1. TV shows--you can find them for free on Hulu.com, saving the cost of cable or satellite.
2. Curbside shopping or dumpster diving--you can find all sorts of free stuff there.
3. Freecycle.
4. Word-of-mouth advertising sometimes lands you some surprising results.
5. Use what you already have, or can get more of for free.
6. Garden seeds from food you've already paid for.
7. Sprout beans and seeds from food you've already paid for.
8. Swap stuff with a friend/neighbor. Pay particular attention to electronic gadget freaks--every time they upgrade, they tend to cast off.
9. Follow the sound of a chainsaw, and get firewood for free.
10. Don't be afraid to pick stuff up off the ground--there's money on that pavement!
11. Go to auctions, flea markets, and yard sales near the end, and score stuff that would just get thrown out anyway.
Monday, February 28, 2011
The Secret to Sustainable Frugality
From FavStocks.
"Frugal fatigue has been in the mainstream media a lot this week. It seems that consumers have grown weary of tightening their belts and are letting it all hang out. It’s certainly okay to splurge every once in a while especially on things that have real meaning to you, however, it’s important to not forget the lessons we’ve learned during the recent recession.
The key is to create a positive mindset about frugal living, so that it doesn’t seem like something that’s been imposed on you but rather a way of living that you have chosen for yourself. When we are frugal because it aligns with our values and goals, it’s much easier to see the bigger picture and resist the temptation to solve our problems by spending money.
Why Are You Frugal?
Knowing why you are choosing a frugal lifestyle is the first step. Everyone will have a different answer. Long term financial security is certainly a big one for most people, but think of the other benefits. Do you want to free yourself from being focused on material things? Are you concerned about the environment? Do you want to be able to live on less so that you can spend your time doing things that matter to you?
If you know why you are choosing frugality, you are empowered to stay on track towards meeting your goals. It also gives you the freedom to spend money on the things that will enrich your life as you can see how they fit into your overall goals and desires.
Gain Some Perspective
I am always shocked when I see a news report that says the average household income in the area where I live is in the $30K a year range because it seems like I’m always stopped behind a luxury Lexus SUV with bumper stickers for pricey private schools on the back.
Most of us do tend to notice all the Joneses that are living the high life and ignore all the evidence that many people have much more moderate means and too many are living in dire poverty. This skewed perspective can leave us feeling like we don’t measure up, which can lead to buying things so that we feel like part of the crowd.
I don’t think any of us would feel joy at knowing that many people are struggling just to eat but it can give us perspective and a feeling of gratitude and humility instead of feeling deprived.
Give Yourself Permission to Splurge Wisely
Never spending money on things you would enjoy is a grim way to live. If you’re experiencing a financial crisis, tightening is unavoidable, but when you can, give yourself some leeway to “blow” money on unnecessary items that give you joy.
Starvation diets don’t work in the long run when it comes to losing weight and neither does a starvation budget.
Not only will you eventually rebel, but it doesn’t teach you how to weigh options and make smart choices. As many failed dieters will tell you, sheer willpower is not enough. You need to craft a plan that works with your lifestyle and personality for long-term success.
Replace Spending with Something Else
If you’ve ever stopped smoking, you’ll know that kicking the habit is much easier if you can replace smoking with another activity to break old habits and stay away from trouble spots like nightclubs and friends that smoke. Likewise, it’s hard to stop spending if you spend all your free time in the mall or browsing online deal sites!
I’ve found that the more physical activity I get in my life, the less I spend. It keeps me out of the stores and I’m too busy to even think about all the cool stuff I could be buying. What activities do you enjoy that will keep your mind off of shopping and give your life richness and meaning?
Finding a circle of friends who are willing to spend time doing low-cost activities with you is an excellent way to fill your days with fun. If your friends and family usually like to do things like go to the movies or restaurants, take the lead and invite them to a movie night at your place or a picnic in the park. You might even find that they are grateful to you for finding inexpensive ways to fill the time."
I enjoy watching my savings balance grow, giving me more money (tax free) to invest, spend on home improvements, car repairs, feline maintenance, and better food. I'd gladly trade in satellite TV fees for an Angus eye of round or two every month, or just to have gas money for the car (if it came down to it). I'm gladly trading doctor and dental bills for gardening, and off-peak electrical use for a 50% discount in my bill.
What are YOU trading in your pursuit of frugality?
"Frugal fatigue has been in the mainstream media a lot this week. It seems that consumers have grown weary of tightening their belts and are letting it all hang out. It’s certainly okay to splurge every once in a while especially on things that have real meaning to you, however, it’s important to not forget the lessons we’ve learned during the recent recession.
The key is to create a positive mindset about frugal living, so that it doesn’t seem like something that’s been imposed on you but rather a way of living that you have chosen for yourself. When we are frugal because it aligns with our values and goals, it’s much easier to see the bigger picture and resist the temptation to solve our problems by spending money.
Why Are You Frugal?
Knowing why you are choosing a frugal lifestyle is the first step. Everyone will have a different answer. Long term financial security is certainly a big one for most people, but think of the other benefits. Do you want to free yourself from being focused on material things? Are you concerned about the environment? Do you want to be able to live on less so that you can spend your time doing things that matter to you?
If you know why you are choosing frugality, you are empowered to stay on track towards meeting your goals. It also gives you the freedom to spend money on the things that will enrich your life as you can see how they fit into your overall goals and desires.
Gain Some Perspective
I am always shocked when I see a news report that says the average household income in the area where I live is in the $30K a year range because it seems like I’m always stopped behind a luxury Lexus SUV with bumper stickers for pricey private schools on the back.
Most of us do tend to notice all the Joneses that are living the high life and ignore all the evidence that many people have much more moderate means and too many are living in dire poverty. This skewed perspective can leave us feeling like we don’t measure up, which can lead to buying things so that we feel like part of the crowd.
I don’t think any of us would feel joy at knowing that many people are struggling just to eat but it can give us perspective and a feeling of gratitude and humility instead of feeling deprived.
Give Yourself Permission to Splurge Wisely
Never spending money on things you would enjoy is a grim way to live. If you’re experiencing a financial crisis, tightening is unavoidable, but when you can, give yourself some leeway to “blow” money on unnecessary items that give you joy.
Starvation diets don’t work in the long run when it comes to losing weight and neither does a starvation budget.
Not only will you eventually rebel, but it doesn’t teach you how to weigh options and make smart choices. As many failed dieters will tell you, sheer willpower is not enough. You need to craft a plan that works with your lifestyle and personality for long-term success.
Replace Spending with Something Else
If you’ve ever stopped smoking, you’ll know that kicking the habit is much easier if you can replace smoking with another activity to break old habits and stay away from trouble spots like nightclubs and friends that smoke. Likewise, it’s hard to stop spending if you spend all your free time in the mall or browsing online deal sites!
I’ve found that the more physical activity I get in my life, the less I spend. It keeps me out of the stores and I’m too busy to even think about all the cool stuff I could be buying. What activities do you enjoy that will keep your mind off of shopping and give your life richness and meaning?
Finding a circle of friends who are willing to spend time doing low-cost activities with you is an excellent way to fill your days with fun. If your friends and family usually like to do things like go to the movies or restaurants, take the lead and invite them to a movie night at your place or a picnic in the park. You might even find that they are grateful to you for finding inexpensive ways to fill the time."
I enjoy watching my savings balance grow, giving me more money (tax free) to invest, spend on home improvements, car repairs, feline maintenance, and better food. I'd gladly trade in satellite TV fees for an Angus eye of round or two every month, or just to have gas money for the car (if it came down to it). I'm gladly trading doctor and dental bills for gardening, and off-peak electrical use for a 50% discount in my bill.
What are YOU trading in your pursuit of frugality?
Guide to Cooking in Small Spaces
From Earth 911.
"An apartment dweller can’t flip through cookbooks or culinary magazines without feeling inadequate. Images of spacious counter tops, shelves that hold every spice imaginable and long dinning room tables all strike envy in the hearts’ of city cooks. It’s enough to make you want to call for takeout and never cook again.
But according to Amy Pennington, size doesn’t matter, at least when it comes to your kitchen. In her book “Urban Pantry: Tips & Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable & Seasonal Kitchen,” Pennington shares tips for starting a pantry garden, small batch canning and stocking small spaces with the essentials – all with saving money in mind.
We asked Pennington to give Earth911′s city cooks some of her own tips and favorite recipes.
1. Space-saving kitchen secrets
2. Growing herbs in the windowsill
3. If there’s no room for recycling…
4. The cookware you need
5. Food that’s worth the money
6. Last-minute, low-resource recipes
Anybody know what a "gremolata" is?
"An apartment dweller can’t flip through cookbooks or culinary magazines without feeling inadequate. Images of spacious counter tops, shelves that hold every spice imaginable and long dinning room tables all strike envy in the hearts’ of city cooks. It’s enough to make you want to call for takeout and never cook again.
But according to Amy Pennington, size doesn’t matter, at least when it comes to your kitchen. In her book “Urban Pantry: Tips & Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable & Seasonal Kitchen,” Pennington shares tips for starting a pantry garden, small batch canning and stocking small spaces with the essentials – all with saving money in mind.
We asked Pennington to give Earth911′s city cooks some of her own tips and favorite recipes.
1. Space-saving kitchen secrets
Earth911: What are some space-saving ideas you can give to chefs burdened with tiny kitchens? Are there containers or shelving techniques you use at home to save space?
Amy Pennington: The first thing to really think about is how much food you will actually use. A single person does not need a 5-pound bag of potatoes, whereas a family of four can use them. It is always best to buy in bulk when you can, for the best deal, but also so you’re able to control quantity. Only make risotto once in a blue moon? Then you only need 2 cups of pearled barley (or arborio rice), and there is no reason to crowd your small pantry with more. By purchasing smaller quantities, you cook through them faster and make space to try some new things.
2. Growing herbs in the windowsill
Earth911: What about apartment gardening? What are some great windowsill herbs to grow?
AP: You can grow herbs on your windowsill (presuming you have sun exposure for at least six hours a day), but I wouldn’t recommend it. If you cook a few times a week, a small pot of herbs on your windowsill won’t actually produce enough green fast enough to satisfy. If you’re able, it’s better to put a pot of herbs outside. If you really only have your windowsill, I’d recommend some other home-growing projects like sprouting seeds or having a little micro green garden for garnishes.
3. If there’s no room for recycling…
Earth911:What about recycling, do you have any space saving ideas for keeping your recycling and trash neat in a tiny space?[Author note: I LOVE my Simple Human trash/recycling bin.]
AP: I compost anything I can, adding it to the city’s yard waste containers that are collected once a week. All vegetable scraps, fruit peels, eggshells and coffee grinds go in to a gallon-sized glass mason jar. I take that out every two days or so, because it gets full fast and in that way, never smells or rots. I do the same for recycling. I simply reuse paper grocery bags and take it out often. If you get into the habit of taking your waste out often, you don’t need a big space to contain it! I create very little waste, so there is no need for me to have a big garbage can, either.
4. The cookware you need
Earth911: What are some common mistakes new cooks in tiny kitchens make? Are there items that novice chefs tend to buy that they really don’t need and don’t have the space for?
AP: Too many gadgets! You don’t need a garlic press if you have a knife, and many other kitchen items that are meant to be convenient just end up taking up space. Be realistic about what equipment you’ll use often and only purchase those. (If you make rice four times a week, a rice maker is great!) You can get by really well on a rubber spatula, a wooden spoon and a good chef’s knife. You also really only need one saucepan and one fry pan. New cooks also have a tendency to buy ingredients only because they think they’ll need them, [but they] just have to be realistic about how often they will cook and shop accordingly.
5. Food that’s worth the money
Earth911:What are some more expensive items or ingredients that are worth the cost?
AP: Spices are worth the extra expense. A beautifully smoked paprika is an entirely different beast then the paprika you buy in a tin from the grocery. Local and organic meat, eggs and dairy are also worth the cost. I don’t eat meat often, as I can’t afford local organic meat, which is often more than half the cost of conventional, but the extra money you spend is totally worth it. This meat is typically grass fed and therefore leaner and has a more complex flavor which means a little goes a long way (and saves you money!).
6. Last-minute, low-resource recipes
Earth911: What’s your favorite dish to cook for guests? What about a comforting meal after a long day?
AP: My hands down favorite comfort meal is roast chicken and a gin martini. When in doubt, I will roast a chicken. For guests, I like to cook elaborate meals that come together simply so I’m not stuck in the kitchen all night. Braises are great for this – you just put them in the oven and leave them be. You can make them special by focusing on condiments and garnishes – some gremolata, some pickled vegetables, a compound butter – these are the things that make meals special."
Anybody know what a "gremolata" is?
10 Things Americans Waste Money On
From 24/7 Wall St.
"24/7 Wall St. reviewed how Americans spend money. One of the conclusions of this analysis is that consumer spending is relatively alive and well, despite the recession. This may mean that Americans continue to be over-leveraged. US citizens have, in general, brought down their indebtedness. However, holiday spending rose substantially from last year, and the extent to which Americans feel poor has declined now that the recession has ended. Americans spend about 15% of their household incomes on things that they do not need to satisfy their vices or to keep themselves amused.
We examined the changes in spending patterns over the course of one generation–20 years. Americans have certainly not cut back on vices because of the recent difficult economy, with the exception of casinos which were hurt badly by the slowdown. Money spent on alcohol and tobacco is about the same as it was two decades ago. Sin apparently is not beaten down by hard times."
...
"24/7 reviewed how American households spend their money and identified categories in which the expenditures are purely discretionary as a way to set its final list of ways people spend money on unnecessary items. We removed all expenses that could be considered essential to maintain a reasonable living, good health and a steady job. Then, we identified the ten categories of unnecessary purchases which accounted for the largest part of U.S. household expenditures. We also broke the data into several demographics, including income before taxes, regions of the country, and the number of people in each household.
The ten categories of unnecessary purchase can be balanced against the ability of Americans to save money or pay off debts. The “average” American household which has an income of $63,000 spends more than $8,000 on goods and services it does not actually need. The credit crisis might not have been so bad if all that money had been put into savings accounts between 1989 and 2009, but the period would not have been nearly as fun."
