Feeding a family on a budget

I am the oldest of 5 boys. I have grown to have an appreciation of what my parents went through trying to feed us, as I am now the father of 4 boys of my own. They are all grown now, but when they were teenagers, they all ate like farm hands. My oldest is the only person I have ever known to be ejected from an all you can eat buffet for eating too much. In our home, the refrigerator became a supplement to the air conditioner. Needless to say, over the years, I have learned to be very imaginative and exceedingly frugal in creating meals that could fill the caverns my sons called stomachs. So, let me share with you a few things I have learned over the years.

First, lets start with buying meat. If you have a troop of carnivores like I did, meat is a dietary staple. A vegetarian meal would have evoked a mutiny in our house. So, I needed to find ways to serve meats that didn’t require taking a second mortgage. One favorite was chicken. For some reason only known to the chicken producers, leg quarters were cheaper than a whole, uncut chicken. Go figure. They are also generally sold in large family sized bags of 8 to 10 pounds. Cutting these to separate the leg from the thigh would yield enough bird to make 2 meals with. Pork and beef were also common in our house. But it was uncommon for us to prepare them whole. More often than not, they were cut up into strips or cubes, which made them go further. We also used copious amounts of ground meat as well. However, this was usually in the form of ground turkey rather than beef. Mainly because it was no more expensive than beef but had far less shrinkage. I also tried to buy meats in as large a package as possible. The cost per pound was less and the package could be divided for multiple meals.

Next come the veggies. I always prefer garden fresh, but based on what I grew in the backyard garden, it wasn’t always an option. For instance, I never grew potatoes. They are cheap and I preferred to use my garden space for more expensive items. The trick with fresh produce is to not buy more than you need. That giant bag of carrots may be a great deal, but if they don’t get eaten, they go bad and that was a waste of money. Also, never keep veggies in those plastic bags from the store. They hold in the moisture and will accelerate their going bad.

Now for a few cooking hints. Campbell’s soup is your friend. They have a wide variety of cream soups on the shelf. These make great bases for sauces to create meals from. No need for ingredient-laden recipes or expensive sauce packages. Throw in a couple of cans of cream of something and you have a meal the family will gobble up like vultures. A word of caution. Don’t use the cheap brands for this. They break down easily and you will end up with mushroom flavored water. Pastas are great for meals on the cheap as well. They are loaded with carbs, which kids burn like fuel in an Indy car. They are great filler and can make a skimpy meal stretch a long way. And lets not forget about the lowly potato. Baked, boiled, fried, mashed, scalloped, au gratin, there is virtually no end to the different methods of preparing these little guys. They are cheap to buy and keep for a long time if kept in a cool dry place.

So, let me leave you with an example of a dish I make using these concepts. We call it Clara’s recipe. Don’t have real name for it, so we named it for a friend that shared her recipe with us.

Cube a small beef roast into 1 inch squares and dump into a crock-pot. Add to this enough condensed cream of chicken soup to cover. Set the crock-pot to high and cook for about 4 to 6 hours or until the beef is cooked through and the juices have mixed with the soup to create a sauce. At this point add salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder to taste. When this is ready, cook up some egg noodles and serve the meat sauce mixture on top of the noodles. This is an easy and cheap meal that will feed an army.     

Easy to Grow Vegetables for a Backyard Garden

Back yard gardening is the epitome of frugal living. For the cost of seed, some bedding plants and water, you can have a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables for a fraction of what you would pay at the supermarket. And as food costs continue to rise, the savings are even greater. Then there is the food safety concerns. Think about that bell pepper you bought last week at the store. Was it grown from natural seeds or genetically altered ones? What pesticides were used to grow it? How many people handled it before you bought it? Grown in your own back yard garden, none of these issues are of any concern. Finally, we all know that fresh vegetables have a wonderful taste that just can not be duplicated by store bought produce. I could go on and on about the benefits of growing your own food.

If you are new to backyard gardening, you may be concerned if you can successfully grow your own fruits and vegetables. Especially if you are one of those people that tends to have a brown thumb with plants. No worries. There are a host of vegetables and fruits that are so easy to grow that even the novice can do it. So, what are the easiest vegetables to grow?

The absolutely easiest vegetable to grow is a radish. If a sloth were able to garden, even he could grow a radish. Simply plat the seed, give it water and you are guaranteed to have a crop of these little red jewels. They will be the first to sprout up and can be harvested as quickly as 4 to 5 weeks. Once harvested, replant a new crop and you will have them all summer.

