It's October! Welcome to CHAOS BAKING!

I know a couple of people who are afraid to bake. They're good cooks, but something always seems to go wrong when they slide cookies or bread or some kind of baked good into the oven. And I can see why they're nervous about baking. We've been practically brainwashed to believe that baking requires precision measurements, careful treatment of every ingredient, and an oven calibrated to the perfect temperature if we're going to get a quality result.

Nonetheless, every now and then it's worth attempting some chaos baking -- just making stuff up to see what happens.

It's easy to forget that people have been making baked goods for a long time, and for most of that time baking was much more a seat-of-the-pants process than it is now. Medieval baking required working with rustic, unsifted flour and a sourdough starter, using no standard measurements to bring a dough together, heating an earthen oven with a wood fire for many hours, then raking everything out so there would be no ash on the bread, then carefully sliding the loaves in, sealing the entry shut with a wooden door that had been soaking in cold water for hours so it wouldn't burn, and leaving the loaves in long enough to bake them through but not long enough to dry them out or scorch them. One way to check oven temperature back then was to toss in a little raw flour; if it turned brown the oven was ready, but if it turned black the oven was too hot.

If medieval peasants could successfully make bread with no measuring cups, no electricity, not even a set recipe -- then we can go a little off script with our baking and still turn out something worth eating.

You want proof? Here ya go!

Right now I have a whole lot of milk that's just gone sour (about 4 cups total), and I'm wanting to do something with it before it actually spoils. Thing is, milk that's just barely soured may not be great on your breakfast cereal, but it's still fine for baking and can be used, cup for cup, as a substitute for buttermilk in most baked goods. I'd just settled on making a homemade sour milk spice cake when I went to the store for supplies.

Well, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a pile of Betty Crocker cake mixes for 98 cents apiece. In this economy, that's hard to beat; I haven't done the math but I'm not sure I could make a cake from scratch at that price. There was no spice cake mix on sale (or even available for purchase), but that wasn't going to stop me. So I changed my mind and grabbed a yellow cake mix. (Also impulsively picked up a six-count of pumpkin spice flavored old-fashioned donuts, which will be important later.)

In the car on the way back from the store, I ate too many of those donuts. Yeah, sometimes I'm not very smart. Captain Midnight doesn't care for old-fashioned donuts and is neutral about pumpkin spice stuff, so I knew he wouldn't want any of the remaining donuts. He doesn't even like frosting on his cake. This spice cake is probably going to be pretty plain --

Oh hey. No it isn't. I have a potentially brilliant idea.

I mixed up the cake mix mostly according to directions, swapping in a cup of sour milk instead of a cup of water, and adding 1/2 t. allspice, 1/4 t. cinnamon and 1/8 t. nutmeg to the mix. (Now it's a spice cake! There ya go.) Poured it into a greased 9x13" glass pan, then did the brilliant thing: I dropped the remaining pumpkin spice donuts into a bag, mashed them into crumbs and used them as a streusel topping to scatter over the top of the cake batter. Baked about 25 minutes in a moderate oven.

Here's the result.

I didn't even wait for the cake to cool down, I just cut myself a corner piece.

NOM.

This is good, but if anything, this doctored spice cake needs even MORE spice. (My English ancestors didn't do insane things to find better spice routes just for their descendants to be terrified of "1/4 t. black pepper" in a recipe, dangit!) I'd at least double the amount of spices if I were to make this again. As it is, though, it's delicious all on its own and would also be great covered with whipped cream or served a la mode. There's no indication in look or taste that this cake was made with sour milk. And the streusel topping was a genius idea -- soft, light cake covered by a crunchy, sugary, spicy topping.

In fact, it was so tasty that the minute I left the kitchen, Charlie-cat jumped up on the counter and helped himself to a big mouthful of cooling cake. BAD CHARLIE. NOT FOR YOU. So now the cake is safely cooling in the oven with the door cracked open because our cats are mad jonesing for our chaos baking experiments.

Staycations and epiphanies

"Time for a staycation!" said the bearded shopper behind me.

I turned. "Sorry?"

"We were planning to go off somewhere this weekend, but now we're just going to have a little staycation instead," he said convivially, looking over the beef jerky. "Getting all kinds of goodies for the family." He surveyed his cart. "Actually, there's almost no junk food in here," he added. "They're gonna be disappointed."

After we exchanged a few pleasantries about needing to have flexible plans these days, I wished him a happy staycation and continued looking for salad fixings. (Tonight I'm making ham and beans and a big green salad with goodies in it.) And as I was looking through the canned beans, a sudden memory swept over me.

The word "staycation" has been around longer than I thought -- Merriam-Webster says it was first coined in 1944 -- but it really took hold in American popular culture during the early days of the pandemic. But the concept of staying in while doing something different certainly isn't new. And the memory I had was an amalgam of several different memories, something my mom would do occasionally when I was growing up, especially my years in middle school.

"Tonight, let's see what it was like to live in colonial times," she'd say. And for that evening, we'd turn off all the lights, unplug the appliances and clocks (except the battery-powered ones), and turn off the ringer on the phone. Instead of cooking on the stove, Mom would fire up the kerosene heater in front of the fireplace and cook a bubbling stew on its flat, trapezoidal top. We'd light kerosene lanterns at the kitchen table and put candles above the fireplace, and we'd do our homework by lantern light while Mom, who had been a history teacher before she married and had six children, would tell us about the era before video games and electrical power and refrigerators and lightbulbs: how people in those days lit their homes and kept their food safe to eat, how they'd cook over the kitchen hearth and bake in earthen ovens, how they'd entertain themselves in the long, cold winters. Sometimes during these colonial-times evenings, we'd get our sleeping bags and all sleep together in the front room, cozy and safe in the residual warmth of the kerosene heater.

"Lantern" by Chuck Grimmett. Public domain image.

I was smiling a little at the thought of it -- and then, for the first time, it really hit me.

"Oh," I said aloud, right in the canned-food aisle. "She didn't have enough money to pay PG&E."

We lived well below the poverty line even before my dad died, and while I think we kids all knew there wasn't much money, my mother tended to focus on things that were freely available to us -- the library, the public parks, city museums, walks and hikes in local green spaces, imaginative play -- rather than things we couldn't afford. There must have been times when she had very little money to pay the gas and electric bill, but she'd done such a skillful job of making "colonial times" into a purposeful adventure that up to that moment, it had never occurred to me that she was doing it out of financial necessity.