TOP 10 LIST
10. Apparel Products and Services
9. Tobacco
8. Entertainment Equipment and Services (Nonessential)
7. Alcohol
6. Fees and Admissions
5. Lodging, Vacation Homes and Hotels
4. Pets, Toys, Hobbies, and Playground Equipment
3. Television, Radio, and Sound Equipment
2. Gifts
1. Food Away From Home
Even if we were to cut just the top three items, we'd be miles ahead of where we are today. As for #4, I'd add children to the list.
If I could speak to the author about energy usage, I'd have him/her add it to the list, because we don't really pay attention to WHEN we use energy---we just expect the power to come on when we flip the switch, no matter what time of day or night, and no matter the grid conditions. That convenience comes with a heavy price--to the tune of a 50% price increase.
If I could also speak to the author about FOOD waste and the amount of food people are dredging up in dumpsters and trash cans, I'd ask that this be added just as soon as a dollar figure could be assigned to it.
"24/7 Wall St. reviewed how Americans spend money. One of the conclusions of this analysis is that consumer spending is relatively alive and well, despite the recession. This may mean that Americans continue to be over-leveraged. US citizens have, in general, brought down their indebtedness. However, holiday spending rose substantially from last year, and the extent to which Americans feel poor has declined now that the recession has ended. Americans spend about 15% of their household incomes on things that they do not need to satisfy their vices or to keep themselves amused.
We examined the changes in spending patterns over the course of one generation–20 years. Americans have certainly not cut back on vices because of the recent difficult economy, with the exception of casinos which were hurt badly by the slowdown. Money spent on alcohol and tobacco is about the same as it was two decades ago. Sin apparently is not beaten down by hard times."
...
"24/7 reviewed how American households spend their money and identified categories in which the expenditures are purely discretionary as a way to set its final list of ways people spend money on unnecessary items. We removed all expenses that could be considered essential to maintain a reasonable living, good health and a steady job. Then, we identified the ten categories of unnecessary purchases which accounted for the largest part of U.S. household expenditures. We also broke the data into several demographics, including income before taxes, regions of the country, and the number of people in each household.
The ten categories of unnecessary purchase can be balanced against the ability of Americans to save money or pay off debts. The “average” American household which has an income of $63,000 spends more than $8,000 on goods and services it does not actually need. The credit crisis might not have been so bad if all that money had been put into savings accounts between 1989 and 2009, but the period would not have been nearly as fun."
TOP 10 LIST
10. Apparel Products and Services
9. Tobacco
8. Entertainment Equipment and Services (Nonessential)
7. Alcohol
6. Fees and Admissions
5. Lodging, Vacation Homes and Hotels
4. Pets, Toys, Hobbies, and Playground Equipment
3. Television, Radio, and Sound Equipment
2. Gifts
1. Food Away From Home
Even if we were to cut just the top three items, we'd be miles ahead of where we are today. As for #4, I'd add children to the list.
If I could speak to the author about energy usage, I'd have him/her add it to the list, because we don't really pay attention to WHEN we use energy---we just expect the power to come on when we flip the switch, no matter what time of day or night, and no matter the grid conditions. That convenience comes with a heavy price--to the tune of a 50% price increase.
If I could also speak to the author about FOOD waste and the amount of food people are dredging up in dumpsters and trash cans, I'd ask that this be added just as soon as a dollar figure could be assigned to it.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Do Your Own "Free" Shopping
Here's the secret (well, not so secret--I've known about it at least a decade, but have given over to a better system)--it's called Baseball Couponing.
Here's how you run the bases.
FIRST BASE: Just using coupons alone as you need the item. You save a little.
SECOND BASE: Combining coupons with store sales. You save about half.
THIRD BASE: Combining coupons, store sales, and rebates. You save 3/4 to all.
HOME RUN: Combining store sales, coupons, rebates, and some sort of cash-back program (whether it's the store's, your credit card's, or some third-party program). You DEFINITELY get money back.
However, there are always drawbacks to the game, such as mismatched coupon and store sale timing, short expiration dates on coupons, coupon and store sale buying restrictions, a non-existent rebate, or a non-existent cash-back program.
Now that everyone's going coupon-crazy lately, expect the store sales and coupons to be few, far between, and full of junk nobody wants. The coupon expiration dates will be shorter, and the coupon values will go down to the point of near-worthlessness. The retailers are going to use this to their advantage, and get their expiring goods out of the stores faster, jack up the prices right before a sale, and let manufacturers and cash-back programs take any losses from discounting.
In reality, when you brush aside all these games, there is a free lunch only to be found from food demonstrators in warehouse stores--nowhere else. The closest you can get is the lowest price per unit you can find for the largest quantity you can find, so you make fewer repeat purchases, until you figure out a way to stop purchasing altogether, and create your own stuff...or change how you live and eat so you don't need the products being hawked in the grocery stores and drugstores in the FIRST place!
It's not what you save (in discounts), it's what you don't spend to begin with. Couponers need that little slip of paper to justify their shopaholic-ness, and extreme couponers need therapy more than the rest--and not RETAIL therapy!
Here's how you run the bases.
FIRST BASE: Just using coupons alone as you need the item. You save a little.
SECOND BASE: Combining coupons with store sales. You save about half.
THIRD BASE: Combining coupons, store sales, and rebates. You save 3/4 to all.
HOME RUN: Combining store sales, coupons, rebates, and some sort of cash-back program (whether it's the store's, your credit card's, or some third-party program). You DEFINITELY get money back.
However, there are always drawbacks to the game, such as mismatched coupon and store sale timing, short expiration dates on coupons, coupon and store sale buying restrictions, a non-existent rebate, or a non-existent cash-back program.
Now that everyone's going coupon-crazy lately, expect the store sales and coupons to be few, far between, and full of junk nobody wants. The coupon expiration dates will be shorter, and the coupon values will go down to the point of near-worthlessness. The retailers are going to use this to their advantage, and get their expiring goods out of the stores faster, jack up the prices right before a sale, and let manufacturers and cash-back programs take any losses from discounting.
In reality, when you brush aside all these games, there is a free lunch only to be found from food demonstrators in warehouse stores--nowhere else. The closest you can get is the lowest price per unit you can find for the largest quantity you can find, so you make fewer repeat purchases, until you figure out a way to stop purchasing altogether, and create your own stuff...or change how you live and eat so you don't need the products being hawked in the grocery stores and drugstores in the FIRST place!
It's not what you save (in discounts), it's what you don't spend to begin with. Couponers need that little slip of paper to justify their shopaholic-ness, and extreme couponers need therapy more than the rest--and not RETAIL therapy!
Frugal Living--Everyday Savings
From the Manila Bulletin (Philippines).
"There are savings to be made in everything we do at home, from washing the dishes, preparing meals, to doing the laundry; all it takes is a few adjustments and a little time. These days, with the cost of everything going up, saving a bit here and there all adds up to easing the household budget and teaching the kids a better, more earth-friendly lifestyle as well.
LAUNDRY– Doing everything at home by myself has given me a lifetime of lessons on how to save on very important stuff: water, detergent, electricity and time.
The first tip is: dissolve the detergent in water before adding the dirty clothes. In the washing machine, this is done by running the tub for a few minutes while adding the powder detergent. Add the clothes when there’s no longer any trace of powder in the water. The aim here is to ensure that the detergent’s washing power is distributed evenly to all the pieces of clothing.
Never make the mistake of adding detergent to a washing machine filled with dirty clothes. The power will clump in the nooks and crannies, pockets and what-have-you of all the washables, making it virtually impossible to rinse them all off. And think of the wasted cleaning power of the undissolved powder.
DRYING– After soaping and rinsing, drying the wash is another point where one can save money. When spin-drying, consider the weather outside. If it is sunny, spin-dry the batch only a couple of minutes, just enough so the items do not drip when hung. Use the power of the sun and the wind for drying whenever possible. If your drying area has limited space, take the time to rotate the drying clothes so each piece is touched by the sun and the wind during the drying period.
TO PRESS OR NOT– In our household, we hardly take out the electric iron to press our clothes. I stretch the clothes while they are hanging out to dry. Jeans, T-shirts, pants, blouses all come out creaseless. The system calls for stretching the clothes on the diagonal, this way and that way, while wet. Do it again after a few minutes to redo the stubborn parts.
My grandson’s white long sleeved shirts for school go to a neighborhood laundry shop which does it cheaper and more efficiently than if I had done it at home. For P80 per kilo (5 shirts), I pay only P160 for two weeks worth of uniforms that get washed, pressed and delivered to me in my own hangers. That is much less than I would have paid for an “extra” maid to wash and press them at home.
FOOD PREPARATION– Cook in bulk to save money on ingredients, time and fuel.
Cooking for six persons costs only a bit more than cooking for two; and with freezers, refs and microwaves, storage and reheating are no longer formidable problems.
For example, because there’s only me and my grandson in the apartment, it is impractical to cook rice every time we sit down for a meal. What I do is cook a kilo of rice in the rice cooker and pack the rice in solo servings once it cools. One minute on high is enough to zap one serving of rice to steaming. We cook rice only two or three times a week, and use the microwave a lot for reheating.
Cooking in bulk is great also for viands. Take Adobo, which tastes even better when reheated. This applies also to such dishes as Mechado, Menudo, Paksiw na Lechon, Dinuguan, Paksiw na Isda, Kare-Kare and Kaldereta.
Pasta dishes and casseroles are also perfect cooked in advance, frozen and reheated when needed. Our other favorite pre-cooked meals are: Baked Macaroni, Spaghetti, Pasta Alfredo, Eggplant with Mozzarella sauce, Pizza, Beef Stew, Pot Roast and Callos.
FOOD PURCHASING– Nothing beats buying in bulk. The Filipino “tingi” habit of buying cigarettes by the stick, shampoo by sachet and vegetables by “tali” or “tumpok” means paying twice as much for the items.
Market prices are quite affordable when buying by the kilo or half kilo. This applies to vegetables, fruits, flour, sugar, oil, fish, chicken and meats.
Wash and gut the fish and freeze individually or in layers separated by wax paper or plastic. Meats should be frozen in thin layers, Season what has to be seasoned (Daing na Bangus, Adobo, Tapa) before freezing.
Vegetables and fruits should be cleaned of mature or wilting leaves, fruits and non-leafy veggies should be washed in water with mild detergent to get rid of surface soil and dirt. Air dry or blot with kitchen towels before packing and storing in the refrigerator.
Singles or very small families should find friends and relatives to share their purchases with, splitting the cost and transport expenses.
One can also save by not buying processed meats; it is much cheaper and more satisfying to make your own. You also get peace of mind, knowing what goes into everything you serve your family."
You can also season and/or marinate in the same bags you subdivide meats into for freezing. Meat absorbs spices or marinade while thawing.
I didn't see a word one in there about coupon craziness--not one word!
"There are savings to be made in everything we do at home, from washing the dishes, preparing meals, to doing the laundry; all it takes is a few adjustments and a little time. These days, with the cost of everything going up, saving a bit here and there all adds up to easing the household budget and teaching the kids a better, more earth-friendly lifestyle as well.
LAUNDRY– Doing everything at home by myself has given me a lifetime of lessons on how to save on very important stuff: water, detergent, electricity and time.
The first tip is: dissolve the detergent in water before adding the dirty clothes. In the washing machine, this is done by running the tub for a few minutes while adding the powder detergent. Add the clothes when there’s no longer any trace of powder in the water. The aim here is to ensure that the detergent’s washing power is distributed evenly to all the pieces of clothing.
Never make the mistake of adding detergent to a washing machine filled with dirty clothes. The power will clump in the nooks and crannies, pockets and what-have-you of all the washables, making it virtually impossible to rinse them all off. And think of the wasted cleaning power of the undissolved powder.
DRYING– After soaping and rinsing, drying the wash is another point where one can save money. When spin-drying, consider the weather outside. If it is sunny, spin-dry the batch only a couple of minutes, just enough so the items do not drip when hung. Use the power of the sun and the wind for drying whenever possible. If your drying area has limited space, take the time to rotate the drying clothes so each piece is touched by the sun and the wind during the drying period.
TO PRESS OR NOT– In our household, we hardly take out the electric iron to press our clothes. I stretch the clothes while they are hanging out to dry. Jeans, T-shirts, pants, blouses all come out creaseless. The system calls for stretching the clothes on the diagonal, this way and that way, while wet. Do it again after a few minutes to redo the stubborn parts.
My grandson’s white long sleeved shirts for school go to a neighborhood laundry shop which does it cheaper and more efficiently than if I had done it at home. For P80 per kilo (5 shirts), I pay only P160 for two weeks worth of uniforms that get washed, pressed and delivered to me in my own hangers. That is much less than I would have paid for an “extra” maid to wash and press them at home.
FOOD PREPARATION– Cook in bulk to save money on ingredients, time and fuel.
Cooking for six persons costs only a bit more than cooking for two; and with freezers, refs and microwaves, storage and reheating are no longer formidable problems.
For example, because there’s only me and my grandson in the apartment, it is impractical to cook rice every time we sit down for a meal. What I do is cook a kilo of rice in the rice cooker and pack the rice in solo servings once it cools. One minute on high is enough to zap one serving of rice to steaming. We cook rice only two or three times a week, and use the microwave a lot for reheating.
Cooking in bulk is great also for viands. Take Adobo, which tastes even better when reheated. This applies also to such dishes as Mechado, Menudo, Paksiw na Lechon, Dinuguan, Paksiw na Isda, Kare-Kare and Kaldereta.
Pasta dishes and casseroles are also perfect cooked in advance, frozen and reheated when needed. Our other favorite pre-cooked meals are: Baked Macaroni, Spaghetti, Pasta Alfredo, Eggplant with Mozzarella sauce, Pizza, Beef Stew, Pot Roast and Callos.
FOOD PURCHASING– Nothing beats buying in bulk. The Filipino “tingi” habit of buying cigarettes by the stick, shampoo by sachet and vegetables by “tali” or “tumpok” means paying twice as much for the items.
Market prices are quite affordable when buying by the kilo or half kilo. This applies to vegetables, fruits, flour, sugar, oil, fish, chicken and meats.
Wash and gut the fish and freeze individually or in layers separated by wax paper or plastic. Meats should be frozen in thin layers, Season what has to be seasoned (Daing na Bangus, Adobo, Tapa) before freezing.
