Wednesday, December 9, 2009 by Hodding.

I wrote the following before I wrote yesterday’s short update:

I apologize–again, I think.  No, not for the typo’s.  I sort fo like those (yes, that was intentional but not so witty).  No, I’m apologizing again for not writing.  Truthfully, I can’t write every week–duh!–and don’t want any of you to think I’ll be doing so.  I’m trying to get a book finished (it’s due in January–did I already use this excuse?) and feel guilty even when using the bathroom, let alone writing something that is NOT my contracted book.  The book, however, is about being frugal, specifically my family’s fledgling attempts at being more like the Waltons and less like the Jetsons, and will be filled with recipes, anecdotes, facts, excitement, love, sadness and more.  It’ll be better than a blog.  Promise!  So, this will probably be my last posting for a while.

Let me rephrase that, more firmly: I WILL NOT BLOG AGAIN UNTIL MY BOOK IS DONE–but please come back at the beginning of February, ok?

Meanwhile, here’s a tip:

Don’t ever, ever leave a pot of apple chunks on a lit stove unattended for hours at a time when attempting to make applesauce, even if you have it set on medium.  Or even 1 hour at a time.  Or maybe even 30 minutes.  I’m not sure.  All I do know is that I presently have not 1, not 2 but 3 (THREE) of our largest pots sitting around useless with a few inches of old soaking water in them–hoping that by some miracle the scorched, blackened apple-residue will miraculously disappear.  You’d think I would’ve learned from the first pot, right?  Well, I filled the second with about 50 or so apples, just like I’d done with the first, and then put in twice as much water as the first time, 2-3 cups this time, roughly. It still didn’t do the trick and to this very morning I’m trying to get the pot clean.  The same thing happened the third time but at least all three failures are ample evidence that I’ve been working hard on my manuscript.  You know, I was madly typing away between applesauce stirrings and all that.

Except I wasn’t.  Each time, I was doing one of those projects that always beckons to me at inappropriate times, like when I should be watching my pot of soon-to-be applesauce or typing away at my computer keyboard.  The first time I was cleaning out the muck in the hen house.  Yes, it’s supposed to be the kids’ job, but it was the day before Thanksgiving and friends were coming over, not for dinner but to take care of our “farm” while we were away.  I couldn’t very well let them see how we really keep things, could I?  The second time I was out getting the previously mentioned black gold.   I still can’t get over that stuff, by the way, and there’s plenty more.   And the third time I ruined a pot (one of those fancy French enameled things, even) I have no earthly idea what I was doing–maybe marveling at our winter-mix lettuce.

Yes, you read correctly and that’s no tyop–for once.  We have mesclun, baby romaine and other edible greens, and it’s December in Maine. The salvaged French doors did the trick.  It really was the coolest thing yesterday morning when I had to brush the snow off the glass and then open the hinged door and then pluck enough salad for our entire family.  Yes, I really did scream out loud.  Danced a little jig. Etc.  It’s so great when these thrifty things pay off–even when we’re not being as perfectly miserly as before.

I’m admitting to some unfrugal Christmas shopping.  We made all kinds of low-cost presents for friends and family-that-are-not-our-kids.  HodsMead Batch #3, spruced up with many apples tossed in when boiling the must, is superb, if I say so myself.  Lisa jarred about a dozen crab-apple jellies and just as many crab-apple butters.  Between those two items and others that are not coming to mind, we’ve got more gifts to give away than many of our non-frugal years combined.  I’ve also vowed only to buy Lisa 1 present (it’ll be cheap, promise)–the rest of her gifts are homemade.  When it came to the kids, however, we got them a few things we couldn’t even think about buying the last 18 months or so.  We didn’t go Paris-Hilton wild but we did spend a bit more than planned (we’ll make up for it in January).  And, of course, there’s no telling what Santa might do.

There are so many things that we’ve been doing this past month I wish I had time to write about.  My favorite was collecting apples with our Reverse Johnny Appleseed friends.  They’re sort of reverse because instead of going around planting apple seeds, they knock on neighbors’, strangers’ and friends’ doors asking if they can pick their unharvested apples.  I do this on occasion myself but never to the extent that these two do it.  The day I spent picking with them we filled (literally) the entire back 2/3 of their 1990’s wagon.  A few days later, Lisa and the kids helped wash, cut and press these apple and more into cider.  They gave away dozens of gallons and our family still came home with 25 for ourselves.  Luckily we have a huge frezer.  I was off at an all-day meeting but everyone had a blast.  We’re trying only to drink a gallon every other week.  So far, we’ve failed miserably and are averaging a gallon every 10 days.  Even so, at that rate we’ll be drinking pure, unadulterated cider well into the spring.  For Free–except for the cost of running the freezer!

That’s it for now.  Sorry it wasn’t much of an entry.

I will return.

Posted in Frugal writing, Homemade cider, Frugal presents | 9 Comments »

Thursday, October 22, 2009 by Hodding.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I just realized we already have a hefty amount of free advice and wonderful stories at this site–and not from me.  You are leaving such thoughtful and helpful comments.  A friend–OK, it was Mike Ross, the guy who helped shape my site this past few weeks, commented that there’s so much good stuff here.  I said, yeah, yeah, just thinking he was being a surfing-for-frugality neophyte BUT THEN I  READ ALL OF YOUR COMMENTS!  I hope the rest of you take the time to read them too.  I like so many of these helpful tidbits but am especially psyched about clf’s advice and information on canning without all the extra boiling.   And then there was the post correcting me about fougasse and explaining how to make it properly (still haven’t broken out the cracklings but looking forward to it).

