Thursday, May 28, 2009 by Hodding.

I was going to write about our pantry moths and the fact that I can’t do what I did the last time we had an outbreak of those annoying winged pests—throw away all the grains and anything made with grains*. And I was also going to write about being overcome with emotion on Memorial Day, while I stapled 300 feet of chicken wire together to make a gigantic pen for the hens. It wasn’t the work involved that brought tears to my eyes, but what I saw when I glanced over my shoulder: Anabel building five four-foot-high string-fences for our peas to grow on; Helen digging holes and planting two new Jonathan apple trees; Angus shooting his homemade slingshot and helping everybody with their projects; Lisa weeding, planting, transplanting, and generally fixing things; and (reality check) Eliza—well, Eliza was helping in fits and starts, in between showering, picking out clothes for a party, and arguing with me as to why she couldn’t help. The setting, action, and plotline of the scene before me were not part of any script I’d written or anticipated for us. Here was a family working together with a purpose, and we even appeared to know what we were doing. It felt self-sufficient and confident and beautiful in our own slapdash, cross-your-fingers fashion.

Like I said, I was going to write about all that as well as the fact that if you had told me three or more years ago that I’d be collecting 17 eggs a day from my own hens, selling said eggs with my kids to friends and neighbors, baking bread that people raved about and then selling said bread to more and more people each passing weekend, I would have, at the very least, looked for the Candid Cameras.

And I was going to let you in on a surprise: Lisa and I are proud parents yet again. And, even worse (in my mind) or better (in Lisa’s mind), depending on how you see these things, we’re having multiples. In fact, it looks like we might have octodectuplets, at the very least. Okay, so they’re not actually human offspring but are instead chicks—offspring of our Rhode Island Red rooster and many of our Black Australorp hens—but we’re still pretty excited around here. Our local kindergarten always hatches chicken eggs every spring, and so we offered all three classrooms a dozen each, expecting one out of every two to hatch. After all, common wisdom (common to us poultry people, that is) has it that a rooster can only service 10 hens, and we have almost 20 now. Well, ol’ Snowflake, our rooster, is one hell of a stud. Of the dozen eggs in Angus’s class, 11 grew into chicks, and 7 hatched in another class. (The incubator was accidently ruined in the third class.) The kids all had great questions when I spoke with each class about egg development, and they invariably knew more than I.

But what I really want to write about is Angus throwing his $1.39 balsawood glider around the house this morning. After sliding the wings, rudder, and pilot in place, he had played with it off and on for a few days—what boy can’t resist a glider even with pheromone-loaded traps in the house?—before it crashed into a bicycle, which somehow fell over and destroyed it. Yet, this morning, Anabel and Angus taped it back together and he’s been tossing it in loop-de-loops and long, record-setting flights for hours.

“Yessss!” he just called out to nobody but his imaginary world. “One hundred and fifty-seven feet! Hooray!”

Now, that’s what I really wanted to write about.

Frugal Tip of the Week

I was going to save this idea for an entire blog, but my editor pressed me for my weekly tip, and since I hadn’t thought of one, I’m going to have to offer this up sooner than planned. I hope a few of you appreciate it and even take our advice. I say “our” because it was Lisa’s idea and, at first, I was completely opposed. I knew there was no way we could live without this product. Yet, despite all my complaints and initial fears, we have.

What do we want you to get rid of? Paper towels.

I know you use them for EVERYTHING. We did, too. But, they cost, on average, a dollar a roll, and there’s hardly a single task they perform that can’t be done by dish towels, sponges, and rags. We used to use two or three rolls a week (I know some families that go through one a day). So, not only are we saving $120 a year just by giving up something that we actually don’t need, but we’re also helping the environment.

Give it a try for two weeks and then let us know how it’s going. We’re convinced you’ll be won over—except when it comes to making bacon in the microwave. The bacon sticks to the rags, so we’re on the lookout at local yard sales for one of those nifty bacon-cooking dishes that I once thought a complete waste of money.

* How do you get rid of them? I could have written an entire entry just on pantry moths because getting rid of them is quite exciting. It’s a matter of sex, pure and simple. No, no, don’t go jump in bed at the first sight of Indian meal moths (their real name). I’m not talking about human sex. I mean go get a couple of alluring pantry moth traps for three dollars or so. They’re loaded with irresistible male Indian-meal-moth-attracting pheromones and coated with a sticky substance that holds the adventurous dudes forever—thus breaking their reproductive cycle. I like to think of these as a moth-catching version of a female cop disguised as a prostitute. We’ve just put some up—after vacuuming and cleaning everything in the pantry with soapy water. According to most experts and common practice, you’re supposed to throw away all contaminated food because the bins and boxes are interlaced with webs and full of larvae. Being the guy that I am, though, I just stirred up the webs to break them up and fed the larvae to the family. (This is extreme frugality, after all.) Bugs and larvae are full of protein and fats, of course, and no one in my family is the wiser—until now. The irony in all this is that the reason we got the moths is because we bought such large—thus cheaper—amounts of flour, barley, wheat, oats, etc. The moths and their offspring hang out in those big grain bins at your local co-op and supermarket.

Photograph by W. Hodding Carter

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Monday, May 25, 2009 by Hodding.

Some fish require a sacred spot on the living-room wall. They might even bring out a little Papa Hemingway in you: “It was a good fish. The night was long and dark, the way a night should be. Katherine didn’t understand. She never would, but none of that mattered now that the line was tight and it was just the fish. That’s all there was.” You know the fish I’m talking about: the glamorous kind that makes women swoon and men grit their teeth with envy. But what happens when the fish you heroically slay is just a gangly squid? Even now I can sense your derision, but the truth is, I can land Illex illecebrosus (shortfin squid) with the best of them and live to tell you all about it—including how squid most likely got their name.

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Their nomenclature became immediately apparent the very first time I caught one. There was a bending of the rod, followed by a slight tug, characteristics shared with the snaring of any other sea creature. All similarities stopped, however, when the squid broke surface and started frantically squirting water, much like a kid might do when his water pistol is running out of ammunition. Squirt. Squirt. Squirt. The squid was fighting to stay submerged the only way it knew how, by blowing water out its beak. Along with jellyfish, squid and other cephalopods are the only jet-propelled animals in the oceans. They draw in water and then expel it to move silently at speeds of up to six knots. Odds are that the origin of their common name is a dialectal version of the word squirt, and it comes from this propulsive action.

You don’t go after squid for sport or to have something impressive to say at the next board meeting. No, you fish shortfin squid (which, unlike longfin species, visit the harbors where land-based fishermen can catch them) for a very simple reason: food, and mighty fine food at that. I learned how to catch squid from a local fisherman named Eddie, a Filipino-American who has caught 200 squid in a single outing. “There were so many, I had to go out and buy a freezer just so we could eat them all winter,” he confided to me one evening. All good squid fishing occurs at night, when the squid are attracted to the harbor lights. (Commercial squid fishermen, in fact, hire other boats merely to shine lights on the ocean to help them make their catch.) Anyway, Eddie is one of the Filipino immigrants who introduced squidding to my area of Maine. Before their arrival, squid were just an occasional freaky bycatch, tossed back into the water with disgust by locals who were going after mackerel.

A few years back, Eddie and his fellow squidders started showing up near dusk on nights when the tide was rising. Once darkness fell, they would reel in squid up-on squid, using either the dock lights or their own, plugged into a handy outlet, to attract them. Some of us mackerel fishermen, watching with envy, soon found ourselves buying the hottest Japanese-made squid jigs and attempting to do the same, side by side on the ever more crowded dock. Most evenings, Eddie would set the tone. One time, he squidded for just a few minutes, then abruptly left, explaining, “Bad night for squid. Cast five times. Nothing. Time to go home.” Eddie always made room for my entire family—even with the four kids fighting, screaming, and casting jigs perilously close to his face—while calmly doling out advice: Let your jig sink to the bottom and slowly jig to the top; fish an hour or so before high tide, at high tide, and then an hour or so after; cast out in the middle of the channel for the really big squid, with bodies more than a foot long; and remember that squid recipes are only limited by one’s imagination. He didn’t actually state that last piece of information, but I gleaned it from the endless list he uttered when I asked how he prepared them. After he’d described what seemed like a dozen methods in less than a minute, he asked me how I liked to cook them. He almost choked with laughter when I told him about soaking them in beer before tossing them in a one-to-one mixture of flour and cornmeal. “You trying to get them drunk?” he asked. (I have since switched the liquid to milk after learning that it helps tenderize them.)