Vegetables and fruits should be cleaned of mature or wilting leaves, fruits and non-leafy veggies should be washed in water with mild detergent to get rid of surface soil and dirt. Air dry or blot with kitchen towels before packing and storing in the refrigerator.
Singles or very small families should find friends and relatives to share their purchases with, splitting the cost and transport expenses.
One can also save by not buying processed meats; it is much cheaper and more satisfying to make your own. You also get peace of mind, knowing what goes into everything you serve your family."
You can also season and/or marinate in the same bags you subdivide meats into for freezing. Meat absorbs spices or marinade while thawing.
I didn't see a word one in there about coupon craziness--not one word!
A Madcap Quest for "Free"
From the Boston Globe.
"As soon as Kathy Spencer walked into the Rite Aid in Haverhill, early one recent Sunday morning, she knew something was up: All the carts were gone. At that hour, she was accustomed to having the store to herself, quietly piling hundreds of dollars worth of goods in her cart, quietly working the system, quietly walking out the door without having to pay for any of it.
Instead, the store was “a madhouse full of crazy women fighting over toilet paper,’’ she said.
She knew exactly who was to blame: she was.
“I had a moment,’’ she said, “where I wondered, ‘What have I done?’ ’’
In the world of “extreme couponing,’’ Spencer, a 41-year-old mother of four who lives in Boxford, has quickly risen to guru status. In private classes and a new book, “How to Shop for Free,’’ the woman who claims to feed her family on $4 a week and is known to her disciples as the “Oprah of couponing’’ teaches a complicated, and some say controversial, series of tips and tricks. Her program ranges from simple advice on where to find good coupons and sales, to the calculated exploitation of loopholes in store rewards programs. This is a woman who makes $20 each time she fills a prescription — by moving them to a different pharmacy each month to earn the gift cards that many offer for new or transferred prescriptions.
Spencer’s approach requires significant planning and effort, a willingness to stand up to hostile cashiers, and, some say, a lack of shame. But the reward she offers is too good for her thousands of devotees to pass up.
The goal is not simply a good deal, she says. “The goal is free.’’
On that seminal Sunday last month, a combination of factors collided to bring an entirely new pack of extreme couponers to the scene at once, unable to resist that first taste of “free.’’ After the Great Toilet Paper Rush, nothing would be the same.
“It was the day that sent a seismic wave through coupondom,’’ said Melanie Feehan, a veteran extreme couponer who arrived at a Rite Aid near her home in Plymouth shortly after it opened, only to discover the toilet paper had been cleared from the shelves by a man who bragged to a clerk that he had already emptied three other Rite Aids that morning.
“When a newbie couponer is birthed they are very much like baby vampires,’’ Feehan wrote on her popular blog, The Coupon Goddess. “They go on a couponing rampage that wreaks havoc at every store they descend upon . . . Carnage.’’
Directly and indirectly, it is Kathy Spencer who gave birth to many of those vampires. Annemarie Guertin took Spencer’s class four months ago and says she has since used her system to get more than $15,000 worth of products for little or no money. A 34-year-old kindergarten teacher from Haverhill, Guertin walked out of Rite Aid with so much “free’’ toilet paper that she could not fit it all in her sport utility vehicle; she gave the rest to strangers in the parking lot.
Coupon redemption has experienced a sharp uptick in the down economy, with six quarters of double-digit growth since 2009, according to Inmar, a company that tracks coupon trends. Within this return to frugality, Spencer is trying to position herself as a penny-pinching brand.
In social settings, Spencer is quite reserved, even retiring. She has a small voice and a small frame and admits to being shy almost everywhere except for the aisles. But when she enters a store, she enters a zone; on a recent shopping trip, her pace quickened the second her hands touched the cart. Her eyes scanned everything, and she mumbled aloud as she considered the math for each deal. When she passed other shoppers carrying coupons, she instinctively scrutinized their carts for clues to deals she might be missing. Her husband calls her the “Rain Man of couponing.’’
Her bargain-hunting chops have become urban legend. People clap for her at the checkout counter. When she took “Good Morning America’’ to her local Shaw’s and used her methods to get $267 worth of groceries for a penny, a stunned Diane Sawyer declared that Spencer made her feel “inferior.’’
On her website, howtoshopforfree.net, Spencer and her followers — her site received about 43,000 unique visitors last month, according to Nielsen Online — stalk the circulars and wait for moments when a sale can combine with a coupon or two to make the item free or, in a lot of cases, earn them a profit in store credit or rebates. Then they pounce and stockpile the item so they can cross it off their shopping list for an extended period. Spencer’s claim of a $4-a-week grocery bill inspires incredulity, but she says she can do it because she has so many staples in her stockpile, and they only eat what’s on sale. Her husband, Brian, a gravedigger in Peabody, refers to weekly sale circulars as his “dinner menu.’’
In December, shortly after the publication of Spencer’s book, the TLC cable network aired “Extreme Couponing,’’ a special that tracked four couponers as they made some ridiculously large hauls. The show triggered a stampede to Internet coupon forums by people desperate to learn the secrets and, on Spencer’s forum, they found an easy way to build stockpiles of a staple that never spoils: Rite Aid toilet paper.
Using one of the signature techniques of Spencer’s system, they could “roll’’ store credit to get an unlimited amount of toilet paper for free without even needing a coupon. Four-packs and single rolls of toilet paper were on sale for $1, but each purchase earned a $1 reward in store credit. By breaking the purchase up into several transactions and rolling the credit from one to the next, they could essentially make Rite Aid pay for it, over and over.
She has similar systems at Shaw’s, Market Basket, Kohl’s and especially CVS, where she has a PhD-level understanding of its ExtraCare rewards program.
“I started at CVS six years ago with $8 out of pocket and since then I haven’t spent any real dollar bills in the store,’’ she said, though she claims she has taken thousands of dollars in real products out. Store managers in her area, wary of running out of sale items, now ask for her help. They give her circulars weeks in advance so she can identify the weak spots and they can stock up.
“She is just very, very proficient at what she does, and I don’t want to run out of things on the first day of the sale,’’ said Wayne Lamoureux, manager of a Rite Aid in Haverhill.
Spencer insists she is not a shelf clearer and preaches against it. But not all her disciples listen, as became clear that Sunday and again the following Saturday, when she took a Globe reporter to Shaw’s.
On her shopping list were four items that had gone on sale a little more than an hour before. With coupons, she could get them for nothing. But in each case, she arrived to find shelves that had been ransacked.
“This is definitely the work of someone who reads my website,’’ she said, chagrined. Several times, she blamed her “big mouth.’’
Spencer first opened her mouth about couponing five years ago, when she used coupons to get three bottles of juice completely free. Her husband was very sick and out of work, and she turned to coupons to help make ends meet. She had grown up in a frugal home in Chelsea with a mother who had an accordion coupon file, but said those three juices triggered an epiphany.
“When I was loading them into the carriage, it all clicked,’’ she said. From there, she “cracked the code,’’ which allowed her to quit her job as a loan officer to coupon full time. After tiring of repeating her instructions over and over, she created a Yahoo! forum and posted her system there. After the site was featured on the Yahoo! homepage, the media came calling and everything took off.
There is an inherent thrill built into extreme couponing, practicioners say, a “coupon high’’ that can be as addictive as a drug. “I’ll bring girls and they’ll just shake like they’re shoplifiting,’’ she said.
Spencer has been doing it so long now and so often — one television show looked at her numbers and estimated that she saves $60,000 a year — that “free’’ has lost its excitement. It’s become a job. She spends a lot of time getting things she does not want or need because it allows her to roll store credit (which expires) or feed her new high, which is giving things away to those who do need it. She says she regularly donates to food banks, and recently made a man cry when she gave him a chicken she had gotten for free.
Extreme couponers love to post photos of their stockpiles online; to the unaccustomed eye, they can be shockingly large, filling multiple rooms. Spencer’s own stash is relatively small; she limits herself to a year’s worth of a product at a time because she’s confident she can always get more.
But, Spencer admits, there is one thing she hoards almost helplessly, and led a reporter to a bathroom upstairs in her house. There, she opened a door to reveal a closet full of toilet paper."
What did I say previously about ants, grasshoppers, and the frantic game of catch-up? Had these people been doing this about 3 years ago, they'd have been better prepared for the recession/depression we're in now, and probably would still have the foreclosed house stuff it all in. There certainly wouldn't be the building uprising for Level 5 federal unemployment bennies you see going on in activist circles, over-worked food bank workers, and crammed social service offices.
As for no carts and crammed stores, this is why I choose to go out during the week, instead of the weekends--everyone else is at work, so I have little competition on the freeways, in the parking lots, and in the stores. There is no hard and fast rule that says you must go out on weekends--in fact, if you want to avoid crowds, avoid the days crowds are most likely to gather...on weekends.
Drug store crap is so over-priced to begin with, and now they're knowingly giving away the store for the sake of sales--you gotta be thinking about quality at this point. There is no quality. Products are under-sized, watered down, under-strengthed, and just all around poor choices. Even free, these products are over-priced! Don't get me started on expiration dates...these are worse than convenience stores for it!
I have a big mouth too (well, a loud blog, anyway), and I'm not one bit sorry about starting some anti-coupon movement--in fact, it wasn't even me who started it. I learned it from Amy Dacyzcyn of the Tightwad Gazette books over a decade ago, when times were still good. As for the absence of carts in a store, that's okay--I only need a hand-basket for small stuff. A large amount of my shopping's done elsewhere, where there's a whole lot less people buying lots bigger quantities for much less.
"As soon as Kathy Spencer walked into the Rite Aid in Haverhill, early one recent Sunday morning, she knew something was up: All the carts were gone. At that hour, she was accustomed to having the store to herself, quietly piling hundreds of dollars worth of goods in her cart, quietly working the system, quietly walking out the door without having to pay for any of it.
Instead, the store was “a madhouse full of crazy women fighting over toilet paper,’’ she said.
She knew exactly who was to blame: she was.
“I had a moment,’’ she said, “where I wondered, ‘What have I done?’ ’’
Spencer’s approach requires significant planning and effort, a willingness to stand up to hostile cashiers, and, some say, a lack of shame. But the reward she offers is too good for her thousands of devotees to pass up.
The goal is not simply a good deal, she says. “The goal is free.’’
“It was the day that sent a seismic wave through coupondom,’’ said Melanie Feehan, a veteran extreme couponer who arrived at a Rite Aid near her home in Plymouth shortly after it opened, only to discover the toilet paper had been cleared from the shelves by a man who bragged to a clerk that he had already emptied three other Rite Aids that morning.
“When a newbie couponer is birthed they are very much like baby vampires,’’ Feehan wrote on her popular blog, The Coupon Goddess. “They go on a couponing rampage that wreaks havoc at every store they descend upon . . . Carnage.’’
Directly and indirectly, it is Kathy Spencer who gave birth to many of those vampires. Annemarie Guertin took Spencer’s class four months ago and says she has since used her system to get more than $15,000 worth of products for little or no money. A 34-year-old kindergarten teacher from Haverhill, Guertin walked out of Rite Aid with so much “free’’ toilet paper that she could not fit it all in her sport utility vehicle; she gave the rest to strangers in the parking lot.
Coupon redemption has experienced a sharp uptick in the down economy, with six quarters of double-digit growth since 2009, according to Inmar, a company that tracks coupon trends. Within this return to frugality, Spencer is trying to position herself as a penny-pinching brand.
In social settings, Spencer is quite reserved, even retiring. She has a small voice and a small frame and admits to being shy almost everywhere except for the aisles. But when she enters a store, she enters a zone; on a recent shopping trip, her pace quickened the second her hands touched the cart. Her eyes scanned everything, and she mumbled aloud as she considered the math for each deal. When she passed other shoppers carrying coupons, she instinctively scrutinized their carts for clues to deals she might be missing. Her husband calls her the “Rain Man of couponing.’’
Her bargain-hunting chops have become urban legend. People clap for her at the checkout counter. When she took “Good Morning America’’ to her local Shaw’s and used her methods to get $267 worth of groceries for a penny, a stunned Diane Sawyer declared that Spencer made her feel “inferior.’’
On her website, howtoshopforfree.net, Spencer and her followers — her site received about 43,000 unique visitors last month, according to Nielsen Online — stalk the circulars and wait for moments when a sale can combine with a coupon or two to make the item free or, in a lot of cases, earn them a profit in store credit or rebates. Then they pounce and stockpile the item so they can cross it off their shopping list for an extended period. Spencer’s claim of a $4-a-week grocery bill inspires incredulity, but she says she can do it because she has so many staples in her stockpile, and they only eat what’s on sale. Her husband, Brian, a gravedigger in Peabody, refers to weekly sale circulars as his “dinner menu.’’
In December, shortly after the publication of Spencer’s book, the TLC cable network aired “Extreme Couponing,’’ a special that tracked four couponers as they made some ridiculously large hauls. The show triggered a stampede to Internet coupon forums by people desperate to learn the secrets and, on Spencer’s forum, they found an easy way to build stockpiles of a staple that never spoils: Rite Aid toilet paper.
Using one of the signature techniques of Spencer’s system, they could “roll’’ store credit to get an unlimited amount of toilet paper for free without even needing a coupon. Four-packs and single rolls of toilet paper were on sale for $1, but each purchase earned a $1 reward in store credit. By breaking the purchase up into several transactions and rolling the credit from one to the next, they could essentially make Rite Aid pay for it, over and over.
She has similar systems at Shaw’s, Market Basket, Kohl’s and especially CVS, where she has a PhD-level understanding of its ExtraCare rewards program.
“I started at CVS six years ago with $8 out of pocket and since then I haven’t spent any real dollar bills in the store,’’ she said, though she claims she has taken thousands of dollars in real products out. Store managers in her area, wary of running out of sale items, now ask for her help. They give her circulars weeks in advance so she can identify the weak spots and they can stock up.
“She is just very, very proficient at what she does, and I don’t want to run out of things on the first day of the sale,’’ said Wayne Lamoureux, manager of a Rite Aid in Haverhill.
Spencer insists she is not a shelf clearer and preaches against it. But not all her disciples listen, as became clear that Sunday and again the following Saturday, when she took a Globe reporter to Shaw’s.
On her shopping list were four items that had gone on sale a little more than an hour before. With coupons, she could get them for nothing. But in each case, she arrived to find shelves that had been ransacked.