"She made necessity into an adventure." If I had to sum up my mom's parenting style in six words, I think that would be it.

Holiday gift shipping: pro tips!

It's that time of year when people are getting all kinds of parcels on their doorsteps, and when surprises are very easily spoiled. So:

1) If you're shipping an unwrapped gift, make it obvious to the recipient right on the shipping label. The USPS will usually deliver as long as the address and zip code are correct, and often if the surname is correct. So, using the Renlund surname as an example, you could send the gift to "U G Renlund" (for "Unwrapped Gift") at the usual address. For a specific occasion you could send to "B D Renlund" (birthday) or "S C Renlund" ("Santa Claus," for Christmas). Or if you're worried all these are too obvious and might lead to mail theft, pick a fake first name that everyone in the family knows means "unwrapped gift inside," such as "Aloysius Renlund." This trick works whether you're packing the box yourself or sending it directly from a website or other retailer.

2) In conjunction with the previous tip: sending gifts directly from a retailer to multiple people in one household? Have a confederate in that household who likes to wrap gifts and is willing to help? Ask that person to receive and wrap the gifts as they arrive. Of course, you should gift-wrap (or pay the retailer to gift-wrap) the present you're sending to your confederate so as not to spoil the surprise for them; it's not much fun to wrap a gift for oneself. And of course, you should be willing to wrap incoming gifts to your household in return. But doing it this way means each of you pays for just one gift wrap while getting all the other presents wrapped. And at the end of the holidays, you won't have to get rid of, say, a pile of tatty Amazon gift bags.

3) Pack tight. A well-packed parcel should be solid. You want to be able to shake the box and not hear anything rattle around. The looser the packing, the more likely the item inside will get shaken up and damaged in transit. Also, shield your wrapped gifts with bubble wrap so the wrapping paper won't rub up against packing peanuts (or other box filler) and rip itself to shreds.

4) If you are packing a gift for shipment, always, always, ALWAYS print the recipient's name and address on a piece of paper and put it inside the box! If the box is damaged or the label becomes unreadable, this information can give the USPS or other parcel carriers the hint they need to get a damaged parcel to its proper destination.

5) If you're sending a gift to a friend overseas, consider finding an online retailer in your friend's country, buying the gift online and having the local retailer send the package directly to your friend. This bypasses the hassle of dealing with customs forms, paying a premium in shipping costs and requiring your friend to pay any duties on the parcel. Big companies like Amazon have localized websites in the UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, etc., as do many other businesses both large and small. All you need is a method of payment the website will accept, and most credit card companies will convert your payment to the local currency for a nominal fee.

For example, if I wanted to send a book to Gretel in the UK, instead of buying a book in the US and mailing it to the UK, I could go to amazon.co.uk, find a copy of the book there, pay for it with a credit card and have it mailed directly to her. It would arrive in a matter of days rather than multiple weeks, and she wouldn't have to pay any duties on it as an imported good.

What are your best tips for holiday gift shipping? Please share!

 

A little regifting tip

INCE it's nearing the end of June, a month where folks are traditionally more likely to get married, I thought it might be wise (and potentially entertaining) to offer a PSA about regifting.

In days of yore, when hubby and I got married, we were lavishly endowed with many gifts. (Especially from my dear departed maternal grandmother, who was so excited over the first of her grandchildren getting married that she went a little nuts sending us gifts on the order of one per week, but that's another story.)

Once we got back from our honeymoon, we started opening the wedding gifts we'd received. One of them -- and even at this remove, I won't tell what it was or who it was from -- came with a sweet little note inside.

"To [Danielle and Fred]*, congratulations and the best of luck in your new life together."

We are not named [Danielle and Fred]. The people who gave us the gift are also not named [Danielle and Fred]. Which means this particular item was regifted at least twice without anyone even bothering to open it and check out the contents.

So if you're going to regift an item, mayyybe give its contents a once-over first.

*names changed, obvi

How to blam a piece of crap

So, since February 3rd is Blam This Piece of Crap Day in our household (it can be in yours, too! Try it, it's fun!), I thought it might be worthwhile to show y'all an example of how a piece of crap can be BLAMmed up into something better.

Exhibit A: canned beef chunks in water.

I've had these canned beef chunks in our food storage for quite some time. While they are not horrible by any means, they tend to look rather off-putting when they first come out of the can, like something you might feed to a dog.

(Foties from here on out by Captain Midnight. Thanks, honey!)

Here, Fido

Appearance, however, isn't as important as taste. See, this canned beef was designed to be part of a long-term food storage solution. I want to use it up before it loses significant nutritive value. Canned meat works fine in any application that might use leftover cooked meat; it makes decent chili, for instance. But at this point in its shelf life, canned beef often tastes more like can than beef. If you make beef enchiladas out of this, you will taste the canned flavor. If you make deviled meat for sandwiches, you will taste the canned flavor.

I do not want to taste that can. I do not like it, Sam-I-Am.

So whatever I make with this will have to be flavorful enough to defeat the taste of the can.

Fortunately, I know just the thing, because I watch the Future Neighbor channel on YouTube. I'm gonna BLAM this can into a spicy red-pepper-based stew over rice!

Ingredients assemble!

For those of you who are Korean or who cook Korean on the regular, yes, this is an adaptation of gochujang-jjigae. Yes, OF COURSE it tastes better with fresh beef/pork/chicken and otherwise more authentic ingredients. But it was surprisingly delicious just using up what I had. (In fact, to complete this dish, I had to buy exactly one item from the store: a jalapeño pepper. I thought I had one, but it had been sitting in the fridge too long and had started growing its own little civilization, and eating volunteer mold is never a good idea.)

Not shown: the pepper I had to buy and some soy sauce, because, um, I forgot this recipe had soy sauce. I did add it later.

In addition to the beef chunks, there was a handful of mushrooms of questionable provenance which I wanted to use up, as well as some leftover rice and a rather sad-looking old potato.

Let's do this.

Mise-en-place

In the center: gochujang, a traditional Korean fermented red pepper paste with tons of fabulous flavor. Around it: half a white onion, the aforementioned jalapeño, mushroom soaking water, mushrooms, green onions, the peeled and thinly sliced potato, and about 2 tablespoons minced garlic. Oh yeah.