Perhaps feeling pity, he started to explain his favorite recipe: stuffed, baked squid. He uses ground beef, peppers, garlic, and I don’t know what else, because at that moment his rod bent with a jerk and with great delight he interrupted himself by repeating, “Squid! Squid! Squid!” I never found out Eddie’s remaining ingredients, but no matter: I have tried stuffing squid with practically anything and everything and have not yet been disappointed. They’re so versatile, in fact, that I have dubbed squid the Hamburger Helper of the sea. Squid on!

Photograph by Jeff Rotman/Alamy

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Thursday, May 21, 2009 by Hodding.

When our one-day-old chicks arrived back in October from Murray McMurray Hatchery, a trusted livestock and feed company that shipped them to us overnight, they were all in fine condition except for one unfortunate, whose far right toe was injured. The other chicks were pecking her all over, and she looked like she was going down any minute. What should we do?

Lisa did some quick research. Turns out that chickens are genetically hardwired to kill a misfit rather than to waste food on something that’s likely going to die, anyway, and our other chicks probably wouldn’t stop until this little thing was a pile of bones and fluff. So we separated her from the rest by putting her on the other side of the seat/thwart (we kept our hens in a rowboat in the living room for the first six weeks), cared for the injury, and finally, in the most important step, we named her. Helen decided she looked like a “Stella.”

Jump ahead to two days ago.

It’s dusk. Lisa has heard a desperate scream from outside and yells through the house. “Hodding, something’s wrong with the chickens!” she calls out.

I had put them in for the night about 20 minutes earlier, so I was sure she was wrong. Even though I didn’t actually count how many had returned to the hen house, they always come in together on their own. “That’s Helen practicing the clarinet,” I respond.

“Hurry, Hodding. It sounds like it’s dying!”

I grab a flashlight, and seconds later I’m outside, whirling Angus’s toy sword in front of me. I’m expecting I’ll have to chase away the neighbor’s pugs, who like harassing the hens, or maybe a fox. There’s a sly one who makes his rounds every morning at four. He once stole all our Easter eggs.

“She’s right here,” Lisa says, standing by the side door. “At the bottom of the stairs.”

I scoop up the hen and instinctively look at the right foot.

“STELLLLAAAAAAAA!” I scream, my t-shirt clinging to my heaving chest. We huddle over her, petting her gently as we search for the damage. Part of her left wing is gone. There’s also a small gash on her back, and feathers are falling off as if it’s molting season.

Again, Lisa studied what we’re supposed to do, which is why Stella is currently living in our bathtub, on a bed of wood chips. She hasn’t been eating her feed, so we’ve been supplementing with whatever we can dig up out of our third garden—Lisa’s garden, in fact, which we planted on Mother’s Day. Sunday night Stella had 12 worms, 7 grubs, and 6 beetles, about half a cup of bugs. The more she eats, the better she seems to get, so all day yesterday, the kids and I were bringing in a worm or two at a time. And it appears to be working. While she didn’t move for the first 36 hours, she’s now walking around, peering over the edge of the tub and knocking over the food and water bowls.

The big problem is that she hasn’t laid an egg. This means that everything will get backed up and she’ll essentially go into toxic shock. Judging by the tears I had in my eyes the other night, her death won’t be a good thing.

So, according to Lisa, later today we have to hold her over a pot of boiling water so the steam will loosen things up. Sounds like fun, right? Wish us luck.*

Of course, it may be that Stella has never laid an egg, and the reason we’ve always had as many eggs as hens is because one hen is laying two a day. That’s my theory, but then again, that may be simply because I’m not really looking forward to steaming Stella’s rear end.