“This is definitely the work of someone who reads my website,’’ she said, chagrined. Several times, she blamed her “big mouth.’’
“When I was loading them into the carriage, it all clicked,’’ she said. From there, she “cracked the code,’’ which allowed her to quit her job as a loan officer to coupon full time. After tiring of repeating her instructions over and over, she created a Yahoo! forum and posted her system there. After the site was featured on the Yahoo! homepage, the media came calling and everything took off.
There is an inherent thrill built into extreme couponing, practicioners say, a “coupon high’’ that can be as addictive as a drug. “I’ll bring girls and they’ll just shake like they’re shoplifiting,’’ she said.
But, Spencer admits, there is one thing she hoards almost helplessly, and led a reporter to a bathroom upstairs in her house. There, she opened a door to reveal a closet full of toilet paper."
What did I say previously about ants, grasshoppers, and the frantic game of catch-up? Had these people been doing this about 3 years ago, they'd have been better prepared for the recession/depression we're in now, and probably would still have the foreclosed house stuff it all in. There certainly wouldn't be the building uprising for Level 5 federal unemployment bennies you see going on in activist circles, over-worked food bank workers, and crammed social service offices.
As for no carts and crammed stores, this is why I choose to go out during the week, instead of the weekends--everyone else is at work, so I have little competition on the freeways, in the parking lots, and in the stores. There is no hard and fast rule that says you must go out on weekends--in fact, if you want to avoid crowds, avoid the days crowds are most likely to gather...on weekends.
Drug store crap is so over-priced to begin with, and now they're knowingly giving away the store for the sake of sales--you gotta be thinking about quality at this point. There is no quality. Products are under-sized, watered down, under-strengthed, and just all around poor choices. Even free, these products are over-priced! Don't get me started on expiration dates...these are worse than convenience stores for it!
I have a big mouth too (well, a loud blog, anyway), and I'm not one bit sorry about starting some anti-coupon movement--in fact, it wasn't even me who started it. I learned it from Amy Dacyzcyn of the Tightwad Gazette books over a decade ago, when times were still good. As for the absence of carts in a store, that's okay--I only need a hand-basket for small stuff. A large amount of my shopping's done elsewhere, where there's a whole lot less people buying lots bigger quantities for much less.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Coupons Alone Don't Make the Cut
From the Miami Herald (FL).
"I wrote a column last year about why using coupons may not pay, especially for small households like mine that don’t eat a lot of processed food. Then I decided to give it another try.
If the shoppers profiled on TLC’s Extreme Couponing can get hundreds of dollars worth of groceries for $25, I figured, can’t I save something by using coupons?
Here’s what I’ve found:
• Shopping grocery sales still yields far more savings than using coupons. Sales come in cycles, so watch the products you buy often and stock up when they’re on sale so you never have to pay full price.
• Perennial sale — and coupon — items include salad dressing, salsa, pasta sauce and cereal.
• Holding on to coupons for several weeks after they come out can be profitable. Many of the items will be on sale in about four weeks. (You can use two coupons on Publix buy-one-get-one-free items.)
• There are always coupons for some items, so you might as well use them, even if the savings are small. I often buy Yoplait yogurt, Nature Valley granola bars, canned tomatoes and various Procter & Gamble products, all of which offer coupons. Add up 75 cents here and 35 cents there, and soon you’re talking real money.
• Buying store brands of toiletries or toiletries on sale often, but not always, yields more savings than using coupons for name-brand products.
The people on Extreme Couponing do things I never would, such as spending six hours a week grocery shopping and filling whole rooms with stockpiles of food. (Clearly they don’t have the bugs we do.) I don’t see any sense in stockpiling 30 years’ worth of deodorant, even if you get it free. Space is worth money, too.
The bottom line: On my most recent shopping trip, I spent $108.57, after $37.77 in store savings and $7.35 in coupons."
Give it up completely--that's my take. You can do much better sticking with basic ingredients and basic foods, buying at price per unit, and WATCHING THAT EXPIRATION DATE!
Every week, I save anywhere from 25-50% at my health food store just by being a member, using case discounts, buying basic ingredients, and using cost per unit--no coupons involved. They don't make coupons for fresh produce, grass-fed meat (unprocessed), or organic eggs from a farm in the next county. They also don't make coupons for 25- and 50-lb. bags of stuff.
Coupons are mostly for processed foods, unnecessary items, and/or stuff that isn't selling well on it's own--a red flag if I ever saw one! Just once, JUST ONCE I'd like to see a coupon for broccoli, collards, romaine lettuce, or carrots that didn't require them to be pre-packaged or processed in some way--just to use on them as they lie in the produce section shelf, with only a thin open plastic bag for packaging.
"I wrote a column last year about why using coupons may not pay, especially for small households like mine that don’t eat a lot of processed food. Then I decided to give it another try.
If the shoppers profiled on TLC’s Extreme Couponing can get hundreds of dollars worth of groceries for $25, I figured, can’t I save something by using coupons?
Here’s what I’ve found:
• Shopping grocery sales still yields far more savings than using coupons. Sales come in cycles, so watch the products you buy often and stock up when they’re on sale so you never have to pay full price.
• Perennial sale — and coupon — items include salad dressing, salsa, pasta sauce and cereal.
• Holding on to coupons for several weeks after they come out can be profitable. Many of the items will be on sale in about four weeks. (You can use two coupons on Publix buy-one-get-one-free items.)
• There are always coupons for some items, so you might as well use them, even if the savings are small. I often buy Yoplait yogurt, Nature Valley granola bars, canned tomatoes and various Procter & Gamble products, all of which offer coupons. Add up 75 cents here and 35 cents there, and soon you’re talking real money.
• Buying store brands of toiletries or toiletries on sale often, but not always, yields more savings than using coupons for name-brand products.
The bottom line: On my most recent shopping trip, I spent $108.57, after $37.77 in store savings and $7.35 in coupons."
Give it up completely--that's my take. You can do much better sticking with basic ingredients and basic foods, buying at price per unit, and WATCHING THAT EXPIRATION DATE!
Every week, I save anywhere from 25-50% at my health food store just by being a member, using case discounts, buying basic ingredients, and using cost per unit--no coupons involved. They don't make coupons for fresh produce, grass-fed meat (unprocessed), or organic eggs from a farm in the next county. They also don't make coupons for 25- and 50-lb. bags of stuff.
Coupons are mostly for processed foods, unnecessary items, and/or stuff that isn't selling well on it's own--a red flag if I ever saw one! Just once, JUST ONCE I'd like to see a coupon for broccoli, collards, romaine lettuce, or carrots that didn't require them to be pre-packaged or processed in some way--just to use on them as they lie in the produce section shelf, with only a thin open plastic bag for packaging.
Growing Microgreens a Great Indoor Gardening Project
From the Times-Colonist (Canada).
"The wind howled. Frost hardened on my windowpanes, blotting out what little light radiated from a dull and distant sun.
No matter. Fresh and bright in their makeshift plastic tray, my tiny green broccoli seedlings grew and thrived.
Given little more than a few square inches of potting soil, a scrap of unbleached paper towel (more about that later) and a few spritzes with a cheap supermarket misting bottle, the seeds sprouted within 48 hours, throwing down roots and offering up tiny ivory leaves. The next day, the leaves were lime green, and a week after that they were dark, lush and ready for harvesting.
Following the instructions in Microgreens: A Guide to Growing NutrientPacked Greens by Eric Franks and Jasmine Richardson (Gibbs Smith, $19.99). I clipped a fourcentimetre plant above the soil and plopped the whole thing, stem and all, into my mouth.
The flavour, subtle but distinctive, took me by surprise: broccoli distilled to its tender green essence.
And so, gentle reader, I became a grower of microgreens.
Maybe it isn't cold weather stopping you from gardening but, well, the lack of a garden. Again, microgreens offer an ideal antidote for those without yards, patios -or even, for that matter, green thumbs.
Bigger than sprouts and smaller than mature plants, microgreens can be grown from herbs and vegetables such as basil, beets and broccoli. They're best known as a prized ingredient of produce-savvy chefs, but recent books such as Franks and Richardson's, and Fionna Hill's Microgreens: How to Grow Nature's Own Superfood (Firefly, $17.95), offer instructions for beginners who want to go "micro" in the comfort of their own homes.
Throw in some DIY tips from the Internet -among them, making your own trays from old plastic lids -and you're off to a good start.
"Microgreens are easy, and they're quick, and you can grow them year-round in your house," says Richardson. "It's a way that the everyday person can produce their own food."
They also boast an impressive nutritional profile.
Three-day-old broccoli plants are a great source of sulforaphane, a powerful cancer-fighting compound, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. In 1997, the researchers reported that three-day-old broccoli and cauliflower have 10 to 100 times as much glucoraphanin (a precursor of sulforaphane) as the mature plants.
My microgreens adventure started when I called my local garden centre to find out if they had organic potting soil, and I discovered they were sold out. I called another garden centre, which was closed for the season. The big plant nursery 20 minutes away did have potting soil, but it was frozen solid. I had to let the bag thaw inside overnight.
Finding a sunny windowsill was challenging; my house was built in the 1930s, when, apparently, direct sunlight was not in vogue. Still, a bit of experimentation yielded the optimum location, and the sight of sun-splashed new leaves rising from fresh soil was ample reward for my efforts.
Even the thankless process of seed germination was lively, thanks to Richardson's technique of covering the seeds with unbleached, natural paper towels rather than soil. You can lift up the paper towel to see the tiniest roots begin to emerge, and you know when to remove the towel because the growing seedlings start pushing it up off the ground.
You don't need to buy seed packets specifically labelled as microgreens but you do need to know that some herbs and veggies work better than others.
Richardson and Franks offer information on more than a dozen options, including amaranth, purple cabbage, celery and bok choy.
You can use basil microgreens in desserts, and just about any microgreen will enhance a salad, omelet or sandwich. Both books include many recipes.
Some microgreens are harder to grow than others -arugula, for example, can be a trifle fussy about soil pH -so anxious firsttimers may want to stick with broccoli, Richardson's top pick for ease and reliability.
And just how tough are broccoli microgreens?
During the course of my busy morning routine, I once accidentally misted a tray of seedlings with organic counter cleaning spray, which bore an uncanny resemblance to my cheap plastic plant mister in both size and design.
The seedlings temporarily drooped -largely, Richardson speculated, in response to my overzealous attempts to rinse them off -but by evening they were bouncing back.
"Don't worry about it -they're pretty resilient," Richardson counselled.
Sure enough, when I harvested my "crop" with kitchen scissors a few days later, the little heart-shaped leaves were back to their old selves: fresh, crisp and alive with flavour."
I myself am growing collards, mustard, and mung beans as sprouts (no dirt)--the dirt in my garden isn't warm enough to plant in yet. I'm going to continue sprouting collards and some broccoli indoors, because this gets around the pesticide-organics issue.
"The wind howled. Frost hardened on my windowpanes, blotting out what little light radiated from a dull and distant sun.
No matter. Fresh and bright in their makeshift plastic tray, my tiny green broccoli seedlings grew and thrived.
Given little more than a few square inches of potting soil, a scrap of unbleached paper towel (more about that later) and a few spritzes with a cheap supermarket misting bottle, the seeds sprouted within 48 hours, throwing down roots and offering up tiny ivory leaves. The next day, the leaves were lime green, and a week after that they were dark, lush and ready for harvesting.
Following the instructions in Microgreens: A Guide to Growing NutrientPacked Greens by Eric Franks and Jasmine Richardson (Gibbs Smith, $19.99). I clipped a fourcentimetre plant above the soil and plopped the whole thing, stem and all, into my mouth.
The flavour, subtle but distinctive, took me by surprise: broccoli distilled to its tender green essence.
And so, gentle reader, I became a grower of microgreens.
Maybe it isn't cold weather stopping you from gardening but, well, the lack of a garden. Again, microgreens offer an ideal antidote for those without yards, patios -or even, for that matter, green thumbs.
Bigger than sprouts and smaller than mature plants, microgreens can be grown from herbs and vegetables such as basil, beets and broccoli. They're best known as a prized ingredient of produce-savvy chefs, but recent books such as Franks and Richardson's, and Fionna Hill's Microgreens: How to Grow Nature's Own Superfood (Firefly, $17.95), offer instructions for beginners who want to go "micro" in the comfort of their own homes.
Throw in some DIY tips from the Internet -among them, making your own trays from old plastic lids -and you're off to a good start.
"Microgreens are easy, and they're quick, and you can grow them year-round in your house," says Richardson. "It's a way that the everyday person can produce their own food."
They also boast an impressive nutritional profile.
Three-day-old broccoli plants are a great source of sulforaphane, a powerful cancer-fighting compound, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. In 1997, the researchers reported that three-day-old broccoli and cauliflower have 10 to 100 times as much glucoraphanin (a precursor of sulforaphane) as the mature plants.
My microgreens adventure started when I called my local garden centre to find out if they had organic potting soil, and I discovered they were sold out. I called another garden centre, which was closed for the season. The big plant nursery 20 minutes away did have potting soil, but it was frozen solid. I had to let the bag thaw inside overnight.
Finding a sunny windowsill was challenging; my house was built in the 1930s, when, apparently, direct sunlight was not in vogue. Still, a bit of experimentation yielded the optimum location, and the sight of sun-splashed new leaves rising from fresh soil was ample reward for my efforts.
Even the thankless process of seed germination was lively, thanks to Richardson's technique of covering the seeds with unbleached, natural paper towels rather than soil. You can lift up the paper towel to see the tiniest roots begin to emerge, and you know when to remove the towel because the growing seedlings start pushing it up off the ground.
You don't need to buy seed packets specifically labelled as microgreens but you do need to know that some herbs and veggies work better than others.
Richardson and Franks offer information on more than a dozen options, including amaranth, purple cabbage, celery and bok choy.
You can use basil microgreens in desserts, and just about any microgreen will enhance a salad, omelet or sandwich. Both books include many recipes.
Some microgreens are harder to grow than others -arugula, for example, can be a trifle fussy about soil pH -so anxious firsttimers may want to stick with broccoli, Richardson's top pick for ease and reliability.
And just how tough are broccoli microgreens?
During the course of my busy morning routine, I once accidentally misted a tray of seedlings with organic counter cleaning spray, which bore an uncanny resemblance to my cheap plastic plant mister in both size and design.