Another extremely easy vegetable to grow are tomatoes. I suggest buying them as bedding plants. They are easier to grow this way and will yield fruit faster. They also come in a number of varieties such as cherry tomatoes, Roma’s, Big Burpy and so on. One note on growing tomatoes. If you are going to grow different varieties, plant each type of tomato apart from the others. They have a tendency to cross-pollinate. It would be a shame to plant some nice big tomatoes, just to have them cross-pollinate with your cherry tomatoes and end up with a bumper crop of little tomatoes and no big ones.

Onions are another easy crop to grow. They are hardy and will grow easily with little effort. I again recommend you buy them as starters rather than seed. Though they grow well from seed, they will mature faster if they are planted as starters allowing you to harvest quicker.  

Another bedding plant that grows easily, mature quickly and yields tons of fruit are peppers. Just about any variety can be bought as a bedding plant. There are sweet peppers like green, red and yellow bell peppers. Then there are the hot peppers like jalapenos, Serrano’s, chili’s and for the true masochist, habaneras peppers.

Cucumbers are simple to grow too. These vine plants grow close to the ground and produce a fruit that can’t be beat. Planted in a mound, the broad leafs of the sprout will come up in just a few days. Make sure you plant these some distance from the rest of your garden as the vines will take up a lot of space.

Lettuce can be grown pretty easily as well, particularly in cooler climates. I recommend growing leafy lettuce varieties and steering clear of head lettuce like iceberg. The main reason is that in vegetables that have a tight head, insects will have a place to hide between the leaves, making them hard to control. This philosophy also goes for other head vegetables like brussel sprouts and cabbage.   

I have one final note on growing vegetables from seed. When you purchase seeds you will notice that some will have a label denoting that they are heirloom seeds. In an attempt to get you to come back and buy more seeds every year, seed companies have genetically altered the packaged seeds so that the seeds that come from the mature fruit are unpalatable and will not germinate. Heirloom seeds have not been genetically altered in this way. Seeds from matured fruit of heirloom seeds can be dried and then planted next year, saving you the cost of buying more seeds. So if you are concerned about genetically altered seeds or you just want to save money in the long run, I recommend buy the heirloom varieties.

Growing veggies in the backyard is extremely satisfying. There is nothing like watching them grow from seeds to full sized plants. So, pull out the tiller, go buy some seeds and let the fun begin.

The effects of plastic on the environment

Garbage has been a part of humanity for thousands of years. The Mayan Indians had huge dumps for their refuse. History tells us that their dumps had an inclination to periodically explode, and then burn for several days due to the heat generated from decomposing material. Dumping has remained to this day, a popular means to dispose of garbage. For many thousands of years, this was an efficient way to do away with refuse. Prior to the industrial revolution, dumps contained all organic materials. The organics would decompose over time, slowly dropping the debris level, which made room for more garbage. But the dawn of mechanization changed all that.

As the west entered into the industrial age, we began to produce materials that did not decompose, or did so very slowly. And though this had some impact on the garbage dumps of the time, the real beginning of our modern day garbage disposal problems came in 1810 with the invention of the tin can. This was the forerunner of a host of other food and merchandise packaging that was to come over the next 200 years.

In two centuries, we have developed all sorts of new man made materials designed to help preserve food and package merchandise. The most nefarious and most revered, the most hated and most loved of all packaging materials ever invented by man is plastic. In 1839 Polystyrene was introduced, the grand daddy of modern day plastics.

Today, we could barely imagine what life would be like without plastic. We use plastic in a variety of forms to preserve and store our food. It’s in our cars, our TVs and computers, our I-Pods and our furniture. In our modern world, plastic is everywhere. The problem is, most plastic does not break down quickly. Some plastics have been found to survive in tact after decades in a landfill.

One huge problem with plastics in landfills comes from the use of the plastic garbage bag. Introduced to the consumer market in the 1960’s, they came into wide use in the mid 70’s. They have now become so widely accepted that environmental groups estimate that between 500 billion and 1 trillion of these bags are used every year worldwide. In fact, the problem has risen to such proportions that there is now a growing movement across the globe to ban the use of plastic garbage bags.

So, if this is such a big problem, why do we still use plastic trash bags? Well, the short answer is that, until recently, there hasn’t been an affordable and readily available alternative. However, in recent years, new environmentally friendly bags have been developed. This new generation of trash bag decomposes over a relatively short period of time. They are also comparable in price to the old style trash bags and now are available off the shelf in many national chain stores.

But the bag is only part of the problem. After that biodegradable bag decomposes, the contents of the bag are exposed. How much of what is in that bag is biodegradable? Follow these tips to reduce the amount of non-biodegradable garbage you send to a landfill.

First, to help minimize the overall volume of garbage you send to the landfill every day, create a compost bin. Just do a search on the Internet for “compost bins” and you will see thousands of websites offering plans and instructions on how to build and maintain one. Doing this will not only limit the garbage you send out the door, but composted materials make a fine fertilizer for your flowers and vegetables.