And for those of you who have been following along, we’re down to 19 chickens: 18 hens and 1 rooster. Some birds have died, and we sold four to friends. We usually get 18 eggs a day, and as of this past weekend, the kids have found almost enough clients to buy them. We’re eating and using about six eggs a day, so I hope the new conventional wisdom—that eggs are good for you and we don’t really need to worry about what they do to cholesterol—is correct. Also, a couple of those egg buyers sampled our homemade bread and so we’re selling a couple of loaves each week, too. Not bad for a family of former spendthrifts, huh?

*I’ll provide an update in a day or two in the “Comments” section for those of you who are anxiously awaiting the results.

Frugal Tip of the Week

Many grocery stores sell light green, transparent plastic bags invented by a woman named Debbie Meyer, who claims they will prolong your produce’s refrigerator life. Guess what? They actually work. Lisa bought a dozen in December, and we’re now in the habit of transferring every vegetable we buy into these bags. There’s a mineral in the bag that absorbs ethylene gas—a by-product of the ripening fruits and vegetables. I was, of course, originally a skeptic, but am now an avid promoter. Just be sure to remove any moisture build-up, and you’ll find that most things will last at least as twice as long as usual.

Photograph by W. Hodding Carter

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Thursday, May 14, 2009 by Hodding.

I‘ve been living a dual life the past five weeks or so. It’s not easy for me to admit this—to come right out and confess publicly—but I’m going to do it, anyway: I’ve been both a frugal Suzy Homemaker and a returning athlete.

This duality of purpose isn’t inherently problematic, but whenever I’ve focused on competitive swimming, I’ve been hedonistic. I always figured I deserved to live it up since I was working so hard in the pool. By burning thousands of calories in a relatively small amount of time, I deserved to watch The Biggest Loser on the Internet, amuse my stomach with an amuse-bouche from chef Melissa Kelly, and buy yet another magazine or book on sports, training, and/or swimming. I was an especially big sucker for sports drinks and supplements. It’s as if I thought I’d make it to the Olympics by guzzling expensive whey protein isolate potions or SuperVitaMax Fabulicious Miracle Stud shakes (not a real drink, by the way). Recovery drinks were my secret weapon.

Although I haven’t touched one of those tempting libations lately, I’m still thinking about training for the 2012 Olympics. What’s my secret? How do I plan to be the oldest swimmer—male or female—ever to prance around in a Speedo before millions of viewers worldwide, shaking my booty to the Olympic Anthem? Without drinking a single overpriced, must-have recovery drink?

By drinking chocolate milk.

For decades, sports scientists have known that exercise lowers levels of glycogen (stored carbohydrates), and those levels need to return to normal before an athlete can perform well in an ensuing practice or game. For most of my childhood, we were told to drink or eat massive amounts of carbohydrates to achieve this, but as it turned out, we’d been doing it all wrong. Yes, we need large amounts of carbs within 20 to 30 minutes of exercise, but they need to be balanced with a smaller amount of protein—four parts carbs to one part protein, to be exact.

Companies fell all over themselves developing and then selling the perfect four-to-one drink, and people like myself depleted their bank accounts faster than their glycogen levels by buying the products. But no more. About three years ago, when kinesiologist and avid masters swimmer Joel Stager and his team at the Counsilman Center for the Science of Swimming, at Indiana University, in Bloomington, set out to make recovery affordable, they found that plain old chocolate milk could do the same things at a fraction of the cost as overstuffed shakes and powders.

Of course, now that I’m drinking a quart of chocolate milk a day, Angus and I are fighting more—over the Nestlé Nesquik, that is—and, even worse, I’ve run out of excuses for swimming so slowly.

Hip Tip of the Week (having recently googled “frugality,” I’ve discovered that it is really “in” right now; in that light, these frugal tips are hip, right?)

