Frugal Friday
Sep. 27th, 2024 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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 may change further as we proceed. 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!
Have a care when canning!
Date: 2024-09-27 01:58 pm (UTC)I was putting up tomatoes. They're not good this year-- black in the hearts, like blossom end rot but interior. This can lower the acidity of the tomato so makes them unsuitable for water bath canning-- so I diced them, removed the bad parts, and pressure canned instead. (This is not USDA approved, so don't do it.)
A few batches into that, I opened up the canner after all pressure indicators had gone low, but, notably NOT before the jars had fully cooled. I got 3 of the 7 jars out safely, and realized I was rushing things when I noticed bubbling still inside jar #4 jut as I picked it up. That's when it hit me: Boiling-hot tomato all over the ceiling, walls... and me. Luckily the shower is next to the kitchen so I was able to rinse off in cold water immediately. The sheer pain of it put me briefly into shock.
I got very lucky. I'm red as a lobster with a few blisters on my face and second degree burns on my hand. It was within the realm of first aid, but I could have easily lost an eye if the spatter had flown just a little bit differently, or I could have been coated in the stuff and ended up in the burn ward. Or if jar had failed instead of just the lid, I'd have been filled with glass shrapnel, too.
You hear horror stories about pressure canners; I've had this one for 15 years without incident, and I guess I got complacent. I will treat this one with more respect from now on!
I don't know exactly what went wrong. When I went back to clean up I saw the jar was intact, empty, and lidless. Did I leave the ring too loose in haste? Overtighten it so the pressure built excessively? Was the lid already flawed in some way? I don't know. It might well have sealed just fine if it had had a chance to cool in peace. All I know is that I'm going to work more slowly, carefully, and methodically with my canning from here on out. I know when I've been warned, and I want to pass that warning on to all of you.
Re: Have a care when canning!
Date: 2024-09-28 01:12 am (UTC)Re: Have a care when canning!
Date: 2024-09-28 10:55 am (UTC)Re: Have a care when canning!
Date: 2024-09-28 02:11 pm (UTC)Re: Have a care when canning!
Date: 2024-09-29 12:36 am (UTC)(tucks away cautionary tale)
Re: Have a care when canning!
Date: 2024-10-02 02:34 pm (UTC)Eating while traveling far from home
Date: 2024-09-27 03:18 pm (UTC)It's hard to minimize travel and lodging costs but eating is something you can control more easily.
First, I insisted on a hotel with a free breakfast. I know they add in the charges to the room rate but you've got to eat somehow. Eating at the hotel's breakfast buffet lets you fill up for the day ahead and saves you time and $$ on finding local restaurants, especially the time part.
A breakfast buffet (don't take what you won't eat!) *also* can let you make a sandwich you can wrap in a napkin and eat later during the day. Thus, English muffins, rolls, bagels or some other bready product, filled with butter, jam, or a sausage patty. This works.
The other thing we did was look for cheaper food alternatives to restaurants. A difficulty with restaurants is they frequently serve huge portions and you're stuck with leftovers you have no way of storing for later consumption. They're also far more expensive than supermarkets.
We looked for supermarkets. In England, we discovered the immense variety of takeaway food shops with every conceivable food product, freshly made, and packed in single-serving size containers. We used the Marks & Spenser food mart for dinner every night, bringing our sandwiches and salads back to the Latvian Guest House to eat in their walled garden. This saved us big bucks.
When we couldn't do this, we used the soup and/or appetizer and/or snax section of the menu. The portions are smaller and less expensive and again, we weren't saddled with leftovers. It was just enough.
When we stayed at a friend's beach house years ago, we did the same. Dinner came, every night, from the deli counter and salad bar at the supermarket. We've done this at conventions too.
If you can't haul groceries with you for an extended trip, this works; saving you time and money and wasted food.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-09-27 03:47 pm (UTC)Using kombu (kelp) seaweed
Date: 2024-09-27 03:50 pm (UTC)https://www.justonecookbook.com/simmered-kombu-tsukudani/
Re: Using kombu (kelp) seaweed
Date: 2024-09-29 04:06 pm (UTC)Indie Web
Date: 2024-09-27 03:51 pm (UTC)These sites get buried in traditional search engines, but there are several options that are catered to non-corporate results. One that I like a lot is Marginalia: https://search.marginalia.nu/
When you search, you can apply filters like reducing results with adtech, excluding javascript, etc. And their Domains feature lets you restrict results to areas like the small web, blogosphere, academia, recipes, documents, etc. It's a nice way to unbury things you would never find even on a good mainstream engine like Duck Duck Go, and it's easy (and free) to get lost in those fascinating rabbit holes.