The seedlings temporarily drooped -largely, Richardson speculated, in response to my overzealous attempts to rinse them off -but by evening they were bouncing back.
"Don't worry about it -they're pretty resilient," Richardson counselled.
Sure enough, when I harvested my "crop" with kitchen scissors a few days later, the little heart-shaped leaves were back to their old selves: fresh, crisp and alive with flavour."
The Clean 15--Foods You Don't Need to Buy Organic
From WalletPop.
"Organic foods get a lot of buzz for their lack of chemical pesticides, but you can save money and avoid pesticides by buying certain conventionally grown fruits and vegetables found in the regular supermarket produce aisle.
To help prioritize your food dollars, here's the current list of the "Clean 15" - the best conventionally grown produce to buy, as determined by the Environmental Working Group upon examining the U.S. Department of Agriculture's produce-sampling tests.
You can slash your pesticide consumption - by nearly 80% - by eating the following "clean" conventionally grown choices while also avoiding the 12 most-contaminated fruits and vegetables, the organization says.
You can feel comfortable buying the following fruits and vegetables in the the regular produce section since they're lowest in pesticides:
1. Onions
2. Avocado
3. Sweet corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mangos
6. Sweet peas
7. Asparagus
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Cantaloupe
12. Watermelon
13. Grapefruit
14. Sweet potato
15. Honeydew melon
You can download a wallet guide version or iPhone app here.
It's not that the "Clean 15" always contain no residue of fungicides or insect killers - it's just that the best choices often don't. Onions, asparagus, sweet corn, pineapple, mango and avocado had no detectable pesticide residues on at least 90% of produce sampled by the government, according to EWG. Most cabbage sampled (82%) had no detectible pesticides. Ditto for eggplant (75.4%).
Bottom line: You can save money by buying the fruits and veggies on this list and putting your savings toward produce that is more important to purchase organically if you want to limit how much pesticide you inadvertently consume. Among other reasons, many pesticides disrupt male hormones, new research shows. If money is no object, go ahead and always buy organic.
"If customers are concerned about pesticides in general," EWG spokesman Alex Formuzis tells Consumer Ally, "then they should buy organic for as many foods as possible."
In contrast, there is also a "Dirty Dozen" list of foods you ABSOLUTELY WANT TO BUY organic on the website. I made my own by taking their complete list of 100 foods, editing out the foods we don't eat, and re-forming the list ranks. Now I have my own Dirty Dozen List and Clean 15 list in my head. The Wenchypoo Magic 8 foods have also taken this info into account.
Wenchypoo Magic 8 list: berries (blue-, straw-, and black-), plums, navel oranges, broccoli, carrots, and red peppers, along with cuts of lean meats and dark salad greens (kale, spinach, chard, collards, and romaine). Only the plums, navel oranges, and broccoli should be bought commercially--everything else should be organic if possible, home-grown is best (to control pesticides). Sprouts can be used to substitute for leafy greens, and can be commercial if UNTREATED seeds are used to grow them--they require no pesticides if grown indoors.
General rule of thumb when choosing organic or not: if you're going to eat it with the skin on, and it has a thin skin, go with organic. If you aren't eating the skin, and the skin gets discarded (as in oranges or avocados), you can go commercial--no need for organic. Broccoli is an exception to this rule--since pests don't attack the broccoli flowers, and attack only the leaves, broccoli usually doesn't get doused with pesticides, because bugs don't like the taste of it. Leaves get peeled off before it comes to market.
Collards are related to broccoli--even though you'd think bugs hate broccoli, so they must hate collards, it doesn't work that way. Bugs LOVE broccoli LEAVES, so they also love collard leaves, making pesticides necessary. Go with organic collards or sprout them indoors--I'm telling you this from gardening experience.
So why is cabbage on the Clean 15 list if bugs love broccoli and collard leaves? Cabbage grows as a head, and the outer bug-eaten leaves get removed before it comes to market. Collards are essentially a non-heading cabbage, with no outer leaves to remove.
But plums are thin-skinned, and are generally eaten with the skin on--why not organic for those? Plum trees need no spraying, that's why. Bugs hate the trees.
"Organic foods get a lot of buzz for their lack of chemical pesticides, but you can save money and avoid pesticides by buying certain conventionally grown fruits and vegetables found in the regular supermarket produce aisle.
To help prioritize your food dollars, here's the current list of the "Clean 15" - the best conventionally grown produce to buy, as determined by the Environmental Working Group upon examining the U.S. Department of Agriculture's produce-sampling tests.
You can slash your pesticide consumption - by nearly 80% - by eating the following "clean" conventionally grown choices while also avoiding the 12 most-contaminated fruits and vegetables, the organization says.
You can feel comfortable buying the following fruits and vegetables in the the regular produce section since they're lowest in pesticides:
1. Onions
2. Avocado
3. Sweet corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mangos
6. Sweet peas
7. Asparagus
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Cantaloupe
12. Watermelon
13. Grapefruit
14. Sweet potato
15. Honeydew melon
You can download a wallet guide version or iPhone app here.
It's not that the "Clean 15" always contain no residue of fungicides or insect killers - it's just that the best choices often don't. Onions, asparagus, sweet corn, pineapple, mango and avocado had no detectable pesticide residues on at least 90% of produce sampled by the government, according to EWG. Most cabbage sampled (82%) had no detectible pesticides. Ditto for eggplant (75.4%).
Bottom line: You can save money by buying the fruits and veggies on this list and putting your savings toward produce that is more important to purchase organically if you want to limit how much pesticide you inadvertently consume. Among other reasons, many pesticides disrupt male hormones, new research shows. If money is no object, go ahead and always buy organic.
"If customers are concerned about pesticides in general," EWG spokesman Alex Formuzis tells Consumer Ally, "then they should buy organic for as many foods as possible."
Wenchypoo Magic 8 list: berries (blue-, straw-, and black-), plums, navel oranges, broccoli, carrots, and red peppers, along with cuts of lean meats and dark salad greens (kale, spinach, chard, collards, and romaine). Only the plums, navel oranges, and broccoli should be bought commercially--everything else should be organic if possible, home-grown is best (to control pesticides). Sprouts can be used to substitute for leafy greens, and can be commercial if UNTREATED seeds are used to grow them--they require no pesticides if grown indoors.
General rule of thumb when choosing organic or not: if you're going to eat it with the skin on, and it has a thin skin, go with organic. If you aren't eating the skin, and the skin gets discarded (as in oranges or avocados), you can go commercial--no need for organic. Broccoli is an exception to this rule--since pests don't attack the broccoli flowers, and attack only the leaves, broccoli usually doesn't get doused with pesticides, because bugs don't like the taste of it. Leaves get peeled off before it comes to market.
Collards are related to broccoli--even though you'd think bugs hate broccoli, so they must hate collards, it doesn't work that way. Bugs LOVE broccoli LEAVES, so they also love collard leaves, making pesticides necessary. Go with organic collards or sprout them indoors--I'm telling you this from gardening experience.
So why is cabbage on the Clean 15 list if bugs love broccoli and collard leaves? Cabbage grows as a head, and the outer bug-eaten leaves get removed before it comes to market. Collards are essentially a non-heading cabbage, with no outer leaves to remove.
But plums are thin-skinned, and are generally eaten with the skin on--why not organic for those? Plum trees need no spraying, that's why. Bugs hate the trees.
Commodity Watch for Last Week
From Prudent Bear. the relevant part of a long roundup of market action--here's the relevant bits:
"February 25 – Bloomberg (Tony C. Dreibus): “Rice, the staple food for half the world, rallied… as governments boosted stockpiles to curb prices that sparked protests across North Africa and the Middle East. Bangladesh, South Asia’s biggest buyer, said it’s seeking supply from India as part of more regular grain purchases to bolster food security. Japan bought 68,000 metric tons of rice from the U.S., Australia and Thailand in a tender two days ago. ‘When we go for international tenders and prices suddenly rise, private suppliers sometimes fail to fulfill their commitments,’ Muhammad Abdur Razzaque, the Bangladeshi food minister, said… ‘They don’t supply us and put us in trouble. It has happened.’”
February 25 – Bloomberg (Thomas Kutty Abraham): “Raw sugar prices that reached their highest level in 30 years this month will cause shortages for consumers in the second half, according to Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd., India’s biggest refiner. Processors are shutting factories because they can’t make enough money… The gain is adding to inflation after global food costs climbed to a record in January…” "
Beware of rice and sugar--if you're going to get them, do it NOW and in large quantities...especially the sugar.
"February 25 – Bloomberg (Tony C. Dreibus): “Rice, the staple food for half the world, rallied… as governments boosted stockpiles to curb prices that sparked protests across North Africa and the Middle East. Bangladesh, South Asia’s biggest buyer, said it’s seeking supply from India as part of more regular grain purchases to bolster food security. Japan bought 68,000 metric tons of rice from the U.S., Australia and Thailand in a tender two days ago. ‘When we go for international tenders and prices suddenly rise, private suppliers sometimes fail to fulfill their commitments,’ Muhammad Abdur Razzaque, the Bangladeshi food minister, said… ‘They don’t supply us and put us in trouble. It has happened.’”
February 25 – Bloomberg (Thomas Kutty Abraham): “Raw sugar prices that reached their highest level in 30 years this month will cause shortages for consumers in the second half, according to Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd., India’s biggest refiner. Processors are shutting factories because they can’t make enough money… The gain is adding to inflation after global food costs climbed to a record in January…” "
Beware of rice and sugar--if you're going to get them, do it NOW and in large quantities...especially the sugar.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Budget Landscape Supplies
“Dear Wenchypoo,
We purchased a 3 year old home that had an overgrown backyard. We hired a company to "clean it up and trim the trees". But, now we have a large back yard with large trees that is in desperate need of landscaping. There is no grass there, only weeds and dirt. What suggestions do you have on landscaping on a budget. What makes a good ground cover? We'd love a pathway, and to make it look nice, but this could be very expensive. I'd love some suggestions.”
Dear Unearthed,
I got some suggestions right here:
1. Contact your utility companies and ask if they have some poles to get rid of. These can be used for container beds, edging large runs, or sliced into stepping stones. Ask about delivery arrangements.
2. Visit construction sites and ask the foreman if you can haul away any of their masonry trash—usable brick, concrete block, paving chunks, parking spot bumpers, large rocks. They also might have scraps of wood that are usable—4X4s, 2X4s, and the like.
3. Call your city hall and ask if the city workers happen to have excess mulch (from tree trimmings), road pavement chunks, utility poles, large cable spools, large rocks, wood pieces, etc. Often, they will deliver free of charge.
4. Call your local hardware stores and home renovation centers and ask if they might have brick, stone, tile, or wood that’s “oopsed” or broken and not salable. Often, these get given away.
5. Visit someone who you know is renovating their property—sometimes you can get their excess tile, stone, wood, etc. If you don't know them, check their construction dumpster outside.
6. Call any stone companies that do headstones and monuments—mistakes can be picked up for a song, and all they need is a good sandblasting to remove any names or dates off the face.
7. Know anybody who carries baker’s racks? Sometimes granite shelves get damaged, and need to be disposed of.
8. There’s always the dump.
9. Need free dirt? Check out a cemetery or construction site.
10. Need free mulch? Follow the sound of a chainsaw--three companies must shred any trees they trim or take down, and you offering to take them off their hands saves them a costly trip to the dump. They also deliver free. If they are shredding pine, your yard will smell like Christmas for a while. :)
11. Need free tree stalks (poles) or stumps for slicing? Contact tree maintenance companies, or just follow the sound of the chainsaw and ask.
12. Lumber mills are happy to bring you rejected pieces of lumber or tree slabs for free.
13. Potteries or garden stores are happy to give or sell cheaply any chipped or cracked ceramic pots, or damaged or dying plants.
14. Mushroom, chicken farms, and horse stables are happy to let you take away all the manure you can carry.
15. Look for families just moving into a house--chances are good they'll be ripping something out of their yards soon enough to plant their own stuff.
16. Make friends with specific-type flower enthusiasts (such as roses), garden club members, or just avid gardeners--they'll be happy to share their bounty, save their cast-off species for you, or just pawn off unwanted plants to you. (I've had a number of surprise bulbs pop up in my plot, and I dug them up and traded them for a supposedly-unsatisfactory rose plant breeding my neighbor across the street was tossing out)
17. Contact tree removal companies to see if perhaps they have a mature tree in need of a new home (usually from construction)--it may cost you to dig the hole for it, but the already-mature tree may be free or really cheap.
18. Granite yards and stores may have remnants too small to be useful to sell, or may have damaged or discolored pieces, or even granite gravel to pick up or sell cheaply.
19. Check the dump--if your town once had cobblestone streets, the cobblestones very likely have been dug up and taken to the dump.
20. Check these so-called "shovel-ready" stimulus projects for torn-out paving pieces, concrete chunks, bridge parts, cut-down trees, large stones or rocks, etc. Again, you're saving them a trip to the dump.
21. Check apartment complex dumpsters--lots of complexes are remodeling, and they throw the stuff away in their own dumpsters.
22. Disassemble a wooden swing set tower (yours or someone else's--some people will pay you to take them away), and haul home the free lumber (and any other usable parts).
Don’t expect to get your materials together overnight, or get your projects done quickly. These “freebies” take time to assemble, so savor your journey to backyard nirvana and work with what you CAN accumulate.
A Tale of Regret--The New Car Wasn't So Great
From a reader:
“Last summer I bought a new car for my wife. With our net income up 5 times from when we meet 5 years ago and expenses only up 40%, everything has been humming along well financially. So we agreed that it was well within out means to get my wife a new car.
My wife loves small cars, and has always wanted a convertible. After some research and test- drives she knew the exact car that she wanted to have, a beetle convertible. I called around, and via a suppliers discount was able to find pretty good prices on convertible beetles. Then I stumbled upon the JACKPOT, one dealership had a demo beetle with 3k miles on it that was very cheap. After some tough bargaining, with the car dealer looking right into by eyes and straight up lying to me we brought it home for a very respectable price about 30% off retail.