We’ve always liked making pizzas at home and think our crust is the cat’s meow (or at least the cat’s near-perfect sassy walk), but it was always such a pain to get the pizzas into the oven: They’d either be half cornmeal on the bottom, which I detested, or they would stick to the work surface. As a result, the kids would be frustrated that their artistically arranged toppings were for naught, and I invariably lost my temper. Now, we just put the dough straight onto a silicone baking mat—a thin, rubbery, nonstick baking sheet that can be used like parchment paper—let the kids do the decorating, and then put the whole thing in the preheated oven on top of a pizza stone. We eat pizza two to three times a week: one for breakfast and a couple more for dinner and/or snacks. We keep a can of crushed tomatoes (70 cents for organic at Caswell’s) in the fridge and use whatever cheese is on sale in a given week. One of our homemade pizzas probably costs about a buck (which includes the cost of heating the oven), and they are delicious—better than any pizza in Maine, almost. Since there is hardly a single American family that doesn’t eat pizza, the silicone mats are a great investment (a 16- by 11-inch mat will run you about $20) and, in our case, paid for themselves in just a few weeks.

Photograph by W. Hodding Carter

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Thursday, May 7, 2009 by Hodding.

Wired of having to stare at their spindly little bodies day after day and listen to their incessant whining for more, more, more, I’d finally had enough and did something about it. A bit of quick research on the Web, and soon enough an ancient custom of live burial was revealed as the one and only solution. And now, having followed a few simple steps, I’ve restored order to their world.

I’ve buried them up to their necks in moist, heavy soil—with absolutely no chance of escape—and I feel awesome. And what about them, you ask? What ever happened to free will and choice? Well, suck it up, buttercup, this ain’t a democracy. They had their chance. We nurtured and cared for them since birth. Did all the right things. They didn’t have to grow out of control and, at the same time, get so weak. If you ask me, they had it coming to them.

Even now, though, behind all the hubris and bravado, I’m wondering if I’ve done the right thing. And what will the kids think when they come home from school?

Oh, wait. You thought I was talking about burying the kids, didn’t you? What gave you that idea? No, no. I was talking about our tomato seedlings. I buried them so that only their top two leaves are exposed. Apparently, everybody in the world knows you’re supposed to do this two or three times before transplanting them to the outdoors—everybody except me and maybe a couple of you as well. I knew you could bury them pretty deep when transplanting them to the garden, having learned this from our former neighbor Helen Bonzi, but the seedlings? I found out it allows the little guys to absorb more nutrients, have sturdier and larger rootstocks, and grow stout bodies, all without a greenhouse or fancy grow lights.

Yes, those cheap, white fluorescent lights standing in the corner of your basement are good for something, after all. While older, flowering, and/or fruit-bearing plants need full-spectrum light, seedlings can thrive under the blue spectrum released by fluorescents. In other words, even those of us living in Frugaland* can do the right thing: I’ve been using the white tubes all along, thinking that I was only making do, so it’s nice to know that our young plants aren’t deprived.

This was much-needed happy news, given that I had blown most of our entire month’s budget ($550) on Monday, when I gave in to a nagging sense of concern and bought two new brake pads for the minivan ($499). A loud grinding noise that had been making the dog whine every time we pulled up to a stop sign, coupled with an inability to actually stop, was the tipping point. In any event, the tires needed rotating, the regular service was way past due, and the windshield was cracked. And, in truth, I was escaping the house because I couldn’t bear to look at those weak, leggy tomato seedlings another minute. I’d been obsessing over them—moving them next to the woodstove on cloudy days, overfeeding them with a soup I’d concocted using chicken poop (it’s like giving kids chicken soup, right?), and ferrying them from the fluorescent lighting to windowsills—and needed the break. Because the car repairs took a little longer than expected, I had a chance to read Bob Wildfong’s “Tomato Seedlings without a Greenhouse” and learned to embrace burying things up to their necks.

And, yes, I am wondering if it’ll work with 13-year-old twins.

*Catchy, huh? I’m copyrighting it immediately.

Frugal Tip of the Week

Don’t start your seeds in those expensive little peat cups, start them in … you thought I was going to suggest egg cartons or maybe Dixie Cups, right? Wrong. Use a plastic snow sled or, if that’s too big, then just a large Tupperware tray. Fill it a little less than halfway the first time around. That way, you don’t have to disturb the seedlings for the first reburial. Just add soil up to the first two leaves.

Photograph by W. Hodding Carter

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