For example, just browsing random neocities sites I discovered a couple of Youtube plugins, one which allows you to skip sponsored segments within videos as well as "make sure to like, subscribe," etc. (Sponsorblock), and the other which swaps the clickbait thumbnails for a random screenshot within the video and changes the title to remove annoying all caps (DeArrow). And users can submit their own titles and vote which is most accurate, so a video that was called "You will never believe this life-changing hack that only idiots don't know about!" becomes "How to change the ink cartridge in a pen."
Re: Indie Web
Date: 2024-09-29 12:38 am (UTC)Though I hope the Neocities is at least lighter on the blinky GIFs...
Re: Indie Web
Date: 2024-09-29 03:25 am (UTC)Nice! And the Sponsorblock is really useful. The one that swaps the dumb clickbait thumbnails and all caps is a fantastic idea to decrapify youtube.
I am really annoyed by such debased marketing behaviors and it is nice to see there are ways to avoid it!
Re: Indie Web
Date: 2024-09-29 12:53 pm (UTC)Re: Indie Web
Date: 2024-10-03 09:46 pm (UTC)I've got two pages up now - and while I CERTAINLY have enough projects on my plate and this one isn't super high priority, I hope to play around with it now and then and put up random bits and bobs that never really fit on the main site (kinda "mimeograph and then some").
edited to add the link (duh!): https://mimeographrevival.neocities.org/
Figs
Date: 2024-09-27 08:28 pm (UTC)I have to prune my figs today. I will cut the longest branches of the figs right down. I will crop off about a third of the branches on each tree. Figs fruit on the tips so you prune them differently than all other fruit trees. We cut the longest branches down because we cannot reach the fruit.
This is where it gets frugal. The cuttings can be potted up to make new trees. I have a friend who is pruning his Ron de Bordeaux fig tree and will save cuttings for me as I do not have that variety yet. I will pot up cuttings from my Italian honey fig as I want more of those trees. They have lovely pink fruit, very sweet and tasty. A fig from a cutting can be fruiting within three or four years.
Maxine
Re: Figs
Date: 2024-09-29 03:09 am (UTC)Atmospheric RIver
Print at Your Library, Office, etc.
Date: 2024-09-27 08:58 pm (UTC)For example, my nearby library charges 10 cents for single-sided B&W and up to 75 cents for two-sided color. That’s frugal for the few pages I occasionally need, frugal considering that I don’t have to pay for cartridges that I’d only use maybe 20% of before they go bad, frugal in that I don’t have to buy a printer, and double-frugal in that I don’t have to set aside space in my tiny office for it.
If printing at work is more convenient than at the library, it’s going to be somewhere between “free, but don’t let it get out of hand,” “yeah, 25 cents a page,” and “no, just don’t.” The main thing is, don’t be sneaky and jeopardize your job, because that’s not frugal at all. This is one case where the inverse of “it is easier to obtain forgiveness than permission” probably applies.
Anyway, I’m tired of dried-out ink cartridges, balky interfaces, and fighting with the wi-fi box. Ten cents a page man, I’m happy. Enjoy your road trip, JMG!
(no subject)
Date: 2024-09-28 02:01 pm (UTC)We do this already but I never thought to mention it. Mostly we quit printers because I just ran out of patience trying to be my own tech support everytime something went wrong, I think they are designed at a price point where you just get fed up and go buy the next one.
We live close to a library and Mr. PG takes little PG there every week so I just email him things I need printed and the next time he goes there, he prints for me. Also, he's a fan of the NY Times crossword (they still do something well!) and instead of us having a subscription, the library actually makes one photo copy of it from their subscription every day as the master copy and anyone can come in and copy that for the $0.10. He's often able to get a few days at a time.
Re: Print at Your Library, Office, etc.
Date: 2024-09-29 01:11 am (UTC)Re: Print at Your Library, Office, etc.
Date: 2024-09-29 12:46 pm (UTC)Also, a hybrid approach could work well here: do most of your printing at home in B&W, and for the occasional color print do it at the library.
Re: Print at Your Library, Office, etc.
Date: 2024-09-29 04:09 pm (UTC)Re: Print at Your Library, Office, etc.
Date: 2024-09-29 08:51 pm (UTC)Re: Print at Your Library, Office, etc.