Now we've had the beetle for 9 months. While it is fun to take the top down and drive around, we've found out that we simply don't do it all that often. My wife thought she would LOVE her car, and she likes it, but really it has just become a set of wheels to her. My company is has moved me from Houston to New Orleans, and our new house is going to be 2 blocks from Tulane where she is going to get her M.S. in accounting. Being the more cost-focused member of our team, I had thought about "Hun, we're going to be so close we could just get rid of her car" but dismissed mentioning it since she had to move and leave her job and that I would be asking too much by doing that. A few weeks ago, what did my wife suggest? Getting rid of the CAR!
While the beetle was fun, it is going up on E-bay this weekend! Overall if it sells for a fair price the whole thing will have cost us $2k at the worst, and we'll make $2k if we can get blue book for it. We're going to become a 1-car household. Everyone I've mentioned this to seems to think we're nuts. When I point out the saved costs, even getting into the details, most of them just don't get it. Questions come up like, what if you have to get to someplace really quick? Whenever I start talking about priorities, and how we're on track to retire by 40 or maybe younger no one seems to get it.”
Dumpster Diving--Attacking the World's Waste
From WHAS-11 (KY).
"Tara Manning is working to fix one of the world's biggest problems, but carries her own heavy burdens along the way.
"My husband died a few years ago so he wasn't able to support me. I live on a fixed income because though I look really healthy, I have some pretty interesting health problems,” said Manning.
Manning knows these hardships aren't exclusive, but with her back against the wall and a young daughter to feed, she's choosing solutions over excuses, "When times get tough, you have to get really radical in your thinking," said Manning.
Sometimes radical means not going through the front door of the grocery store. You may know it as dumpster diving, Manning knows it as grocery shopping. Manning goes looking through trash, which can be treasure.
"Food stamps determined I would only get $5 a month to feed myself and my child, so I began visiting local dumpsters," said Manning.
She admits it's an acquired taste.
Pitched produce and forgotten fruit, deemed dead by grocers, takes on new life in Manning's kitchen. She normally goes it alone, but when WHAS11 tagged along, an unexpected guest helps with the hunt.
Together they weed through the waste. These dumpsters divers, are less commonly known as ‘Freegans’: the food they're after is free and they are vegan. Their goal? Reclaim and minimize the world's waste.
"I take it home and clean it and give it to friends. I cook for friends and share the wealth," said fellow dumpster diver Bob Cheever.
They leave with full bags. But, even as a Freegan, not every piece makes the cut.
“I get everything sorted out here and then I’m going to rinse it in a mild bleach and water solution to kill any possible bacteria," said Manning.
Manning believes a clean kitchen is also a healthy kitchen. "It's really important to make sure everything is sanitary because you're feeding this to your family. My husband died of type two diabetes complications and if the way to prevent that in my child is by dumpster diving, then of course, that's what I’m going to do,” said Manning.
Manning’s 11-year-old daughter Hanna isn't complaining. "There was this spaghetti. It was probably the best spaghetti she's ever made. Meatless, cheese less. Wow!,” said Hanna.
Hanna has learned the court of public opinion can make harsh judgments; especially when kids at school find out where your lunch comes from.
"I'd rather her be embarrassed about where the food is coming from and how we're getting it than being embarrassed because her tummy is growling so loud at school kids make fun of her," said Tara.
The aroma of slow cooking French onion soup and roasted vegetable medley fills the kitchen. Forgotten is the decomposing stench of the wet garbage can where the meal was harvested.
It's certainly not the first meal of this type she's prepared, but this time the pressure's on.
"This will be the first time that I've actually had local Louisvillians here to eat one of my Freegan meals. I think people are a little nervous about it,” added Manning.
The guests know the meal's origin and if they had any apprehension going in, the slurping and chewing prove it's now only a memory.
"I'm so totally freaking impressed, not just by the taste of the of the food, but by the spirit of the occasion," one guest told WHAS-11.
In a country that's replaced healthy meals with happy meals, this is truly a happy and healthy meal. A simple spread, in a simple setting, with a simple motive: no waste was involved.
Tara estimates she's saved thousands of dollars since she started this about six months ago.
She also said she doesn't get all her food from the trash can. She does buy some from the store. She also says she's never gotten sick from eating this food."
"Tara Manning is working to fix one of the world's biggest problems, but carries her own heavy burdens along the way.
"My husband died a few years ago so he wasn't able to support me. I live on a fixed income because though I look really healthy, I have some pretty interesting health problems,” said Manning.
Manning knows these hardships aren't exclusive, but with her back against the wall and a young daughter to feed, she's choosing solutions over excuses, "When times get tough, you have to get really radical in your thinking," said Manning.
Sometimes radical means not going through the front door of the grocery store. You may know it as dumpster diving, Manning knows it as grocery shopping. Manning goes looking through trash, which can be treasure.
"Food stamps determined I would only get $5 a month to feed myself and my child, so I began visiting local dumpsters," said Manning.
She admits it's an acquired taste.
Together they weed through the waste. These dumpsters divers, are less commonly known as ‘Freegans’: the food they're after is free and they are vegan. Their goal? Reclaim and minimize the world's waste.
"I take it home and clean it and give it to friends. I cook for friends and share the wealth," said fellow dumpster diver Bob Cheever.
They leave with full bags. But, even as a Freegan, not every piece makes the cut.
Manning believes a clean kitchen is also a healthy kitchen. "It's really important to make sure everything is sanitary because you're feeding this to your family. My husband died of type two diabetes complications and if the way to prevent that in my child is by dumpster diving, then of course, that's what I’m going to do,” said Manning.
Manning’s 11-year-old daughter Hanna isn't complaining. "There was this spaghetti. It was probably the best spaghetti she's ever made. Meatless, cheese less. Wow!,” said Hanna.
Hanna has learned the court of public opinion can make harsh judgments; especially when kids at school find out where your lunch comes from.
The aroma of slow cooking French onion soup and roasted vegetable medley fills the kitchen. Forgotten is the decomposing stench of the wet garbage can where the meal was harvested.
It's certainly not the first meal of this type she's prepared, but this time the pressure's on.
"This will be the first time that I've actually had local Louisvillians here to eat one of my Freegan meals. I think people are a little nervous about it,” added Manning.
"I'm so totally freaking impressed, not just by the taste of the of the food, but by the spirit of the occasion," one guest told WHAS-11.
Tara estimates she's saved thousands of dollars since she started this about six months ago.
She also said she doesn't get all her food from the trash can. She does buy some from the store. She also says she's never gotten sick from eating this food."
Shoppers Wary of GM Foods Find They're Everywhere
From Yahoo News. Funny--I just told you this yesterday!
"You may not want to eat genetically engineered foods. Chances are, you are eating them anyway.
Genetically modified plants grown from seeds engineered in labs now provide much of the food we eat. Most corn, soybean and cotton crops grown in the United States have been genetically modified to resist pesticides or insects, and corn and soy are common food ingredients.
The Agriculture Department has approved three more genetically engineered crops in the past month, and the Food and Drug Administration could approve fast-growing genetically modified salmon for human consumption this year.
Agribusiness and the seed companies say their products help boost crop production, lower prices at the grocery store and feed the world, particularly in developing countries. The FDA and USDA say the engineered foods they've approved are safe — so safe, they don't even need to be labeled as such — and can't be significantly distinguished from conventional varieties.
Organic food companies, chefs and consumer groups have stepped up their efforts — so far, unsuccessfully — to get the government to exercise more oversight of engineered foods, arguing the seeds are floating from field to field and contaminating pure crops. The groups have been bolstered by a growing network of consumers who are wary of processed and modified foods.
Many of these opponents acknowledge that there isn't much solid evidence showing genetically modified foods are somehow dangerous or unhealthy. It just doesn't seem right, they say. It's an ethical issue.
"If you mess with nature there's a side effect somewhere," says George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley, the nation's largest organic farming cooperative, which had more than $600 million in sales last year. "There is a growing awareness that our system makes us all guinea pigs of sorts."
The U.S. government has insisted there's not enough difference between the genetically modified seeds its agencies have approved and natural seeds to cause concern. But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, more so than his predecessors in previous administrations, has acknowledged the debate over the issue and a growing chorus of consumers concerned about what they are eating.
"The rapid adoption of GE crops has clashed with the rapid expansion of demand for organic and other non-GE products," Vilsack said in December as he considered whether to approve genetically modified alfalfa. "This clash led to litigation and uncertainty . . . Surely, there is a better way, a solution that acknowledges agriculture's complexity, while celebrating and promoting its diversity."
Vilsack later approved the engineered alfalfa for use — along with sugar beets and a type of corn used in ethanol — to the disappointment of the organic industry, but he said the department would do additional research on ways to prevent contamination of natural seeds and improve detection of contamination.
Organic companies have praised Vilsack for even acknowledging the issue, as large seed companies like Monsanto and the substantial chunk of agribusiness that use their seeds have long held sway at USDA. The organic industry fears contamination could hurt sales of its products, especially in Europe, where consumers have been extremely hesitant about biotech foods.
While opponents of engineered foods haven't found federal agencies overly receptive to their concerns, they've been able to delay some USDA approvals with lawsuits. The alfalfa decision followed a lengthy court battle that was closely watched not only by the organic industry, but by consumers — a development opponents believe will help their cause.
"We're seeing a level of reaction that is unprecedented," says Jeffrey Smith, an activist who has fought the expansion of genetically engineered foods since they were first introduced 15 years ago and written two books on the subject. "I personally think we are going to hit the tipping point of consumer rejection very soon."
Many consumers also have followed the Food and Drug Administration's consideration of an engineered salmon that grows twice as fast as the conventional variety. If the FDA approves the fish for sale, it will be the first time the government has allowed genetically modified animals to be marketed for humans to eat.
Consumer interest in the issue has magnified in the past five years, along with interest in eating locally grown and organic foods, said Organic Valley's Siemon. Young, educated consumers who are driving much of the organic market have no interest in eating crops derived from a laboratory, he said.
Genetically modified crops were introduced to the market in 1996. That year, engineered corn accounted for less than 5 percent of the total crop. Last year, the USDA estimated that 70 percent of the nation's corn acreage was planted with herbicide-tolerant corn and 63 percent had been planted with insect-resistant seeds. Rates for soybeans and cotton are even higher.
The federal government approves genetically modified plants and animals on a case by case basis, with the FDA and USDA looking at the potential effects on food safety, agriculture and the environment. Critics say the process needs to be more thorough and more research should be done with an eye on potential dangers. Agencies often rely on companies' own data to make their decisions.
The genetic engineering industry says its products already receive far more scrutiny than most of the food people put in their mouths. It also says 15 years of consumption with no widely recognized health problems shows much of the concern is overhyped.
David B. Schmidt, who heads the International Food Information Council Foundation, a food-industry funded group that has polled consumers on genetically modified foods, said their responses depend on how the issue is framed. When pollsters tell consumers that some foods can be engineered to have health benefits — such as biotech soybeans designed to reduce trans fats in soybean oil — they become more open to them. Most consumers are more open to modifications in fruits and vegetables than in animals, he added.
Still, many people don't know what to think. About half of the consumers the foundation has polled recently have either been neutral on the subject or didn't know enough to have an opinion.
Dan Barber, a well-known New York chef who grows his own food and sits on President Barack Obama's Council on Physical Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, said the growing popularity of organic foods has given an "economic legitimacy" to the criticism.
He believes messing with nature will always have collateral damage. And, the more genetically modified crops are used, he said, the more pure crops will become compromised.
"Once you head down that road you don't turn back," Barber said."
These foods have NEVER been tested on human before reaching market--and people wonder why there are so many food allergies prevalent! We ARE the guinea pigs for future generations...well, you are, because I'm not eating any of it.
"You may not want to eat genetically engineered foods. Chances are, you are eating them anyway.
Genetically modified plants grown from seeds engineered in labs now provide much of the food we eat. Most corn, soybean and cotton crops grown in the United States have been genetically modified to resist pesticides or insects, and corn and soy are common food ingredients.
The Agriculture Department has approved three more genetically engineered crops in the past month, and the Food and Drug Administration could approve fast-growing genetically modified salmon for human consumption this year.
Agribusiness and the seed companies say their products help boost crop production, lower prices at the grocery store and feed the world, particularly in developing countries. The FDA and USDA say the engineered foods they've approved are safe — so safe, they don't even need to be labeled as such — and can't be significantly distinguished from conventional varieties.
Organic food companies, chefs and consumer groups have stepped up their efforts — so far, unsuccessfully — to get the government to exercise more oversight of engineered foods, arguing the seeds are floating from field to field and contaminating pure crops. The groups have been bolstered by a growing network of consumers who are wary of processed and modified foods.
Many of these opponents acknowledge that there isn't much solid evidence showing genetically modified foods are somehow dangerous or unhealthy. It just doesn't seem right, they say. It's an ethical issue.
"If you mess with nature there's a side effect somewhere," says George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley, the nation's largest organic farming cooperative, which had more than $600 million in sales last year. "There is a growing awareness that our system makes us all guinea pigs of sorts."
The U.S. government has insisted there's not enough difference between the genetically modified seeds its agencies have approved and natural seeds to cause concern. But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, more so than his predecessors in previous administrations, has acknowledged the debate over the issue and a growing chorus of consumers concerned about what they are eating.
"The rapid adoption of GE crops has clashed with the rapid expansion of demand for organic and other non-GE products," Vilsack said in December as he considered whether to approve genetically modified alfalfa. "This clash led to litigation and uncertainty . . . Surely, there is a better way, a solution that acknowledges agriculture's complexity, while celebrating and promoting its diversity."
Vilsack later approved the engineered alfalfa for use — along with sugar beets and a type of corn used in ethanol — to the disappointment of the organic industry, but he said the department would do additional research on ways to prevent contamination of natural seeds and improve detection of contamination.
Organic companies have praised Vilsack for even acknowledging the issue, as large seed companies like Monsanto and the substantial chunk of agribusiness that use their seeds have long held sway at USDA. The organic industry fears contamination could hurt sales of its products, especially in Europe, where consumers have been extremely hesitant about biotech foods.
While opponents of engineered foods haven't found federal agencies overly receptive to their concerns, they've been able to delay some USDA approvals with lawsuits. The alfalfa decision followed a lengthy court battle that was closely watched not only by the organic industry, but by consumers — a development opponents believe will help their cause.
"We're seeing a level of reaction that is unprecedented," says Jeffrey Smith, an activist who has fought the expansion of genetically engineered foods since they were first introduced 15 years ago and written two books on the subject. "I personally think we are going to hit the tipping point of consumer rejection very soon."
