Frugal Friday

[ecosophia]

Welcome back to Frugal Friday!  This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which have changed as we've proceeded. (As things have settled down to a nice steady conversational pace, for example, I've deleted the rules about only one tip per person per week and about limiting the length of comments; I was worried early on about people flooding the forum with too much too fast, but I think we're past that risk.)

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc.  I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

With that said, have at it!

Comments

Re: question - green tomatoes and dahlias

[prayergardens]

Green tomatoes! My fav! You can roast them and mix with salsa ingredients. I like to fry them with butter and onion and cilantro and then scramble some eggs in them. Enjoy!

I'm super interested to hear more about dahlias. I just successfully overwintered the tubers for the first time and replanted them but I really just thought they were ornamental. Unfortunately, I just gave away all of my extra tubers so I can't experiment. :( If they are delicious and nutritious, then I'll plant excessive, crazy-plant-lady, amounts of them in the future since the flowers are a joy to give away and then you can eat them! The are good at multiplying and in hard times, who would think to steal them from you?

Re: question - green tomatoes and dahlias

[kallianeira]

Yay, thanks for the tips.

I was concerned about using "green tomato" recipes from the net as there seem to be types of tomatoes that are green even when ripe and it was confusing to sort out whether that was what the recipes were for and if I'd be poisoning us by using unripe ones.

There are websites showing food gardens essentially disguised as ornamental/forest landscapes. I think I was renting when I saw them so didn't pay very much attention to the plants. Nut trees were there for sure.

One other flower which is good for food is day lilies. The shoots and buds and flowers are all edible. I haven't a large enough patch to have eaten the shoots. But the buds and young flowers are delicious, raw or cooked.

Like so many other things (weeds like lamb's quarters/fat hen eg) you'll find people of Asian background writing about these as standard food. How westerners lost the knowledge I suspect is one of the consequences of a century of so of conspicious consumption.

Ditch the lawn, grow edible flowers... (gives you an excuse to bury your food scraps secretly in the front garden too)

- iridescent scintillating elver

Re: question - green tomatoes and dahlias

[(Anonymous)]

My understanding is that unripe tomatoes that are bright green and quite hard are probably inedible, but the ones that are closer to ripening turn a paler green and those are the ones commonly used in green tomato recipes. I'm not 100% sure about that though, so don't take that as gospel.

-Squirrelly Jen