Date: 2024-09-29 06:49 pm (UTC)I was running a 1980s laser printer well into the 2010s. It lasted me a good decade after I pulled it out of a dumpster; darn thing was nearly 30 years old by the end. The drum was dying so the prints were getting streaky, and good luck getting a replacement! I'd have kept it for drafts and such but computers stopped coming with "printer" parallel ports, and the USB adapters I tried didn't work for some reason. Luckily innovation seems to have stalled out so USB we'll have with us until the end of the age, I'd reckon.
FYI,
if you print A LOT, the cheapest per-page is still dot-matrix printers. You know, the ones with typewriter ribbons. They still make them, both the printers and the ribbons.
Maintenance of shaving razors
Date: 2024-09-27 10:28 pm (UTC)Here's one I've been doing for a while. Many shaving razors are sold in packaging urging you to use them no longer than a week. Utter nonsense! I find that some of the better razors, like the ones with 5+ blades built for mounting on a separate handle, can last for several months so long as they are properly maintained.
The main thing that degrades a razor's performance over time is the buildup of cut hair and gunk inside. Cleaning them out, though, is not difficult. After shaving, make sure the razor is completely wet and tap it sharply on the palm of your hand. The blades should be pointing towards your palm, so that you are tipping the razor forward and striking your palm with the base. This will discharge built-up hair and foam onto your palm, from where it can be washed away.
I've found that this process can shorten the lives of razors by wearing away their surfaces that mate with the handle for some types of razors. For this reason, I use a finger to brace the razor's head when I tap it. This keeps the head rigid and prevents it from bouncing around as it strikes my palm, which is what wears away the contact surfaces.
As I said, I've found a good razor can last several months under this maintenance regimen. Hopefully this will save someone some money at the supermarket.
Re: Maintenance of shaving razors
Date: 2024-09-28 03:26 am (UTC)I use the same razor for a month but then, I use a safety razor so after I shave, I unscrew the razor, take the blade out, wipe it off, oil it and put it back. Safety razors give a great shave too.
Maxine
Re: Maintenance of shaving razors
Date: 2024-09-29 01:12 am (UTC)Apple picker basket
Date: 2024-09-28 02:17 pm (UTC)There is an abandoned apple tree on a dirt road we walk down and while other walkers might have grabbed the lower apples, we'll go in and get the ones out of reach and take away a couple of bags of apples.
special compost?
Date: 2024-09-28 10:59 pm (UTC)I once read a garden book in which the author stated that he would make a separate compost from all his insect repelling plants, marigold, nasturtium, onion and so on, and spread that among his vegetables. He claimed it reduced insect damage on his plants.
Has anyone here heard of or tried anything similar? Mary Bennett
(no subject)
Date: 2024-09-29 12:14 pm (UTC)I can only do cold composting right now but I'll certainly make another pile of what I know to be bug repellent and try! But actually, I'm wondering if the bokashi method might be better as it seems faster and viable in small batch.
I went over to the website and noted a few things: people love it, it has no discernible smell, and it also deters deer and earwigs - so now I'm in. One person said they made a tea of this and neem meal as a big repellent dressing.
The one thing I couldn't find was an ingredient list. They sell it as mint compost but you mention above the other ingredients. When I think about it, I may search around some more. This could be a fun mystery to solve.
This is so cool -thanks!
can tomatoes
Date: 2024-09-29 02:17 am (UTC)Right now I am up to 22 pints of canned, diced tomatoes. It has been more trouble than usual as my soil is still recovering, so they are smaller than usual, which means it takes alot more time to cut up. I still have alot of time before a freeze, but probably will only have enough at once to can for the next month. I aim for one pint a week for all year when I dont have fresh, so for 8 or 9 months. So I would like 36 pint jars. And, I have 21 jars left from last year, I would like to get to where I have more than just this seasons, like be a year ahead in case of weather disruptions.
1) Cost: While my yield per plant is low this year due to small size, the whole effort is free as I start the plants myself from seed, and I save the seeds to use the next year, and I dont buy fertilizers, soil, or amendments. As my soil fertility gets back into shape, my yields will return to normal. I do buy one bag of potting soil a year for seed starting, but that is for all the vegetables, and it uses power to run my stove to can. The closest comparable store bought product would be Bionaturae stained tomatoes, which is canned in glass with no additives, at Azure that costs around $4 a jar, pint eqivalent is $2.56,
2) flavor and consistency: This is incredibly better than buying store bought. I grew about 10 varieties this year, 3 of them paste tomato, and I can a mix of whatever is ripe at that moment, so the mix has been mostly paste tomato with some heirloom slicing tomatoes mixed in. The flavor is great, and the consistency is normal, like if I had cooked down fresh. I prefer this to the standard canned diced tomato which has citric acid added and this caused the diced pieces to stay firm.
3) It is important to have food storage at home and to have variety for vitamins. A cup of raw tomatoes has about 45% vitamin C and 75% vitamin A of minimum daily requirement. Some vitamin C is lost in cooking, about 30% of it, but everything else is intact. And, that still leaves 30% of minumum daily vitamin C in the equivalent to one cup fresh, as tomatoes cook down, it is much less than one cup cooked.
4) Canned tomatoes are an incredibly tasty, versatile staple to have around. Curries, Pasta dishes, egg dishes, soups, bean dishes, casseroles.
Atmospheric River
Re: can tomatoes
Date: 2024-09-29 04:45 pm (UTC)Valerie
Re: can tomatoes
Date: 2024-09-30 08:47 pm (UTC)It's an alternative to canning for those of us who don't trust ourselves to can--and if you live somewhere dry, you may not even need a dehydrator.
--Ms. Krieger
Re: can tomatoes
Date: 2024-10-01 04:43 pm (UTC)(The weather here is not good during tomato season for sun drying.)
Apparently your way of storage-- just dry-- is safer than packing them in oil like we see at the store AND obviously cheaper given the price of oil these days.
drying figs
Date: 2024-10-02 11:16 am (UTC)All the remedies with Honey
Date: 2024-09-29 03:21 am (UTC)I have compiled all the remedies with honey that have been shared here, and here they are. If I recall correctly, all of them are good for the respiratory system and some are used as a general health tonic.
Re: All the remedies with Honey
Date: 2024-09-29 03:16 pm (UTC)Re: All the remedies with Honey
Date: 2024-09-29 04:48 pm (UTC)The ginger honey is doing its thing in my bedroom closet. It will get more honey company shortly…
Valerie
Re: All the remedies with Honey
Date: 2024-09-29 08:55 pm (UTC)Boys mom’s plum sauce
Date: 2024-09-29 02:20 pm (UTC)Original post: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/294599.html?thread=50760647#cmt50760647
And though it’s too Late in the season, if you have a lot of apricots, this recipe makes a similar tart, sweet, spicy apricot sauce that we also liked: https://www.thespruceeats.com/apricot-sauce-recipe-4064474
Re: Boys mom’s plum sauce
Date: 2024-09-29 09:42 pm (UTC)This week is peaches: a Sister offered what she and her husband did not need from her tree less a box, if we came and picked, I generally disaprove of my older Sisters and Brothers scaling ladders, so over we went, turned out they have two trees, and we scored nine boxes of peaches! Well, you know what we're doing!
As a kid, I learned how to seal jars with parafin, for high acid high sugar jellies. This is, of course, strongly discouraged nowdays, but I do wonder what options we have, or might have, in the future, for replacing the disposable lids of our jars. No one could get new lids at any price in 2020, and we were all using leftovers . . . this seems to me to be a great potential bottleneck on home canning.
BoysMom
Re: Boys mom’s plum sauce
Date: 2024-09-30 12:51 am (UTC)https://www.reusablecanninglids.com
Re: Boys mom’s plum sauce
Date: 2024-09-30 06:41 pm (UTC)I can't say I was super impressed with Tattlers: they don't seal super-well, IMO. When new, the failure rate was ahigher than disposable lids, but usable; at first I thought I just didn't have the technique right. As the seals aged, that failure rate slowly crept up over time. I'd say the set I had lasted at least 5 years before I stopped using them? Now I may have been cleaning them wrong or opening them wrong in a way that caused rapid deterioration of the lids and/or rubber rings. The company says 12-15 years-- but that probably assumes one seal per year. Since I was probably using them at least twice a year, well, they did last 10 uses.
I have heard Harvest Guard lids (which use the plastic lid, rubber seal, mason jar formula Tattler pioneered) are a bit more reliable, so I might get some of those to try next year.
For our European readers, are the Weck-style glass-and-clip style jars still popular there? How long do the seals usually last? They are hideously expensive here, but I suspect that's our future.
Re: Boys mom’s plum sauce
Date: 2024-09-30 06:47 pm (UTC)I have a bunch of the Tattler plastic lids, I have not used them in a few years, but they do work if used as directed. the rubber rings are reusable, but will not last too many years.
The reality is that having canned foods, from a factory or done at home requires an industrial society. I would imagine that we will keep prioritizing having means to have packaged shelf stable foods for quite a while. I would imagine even if you have no electricity or spotty for residential we would keep prioritiziing factories that make neccessities. SO, canned foods for longer than we have refrigerators or freezers.