Let's drain and rinse those beef chunks. They look better already.

Time to put a wok or other large saucepan over low to medium-low heat, and add some neutral cooking oil and some sesame oil. It immediately starts to smell good.

When the oil is hot, you slide in the gochujang paste and cook until it starts bubbling and changing the color of the oil. Mmmm. Then you throw in about a tablespoon of gochugaru (red pepper flakes)...

Mmm, gochujang broth.

...and immediately follow that with a few cups of water (we added the mushroom soaking liquid to this), bringing the whole thing up to a boil.

Bubbling broth!

Here you add the potato, garlic, some soy sauce and some fish sauce. If we'd been using fresh beef, this is where we would have added that -- but since canned beef is so soft it will fall apart if you look at it too long, we decided to wait until later in the cooking process to fling it in.

This bubbles away for about 5 minutes, letting all the flavors get to know each other and giving the fish sauce some time to settle down.

Getting chunkier

At this point you add the white onion, mushrooms and jalapeño. Bring it back to a boil...

And into the drink they go!

...add the beef chunks, gently stir to break them apart, and let the stew bubble for another 7 to 10 minutes, or until the potato pieces are soft enough to eat.

Is it stew yet?

When the potatoes are soft, sprinkle over some of the green onions, turn off the heat and let the stew sit for 10 minutes to allow the flavors to relax. Check for seasoning -- if it's too salty, add a splash of water.

Done!

The stew is now complete. Heat up your rice and plate that thing up.

All ready to eat

Put rice in bowl. Put stew on rice. Put green onions on stew.
Put spoon in bowl. Put spoon in face. Repeat until gone.

Nom.

And that, my friends, is how you BLAM a piece of crap.

Criss-cross-applesauce

Autumn has come to the PNW. It was colder today, with a fair amount of rain. Charlie-cat was busy trying to find warm spots all over the house. (He's currently in his favorite place, curled up on the back of the sofa.) And I mostly stayed in to do various household-related tasks.

One of those tasks was taking care of some apples. I bought a bag of slightly imperfect apples from the Used Food section of the QFC a while back, and they were getting to a stage of flavor development best described as "wizened," so I needed to do something with them fast. That something turned out to be pressure-cooker applesauce, and it also turned out to be super easy.

Peel, core and cut up apples (welp, that was the hardest part). Throw 'em in the Instant Pot insert along with a half-cup of water, a tiny sprinkle of salt, and some cinnamon and cardamom. (I could have also added some lemon juice, but I didn't have any... and maybe some sweetener, but these apples were plenty sweet enough on their own... so out of necessity I kept it simple.) Clamp it down, cook it on high pressure for 5 minutes, let the pressure drop naturally 5 minutes, then vent the rest of the way. I zapped the cooked apples with an immersion blender, et voilà, homemade applesauce.

It's easy to forget because it's ubiquitous, but store-bought applesauce is a convenience food. In my 1950-reprint Betty Crocker cookbook, any recipe that calls for applesauce first directs the cook to make some, indicating whether it should be thin or thick, plain or spiced, etc. for the recipe. And because it's so often bought instead of made, it's also easy to forget that homemade applesauce is delicious in a way that store-bought applesauce will never be. I grew up with home-canned applesauce made from the sweet-tart Gravenstein apples growing in my auntie's back yard, sweetened and spiced perfectly, and it's spoiled me for life. (It's also why I add cardamom to my applesauce because, hello, YUM.) Tonight's batch of homemade sauce was made with all sweet apples, so it doesn't have the complex flavor or the little tart kick that my auntie's applesauce had, but even so it's still better-tasting than 90% of the bland, watery, mass-produced gunk at the grocery store.

And now I have applesauce to make my great-grandma's chocolate applesauce fruitcake! Um, or not.

What does Soozcat do all day, you ask? Here we go.

Making semi-homemade baked beans today. (This involves rough chopping a small onion and cutting up some pork product -- some days it's bacon, others it's kielbasa, depending on what needs using up -- sautéeing them in a medium-hot pan until the onions start to get soft, then opening up a couple cans of pork and beans, adding them to the pan along with a good squirt of ketchup, some spicy brown mustard, a shot or two of Worcestershire, a bit of liquid smoke and some kind of sweetener -- this time it was apricot preserves instead of brown sugar because I'm all fancy-pants like that -- putting everything into a casserole dish and cooking at 200 degrees for a couple hours, or until it's thick and bubbly and delectable. Nom.) I'll whang together a green salad later, and that'll be dinner done.

No, I didn't use these. Though they are pretty tasty.

Also running a hot bleach load fulla whites and some fabric yardage Miss V wanted preshrunk before it was sent to her. I'm hoping I cut enough of it to account for shrinkage, but we'll see. And later I need to unload the dishwasher.

Meanwhile, in errands, my Doomed Quest for Packing Peanuts continues. You'd think packing peanuts would be available for sale everywhere. Nope. I've been to four different businesses today, with no joy. The only glimmer of hope so far was at Staples, where they had a tiny bag for inflated prices. I AM DISAPPOINT, but I'm also tenacious. I'm certain U-Haul or the UPS Store will have what I need, at a price I'm willing to pay.

Also on the list today: 120 grit sandpaper, Mountain Dew, kitty litter, replacement shovel (ours did a bunk a while back when someone borrowed it for a Boy Scout Eagle project) and ice cream sandwiches. Hmm. I'm pretty sure I know who added that last entry.

I'd be off to Git Stuff Dun, only Roxy-cat jumped up onto the desk while I was typing and has settled down between my arms to take a nap. AAAAH PINIONED TO THE SPOT BY FUZZY CUTENESS. I must gnaw off a limb and flee!

Movin' movin' movin'

NCE again I'm in Utah, hanging out on my mom's laptop (ding-dang touchpad! Bane of my existence, it is!) and doing some quality vegging after several hours helping Miss V pack up her dorm room. And tomorrow I'll do it again. And the day after that, and possibly the day after that (though I sincerely hope we'll be finished by then). We moved quite a few boxes into a storage unit today, but there are going to be a few problematic items -- primarily her mini-freezer, which is still partly full of food and will need to be defrosted before it's packed away, and a huge painted scrim which will not fit into the SUV and might have to be lashed to the roof. It's just another merry adventure in the life of Miss V.

I miss Captain Midnight. I miss Roxy. I miss sleeping in a bed. Mom's sofa is comfy enough, but I'm getting to be an old lady and couch-surfing is rough on the hips. And all this moving and sorting and packing and cleaning and tossing and donating and such is giving me the Urge to Purge. V does not like getting rid of her stuff. At. All. And I have similar pack-rat tendencies, though in my case I think much of it has to do with inertia -- boxes in the garage are out of sight and thus tend to stay in the garage. We have a whole lotta Stuff that we don't need or use, as evidenced by the fact that it's been sitting in boxes in the garage for more than a decade now. I've cleared some of it out, but as the TV product shills say, "But wait, there's more!" It is making me twitchy.

Anyway, when I get back I will give CM muchas smoochas, pay Roxy some attention, and without further ado, start unpacking garage boxes. EVERYTHING MUST GO!

When life gives you Peeps...

It's been nearly three weeks since Easter, and if you can find leftover Easter candy on sale at this point you may notice that it is SUPER CHEAP. At least that's what I noticed today.

This is just a small part of today's trove of cheap sugary goodness.
Only 15 cents aPeeps, erm, apiece. Not too shabby.

And, as often occurs to me when chocolate and other goodies start getting marked down to 90%+ off their original retail price, my marshmallow fudge recipe doesn't care whether the necessary 16 oz. of chocolate comes in chocolate chip form or cut-up solid chocolate Easter bunny form. Likewise, a cup of marshmallow creme equals a cup of mini-marshmallows equals a cup of cut-up Easter Peeps. (That's really all Peeps are -- specialty-shaped marshmallows dusted with food coloring -- so you can use them in almost any recipe that calls for marshmallows. Peep S'mores are especially satisfying to make, because you first roast and then squish that Peep. Muahahaha.)

So when life gives you cheap Peeps, make marshmallow fudge. It's what I'd do.

In fact, I think I'll go do it right now. TTFN!

Creating a frugal minimal-ish lagom life

S I've mentioned occasionally, my siblings and I grew up in a household that, due to our specific circumstances (two adults and six kids living in the East Bay Area of California in the late '70s, primary breadwinner was a freelance graphic designer who sometimes went a long time between paying gigs, galloping stagflation, etc.), functioned well below the poverty line. Until Dad passed away, though, our family accepted very little welfare (I was set to say "no welfare" until I remembered receiving reduced-price lunches in middle school. How could I forget those half-pints of "chunky" school district milk, three weeks past their expiration date?). My mother was particularly talented at home economics and personal finance, so she managed to keep everyone fed, clothed, shod, bathed and (mostly) out of trouble. We learned to make the best of available resources (Mom home-canned and dried a lot of fruit from our yard and encouraged us to forage for wild blackberries, chard and other freebie foods) and we learned how to handle being different from our peers (my brothers still wore Toughskins when everyone else was into designer jeans, and my sisters and I wore dresses and other clothes made by my talented auntie well into the mid-'80s).

We didn't always enjoy being frugal, but that was just how things had to be, especially after Dad died. Sometimes I was painfully conscious of being the only girl in a handmade dress, swimming through a hostile sea of sixth-grade girls in ringer T-shirts and Jordache jeans. But Mom's ingenuity and my personality type combined to create a mental state where, though I clearly didn't fit in at school, I rarely felt truly deprived at home. Consequently, my sense of home is a place that feels like a shelter from the sometimes unfair judgments of the world, comfortable, cozy and safe.

My adult life has been a see-saw between frugality (usually to get us out of debt) and profligacy (usually after some kind of windfall), but I've found that neither extreme brings me long-term happiness. Frugal living comes fairly naturally to me due to the way I was raised, but the option of being able to splurge on certain well-defined, well-loved items has also pushed me in the direction of minimalism. But neither extreme frugality nor minimal-ish living seems to fit me quite right. I've struggled to define the kind of life that hits the sweet spot, the middle ground of thriving, where one has neither an overgrowth of stuff nor is pruned back too much.

And even if I haven't achieved it yet, I think I've defined it. It's "lagom," a Swedish word that doesn't have a precise cognate in English, but which freely translates to "enough, just right, balanced, sufficient," etc. It doesn't mean "perfectionistic," that exhaustive effort to make everything just so; "lagom" means that things have come together really well without anyone going full-on Martha Stewart. It's like the Goldilocks Zone of home life.

So here's a slightly frivolous example of lagom living: I needed some Gruyère to make tonight's dinner, and I didn't have any. Minimalists would encourage me to get only a needful amount of the best Gruyère I could afford. Frugalists would tell me to avoid spending money; I should use whatever cheese I had available, or pick another recipe that doesn't use cheese. But I really wanted to make that recipe, and I could tell it wouldn't taste right if I used the Cheddar I had on hand. It would, though, be lagom to pick up some domestic Swiss cheese with a similar flavor profile to Gruyère, so that's what I did. And Captain Midnight, who ate the resulting meal, pronounced it groovy. (The lagom choice, btw, turned out to be way more frugal than the minimalistic one. Domestic Swiss in my area, not on sale, costs $4.50/lb., while domestic Gruyère starts at $18.90/lb. and goes up from there. Yikes. And the nature of the recipe is such that the Gruyère isn't going to taste four times as good as the Swiss, though it costs about four times as much. Life lesson: from now on I'm buying my cooking cheeses from the dairy, not the deli.)

Lagom living is also tailored to one's personal experience of just-rightness. If you know who you are as a person, what you really need and what you value, finding that sustainable sweet spot becomes an intuitive process. It's largely a matter of paring down the things you no longer want or need in your life to make room for what brings you delight. You are the expert at deciding what's lagom for you.

To that end, I've been going through the house trying to get rid of stuff I don't want, need or use. I've put a cardboard box next to the front door, and I keep dropping in items to be sold or donated. When it's full, it goes away. More space, more serenity. Lagom. See?

New Blessing Journal entry

Something new went into the Blessing Journal a few days ago. Here's what I wrote:

You have a home.

It isn't something you think about often. You tend to take it for granted. But serving dinner at the emergency women's shelter was a wake-up call to remind you of what a blessing it is to have a permanent home. Your things are secure, not subject to the elements, highly unlikely to be lost or stolen. You can depend on getting a hot shower, three good meals and a warm bed every day. You can sleep and wake on your own timetable. You can wash your clothing whenever you need to do so. You have private transportation you can take nearly anywhere. Your money is safe. You have privacy. You are protected and cherished, not yelled at and beaten, by your wonderful husband. And the spirit of God can reside in your home, improving every aspect of your life, helping you with spiritual and mental stability and growth. Having a home to come back to has also blessed Miss V, Captain Midnight, even Roxy. It's a calm, comfortable, warm and lagom sort of place where love is expressed often and in many forms. What a blessing it is to have a home!

Cheap thrills

 few days after David's funeral, I headed home to Washington. Luckily, this time I was able to drive the route with a family friend, which meant a) much less need for caffeine and b) much more conversation. Over the course of the 14-odd-hour drive, we each brought up a number of topics, including the shared experience of growing up in Provo, Utah in the 1980s. My companion pointed out that there wasn't much to do in Provo back then. I think my observation was that '80s-era Provo was the polar opposite of what people often say about New York City: it was a nice place to live, but you wouldn't really want to visit. In the era before Seven Peaks Water Park or even widespread Internet access, the young and thrill-seeking were left to their own devices to come up with something fun to do in Provo.

That's not to say there was nothing fun to do. You just had to do a little digging to find it. My parents (and, later, my mother) set the example of finding cheap or free things to do when my siblings and I were little. As I got into my teens, I started looking around for fun freebies in Provo. Fortunately, there were lots of cheap or free things going on around BYU campus, and most of them were advertised on the campus bulletin boards. The student center had a game room with Foosball, air hockey, pool tables, a bowling alley and a video arcade, where if you had good hand-eye coordination you could make a quarter last a long, long time. The fine arts building always had some kind of art show on display free of charge, and every now and again there would be a student art sale, where some up-and-coming artists would sell their work for a pittance. Downstairs in the same building you could watch a student-directed one-act play in the experimental theater once a week during the semester, and upstairs you could usually find one of several senior student music recitals; both were free. The auditorium in the Kimball Tower hosted International Cinema, where foreign films were screened once a week; I remember it cost a couple of dollars. The planetarium in the science center had weekly student-run shows that were half-educational and half-DJ training, and afterward (at least on clear nights) you could climb the stairs to the observation dome and look at the real stars and planets through the university telescope. The Lee Library was five floors full of fascinating things, where if I couldn't think of anything else to do I'd visit their extensive collection of science fiction and fantasy and read for hours. And those were only the typical options for bookish introverts like me. If you were more sports-oriented, there were numerous trails to hike, a couple of canyons to explore, mountains to climb, a "river" (really, more of a creek) to go tubing in, and world-class skiing in the winter. Even in "boring" Provo, there were numerous low-cost activities available if you were willing to look around for them.

These days I live near Seattle, which isn't really known for its dearth of things to do. But Seattle's most popular activities can burn through the contents of an average wallet in nothing flat. If I want to have fun without going broke, I fall back on the old habit of searching for freebies -- and I've found quite a few. Many museums offer free admission on the first Thursdays or Fridays of the month. During the summer, the Seattle Shakespeare Company puts on a couple of Shakespeare plays in local parks, free of charge. Seafair is in full swing right now, with all sorts of free or low-cost activities. There's almost always something going on at Seattle Center. The city has all sorts of parks, large and small, to discover and explore. You can go window-shopping (and people-watching) at Pike Place Market, spending little or nothing. If you have a smartphone and a fondness for finding hidden objects, you can download a geocaching app, sign up for a free membership at geocaching.com, and go on a treasure hunt in the city. You don't have to haunt the community bulletin boards (though these are still a great way to find cheap or free things to do close to home); type "free things to do in Seattle" into your favorite search engine and you're away.

Point is, there's always something to do. And it doesn't have to cost you a mint. You may have to look around and stretch your brain a bit, but you'll find something amusing.

What do you do for cheap fun in your part of the world?

Looking for cheap, good recipes!

ISS V has been delivered to her new college apartment and reasonably set up with food and other necessities. She doesn't know any of her roomies this year, so I hope she and they manage to get along well. In the brief time I was in Utah I also got to visit my mom, who is currently undergoing various forms of dialysis to find one that works best for her. My sisters have worked incredibly hard this summer making sure she stays as healthy as possible, and my hat is off to both of them -- home dialysis is not easy at all, and they've been doing a bang-up job of it.

In semi-related news, as you may have heard elsewhere, we're in debt. Not hugely so, but enough that I'd like to make sure it goes away as quickly as possible. To that end, I'll be bringing in more money by looking for work in earnest starting next week, but I'm also going to pore over the budget and find ways to keep some more of our outbound cash. One way to do that is to cook from scratch more often. And while I will be looking over our considerable stash of recipes and cooking based on what's on sale this week, I'm also always looking for more ways to vary our diet. So I'd like to ask you, my 3.5 readers: got any cheap, reasonably healthy, tasty recipes for us to try? Thanks in advance!

A simple SodaScream hack

Hey, SodaStream owners! I'm sure you've recently noticed that this:

(retailed $5.99, 500 mL, makes 50 servings, not bad for diet RB)

has unexpectedly (and unpleasantly) become this:

(retails $5.99, 440 mL, makes 29 servings, tastes like butt)

I'm sure this naked money grab on the part of the SodaStream Powers That Be tempts you to scream like a mighty Scot having a tantrum and fling your SodaStream machine, caber-like, through the nearest window, open or not. But don't engage in needless defenestration, people! For although I don't yet have a good substitute for SodaStream's old diet root beer mix (let me know if you've found one), I do have a simple hack for folks who want to make diet soda without breaking the bank.

You will need:

• an old-style 500 mL SodaStream soda mix container with cap, emptied and cleaned
• Crystal Light (or similar store brand) diet drink mix (get the envelopes that make 2 quarts)
• water
• a working SodaStream machine

The math is easy: every capful of soda mix makes 1 liter of soda, and every large envelope of Crystal Light mix makes about 2 quarts of drink (for the purpose of our mixology hack, a quart is close enough to a liter to be nearly equivalent). So for every envelope of Crystal Light drink mix you dump into the soda mix container, add two capfuls of water to dilute to the proper ratio. The 500 mL soda mix container can hold six envelopes of diluted Crystal Light mix. Close the container, shake well to distribute your homemade soda mix, and store in the fridge (I'm not sure this is absolutely necessary, but since a lot of these drink mixes say "refrigerate after reconstituting," better err on the side of caution).

You use this just like a standard SodaStream mix: carbonate a liter of water, pour out a capful of homemade mix, and (DO THIS OVER THE SINK, PLEASE!) slowly and gradually pour the mix into the carbonated water. The first time I tried this, it dramatically overflowed and I made a mess on the counter. I think the citric acid causes the reaction, but I might be wrong. Anyway, over the sink, and slowly!

Threw out all your old-style soda mix containers, and can't find another one? Fret not. All you need is a watertight glass or food-safe plastic jar with a lid, as long as it holds about a pint of liquid, and one of those mini-angled measuring cups you can pick up at any kitchen store.

OXO sells a nice one. And no, they're not paying me for this Shameless Plug.

The old-style soda mix cap holds between 1 1/2 oz. (measuring to the fill line inside the cap) and 2 oz. (measuring to the top of the cap), so measure the mix depending on your personal flavor preferences.

Crystal Light and various store brands have all sorts of fruit-flavored mixes available. You can whip them up as-is, or mix and match combinations. The carbonated water seems to take the super-sweet edge off a lot of artificial sweeteners, as does the citric acid. Inexpensive, tasty, refreshing, and (if this is a concern) it won't raise your blood sugars.

Now go forth my minions and enjoy homemade diet sodie on the cheap!

Kung-fu household management! HYAH!

[If posts about housekeeping bore you to tears, feel free to skip this one.]

O, one of the problems with making the leap back to employment is bridging the financial gap -- that critical span of two to three weeks where you no longer qualify for unemployment, but you haven't received your first paycheck yet. After making sure tithing/rent/bills/etc. are paid, I've noted we don't have much left over in our bank account. I choose to see this as an opportunity to sharpen up my slightly-dulled skills in frugality and home management.

How does this work? I'ma tell ya how!

Cooked homemade pancakes for Miss V this morning. The standard pancake batter recipe makes more than she can eat (unless she's ravenous), and ordinarily I just tip the rest of the batter down the sink. But today I discovered you can freeze pancakes and reheat them later... so I made pancakes until the batter was gone, let them cool, stacked them up with waxed paper in between, wrapped and froze them. When Miss V wants pancakes again (and she will), we'll be set up to provide an instant gratification breakfast.

I have this bad habit of buying a whole lot of fresh basil, using individual leaves in a caprese salad and then forgetting the rest of it until eventually I unearth a pile of green slime in the back of the fridge. Not this time. All the rest of the basil has been stripped of its leaves, and now I've got two cups of packed fresh basil to make some pesto. Because you can make all kinds of stuff when you have pesto.

As you might have discerned from the basil story above, my fridge, freezer and pantry are not very well organized at the mo. I'm going through them to find and use up all the languishing (but still useful) food items that have been hiding in forgotten nooks. (Some of these will be more of a challenge than others -- how do I transmogrify a single serving of frozen white fish into a meal for three people? Dunno, but I suspect pesto WILL be involved.)

Spices. Lots of spices. Spices turn plain-Jane food into gourmet fare. And I already have a hefty stock of them on hand, so there are no additional costs.

I pay my bills with an online bill-payer set up through my bank. (Many banks and credit unions offer these free for the use of their members; check with your bank to see what it offers.) I haven't had to remember to write a check to my landlord in years; the bill-payer does it for me automatically. For bills where the total amount varies from month to month, when I receive a bill in the mail, I go into the bill-payer, indicate how much I want to pay and when I want it paid, make a note of it in Quicken and file the bill. Saves on stamps and eliminates late fees.

I'm working to get on top of household chores. Getting laundry and dishes done quickly isn't just efficient, it's also frugal -- if I leave a clean load of laundry sitting in the washer too long, it will start smelling sour and I'll have to wash it again. $$. Putting it into the dryer immediately after the load is finished saves water and electricity. (Yes, I could line-dry my laundry and save even more, but I live in the Land of Rain, folks. Plus my landlord has been doing a lot of earth-moving on the property lately. Dusty sheets and towels are not my idea of fun.)

Bookstores. Mmmm, delicious books. But they're not really in the budget, so I'm going to a) dig into the Teetering Pile and b) spend more quality time with the county library system. The same goes for movies. I want to see the documentary I Am Big Bird, but the closest theatrical showing will be in Tacoma, a month from now. Fortunately I can rent it from Amazon for a price far less than the cost of gas and theater tickets. Also, I can exercise a little patience and wait until money starts coming in again.

Cleaning up. If I have a whatsit but I can't find it in all the flotsam scattered around the house, I end up buying another whatsit, and then losing it in the flotsam... yeah, you get the idea. Cleaning house is frugal; it helps you find and make use of what you already have. (Small example: I just cleaned out the car and discovered we had three bottles of hand cream in there. THREE? WHY EVEN)

There are probably all sorts of frugalistic things I'm forgetting, but at least this is a start.

On shopping snobbery

"You look really good in that dress!" said the checker, smiling broadly at me. "Where'd you get it?"

As a short fat woman in modern America, I rarely experience this scenario. Other than appreciative comments by Captain Midnight (thanks, honey!), I don't get much positive feedback on my appearance. So both the kind comment and the followup question startled me into saying the first thing that came into my head, which was the truth.

"Um... Walmart, actually," I murmured.

And then it hit me. A full-on Frosty Glare from the checker. I'd just outed myself with a politically incorrect purchase from the juggernaut of capitalist hell that is Wally World, and she was no longer friendly (though to her credit, she retained her civility through the rest of the transaction). At the time, I mostly found it amusing -- if I'd lied about where I'd bought it, no doubt she would have LOVED the dress, but the adorable became the abhorrent merely due to purchasing provenance? Whateva! -- but after mulling it over a while, I've realized there's a bit more to be said about this exchange.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is unpopular in the Puget Sound area. About a decade ago, Walmart tried to open a store in my town, but public outrage and an active campaign against the store drove the company out. Consequently, if I want to reach a full-service Walmart, I have to drive about half an hour north or south. After figuring in the cost of gas, it nearly always makes more financial sense to shop closer to home. Sometimes, though, I do visit with my niece (who unabashedly loves Wally World for its cheap craft items, cosmetics and bargain-bin DVDs), and one time I happened to find a plus-sized dress that a) actually fit me, b) was attractive and c) was ridiculously cheap. Since this confluence of factors occurs roughly once in a blue moon, I bought the dress forthwith and I've never regretted it. (Well, not 'til I got Frosty Glared, anyway.)

You know, I do get why people hate Walmart. (Believe me, everyone who hates it seems eager to tell me why, in vivid detail and often with explanatory charts and graphs.) They don't pay their people enough. They buy goods from Third World sweatshops. They spirit money away from the local economy and put small stores out of business. The goods are low-priced because they're low-quality. The stores attract the lowest common denominator. Walmarts alter or abolish the quaintness of small-town American life. If you're in favor of Truth, Justice and the American Way, by gum, you should shop somewhere else!

But there are some problems with hating on Wally World and similar discount stores. For one thing, household shopping is not a one-size-fits-all pursuit. (Trust the plus-sized woman when she says this.) The people who complain loudest about Walmart shoppers often seem to assume those shoppers could afford to patronize some other store (and therefore should). But not everyone in America has access to a middle-class income or a wide range of choice about where to spend it.

My mother raised six children alone on a teacher's salary and Social Security payments. To her credit, she did very well on a minuscule income. She cooked from scratch, shopped sales, looked for discounts, saved for things she wanted, did without. And let me tell you something: when you have six kids to feed (three of them teenagers) and only $17 to last you to the end of the month, you don't spend that money on a single exquisite wedge of cheese from Whole Foods. You go to a discount grocery, where you can use that same amount to fill a modest basket with cheap, nourishing food.

People in or near poverty don't get to choose between cheap and expensive bread -- their choice is cheap bread or nothing. Even if they have access to a Whole Foods, a Wegman's or a Metropolitan Market, they can't afford to eat cake from their in-store bakeries. Places like Wal-Mart make it possible for the poorest Americans to tread water on a meager income until things get better.

Oh yeah, here's the other thing: for most people, things do get better. As poor newlyweds, Captain Midnight and I did our shopping at a discount grocery. It was an older store, not very clean, poorly merchandised, and you had to be careful about the cuts of meat you picked up from that place, but I'd been taught how to shop and how to cook (thank you, Mom!), so we got by just fine. As time went on and CM moved up in the company, we could afford to trade up to a nicer grocery store -- so we did. It's a typical story in America. While Walmart may attract the poorest people, they aren't perpetually the same people.

Should your shopping choices reflect your ethical beliefs? Sure, if you can afford it and it's important to you. For instance, I picked Bartell Drugs to fill our prescriptions because it's locally-owned, well-stocked, has great customer service, the 24-hour store meets my night-owl needs, and I happen to like the folks who work there; the way I see it, if my modest purchases at Bartell's help pay good people's wages, so much the better. But I can't demand that everyone shop there, because I can't presume to know what other people's needs and household finances are like -- and even if I did know, it wouldn't be up to me to dictate how others spend their money.

Snobbery in any form is ugly. But shopping snobbery is toxic in part because our culture allows, rationalizes, even champions it as a social good. The people who can least afford to spend more money on their households get relentlessly pressured -- by people who have the luxury of far more discretionary income -- to avoid the very places that could help them climb out of poverty. That isn't right. Look, if you don't like Walmart, you're not alone. But don't give people Frosty Glares and excess grief about shopping there -- because from where I'm standing, the echoes of your strident denunciation sound a whole lot like "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche."

Watch this.

I have an ambivalent relationship with timepieces, probably because I have a similarly ambivalent relationship with time.  It never seems to be in my favor.  Which is why, although I love the look of various portable timepieces -- especially pocketwatches -- I rarely wear them.  There's a reason why it's called a "watch."  Every time I look at one I can see its face staring back at me, silently judging me for my tardiness.

Miss V, on the other hand, has yet to develop a complicated love-hate relationship with watches.  She just wanted one because it was cool.  (It occurs to me that her generation is starting to think of wristwatches as a slightly retro affectation, since so many people get the time from their cell phones these days.)  So at first we stopped by Target and I got her a basic Timex.  It sat in its packaging for several days as she dithered over whether she actually wanted the watch she'd picked out so enthusiastically in the store.  (No, don't ask me how often this happens.  I'm going to need therapy.  Mutta mutta.)

Then, about a week ago, V was looking through the glass case at her favorite thrift score emporium and noticed something -- a tall glass vase filled to the brim with watches in various states of disrepair, for the bargain price of $10.  She snapped it up immediately.  I didn't hold out a lot of hope for the watches inside, figuring that most of them would be broken beyond fixing -- but you never know.  And if V wanted to spend her money on a vase full of busted watches, that was her call.

There were 26 watches in the vase.  Some were indeed beyond hope, only good for parts or for junking.  Some -- notably the cheap digital watches -- were still working fine and only needed to be adjusted for DST.  Several watches needed nothing more complex than a new battery.  And one big sparkly watch with lots of Swarovski crystals around the face was in nearly pristine condition; it was probably donated because of the horrible watch band, which looked as though a dog had partially eaten it.  One battery and a new wristband later, it looks (and runs) like new.

Some representative watches from the thrift haul.

V now has several working watches to choose from, and a good dozen more that could be put in working order without much difficulty.

So, a couple of random take-aways from this experience:

• Once again Miss V proves she has a good eye for thrifted treasures.
• We live in a casually affluent and shockingly disposable society.  Most of these watches were given away solely because they needed a new battery -- which can be replaced for about $10 at a watch repair shop.  Nice watches were scattered through this lot; some retailed in the $80 - $150 price range when new.  Wouldn't it make more sense to replace the battery, rather than toss the whole watch out and buy a new one?
• Although batteries are relatively cheap to replace, it costs more than you might imagine to get a quality watch band, so shop around.  (Also, make sure it's the right size for the watch and for your wrist.)
• If you're bold and willing to run the risk of damaging the watch, you can replace the battery yourself for a few dollars.  Banzai.
• Whenever possible, V likes to have multiple options for accessories.  This haul should tickle her pink for some time to come.
• I'm really glad I saved that Target receipt.  Once I'm healthy enough to go out again (cellulitis: it ain't pretty), this Timex is getting returned so fast it'll make your head spin.