Many consumers also have followed the Food and Drug Administration's consideration of an engineered salmon that grows twice as fast as the conventional variety. If the FDA approves the fish for sale, it will be the first time the government has allowed genetically modified animals to be marketed for humans to eat.
Consumer interest in the issue has magnified in the past five years, along with interest in eating locally grown and organic foods, said Organic Valley's Siemon. Young, educated consumers who are driving much of the organic market have no interest in eating crops derived from a laboratory, he said.
Genetically modified crops were introduced to the market in 1996. That year, engineered corn accounted for less than 5 percent of the total crop. Last year, the USDA estimated that 70 percent of the nation's corn acreage was planted with herbicide-tolerant corn and 63 percent had been planted with insect-resistant seeds. Rates for soybeans and cotton are even higher.
The federal government approves genetically modified plants and animals on a case by case basis, with the FDA and USDA looking at the potential effects on food safety, agriculture and the environment. Critics say the process needs to be more thorough and more research should be done with an eye on potential dangers. Agencies often rely on companies' own data to make their decisions.
The genetic engineering industry says its products already receive far more scrutiny than most of the food people put in their mouths. It also says 15 years of consumption with no widely recognized health problems shows much of the concern is overhyped.
David B. Schmidt, who heads the International Food Information Council Foundation, a food-industry funded group that has polled consumers on genetically modified foods, said their responses depend on how the issue is framed. When pollsters tell consumers that some foods can be engineered to have health benefits — such as biotech soybeans designed to reduce trans fats in soybean oil — they become more open to them. Most consumers are more open to modifications in fruits and vegetables than in animals, he added.
Still, many people don't know what to think. About half of the consumers the foundation has polled recently have either been neutral on the subject or didn't know enough to have an opinion.
Dan Barber, a well-known New York chef who grows his own food and sits on President Barack Obama's Council on Physical Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, said the growing popularity of organic foods has given an "economic legitimacy" to the criticism.
He believes messing with nature will always have collateral damage. And, the more genetically modified crops are used, he said, the more pure crops will become compromised.
"Once you head down that road you don't turn back," Barber said."
These foods have NEVER been tested on human before reaching market--and people wonder why there are so many food allergies prevalent! We ARE the guinea pigs for future generations...well, you are, because I'm not eating any of it.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Is China Running Out of Workers?
From MSN Money (or what's left of it).
"They went home for the spring festival holiday in early February and never came back.
Across China, factories are reporting millions of job slots left empty when migrant workers went home for the holiday and never returned to work.
Short-term problem or long-term trend? That’s the question for anyone trying to predict China’s growth rate over the next decade or two.
Before the holiday, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security predicted that enough migrant workers would not return from their holiday trips to their home villages to create a 10% labor shortfall in China’s key factory provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Fujian.
That prediction may have been conservative. Guangdong, for example, reports 2 million unfilled job slots, according to Caixin Online.
This year’s shortages of migrant workers has its roots in rising living costs in China’s eastern provinces, which have long been the heart of China’s export industries. The extra costs have, along with higher wages in inland provinces, erased the big pay differences that have long driven millions of migrant workers to leave their families and native villages and travel hundreds of miles to live in workers’ compounds at factories in coastal provinces. The shortages began to be noticeable in 2009 and have increased each year since then.
The vacancies have also fed into a growing debate inside and outside China about when the country’s demographic dividend will come to an end. A demographic dividend results when a country’s population is producing a large number of new young workers every year -- and where the ratio of dependents to workers is falling. That falling ratio is a result of a decline in the birth rate, due to rising incomes, improving health care, and social decisions -- such as China’s one-child policy—so that young workers have fewer young dependents.
At the same time, the large number of young workers in the population produces a temporary decline in the dependent ratio at the other end of the life cycle: for a while, the population of old people doesn’t keep pace with the rise in the young population. Since the population has a higher proportion of young workers and a lower proportion of children and oldsters who require expensive education and medical care, the economy grows at an accelerated rate.
Demographic dividends don’t last forever. Populations age when a smaller cohort of children produced by a lower birth rate leads to a slowdown in the number of new workers each year.
China currently has 160 million people 60 years old or older. That’s 12% of the population of 1.3 billion. That number is projected to reach 200 million by 2015 and 400 million in 2044. That’s a lot of coming spending going to healthcare and retirement.
The World Bank calculates that a country’s demographic dividend lasts for about 40 years, and that China’s dividend, as defined by its lowest ratio of dependent children and oldsters to workers, dates back to 1968.
From this longer-term perspective, the problems that China’s coastal factories have filling jobs aren’t just caused by higher wages and more job opportunities in inland provinces. They’re also the result of the gradual end of China’s demographic dividend and the decreasing number of young workers in each annual cohort.
Not everyone agrees on when the demographic dividend will come to an end -- estimates range from 2010 to 2015 -- or if what China’s factories are seeing now is evidence of an end to that dividend. Most projections show China’s working-age population peaking in 2015 and its dependency ratio climbing from 39.1% in 2010 to 45.8% in 2025.
Countries can continue to grow at high rates even after the end of a demographic dividend, but that growth becomes increasingly dependent on improving the education, skills, and productivity of the existing workforce. It’s a tougher job. And it’s likely to be the challenge that China is facing now."
But this doesn't mean that jobs are suddenly going to be coming back home--oh no. With the Middle East opening up, there are plenty of young, college-educated workers who speak English over there, and will gladly work for Chinese wages. The benefits of that are OIL and SHIPPING...the closer you are to the source of energy, and a major shipping line, the more manufacturing you're likely to see. Companies can pollute all they want, and pay little if anything in taxes. I see it as the next off-shoring migration.
The Chinese are going back to their plow, where they were pretty much their own boss, except when they were dictated to as to what to grow, and how much. Day-to-day supervision was largely up to them--kind of like a SAHP. I think they've come to figure out that maintaining productivity's a bitch!
Across China, factories are reporting millions of job slots left empty when migrant workers went home for the holiday and never returned to work.
Short-term problem or long-term trend? That’s the question for anyone trying to predict China’s growth rate over the next decade or two.
That prediction may have been conservative. Guangdong, for example, reports 2 million unfilled job slots, according to Caixin Online.
The vacancies have also fed into a growing debate inside and outside China about when the country’s demographic dividend will come to an end. A demographic dividend results when a country’s population is producing a large number of new young workers every year -- and where the ratio of dependents to workers is falling. That falling ratio is a result of a decline in the birth rate, due to rising incomes, improving health care, and social decisions -- such as China’s one-child policy—so that young workers have fewer young dependents.
Demographic dividends don’t last forever. Populations age when a smaller cohort of children produced by a lower birth rate leads to a slowdown in the number of new workers each year.
China currently has 160 million people 60 years old or older. That’s 12% of the population of 1.3 billion. That number is projected to reach 200 million by 2015 and 400 million in 2044. That’s a lot of coming spending going to healthcare and retirement.
Countries can continue to grow at high rates even after the end of a demographic dividend, but that growth becomes increasingly dependent on improving the education, skills, and productivity of the existing workforce. It’s a tougher job. And it’s likely to be the challenge that China is facing now."
But this doesn't mean that jobs are suddenly going to be coming back home--oh no. With the Middle East opening up, there are plenty of young, college-educated workers who speak English over there, and will gladly work for Chinese wages. The benefits of that are OIL and SHIPPING...the closer you are to the source of energy, and a major shipping line, the more manufacturing you're likely to see. Companies can pollute all they want, and pay little if anything in taxes. I see it as the next off-shoring migration.
Chart of Commodity Gains on Last 30 Days
From CNN Money. Click here for the chart, and select which commodity you're interested in from the drop-down table.
Some commodities have risen, and some have fallen--this does not mean they're going to CONTINUE falling or rising. This is just what happened in the last 30 days.
Some commodities have risen, and some have fallen--this does not mean they're going to CONTINUE falling or rising. This is just what happened in the last 30 days.
Seeds Straight From Your Fridge (L-O-N-G)
From the NY Times.
"For an all-purpose garden tool, you can’t beat a full set of molars. Andrew Montain, a 28-year-old urban farmer, presented this theory the other day in my kitchen, as he rolled a nutmeg seed in his hand like a gobstopper.
“I want to crunch into this with my teeth and see what happens,” he said. Maybe it was a shell. Maybe it was a whole seed. He was eager to find out, but first he had a question: “How’s your liability insurance?”
I had invited Andrew to my home in St. Paul not to test his dentition, but to conduct a botanical experiment: If we plopped this nugget in a tray of dirt, would it grow into a nutmeg tree?
What I was imagining was a kitchen garden in the most literal sense: a crop borne of the pantry instead of the usual seed catalog.
For generation after generation of farmers, the staple crops we ate at the table — wheat and barley, maize and beans — were the same seeds we sowed in the fields. They were descendants of the first semi-wild crops that had more or less “ ‘volunteered’ for domestication,” as Peter Thompson, the British conservationist, wrote in his 2010 book, “Seeds, Sex and Civilization.” These seeds “germinated rapidly, completely, and at low temperatures.”
Today’s farmers, with their pedigree seeds, grow foods that are bigger and more bountiful than the peasant crops of the past. The viability of the seeds these cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetables produce, though, is an afterthought.
Yet whether out of nostalgia or novelty, the home gardener likes to tinker with the old ways. The “Don’t Throw It, Grow It Book of Houseplants,” published in 1977 and reissued a few years ago, introduced readers to dozens of seeds that could jump from a dinner plate to a planter. And one of the book’s authors, Deborah Peterson, advanced the cause by founding the Rare Pit and Plant Council, a New York-based gardening club.
The group’s newsletter, The Pits, seems to have fallen fallow. So I started from scratch in the spice drawer, with nutmeg, mustard seed, poppy seed and cardamom. In theory, at least, any of these spices could sprout into a seedling. Next, I raided the cupboard, collecting figs, dates, red beans and chickpeas. Finally, I Dumpster-dived the crisper for grapefruit and ginger.
These foodstuffs led a double life, like Reese Witherspoon’s character in “Sweet Home Alabama.” Before they were clean and dry and double-bagged, they had idled in a distant cow town.
As American consumers, we’ve become alienated from the life cycle of our food. And we’re supposed to feel ashamed of that. But then again, agriculture is a complicated global industry. By comparison, we feel no such compunction to understand where our iPhone comes from.
I, for one, had never seen a lentil plant. As I learned from the Internet (and how, pray tell, does that work?) a lentil is a grain legume, or “pulse,” that will grow to a foot or two in height. The plant self-pollinates and blossoms from the bottom up. The flowers are white, lilac or pale blue.
As it happened, I had picked up a bag of French lentils to make dal. What color would these seeds bloom? I scooped up a spoonful and added them to the kitchen seed bank.
By the time Andrew arrived, the table was cluttered with bottled herbs and dry beans and oddments that I had collected from the bulk bins at the grocery store. For the name alone, I had even picked up a stash of something labeled “sprouting alfalfa seed.” If I couldn’t get this stuff to germinate, I’d exile myself to FarmVille.
The sheer variety of food had Andrew thinking about a teaching from Shunryu Suzuki, his favorite Zen master. “ ‘In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities’ — that’s you,” he said. “But in the expert’s, there are few.”
Having chewed over the mystery of the nutmeg and failed to crack it, the Expert turned to Google. Apparently, our seed had already shed a shroud of red skin — mace spice came from this aril — and an overcoat of fleshy fruit. Studying the pictures, Andrew concluded that maybe his molars had been the wrong tool, after all.
What this job called for was a pair of nail clippers and a glass of water.
“You have to create some kind of hole for water to get into it,” he said. He nicked the side of the nutmeg and then dropped it into the glass. Apparently, following a manicure, what a seed likes best is a spa treatment.
A large seed, like the nutmeg, could soak overnight, imbibing water to soften the outer coat. A smaller seed might be ready in an hour. Inside, the fertilized embryo of a plant would swell and then germinate.
Next, Andrew turned to the beans. We could pierce these seeds just about anywhere, he said. But we would want to avoid the divot in the red bean that ran along the inside seam. This is where the root tip would emerge.
Or perhaps wouldn’t emerge. Call it a conspiracy theory, but apparently the international food-production system does not want my red beans, or other seeds, to sprout. A little moisture in a shipping container can spoil tons of dry goods. So processors routinely treat spices to preserve them for packaging. Some are flash-frozen and vacuum-dried, others steam-heated and sterilized.
And then there’s irradiation. This process bombards the surface of the food with high-energy electrons, gamma rays or X-rays, exterminating pathogens like E. coli, listeria and salmonella. The food does not become radioactive; by eating it, you will not become the Incredible Hulk. But a high enough dose will kill the living tissue in a plant or seed.
How could I tell if my mustard seed had been irradiated? Items like ground beef or papaya must be labeled with the phrase “treated by irradiation” and the Radura logo, a kind of disembodied flower with an atom for a head. But under F.D.A. rules, spices require no such marking, said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Osterholm said he believes that educated shoppers will prefer the safety of irradiated foods, and should be able to identify them on the store shelf. But under the current system (that is, global sourcing and no labels), what percentage of spices should we assume to be irradiated?
“We’ve tried to get more information from companies about that very issue,” Dr. Osterholm said. For now, though, he added: “I can’t tell you that. And I don’t know anyone who can.”
X-RAYS would make a convenient bogeyman for my gardening failures. But in truth, plenty of my other fruits and spices were dead on arrival, Andrew decided. Cutting open a white grapefruit, for instance, he discovered “a bunch of small, poorly formed seeds.”
For some reason, the citrus consumer doesn’t like pits. To satisfy this demand, growers breed grapefruits that are basically seedless, and raise them in orchards full of cloned trees.
The star anise seeds, meanwhile, bobbed to the surface of the bath. Andrew took this to be a bad sign. “If it floats, it has a lot of air in it,” he said. “It should be full.”
Yet you can rarely count out a seed, said Marc Hachadourian, manager of the Nolen Greenhouses at the New York Botanical Garden. “Sometimes things that look dead might be alive, and vice versa,” he said.
So Andrew and I dutifully wetted our pots and trays of seed-starting mix, a clean, fluffy medium for seedlings. We sprinkled the smallest seeds — poppy, caraway, cardamom, fig and mustard — over the surface. A dusting of soil went on top.
The ginger was a rhizome, or underground stem. Laid flat on damp soil, it should sink some roots and then send up leaves. We hoped that the turmeric rhizome, with its articulated arthropod body, would cotton to the same treatment. Otherwise, this thing looked as if it might depart for Wonderland and start puffing on a hookah.
As for the sweet potato, we probably didn’t have to do a thing, Andrew said. “You could leave this on the shelf, and it would start to grow.”
For good measure, we sunk it waist-high in a mound of dirt, like Winnie in Beckett’s “Happy Days.”
Finally, we were left with the seeds from the vanilla pod, which were too minuscule to handle. No store of food or energy filled these iridescent black flecks, Andrew said. “Basically some DNA and, I guess, a growing tip.”
Orchids (vanilla is a type of orchid) will scatter millions of seeds to the wind before one of them finds the right berth to germinate. “It’s probably more like one in a trillion,” Andrew added. “Does it really matter at that point? I suppose if it was money, you’d want a trillion.”
THREE weeks later, I had not hit the vanilla lottery. And I never would, said Jonathan Silvertown, author of “An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds” and an ecology professor at the Open University, 50 miles north of London.
“A vanilla pod is fermented to bring out its flavor,” Dr. Silvertown explained. And with “the smallest seeds on earth,” these orchids “depend on parasitizing fungi to establish themselves.”
The figs were a lost cause, too.
“Most of the figs that we buy are from asexual varieties,” Dr. Silvertown said. “They do have seeds, but they’re nonviable.”
Only a specialized breed of wasp can pollinate a fig. Last I checked, I didn’t have any fig wasps lying around the kitchen.
The wonders of market agriculture and container shipping had stocked my larders from all over the world. But “seeds from the tropics tend not to live as long,” Dr. Silvertown said. “Basically, because their ecology doesn’t require them to.” For many of these hot-blooded migrants, my cupboard was the end of the line.
The sprouting alfalfa, however, lived up to its name. This crop would come in handy if I ever bought a pony.
And the mustard seed and poppies sprouted as soft and thick as a flokati.
This bounty didn’t surprise Dr. Silvertown. “You will get poppy plants coming up in fields that haven’t been propagated for decades,” he said.
My dried beans — the lentils, red beans and chick peas — shot out of the ground as if they had been fired from a silo.
“Seeds with a hard seed coat, like many in the pea family, tend to be the longest living ones,” Dr. Silvertown said.
A pea is a patient thing, he writes in his book: “In 1940 when the Natural History Museum in London was bombed and the fire brigade played their hoses upon the ashes, seeds of the legume Albizia cheerfully woke up and germinated on the herbarium sheet where they had been placed in 1793.”
I’d think of this story the next time I purged the dusty jars from the spice drawer. Ultimately, it’s not the seed that carries an expiration date; it’s the cook.
Satisfying More Than Hunger
AVOCADO is a gateway seed — a way station on the path from horticultural dabbler to gardening addict. The pit, the toothpicks, the glass of water: this is seed germination at its most intoxicating.
Marc Hachadourian became hooked on avocados in third or fourth grade. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, he said, “I planted a little army on the windowsill. It got to the point where my mother got upset. She’d say, ‘We don’t need any giant avocado trees in the house.’ When they’d hit the eight-foot ceiling, it was time for them to go.”
Once Mr. Hachadourian had a taste of seed-starting, he said, he “moved on to other, more advanced horticultural subjects.” Now, at 37, he manages the Nolen Greenhouses at the New York Botanical Garden.
For the “Edible Garden” exhibition last fall, Mr. Hachadourian returned to kitchen propagation. He found particular success selecting produce from small ethnic markets. The vegetables there may not have been treated to prevent germination, Mr. Hachadourian said. “People were asking, ‘Where are we going to get a water chestnut plant?’ I said, ‘I’m not going to pay for that!’ I went down to Chinatown and bought them for $2 a pound.”
Though they are invasive in the wild, water chestnuts won’t thrive indoors without an aquarium or a fishbowl, he said. But plenty of other seeds that look appetizing in the produce aisle also look attractive in a planter.
Once you invite a papaya seed to sprout, it will make itself at home. In tropical weather and full sunlight, a papaya plant will shoot up six feet before its first birthday. Even indoors, the “large, single trunk” will grow rapidly, developing “long stalks with palmate leaves,” Mr. Hachadourian said.
“I’ve seen papayas fruit in a home,” he added. “Granted, the thing was like eight feet tall.”
A tangerine or lemon shrub might put up a fuss about fruiting indoors. But “the fragrance of the flowers is absolutely fantastic if you can coax them into bloom,” he said. This may take a few years. But the shiny leaves, when bruised, release a lovely perfume of their own.
Looking at an old bag of dried beans, it’s hard to imagine a handsome plant. Yet the pigeon pea will develop “beautiful silvery” foliage, Mr. Hachadourian said. And in the “fall to early winter, it will cover itself in bright yellow blossoms.”
For another Chinatown find, he likes the litchi — a sweet, squishy eyeball of a fruit. The “willow-like foliage” on this south China native will start reddish, then turn a deep, glossy green. But don’t get too attached to the plant unless your home has true cathedral ceilings. Though the litchi grows slowly, a mature tree may top out between 30 and 100 feet.
“If the plant gets up to size,” Mr. Hachadourian said, “you just get a new one.” In other words, time to start snacking again."
“I want to crunch into this with my teeth and see what happens,” he said. Maybe it was a shell. Maybe it was a whole seed. He was eager to find out, but first he had a question: “How’s your liability insurance?”
I had invited Andrew to my home in St. Paul not to test his dentition, but to conduct a botanical experiment: If we plopped this nugget in a tray of dirt, would it grow into a nutmeg tree?
What I was imagining was a kitchen garden in the most literal sense: a crop borne of the pantry instead of the usual seed catalog.
Today’s farmers, with their pedigree seeds, grow foods that are bigger and more bountiful than the peasant crops of the past. The viability of the seeds these cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetables produce, though, is an afterthought.
The group’s newsletter, The Pits, seems to have fallen fallow. So I started from scratch in the spice drawer, with nutmeg, mustard seed, poppy seed and cardamom. In theory, at least, any of these spices could sprout into a seedling. Next, I raided the cupboard, collecting figs, dates, red beans and chickpeas. Finally, I Dumpster-dived the crisper for grapefruit and ginger.
These foodstuffs led a double life, like Reese Witherspoon’s character in “Sweet Home Alabama.” Before they were clean and dry and double-bagged, they had idled in a distant cow town.
As American consumers, we’ve become alienated from the life cycle of our food. And we’re supposed to feel ashamed of that. But then again, agriculture is a complicated global industry. By comparison, we feel no such compunction to understand where our iPhone comes from.
As it happened, I had picked up a bag of French lentils to make dal. What color would these seeds bloom? I scooped up a spoonful and added them to the kitchen seed bank.
By the time Andrew arrived, the table was cluttered with bottled herbs and dry beans and oddments that I had collected from the bulk bins at the grocery store. For the name alone, I had even picked up a stash of something labeled “sprouting alfalfa seed.” If I couldn’t get this stuff to germinate, I’d exile myself to FarmVille.
The sheer variety of food had Andrew thinking about a teaching from Shunryu Suzuki, his favorite Zen master. “ ‘In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities’ — that’s you,” he said. “But in the expert’s, there are few.”
What this job called for was a pair of nail clippers and a glass of water.
“You have to create some kind of hole for water to get into it,” he said. He nicked the side of the nutmeg and then dropped it into the glass. Apparently, following a manicure, what a seed likes best is a spa treatment.
A large seed, like the nutmeg, could soak overnight, imbibing water to soften the outer coat. A smaller seed might be ready in an hour. Inside, the fertilized embryo of a plant would swell and then germinate.
Next, Andrew turned to the beans. We could pierce these seeds just about anywhere, he said. But we would want to avoid the divot in the red bean that ran along the inside seam. This is where the root tip would emerge.
And then there’s irradiation. This process bombards the surface of the food with high-energy electrons, gamma rays or X-rays, exterminating pathogens like E. coli, listeria and salmonella. The food does not become radioactive; by eating it, you will not become the Incredible Hulk. But a high enough dose will kill the living tissue in a plant or seed.
Dr. Osterholm said he believes that educated shoppers will prefer the safety of irradiated foods, and should be able to identify them on the store shelf. But under the current system (that is, global sourcing and no labels), what percentage of spices should we assume to be irradiated?
“We’ve tried to get more information from companies about that very issue,” Dr. Osterholm said. For now, though, he added: “I can’t tell you that. And I don’t know anyone who can.”
X-RAYS would make a convenient bogeyman for my gardening failures. But in truth, plenty of my other fruits and spices were dead on arrival, Andrew decided. Cutting open a white grapefruit, for instance, he discovered “a bunch of small, poorly formed seeds.”
For some reason, the citrus consumer doesn’t like pits. To satisfy this demand, growers breed grapefruits that are basically seedless, and raise them in orchards full of cloned trees.
The star anise seeds, meanwhile, bobbed to the surface of the bath. Andrew took this to be a bad sign. “If it floats, it has a lot of air in it,” he said. “It should be full.”
Yet you can rarely count out a seed, said Marc Hachadourian, manager of the Nolen Greenhouses at the New York Botanical Garden. “Sometimes things that look dead might be alive, and vice versa,” he said.
So Andrew and I dutifully wetted our pots and trays of seed-starting mix, a clean, fluffy medium for seedlings. We sprinkled the smallest seeds — poppy, caraway, cardamom, fig and mustard — over the surface. A dusting of soil went on top.
The ginger was a rhizome, or underground stem. Laid flat on damp soil, it should sink some roots and then send up leaves. We hoped that the turmeric rhizome, with its articulated arthropod body, would cotton to the same treatment. Otherwise, this thing looked as if it might depart for Wonderland and start puffing on a hookah.
As for the sweet potato, we probably didn’t have to do a thing, Andrew said. “You could leave this on the shelf, and it would start to grow.”
For good measure, we sunk it waist-high in a mound of dirt, like Winnie in Beckett’s “Happy Days.”
Finally, we were left with the seeds from the vanilla pod, which were too minuscule to handle. No store of food or energy filled these iridescent black flecks, Andrew said. “Basically some DNA and, I guess, a growing tip.”
Orchids (vanilla is a type of orchid) will scatter millions of seeds to the wind before one of them finds the right berth to germinate. “It’s probably more like one in a trillion,” Andrew added. “Does it really matter at that point? I suppose if it was money, you’d want a trillion.”
THREE weeks later, I had not hit the vanilla lottery. And I never would, said Jonathan Silvertown, author of “An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds” and an ecology professor at the Open University, 50 miles north of London.
“A vanilla pod is fermented to bring out its flavor,” Dr. Silvertown explained. And with “the smallest seeds on earth,” these orchids “depend on parasitizing fungi to establish themselves.”
The figs were a lost cause, too.
“Most of the figs that we buy are from asexual varieties,” Dr. Silvertown said. “They do have seeds, but they’re nonviable.”
Only a specialized breed of wasp can pollinate a fig. Last I checked, I didn’t have any fig wasps lying around the kitchen.
The wonders of market agriculture and container shipping had stocked my larders from all over the world. But “seeds from the tropics tend not to live as long,” Dr. Silvertown said. “Basically, because their ecology doesn’t require them to.” For many of these hot-blooded migrants, my cupboard was the end of the line.
The sprouting alfalfa, however, lived up to its name. This crop would come in handy if I ever bought a pony.
And the mustard seed and poppies sprouted as soft and thick as a flokati.
This bounty didn’t surprise Dr. Silvertown. “You will get poppy plants coming up in fields that haven’t been propagated for decades,” he said.
My dried beans — the lentils, red beans and chick peas — shot out of the ground as if they had been fired from a silo.
“Seeds with a hard seed coat, like many in the pea family, tend to be the longest living ones,” Dr. Silvertown said.
A pea is a patient thing, he writes in his book: “In 1940 when the Natural History Museum in London was bombed and the fire brigade played their hoses upon the ashes, seeds of the legume Albizia cheerfully woke up and germinated on the herbarium sheet where they had been placed in 1793.”
I’d think of this story the next time I purged the dusty jars from the spice drawer. Ultimately, it’s not the seed that carries an expiration date; it’s the cook.
Satisfying More Than Hunger
Marc Hachadourian became hooked on avocados in third or fourth grade. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, he said, “I planted a little army on the windowsill. It got to the point where my mother got upset. She’d say, ‘We don’t need any giant avocado trees in the house.’ When they’d hit the eight-foot ceiling, it was time for them to go.”
Once Mr. Hachadourian had a taste of seed-starting, he said, he “moved on to other, more advanced horticultural subjects.” Now, at 37, he manages the Nolen Greenhouses at the New York Botanical Garden.
Though they are invasive in the wild, water chestnuts won’t thrive indoors without an aquarium or a fishbowl, he said. But plenty of other seeds that look appetizing in the produce aisle also look attractive in a planter.
Once you invite a papaya seed to sprout, it will make itself at home. In tropical weather and full sunlight, a papaya plant will shoot up six feet before its first birthday. Even indoors, the “large, single trunk” will grow rapidly, developing “long stalks with palmate leaves,” Mr. Hachadourian said.
“I’ve seen papayas fruit in a home,” he added. “Granted, the thing was like eight feet tall.”
A tangerine or lemon shrub might put up a fuss about fruiting indoors. But “the fragrance of the flowers is absolutely fantastic if you can coax them into bloom,” he said. This may take a few years. But the shiny leaves, when bruised, release a lovely perfume of their own.
Looking at an old bag of dried beans, it’s hard to imagine a handsome plant. Yet the pigeon pea will develop “beautiful silvery” foliage, Mr. Hachadourian said. And in the “fall to early winter, it will cover itself in bright yellow blossoms.”
For another Chinatown find, he likes the litchi — a sweet, squishy eyeball of a fruit. The “willow-like foliage” on this south China native will start reddish, then turn a deep, glossy green. But don’t get too attached to the plant unless your home has true cathedral ceilings. Though the litchi grows slowly, a mature tree may top out between 30 and 100 feet.
“If the plant gets up to size,” Mr. Hachadourian said, “you just get a new one.” In other words, time to start snacking again."
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