Then, eventually, but not in our time, yes, we will no longer do sealed canning. We will go back to fermented and dried foods. At that level of existance, salt and pottery needs to be prioritized.
Atmospheric River
Re: Boys mom’s plum sauce
Date: 2024-10-01 10:31 pm (UTC)Re: Boys mom’s plum sauce
Date: 2024-10-03 08:56 pm (UTC)https://lakelandcamel.scene7.com/is/image/LakelandCamel/3819_1?$610$
If that is indeed the case, I'd add that I've been reusing these jars and lids for many years without a problem. Very occasionally one won't seal properly, which means if I don't immediately notice that this has happened (once), the contents are obviously bad when you open the jar (plus you don't get the "pop" as you open the jar).
Most everyone I know that preserves stuff in jars here in Europe is reusing jars and lids, such that your comment rather surprised me, hence an across the water perspective for all you American preservers.
Re: Boys mom’s plum sauce
Date: 2024-10-04 02:43 am (UTC)The canning lids are supposed to be single use, but they can be reused if they are not bent when opened. There is a risk they will not make a good seal. This is not very risky if it is water bath canning ( sometimes called open kettle canning) as those food products cant grow botulism and kill you.
It is my understanding that Americans pressure can much more than overseas, and pressure canning is where there can be more danger. So things that might be done (but not recommended) for water bath canning, like canning in a jar that was single use from the market, like a jam jar, or strained tomato jar, products canned at a factory, including reusing the lid that came with it, is too risky for pressure canning. Even for water bath canning, they dont vent out steam the same. If you are doing the turn over the jar with boiling high sugar jam, then it is easier to reuse those lids. But, all lids have a thin amount of sealant painted on the inside of the rim, and this is what wears out even if the lid doesnt get bent. Same as the rubber rings for the Weck jars, which I have canned with alot. They are reusable for a while, have to get a new ring
It used to be that factory made products sold here were in compatible jars. When I was younger, things like peanut butter and mayonnaise, etc.... were sold in jars that had compatible threading to the empty canning jars that we would buy specifically for home canning. SO all the home canning lids and rings would fit on those jars. I probably still have what used to be a mayonaise jar mixed in with my quart canning jars. I definitely have pasta sauce jars mixed in, but the later pasta sauce jars are not full quarts, they had shrinkage and are 24 ounces, but fit canning jar lids. Now, I think they have changed those too so the lids are not compatible.
The Unfrugality of Hurricanes
Date: 2024-10-01 03:33 am (UTC)If 5 gallons per person were provided that would mean delivering 5.5 million GALLONS per day. Over broken roads and avoiding washed out bridges. Pretty costly.
One gallon to drink, one gallon to wash hands and face with, one gallon to cook with, one gallon to wash dishes with and one gallon to give to pets. Is 5 gallons per day an unfrugal estimate of mine? How little water should a person be able to get by with for a month-long emergency?
In a place where ALL roads are closed, bridges gone, a whole parkfull of mobile homes washed downhill into a heap with one found roosting in a tree. Where city people are dipping buckets in the gasoline storage-tank-polluted river to have a way to flush their toilets. Nothing has been mentioned about the parts of town that lie below the sewage treatment plants which require powered pumps to raise sewage to the mains level that carries it to the settlement ponds.
In places subject to inland hurricane incursions, it might be a frugal practice to get into the habit of collecting rainwater, storing activated charcoal in a neighborhood concrete bunker situated on the highest point in town, and having regular family walkabouts in the style of Johnny Appleseed, i.e., knowing the lie of the land before the need occurs, knowing how to forage, to find shelter, and to fast.
Looks like a half a million to 1.5 million people are affected by the road closures. Not everyone is without power and food, but the city dwellers are more visible on the media. People living in the hills and hollers could be worse off (polluted wells?) or better off (root cellar stayed dry as a bone and ev’rybody eating ham, sweet potatoes and canned peaches). It is hard to tell what you cannot see.
Cell phones were so badly affected that 1st responders were having a hard time communicating and coordinating actions. Is it frugal to buy a set of walkie-talkies to share with your neighbors? Or just relearn to do the mountain hollering that lets your neighbors know you are okay or in distress? For sure, though, everyone ought to keep a supply of tobacco. If you don’t smoke it, you can use it to drive off the mosquitoes that are bound to come out in force as the floodwaters subside.
Sauerkraut anecdote from 1940ish
Date: 2024-10-03 05:50 am (UTC)From the main blog, https://www.ecosophia.net/the-nibelungs-ring-the-rhinegold-i/#comment-123520