Wednesday, February 10, 2010 by Hodding.

I forgot to sign out of my website yesterday afternoon and lo-and-behold, I was still active this morning!  Wonder what that will do?  Make my site appear more popular? Cost me more money?  Nothing?

I bring that up because I was just laughing with Lisa (see past posts; she’s my wife–the sane one in the family) about how a year ago, several readers asked me if they could follow me on Facebook and what my twitter account was.  “Uh, well, I guess you could be one of my friends,” I stumbled.  And then I mumbled that I was about to become a twitter member too–even though I had no earthly idea what twitter was. Or better yet, that you didn’t become a twitter member–or do you?  I’m still going to do that one of these days–that is, when I know I’ll be able t0 come up with something pithy and pertinent about being frugal every single day.

Ok, I’m writing in a panic today (I tend to do that) but I wanted to relate a shopping experience I had last year that could prove helpful for all of us.  I wrote about it in the “Comments” section of my column for gourmet.com: a post-Saint-Patrick’s-Day potatoes, carrots and corned-beef sale. That day I was rifling through the reduced-for-quick-sale rack at the end of our grocery store’s produce section when I spied a coupon for a great deal: a few days before St. Patrick’s Day, the store was selling 5 pounds of potatoes, 1 pound of carrots and 2.5 pounds of corned beef for $7.99.  Since corned-beef often costs that much all on its own, I was elated.  Until I remembered it was the day after St. Patrick’s.  Bummer.

Later, as I morosely worked my way through the rest of the store, I came upon the meat section.  Thank God. Yes, the sale was over but to my and my family’s stomachs’ delight, it’d been replaced by something better.  A half-off sale.  Since the heady rush of celebrating this dubious Irish holiday had already passed, the store had a lot of salty meat to unload.

We could get all three items for $3.99.

As far as I am concerned, the grocery-shopping Golden Produce Rule–numero uno, in other words–is to shop based on coupons and what’s on sale, not what you think you need.  That said, remembering the yearly potatoes, carrots and corned-beef sale that I happened upon last March has got me wondering:  Can the Golden Produce Rule be universally applied the day after every holiday?  Are there similar sales after every holiday that we can draw each other’s attention toward? Most importantly–and finally to the point–is there a post-Valentine’s-Day sale that is about to be dropped in our laps this coming Monday (and I’m talking about something beyond half-price for a 5-pound box of heart-shaped chocolates that are filled with some unnatural cream or jell that invariably end up back in the box, half-eaten because of their in-edibility factor)?

Well, is there?  Please write in.  If there is, I want to make the appropriate shopping plan.

For instance, having learned from last year’s St. Patrick’s surprise, I already have this year’s March 18th shopping plans in place. Since the half-price deal is only 1 per customer, our entire family will shop that day and each family member will buy his/her own St.-P-Day combo. Pretty good, huh? The only difficulty I foresee is coming up with enough different recipes using those same 3 ingredients. So far, I’ve only come up with a pie and a stew.  Pretty dull.

Maybe there’s some kind of dessert?

PS–I think I have a photo of the corned beef, carrots and potatoes around here somewhere that I took in the store, I was so excited.  I’ll post it if/when I find it.

Posted in frugal tips, Frugal Grocery Shopping, Frugal Cooking, Frugal dish, Frugal Meals | 12 Comments »

Sunday, October 18, 2009 by Hodding.

 I wasn’t really feeling like I had anything to write about until a friend of mine (Peter Nichols, in town promoting his new book, Final Voyage: A Story of Arctic Disaster and One Fateful Whaling Season, an engaging history of our original oil business–whale oil, that is–and the storm that killed it) grabbed the last cheese stick I’d made our kids yesterday morning, explaining between bites:  “You made these?  I eat them every day for lunch in Paris along with a bit of cheese.  They cost me one Euro!  Mmmm.”

Yes, I wanted to kill him for dropping the “P” word and especially for acting as if living there is a hardship.  He’s teaching two weekly writing classes, one for screenplays and the other for fiction.  It sounds so 1920’s–except for the screenplay stuff.  At least he’s only making enough to cover his rent.  He’ll be starving in no time, I hope.

But back to those “cheese sticks.”  I think they might be called fougasse* in French but maybe fougasse are crisp and more like a crunchy Italian breadstick?  Either way, his eating more than his share while not-so-subtly bragging about Paris made me realize I definitely wanted to toss out this idea and recipe (hope I didn’t do so while writing for Gourmet?).

It’s nothing tricky and in fact, that’s why I make them–a last minute, “oh, chicken poop (yes, I step in it every day and use the word poop along with an occasional shit even though Lisa says my saying poop sounds childish)” I’ve-got-to-fill-the-kids-up-with-something fallback.

So, pretend like it’s Friday morning.  The alarm has failed to wake me at 5:30 am and it’s now 6:15.  I clean yesterday’s coffee filter which has been used only six times, turn the over to 375, make the coffee and then throw together our version of the internet-sensation, no-knead bread dough (3 1/2 cups bread flour, 1 1/2 cups water from our well (no chemicals!), 2 1/2 teaspoons salt, and since it’s last minute stuff, 2 teaspoons yeast.

It’s now 6:30 and while it’s being stirred together in the mixer, I grate whatever cheese we have handy but preferably some low-rent parmesan or asiago.  When the dough is ready, I grab a sticky handful and somehow get it to roll into a log shape by doing this on top of a 2-3 tablespoons of the grated cheese.  The cheese covers the stickiness making the dough pliable–or at least able to be shaped into the foot-long pieces we like.  One no-knead recipe makes about a dozen of these cheese breadsticks.

The oven is usually ready by this point (6:40 to 6:50, depending on whether or not the coffee has taken effect and how many arguments Lisa and I have had with the kids and each other–the latter almost always occurring only because of the former) and then they bake until 7:00-7:10, about 20 minutes.

After taking them out of the oven in a mad rush, I toss them at the girls (Angus gets to eat his at the table since his bus comes later) as we’re pushing these surly she-devils that used to be our little angels out the house.

So, if you too have a house full of fledgling teens, give these cheese sticks a try. They don’t always make the kids nicer but they do taste good.

*Postscript: A wonderful person (see first comment under this posting) just wrote in explaining what a real fougasse is.  So, clearly, what I’m making is not fougasse but I hope some of you will try anyway.  Her fougasse sounds divine, however.  She had me at  “anchovies, pork/duck cracklings” by the way.  We’ll just stick to calling the things we make cheese sticks.

Posted in breadsticks, Frugal dish, Peter Nichols, fougasse, Frugal Meals, cheese sticks, Outwitting Children | 13 Comments »

Monday, October 5, 2009 by Hodding.

I’m writing this after I’ve written my second post so I can practice using the writing program for my website.  There seems to be problems with creating paragraphs when I use Safari as my browser so now I’m trying FireFox.

I’m hoping this sentence shows up as an entirely new paragraph.

Just so this isn’t a complete waste of time for you, I’ll announce this: I will attempt to post a video later today.  It’s a short “instructional” piece (I hope it will be clear why I’ve placed instructional in parentheses) on autumnal tilling, composting and farming.

Hope it works.  And thanks for checking us out.  Still feeling very weird about Gourmet.

Posted in Outwitting Children, Frugal Meals, Hens, Roosters, Butchering, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »