Frugal Friday
Aug. 15th, 2025 10:53 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.
Rule #5: don't post LLM ("AI") generated content, and don't bring up the subject unless you're running a homemade LLM program on your own homebuilt, steam-powered server farm.
With that said, have at it!
Falafels
Date: 2025-08-15 03:30 pm (UTC)I grow broad beans the seeds of which came from Jerusalem's old city market many years ago. This is a very small-seeded variety and is very popular in Palestine. I soaked a cup of these for 24 hours, ground the beans in a blender and added coriander, cumin, chili, salt, pepper, chopped dill, cilantro and parsley as well as a small amount of chopped onion and garlic. I formed the mixture into small balls and rolled them in what passes for olive oil here. I roasted them for 15 minutes in an air fryer on 370 degrees F and served them with a tahina sauce and a chopped vegetable salad of cucumbers, tomatoes and more herbs from my garden.
I had five small falafels for breakfast and was very full and contented. The falafels are crunchy and delicious. I was surprised to find that if I had falafel's for breakfast, I saved on lunch too. I was too full to eat more than a piece of fruit for lunch and made it to supper at 6 without snacking or even wanting to.
One cup of these beans makes me 3 breakfasts. If you don't have broad beans, you can us chick peas but you must not use canned chick peas as they are already cooked and will not make a good falafel. This is a really inexpensive meal especially if you have a garden full of herbs, cucumbers and tomatoes.
Maxine
Re: Falafels
Date: 2025-08-17 05:20 am (UTC)Nothing beats beans for cheap nutrition!
Cetiosaurus
Re: Falafels
Date: 2025-08-18 02:20 am (UTC)Thanks Maxine!
I wrote this over at my place
Date: 2025-08-15 03:35 pm (UTC)I Think that it applies here.
At least the weather isn't all that bad. Lately the temps have been >100 F and despite my knees not hurting (cold makes them ache) temps that high are unpleasant for this particular fat old man.
The complaint today that I wish to register is the price of coffee. A year ago, I bought my cheap american-ground coffee (yuban or maxwell house) for $9.00 for over 40 ounces. Now the same container only holds 38 ounces and costs $23.00 (both prices rounded down to dollars).
Now, I hate to say it, this means I need to change my behavior to conform with current realities. I suppose that I have seen this coming for a while now, having noticed and written about the fact that 98+ percent of our coffee is imported even back in the days of my Blogger account. So my thoughts are that I will need to switch to tea for my morning caffeine fix.
I knew that this was coming. That foreknowledge doesn't make it one damn bit better, So I will take this time to share my feelings (here in my world, this is referred to as "bitching"). Surprisingly, I am not all that annoyed about this turn of affairs. I will adapt to this inconvenience by drinking coffee on the weekends and tea on the weekdays.
My tea will be of the "not snooty pooty" variety. I have always felt that emotionally linking your foodstuffs to your self image is a fools game. So I go to Wally world or out on the big wide web and buy myself bulk tea (a brand called Tea India). Two pounds for around $14.00 delivered. Now, this seems expensive at first glance, but for coffee in my 1.5 liter french press is is a minimum of three scoops (2 tablespoons) and the tea is 1-1/2 scoops for 1.5 liters.
Now, this isn't the last adaptation I will need to make in my life. Things like coffee andI tea are imports that won't go away and while I half approve of the tariffs of imported stuff we really could without, the fact is that I really like some of the little luxuries that I might well have to do without.
________________
I don't know if this violates the "no advertisement" policy of our gracious host, but these folks have some good stuff available:
https://www.ishopindian.com/
https://youtu.be/9xA62S-75uk?si=2ii198BggSRUILW2
Re: I wrote this over at my place
Date: 2025-08-16 03:13 am (UTC)So if you can figure out what you're looking at and know what to do with it, maybe go shopping in chinatown.
Re: I wrote this over at my place
Date: 2025-08-16 03:58 pm (UTC)Maxine
Re: I wrote this over at my place
Date: 2025-08-16 05:43 pm (UTC)Just the independents, mind you. We had a great Asian grocery chain called T&T Supermarkets but I hear they are now owned by the Weston family conglomerate.
Caldathras
Re: I wrote this over at my place
Date: 2025-08-16 05:07 am (UTC)5 years (!) later, i have averaged about two fancy coffee drinks per year in the aftermath. don't really miss it and have saved scads of money, cut down on kitchen infrastructure, and cut down on the teeth staining. pretty much a win win, as far as i'm concerned, especially if yuban is $23.
if you have a ross store in your area, they sometimes have good deals on tea. it's hit or miss, but if you're there on the right day you can stock up for cheap.
Re: I wrote this over at my place
Date: 2025-08-16 09:36 pm (UTC)The topic is timely, though, because I was finally able to test a foraged coffee substitute I had read about: cleavers. Here’s a link to what I read: https://www.wildwalks-southwest.co.uk/how-to-make-wild-cleaver-coffee/
It is time-consuming to harvest so I only got a little bit to test it out. After roasting, grinding and brewing, I had a pale brown liquid. It didn’t really smell like coffee to me but the flavor was nutty and slightly sweet, with a hint of bitterness and a coffee finish. Despite the pale color the flavor was plenty strong. If you’ve ever had genmaicha tea, it tasted like that mixed with coffee.
I liked it much better than yaupon, dandelion root or chicory. I think it could be a viable coffee substitute or extender if it could be harvested more easily. Anybody else tried making cleavers coffee?
As with any foraged food, make sure of your identification and try only a little bit at first in case of a bad reaction.
tea sourcing
Date: 2025-08-17 04:29 pm (UTC)Atmospheric River
Re: I wrote this over at my place
Date: 2025-08-18 03:33 am (UTC)I have also altered my coffee and tea drinking but for health reasons. I harvest rose petals, lemon balm, chamomile flowers and mint, all organic and all from my garden. I dry them and mix them up into a tea blend that I am now very fond of.
I know this is a dreaded last resort for caffeine drinkers but I promise, if you switch to herbal tea, your health will benefit from it and it will be easier to get off other addictive substances such as sugar.
Maxine
The Art and Pleasure of Letter Writing
Date: 2025-08-15 03:49 pm (UTC)https://www.sothismedias.com/home/the-art-and-pleasure-of-letter-writing
Justin Patrick Moore
Re: The Art and Pleasure of Letter Writing
Date: 2025-08-15 05:13 pm (UTC)Though I do think that e-mail provides a reasonably good medium for "pen pals". Over time, if I find the ambition and a person that I want to upgrade to a letter in the mail, I will write them.
The only real trouble is to find someone who thinks this way. I have sent letters in the past, only to have folks tell me that they would have preferred an e-mail.
I have a feeling letter writing is going to be an art form shared gratefully between aficionados. If you have someone that you can write a letter to and they will appreciate it...please do.
For some reason, pen and ink are more pleasing to me than printed paper or e-mails. But they are expensive, time consuming, and slow. But then again, that is their appeal!
Re: The Art and Pleasure of Letter Writing
Date: 2025-08-19 02:35 pm (UTC)Thanks for taking the time to read my article.
Writing email is definitely convenient. I have trouble keeping up with some of the pen pals I've had over the past few years, if only because I have so much else on my plate, and I can dash off an email rather quick. I can write a quick letter too -but the other person is going to have to work harder to decipher my handwriting.
Pen and ink are more pleasing. I recently did send a letter to a friend, and I got a really kind note in reply. The note was a public post on substack actually, and they said they had gotten a letter, and how it made them feel, to sit with it and read it, and how different it made them feel emotionally. It was actually rather touching.
Praise the snail! I don't think a letter has to be too much more expensive. Mine to a friend was on common notebook paper written in a ballpoint, while I sat in the nursing home with my mother in law. So yes, when done artfully it can have great appeal, but even when dashed off can be emotionally effecting to someone when they receive it in the mail these days.
Wishing you the best.
Justin
Exercise is routine maintenance for your body
Date: 2025-08-15 07:48 pm (UTC)Your body also needs routine maintenance.
Sleep. Dental hygiene. Eating properly. Go easy on the recreational pharmaceuticals. Wash your hands.
One many people like to skip is routine exercise. Apparently, your immune system doesn't work well if you don't exercise because your lymph system doesn't have a pump! Your circulatory system has a pump; it's called your heart. So what moves lymph through your lymph nodes?
Exercise.
If you watch old movies, especially ones set during WWII, you'll see soldiers recuperating in bed. Even for Hollywood, they look healthy. Nowadays, about the same time the anesthesia is wearing off, the medical staff get you up and moving! Even when you can barely walk! I've personally experienced this, having my husband walk me up and down the aisle, IV bag on a wheelie stand, following us. He held me upright. I did the same with my father.
What this tells me is how critical daily movement is. Not just walking. Based, again on personal experience, walking every day just isn't enough.
You need to work on aerobics, strength, and balance.
Luckily, despite what people try to sell you, you can get all of these with a simple calisthenics program you can do in your own home with a copy of the book (or a pdf downloaded from myriad sites) and about 15 minutes a day.
It is, of course, The Royal Canadian Air Force exercise plan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Canadian_Air_Force_Exercise_Plans
You can easily find a copy of the book in used bookstores online or just download a pdf. The women's plan emphasizes toning and flexibility, the men's strength. You can do either one. It is CRITICAL you start at the bottom and gradually work your way up the charts. Eventually, you can end up at near-Olympic levels of fitness.
Bill and I (we're 65) do a modified version of the women's plan. He's got shoulder injuries and I have to be very careful of my back and knees. We add other calisthenics from other programs we've tried to compensate for the ones we don't do with the RCAF.
This program's been widely used since the 1950's. It works. It lets you increase your intensity. It's free. All you need, beside the instructions, is the self-discipline to do it. You don't have to spend time going to and from the gym.
It's true that the best exercise is the one that you'll do every day.
But it's also true that walking alone, even with weights, doesn't do much for strength or balance. I've watched my mother gradually deteriorate despite her walking, stairs, housekeeping, and gardening. She won't do the extra exercises she should do.
Exercise is how physical therapists get old people out of beds and into wheelchairs and old people in wheelchairs into walkers.
Look into a basic program like Royal Canadian, or see what your library has on offer. Yoga (which we also do, alternating with the Royal Canadian) and tai chi really add extra balancing exercises. If you wear weights, you've added more strength to your routine.
Exercise can be boring and sweaty. It takes time. But you will function better if you find an exercise that you're willing to do every day.
If you function better, have better balance, keep your muscle tone, you'll do handle aging better too.
Re: Exercise is routine maintenance for your body
Date: 2025-08-16 02:02 pm (UTC)Video of an assisted squat: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CcnyxSe_H9g
Re: Exercise is routine maintenance for your body
Date: 2025-08-16 11:36 pm (UTC)I live in Minnesota, and it is difficult getting enough exercise during the winter. (I've been doing the Five Rites daily for two years now, but that is really not aerobic.) This gives me a routine I can have ramped up and going before the weather gets cold.
Note for those of you curious about the Five Rites - no, it is not true that you will recover your original hair color or carry heavy loads up Himalayan peaks. Maybe that takes more than two years...
Re: Exercise is routine maintenance for your body
Date: 2025-08-17 04:51 pm (UTC)Just modify it as you need to for your knees and back!
I've been amazed by the carryings-on about high-end, very expensive exercise classes and much of what they do is similar to Royal Canadian except you're not in your living room, exercising for free.
Re: Exercise is routine maintenance for your body
Date: 2025-08-17 05:27 am (UTC)The Second Heart You Never Knew You Had
Groundbreaking Research Reveals How Your Calf's "Forgotten Muscle" Slashes Blood Sugar by 52%, Prevents Heart Failure, and Burns Calories for Hours—All Without Breaking a Sweat
SAYER JI, JULY 31, 2025
https://sayerji.substack.com/p/the-second-heart-you-never-knew-you
Re: Exercise is routine maintenance for your body
Date: 2025-08-17 08:59 pm (UTC)Since then IIRC scientists discoverd approximately 300 thingummies that ONLY get produced whilst moving (and ONLY in the moving parts) and estimate there to be around 800.
So - move ;-)
The Fixer-I was amazed
Date: 2025-08-15 07:50 pm (UTC)I was so impressed and it made me happy that we didn't have to trash the entire thing and buy a new one.
Re: The Fixer-I was amazed
Date: 2025-08-17 08:56 pm (UTC)more plum sauce - canned
Date: 2025-08-16 01:22 pm (UTC)https://extension.oregonstate.edu/food/preservation/preserving-plums-prunes
This year, we're enjoying the plums steamed, with only a light sprinkling of freshly ground cinnamon and cardamom. Nothing else. Steamed about 10 minutes, until they froth a bit. I've decided that this'll be my birthday dessert this year, served with some sort of cream (whipped-, ice-, or my special-diet's fermented version)
I'm freezing some for continued steaming, but also going to can halved fruits in a very light syrup (I learned that the syrup helps maintain a kind of homeostasis, preventing the fruit's sugar from leaking out into the water and turning them bland). Canned in water is possible, but might not be particularly tasty unless your goal is fruit-sweetened water.
Re: more plum sauce - canned
Date: 2025-08-18 10:09 pm (UTC)I am baout to be rolling in Comice pears, so will need pear preservation ideas. Then it will be apples. Apples I can make canned pie slices, dehydrate slices, make applesauce, and maybe I can borrow a press to can juice, all of which I have no trouble using
Atmospheric River
Re: more plum sauce - canned
Date: 2025-08-20 12:23 am (UTC)I prefer to can my fruit in a light honey syrup. Pears are great canned and really wonderful dehydrated!
Maxine
Plum BBQ Sauce
Date: 2025-08-17 02:38 pm (UTC)https://www.backwoodshome.com/preserving-plums/
I modified the recipe as follows to make it more zesty and less sweet.
8 lbs. (16 cups) plums, pitted and chopped
1.5 cup chopped onion
3 cups packed brown sugar
2 heaping Tbsp. mustard powder
4 heaping Tbsp. ground ginger powder
2 Tbsp. salt
4 garlic cloves (minced)
pinch of cayenne
pinch of nutmeg
2 cups apple cider vinegar
Yield – 6 pints
1. Measure out 16 cups of the plums and pour into a large, nonreactive pot.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, until thickened. This takes about an hour.
4. If desired, you can now make the sauce smooth. Remove from the heat and allow the mixture to cool a bit. Purée with an immersion blender, a traditional blender (working in batches), or a food mill.
5. Continue simmering and stirring often until the sauce is the desired thickness (about another hour; the sauce will thicken faster if puréed).
6. Ladle into hot canning jars, leaving ¼-inch headspace. Process pint or quart jars for 20 minutes in a water bath canner.
pickle relish
Date: 2025-08-18 10:05 pm (UTC)Since I live alone, I canned this up in 4 ounce( 1/2cup) jars. I made up 19 of the teeny jars of this, I think my cukes shrunk alot from the measurement as they were mature or something, but 19 little jars is fine, I was aiming for 24 jars to have this twice a month. I load the jars with a slotted spoon, hit the bottom of the jar to settle some, top off, then ladle in syrup, try to debubble and smooth again.
Making in the very small jars means the jar lids are the priciest part, more jar lids are used, this would have been 5 pint jars if I had canned in pints, so I used 14 more lids than that. But, I will not have it go bad and mold in my refrigerator between my uses. At the moment, I have a stash of lids, the cukes are from my garden, I had pickling spices, salt, vinegar and tumeric, I also had a couple red peppers that were use now, so I just had to buy a couple green peppers, and I will have pickle relish for all year.
Atmospheric River
Re: pickle relish
Date: 2025-08-19 03:38 pm (UTC)As for plum sauce (up thread), yeah, it's hard to use up if you don't eat meat :D Maybe a chutney would be a good use for extra plums (or the pears in your case)? Pear butter?
How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-19 05:09 pm (UTC)I don't know what to do with them. No flies here, so I don't need bundles of dried sage to keep the flies away. I have heard about preserving in honey, but good honey, unadulterated and locally produced is getting hard to find and is quite expensive when it can be sourced at all.
Any good ideas for preserving sage? Mary Bennett
Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-19 06:12 pm (UTC)Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-19 08:04 pm (UTC)Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-19 09:10 pm (UTC)Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-21 08:11 pm (UTC)Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-22 06:25 pm (UTC)Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-20 03:56 pm (UTC)You are lucky to have so much sage - it has numerous health benefits. I make a tincture out of it and then put one teaspoon into a glass of water and drink it every morning. I found it in one of Susun S. Weed books a long time ago and have used it ever since. Here is the tincture recipe.
Ingredients:
- 1 ounce of fresh sage
- 1 ounce 100-proof vodka ( or any grain alcohol, scotch would be delicious;))
This is just a proportion; you can use any amount of sage, of course.
Method:
Chop the plant material coarsely; do not wash. Fill any size jar with plant material, then pour alcohol over it, filling the jar to the top. Cap tightly. Label with date and name. Your tincture will be ready to decant, strain, and use in six weeks, but can sit there as long as you wish.
May you live a long and healthy life and become an old sage!
Inna
Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-21 01:15 am (UTC)Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-21 04:28 am (UTC)Inna
Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-21 04:42 am (UTC)To make any herbal tincture, use dry or fresh herbs chopped up. Add them to a glass jar. Mark where the herbs come to on the side of the jar. Now add alcohol to a couple of inches above the marked line. Label and date the jar. Let sit 4 to 6 weeks and shake daily. Strain, bottle and label because most tinctures look the same.
What are the effects of sage tincture?
Maxine
Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-21 10:13 pm (UTC)According to Susun S. Weed (quite an authority on everything herbal), Garden Sage (Salvia officinalis) has the following effects:
- eases irritated nerves
- relieves dizziness, trembling, and emotional swings
- eliminates headaches
- strengthens the liver
- reduces bladder infections
- improves circulation
- prevents joint aches
- slows aging process
- improves memory
Quite a list, ah?
Inna
Re: How to preserve sage?
Date: 2025-08-22 12:30 am (UTC)