Next, be aware of the packaging used for things you buy. Many times you may have a choice between organic and synthetic packaging. For example, eggs normally come in Styrofoam cartons. But they also come in cardboard cartons too. Buy milk in cardboard rather than plastic bottles. Basically, try to avoid plastic, metal and glass if you have the option.

Also, reuse what you can. Most of us know about using the empty butter tub as a container for storing leftovers. If you’re into canning, I have used left over jelly jars to can preserves of my own and they work great. Be imaginative and consider that what you are throwing away could have other uses. The act of reusing alone will go a long way in helping to reduce the garbage you send to landfill and will save you money to boot.

Finally, if you can’t avoid bringing home non-biodegradable items and you can’t reuse them, then recycle them. I keep separate bins for glass and metal trash items and periodically, I take these to a local recycling facility.

I have one last word concerning the use of trash bags. Reusing the plastic grocery bags from the super market for other uses may seem frugal and environmentally sound. But, these bags still end up in landfills. Here’s an idea. Bring your own canvass bag with you to the super market and avoid having those little bags around altogether.

How to Wash Clothes Naturally

For thousands of years, people have been doing their laundry without the use of chemicals. No modern laundry detergents, no chlorine bleach and certainly no corner dry cleaners. This is not to say that soap wasn’t used to launder clothing. The Romans are generally credited as the first to use soap to wash textiles. This ancient soap was made from lye, water and animal fat (lard).

The Germans invented the first synthetic laundry soap during WW I, out of necessity due to shortages of animal fats at the time. In the U.S., Americans used soap flakes for laundry detergent through the 1920’s. Then, Proctor and Gamble introduced Dreft laundry detergent. This was America’s first synthetic laundry detergent and was specifically designed for use with the new invention, the washing machine.

Fast forward to 2009. Our clothes are made less and less from all natural fibers and are now made from synthetic and natural blends or all synthetic materials. Synthetic fibers differ greatly at the molecular level from those of natural fibers and thusly the methods for removing soil from them differ. Utilizing natural methods to clean a synthetic fiber may not always be successful and in some cases could damage the material. Therefore, natural methods of laundering clothes discussed here are intended for use on natural fibers.

First, lets talk about the laundry detergent itself. Here is a recipe for a homemade laundry detergent that is all natural and has no synthetic chemicals.

Grate a bar of ivory bar soap. Heat a pot of water on the stove and add the ivory soap flakes to the pot of water. Continue “cooking” over medium heat until the flakes are all dissolved. Next, fill a 10-gallon bucket half full of really hot water and then add the dissolved ivory soap to the bucket. Next, add 1 cup of washing soda (sodium carbonate) and half a cup of Borax (sodium borate). Finally, add more hot water to the bucket until the bucket is full. When you are ready to use, stir the bucket first as the soap will gel from sitting. Use ½ to 1 cup of home made soap per laundry load.

Washing soda (sodium carbonate) is a substance akin to baking soda. Borax, though it sounds like some wickedly nasty chemical compound, is nothing more than a natural deposit that is mined domestically in California and the Southwest U.S. Both are readily available at your local super market.

Now lets talk about your whites. Natural fibers won’t yellow like man made synthetic fibers will, so there is really no need to use chlorine bleach on natural fabric like cotton. So, rather than using caustic chemicals that are dangerous to the environment, use the sun. The UV rays of the sun will naturally bleach natural fibers if left out in the sun. So, simply hang your whites out for a day in the sun and they will stay white.

Like your clothes soft, but don’t want to use those nasty chemicals to do it? Use vinegar as a natural fabric softener. Add a little to your laundry at the rinse cycle and it will not only soften your clothes but it will also remove any soap residue from the fabrics.

Natural laundry items like this are easy and cheap to make. So save some cash and help save the environment with some all natural homemade soap.

Things you never thought to recycle

Recycling is an obvious way of being Green and helping the environment by minimizing what ends up in landfills. But in the grander scheme of things, one must consider that there is an ecological price to recycling as well. There is the cost to the environment to transport recyclable materials to a facility as well as the energy it takes to actually convert the recyclables to a useable material. An even better way to help the environment is to reuse waste materials. This is by no means a new concept. My grandmother grew up during the Great Depression, where reusing things was a way of life.

One note of caution before I continue. Reusing items for purposes other than what they were originally intended for may be great for the planet, but be aware of potential hazards to your health and safety. For example, I know some people reuse plastic freezer bags several times before discarding them. This kind of use could lead to cross contamination and have the potential to make you very ill. Those bags may seem smooth to the touch, but on a microscopic level, they are very porous. Even a thorough cleaning can’t guarantee that all the bacteria from the chicken have been removed before you put the ham slices in it. So, just use some common sense and if you aren’t certain about reusing an item then don’t.

That said, here are some nifty ideas on how to reuse items that might normally get tossed into the garbage.

CDs and DVDs have a myriad of uses. Because they pick up light so well, they can be used as reflectors on bicycle wheels and driveway entrances. Attach some felt to one side with spray adhesive and they become coasters. Dip them into cooled bacon grease and pat with birdseed, then hang outside for a great treat for the birds.

Toothpaste tubes can be reused by cutting off the top, washing and used as a knife sheath to prevent accidental cuts in the kitchen drawer.

Did you know you can compost things like old milk, moldy cheese and cotton cloth?

Old pots and pans can be used for cleaning car parts, pet dishes or musical instruments for the kids.

Instead of paper towels, use old clothing cut into pieces. Cotton cloth works best for this.

Save the wrappers from sticks of butter in a sealed plastic bag and use them to grease pans for baking.

Plastic mesh bags, like the ones vegetables come in, can be wadded up and used as a scrubber. Also, fill them with dryer lint and string pieces and hang it outdoors. The birds will use this as nest building material.

Cereal bags can be used like wax paper for separating frozen food or rolling piecrusts on.

Paper towel holders stuffed with dryer lint make a great fire starter for you fireplace.

Bread ties can be used for tying up loose cords to prevent tangling.

Used lemons and limes, along with table salt, can be used to clean countertops and cutting boards.

These are but a few of the things you can reuse for other purposes. Be creative and imaginative and I am sure you can come up with other great ideas.

Health benefits of Artichokes

Artichokes consumed in the U.S. are generally of the Globe variety. Known botanically as Cynara Cardunculus, artichokes are actually part of the thistle family. Artichokes have been around for thousands of years. Originating in Ethiopia, it’s known that artichokes were one of the first vegetables that were grown by ancient man. Today, nearly all artichokes consumed in the U.S. are grown in the town of Castroville, California. However, the world’s top producer of artichokes is Italy.

Artichokes have always been known to hold medicinal properties, and were used by ancient Greeks as a digestive aid. It’s only been in the last couple of centuries that we have come to realize the artichokes true health benefits when added to the diet.

A Diet Including Artichokes

Artichokes are low in fat (less than 1 gram), and are a source of protein (2 to 3 grams), and carbohydrates (10-11 grams). Artichokes are an outstanding source of fiber as well as the trace elements of chromium and magnesium. Artichokes also contain amounts of folic acid, vitamin A, vitamin C, manganese, thiamin, niacin, riboflavin and potassium.

Artichokes can be steamed, boiled or fried. They can be eaten on their own or they can be sliced or chopped and used as an ingredient or topping on other dishes. The leaves can be used to steep in hot water for a tea. The artichoke has what is described as a pleasantly bitter flavor.

Medicinal Values of Artichokes

The bitter taste of the artichoke comes from the chemical cynarin, which is particularly concentrated in the vegetables leaves. Cynarin, along with another compound found in artichokes called luteolinis, are believed to reduce cholesterol. An extract of the leaves are thought to be beneficial in treating irritable bowel syndrome and digestive problems. Fresh artichokes even have a substance called inulin, which is known to help in stabilizing blood sugar levels.

One of the greatest medicinal benefits of artichokes is their contribution to healthy liver function. The compounds in the artichoke help to remove toxins and assist in liver cell regeneration. Heavy or excessive use of alcohol as well as eating fatty and processed foods can put a strain on the liver, rendering it less efficient. This can result in increased cholesterol levels and weight gain. The artichoke can help to counter these effects to some degree if included as a regular part of your diet.

Artichokes can even be used as a means to cleans and detoxify your liver. To do an artichoke liver cleanse, you will need to be eating artichokes at nearly every evening meal for 6 to 8 weeks. During this time, you should remove all animal fats from your diet. Artichokes should comprise the main dish of most of your meals, but you can add a little chicken or fish here and there if you like. You should also avoid any alcohol during this period as well. At the end of your liver cleanse, you will be rewarded with easier weight loss due to more efficient metabolizing, and of all things, improvement to the luminosity of your skin. 

Recipe

Here is a recipe to try, using artichokes. There are many more recipes to be found online that use the artichoke. Try a few out and rediscover the health benefits of this ancient vegetable.

Artichoke Cream Soup

1/3cup butter

2 cups minced green onions

1 bag (16oz.) frozen artichoke hearts, thawed and finely chopped

5cups chicken broth

1/4cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 pint cream

Fresh parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add green onions and sauté for 5 minutes. Add chopped artichoke hearts and continue stirring for 3 more minutes. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. After reaching a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove from heat and using either a hand mixer or food processor puree the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add cream and place back on medium heat until soup is hot but not boiling. Ladle into bowl and garnish with fresh parsley.