And now for a virtual theatrical trailer.

Note: For best effect, you must read the italicized text in your deepest, richest, most dramatic Don LaFontaine trailer voice.  Right?  Go!

There is a place...

...deep in the heart of the city.

To some it is known as a place of peace and goodwill.

But to others...

...it's the end of the line.

[cue dramatic clanky-percussion music]

It is a place where everything has its price... and everything comes cheap.

A place where only the strongest survive.

A place where all who venture inside must cast aside their fears, and dig deep...

...to find what truly lies within.

A place of hidden treasures...

...as well as hidden dangers.

It's no place for the timid...

...but if you have the daring to seek it out...

...the courage to brave the dangers...

...and an industrial-strength bottle of hand sanitizer...

...you might have what it takes to survive...

[music swells to crescendo, then cuts off]

THE BINS.

Yeah, we went to the Bins again today. AND LIVED TO TELL THE TALE, I'll have you know.  Miss V found all manner of secondhand goodies by the pound. (The photo of that shopping cart was taken AFTER she'd picked through it and discarded some of her finds.) I even found a few things, though my secondhand shopping tends to be limited to books, craft items and accessories; I got some all-wool pieces that should felt very nicely, and some cotton clothing I intend to take apart for the fabric.

This is the Goodwill gulag--the place where they send all the merchandise that didn't sell at the area Goodwill stores. If it doesn't sell here at the outlet, it gets recycled or destroyed. Perhaps you'd think such a place would have only the dregs, the thrift-store rejects.  And yes, there is certainly some of that.  But there are also awesome things: designer label jeans, deadstock accessories, adorable purses and bags, kimono and salwar kameez, quirky T-shirts, amazing costume pieces, beautiful shoes. You just have to be willing to dig, and to cultivate an attitude that's open to serendipitous discoveries.

V has a Mysterious Awesome Powah! when it comes to finding stuff at the Bins.  The first time we visited, we arrived just ten minutes before closing time.  Before we were shooed out the door, V used her Thrift-Score Fu to yank a pair of designer jeans out of the closest bin; she bought them without even trying them on (there are no fitting rooms at the Bins). They fit like a glove.

By the way, there was a Neil Gaiman lookalike at the Bins today. (There's a blurry pic of him in one of the photos.) Tall, thin, leather jacket, messy dark hair, prominent nose.  I almost struck up a conversation just to see if he might have a British accent... but I never do very well talking with strangers.

Introducing Scarlett

For some time now I have been scheming to lose weight, and to that end, boring regular readers of this blog with an ongoing quest to obtain a nifty Cannondale bike. But to be frank, some expenses incurred this year and in 2010, plus an overall sluggish U.S. economy, means a Cannondale (which can be pricey) is not in the household budget for the time being.

You think no-budget living is really gonna stop me? Heck no!

Yes, my computer desk is really this untidy. Eh well.

One semi-resourceful brain and ten flying fingers later, I was browsing my local Freecycle group in search of a women's bike in good, rideable condition. Since I'd donated items to Freecycle before, I was in good stead to post a request for a bike.

Here's what turned up:

A beauteous red Schwinn ten-speed. (Alert readers might have noticed this item showing up as a particular detail in an ongoing writing project.) She needs a touch of love here and there, but at the bargain price of FREE I can definitely afford to get her cleaned up.

Gretel has a wonderful habit of naming her bicycles, which seemed a good idea to adopt... so this one has been dubbed Scarlett, for two reasons: 1) the obvious color connection and 2) her name pretty much has to be Scarlett if I'm going to be Gone with the Schwinn.

Hey, don't judge me. I've had to become a pun-fu master in self-defense after many years of hanging around Captain Midnight, Pun King.

Anyway, I still need to pick up some gear, since the county in which we reside has made it illegal for riders even to go for a spin around the neighborhood without wearing dorky bike helmets. Yes, I do realize helmet use is a good idea and contributes to public safety, but just because it's common sense doesn't mean it should automatically be mandatory. Let me be an idiot and run the risk of spilling my own brains on the pavement; I AM AN ADULT AND AS SUCH AM CAPABLE OF MAKING AND LIVING WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF MY OWN CHOICES.

Don't worry, that's all the ranting I'm gonna do for today. (Mutta mutta bureaucrats mutta nanny state mutta mutta.)

ETA: Scarlett needs some love. Her chain slips. Looks like I might need to get it tightened or replaced, possibly along with the sprocket. We shall see.

Cooking compulsions

It's time for me to make a minor confession. I have a really hard time throwing away foodstuffs.

There are several reasons why this is true, I suppose. Part of it may be the legacy of my talented and thrifty mom, who knew how to feed a family of six kids on a freelance graphic designer's (and later, a schoolteacher's) salary. Part of it may come from moral and aesthetic concerns -- a deep-rooted sense that it's wrong to throw away food, especially food derived from animals. In any case, the DON'T WASTE FOOD motto runs thick in my very veins. (You can probably imagine the feeling of sick horror that came over me last year when I discovered our chest freezer had quietly died and several hundred dollars worth of frozen meat, poultry and fish had subsequently gone bad. We shall not speak of this incident again.)

And so on to this evening. Time to roast a chicken. I was merrily pulling chicken guts out of the cavity and came across a big, beautiful, silky-looking chicken liver. Now I'm not a big fan of liver in general; I can eat it, but that doesn't mean I seek it out. Pâté, on the other hand... now that's good stuff. This liver seemed to me to be an excellent candidate for a pâté. I seasoned up the chicken, put it into the oven and went hunting for a good pâté recipe online. After finding one where I had almost all the ingredients on hand, I scaled it down to handle 2 oz. of chicken liver rather than half a pound, and proceeded to do my thang.

Several hours (and a helping of roast chicken, stir-fried choy sum, homemade applesauce and pineapple juice) later, there's a lovely rich cup of liver pâté sitting in the fridge. I just gave it a trial run on some Rykrisp. Oh MAN is it good.

Yes, I could have just thrown it away. But that would have been wrong. So, so very wrong. Mmmmm.

By the way, the leftover roast chicken will be made into at least one more meal. Can't waste it, right?