy families–approximately $4 per person per day.  The suggestion had been to do this for just one week, not for the full 40 days of Lent, implying that just one week would be enough to show you how very meager that amount is and how difficult it is to be adequately fed while spending so little.

Hmmm.  Well, three years ago I read this blog about a couple who ate on a food-stamp budget for Lent.  I remembered that they found it was not as difficult as expected.  Even at the outset, the author explained “What we’re going to do, and why it’s not so humble.”  Their budget was $6 per person per day, and she already knew that wasn’t much less than their normal grocery spending.  They ate pretty well.  BUT!  They were aware that they were coming into this experiment from a privileged position (jobs that allow them time and energy to cook from scratch, easy access to a variety of stores, a full range of kitchen appliances, a pantry already stocked with basics like spices, knowledge of cooking and budgeting) and that the exceptions they were allowing themselves (occasional restaurant meals, wine not included in food budget) would make it easier.

Of course, upon hearing this fast idea again, my data manager’s brain immediately began crunching numbers to estimate how much money per person per day my own family has been spending on groceries.  When I read the above blog, I had just begun tracking our grocery spending for a full year, and since concluding that experiment I hadn’t thought to compare it to a food-stamp budget.  Now I will: In 2010, my family of 3 people spent a total of $3,850.85 on groceries, which works out to $3.52 per person per day.  The current maximum SNAP benefit in our state for a family of 3 is $526 per month, which works out to $5.76 per person per day.  Food prices have gone up since 2010, but not that much.

Gee, those needy families are just rolling in benefits, huh?  Well, no, wait a minute! Read more…

Filed under Habitation, Society Tagged with , ,

3 Good Books on Civil Rights

February 13, 2013 Leave a comment

I happen to have read three books that deal with the rights of African-Americans just before Black History Month.  Two of them are bestsellers I hadn’t read before, but the one I’ll mention first is a less-well-known book I’ve read a couple of times before and suddenly felt inspired to reread.

The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown by Louise S. Robbins is the story of a white librarian who was fired in 1950 because of her personal involvement in advocating equality for African-Americans.  The official reason she was fired was that she had provided “subversive materials” in the library–books and magazines that were thought by the most paranoid conservatives to be advocating Communism–but that was greatly exaggerated.  Really, the people running the town were afraid that her pro-integration activities would embarrass them and/or threaten their status.  There was a long and convoluted campaign to get rid of her, complete with a sudden replacement of the library’s board of directors, outrageous rumors, secret after-hours sneaking into the library’s storage room to photograph books (which, in fact, had been removed from general circulation), and so on.  It’s a great story!  For me, it’s especially interesting because I grew up in that town (Bartlesville, Oklahoma) and this story is both a reminder that things were worse before I was born and a spookily familiar tale of “community leaders” who make policies based on their own stupid prejudices and force out everyone who disagrees with them, and of honest citizens afraid to speak up for what’s right in a culture where personal choices can have mysterious, gossip-driven effects on people’s employment and social lives.  Most of the institutions and a few of the people who are major players in the story are familiar to me.  But even if you know nothing about Bartlesville, small-town politics, or that part of the country, this is a really interesting story!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Read more…

Filed under Society Tagged with

Shovel snow with a broom!

February 7, 2013 Leave a comment

This is a simple tip that I can see is familiar to a lot of the natives here in Pittsburgh, but it took me many years to catch on.  I grew up in Oklahoma, where winter precipitation tends to involve freezing rain, so a lot of what you have to clear from your sidewalk is ice.  Here in the land of picturesque, Christmas-card-like winter weather, however, the sidewalk is typically piled with fluffy snow.  It looks so pretty until you have to shovel it, right?

Wait!  There’s an earlier step that will make the shoveling so much easier, and you might not have to shovel at all!  You might be able to get your pavement completely clear and non-slippy without using hazardous sidewalk salt!

Simply sweep off the loose snow with an ordinary broom.  Keep the broom near the door so you can sweep the snow before anyone has stepped on it.  That way it’s not packed down, and it easily sweeps right off.  If you are going out while it’s still snowing, consider leaving your broom by the end of the walk so you can sweep your way back to the door when you get home.  You’ll want to use your “outdoor broom” or at least keep the broom outside until it dries, because it’s hard to get all the snow off of it, and if you bring it inside it will drip.

Depending on the depth and density of snow, you may still need the shovel to scrape the last of it off the pavement.  Alternatively, if the snow is more than a few inches deep, start by shoveling off most of it and throwing it to the side, then sweep the pavement before you walk on it to get that area completely clear before you move on to the next section.  (Ever walked on a sidewalk where the deep snow was shoveled off, but there’s a thin layer of ice across the whole thing?  That’s the result of leaving behind a little snow that was too hard to scrape up with the shovel–the sun melts it, and then it freezes.)

Sweeping is particularly useful for clearing outdoor steps, especially open-tread ones–just sweep the snow down between the steps!  My epiphany about the usefulness of brooms on snow came when I visited a friend’s hillside house during a snowstorm, and before I left I watched him completely clear his 30-some open-tread stairs of about 3 inches of snow in about 5 minutes.

This technique is so easy, a child can do it!  Nicholas proved this two days ago, when both parents were too sick to pick him up from school, so he walked himself home, responsibly using his new wristwatch and house key on a chain.  When he saw that we had not been able to clear the sidewalk, he swept it, then used the shovel to pry up the packed snow from his own footprints and others’ steps on the public sidewalk.  What a great kid!  (He is 8.)

Visit Your Green Resource for more articles on responsible living!

Filed under Environment, Habitation Tagged with , ,

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