All I’m trying to say here is: let’s keep the information and ideas flowing.  This is a good thing.  A great thing, even.  Thank you.

It turns out there are thousands of you checking in on a regular basis so my guess is there’s still a great need to share stories about coping with less.  Equally pertinent, despite the fabulous, newfound wealth of the very banks that helped get many of us into our current mess, we’re still in a recession.  Friends and neighbors are losing jobs.   Most of our elected officials are not getting the big picture: We need to change.  Live more consciously.  We need to make sure this past year’s flirtation with frugality wasn’t merely a fad.  It’s time to refocus our energy–spend less time reaching for the Almighty Plastic and more time reaching for tiny, long-forgotten crab apples so we can make our own food.  So we can spend more time with our families.  So we can feel good.  Whole.

Well, I’m not too sure what just got into me but I do want to brag in closing.  My Uncle Philip just had his 70th birthday and we decided to give him a few of the things we’d been making at home.  These are items and foods that we worked long and hard to produce but had so much fun in the doing–way more fun than I’ve ever had buying something.  The picture accompanying this entry is of his birthday basket which is holding homemade jelly, applesauce, mead, bread, leeks, eggs, turnips, squash and sweat.

Posted in fougasse, Frugal presents, Making jelly, Hens | 16 Comments »

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Hodding.

I’m afraid this is going to be a bit rambling.  I started out last week all excited.  Lisa and I madly created this site and I wrote my first blog until 1 am Tuesday–putting aside everything else on hearing of Gourmet’s demise.  I was swept up in the euphoria one gets from doing something new, but as the week progressed I grew ever more morose and decidedly less euphoric:  I was out of a job.  In fact, I was out of the only real job I’d had all year.  Writing about being frugal–and getting paid for it–had been a lifeline and a focal point.  No more.  (Making matters worse was the fact that two software/website-designing friends, Mike Ross and Carl Trapani, took hours out of their non-spare time to help make the site look better.  Mike, in fact, loaded all my old columns/blogs from the old Gourmet site, even.)

Yes, we were being frugal because we had to be.  And I was writing about being frugal because I often/almost always write about the big undertakings in my life.  And, deciding to stop eating out and doing things like reusing a coffee filter 42 (43?) times and eating roadkill and raising chickens and going twenty-something days without spending any money (beyond paying old bills) is definitely a big undertaking.  But now what?  If I’m not getting paid for this and don’t feel right about trying to turn this into a commercial blog/website because I’d rather contribute to your frugality then what am I left with?

Being frugal.

That’s why I found myself bending 18-foot tall crab apple trees to eye-level so Lisa could snatch off as many crab apples as possible in the limited amount of time I could hold the trees down.  No, we’re not so desperate that we’re feeding the kids  crab apples but instead, we’re making jelly and canning it for our own consumption and to give away as presents.  Bending the trees down, therefore, was filling two needs at once: being frugal and keeping physically toned.  In fact, given how hard it was to hold them down after a minute or so, I’d recommend the exercise to anyone whose triceps need a little firming up.

It’s amazing how good crab apple jelly is.  I hadn’t bothered tasting it since I was a kid because I’d always been more than happy to shell out for store-made or farm-made jam, jelly and preserves.  There’d been no need.  What a shame.  It’s so good even my non-preserve-eating teenage girls like it.

Lisa found about six, conflicting recipes from various sources, including, among other places, the back of the box the jars came in, online, and the old Joy of Cooking (we couldn’t find canning in the new one but I bet if they were to release an all new version now like they did in 1997 [yes, it’s been that long] they’d include it; our local hardware store said they’d hadn’t sold anywhere near this year’s amount of canning supplies in many, many years).  Some recipes said you didn’t need to sterilize the jars, others suggested 20 minutes and yet others demanded 15 minutes before filling and 10 more after to seal them properly.  So, after trial and error and doing enough research to understand what each step was for, she went with sterilizing the jars for 10 minutes, washing the lids and not dipping them in the boiling water so as not to harm the rubbery seal, and then finishing them off in a boiling water bath for 10 more minutes–or long enough to have a vacuum seal.  You can tell if they’re properly sealed, we now understand, by pushing on the lid with your finger.  If you can’t depress it, then it’s probably properly sealed.  That’s just for making jelly.  It’s different for jams and preserves.  Of course.

Making the jelly was the easy part.  She boiled the crab apples (8 cups with enough water to cover the apples), for 10 minutes and then strained the juice through cheesecloth, being careful not to mush it or it will be cloudy.  Next, she brought this juice, about 4 cups, to a boil, added 3 cups sugar and reheated it to between 222 and 225 degrees over a medium high heat.  You can just stop at this point, like we did, but then you’ll have some jelled jelly and some liquid jelly, which, I guess, isn’t really jelly.  If you simmer it at this heat for a while longer, say 5-10 minutes for 4 cups of crab apple pre-jelly liquid, then nearly all of it ends up being jelly when cooled.  It also gets darker and tastier the longer you’re willing to cook it.  The cool/frugal thing about making crab apple jelly is that you don’t need to add pectin to thicken it.  In fact, some people make their own pectin from crab apples to use in other preserves.

I still can’t get over how tasty it is.  Here… smell.  Taste.  Good, huh?  And Lisa’s jelly looks so wonderful because she simmered it much longer than she had to, making it darker red and stronger tasting than it might otherwise have been.

Of course, it’d be a whole lot better if other members of our family besides Angus and me used jelly, jam, etc.,  but it’ll make beautiful presents in the short, wide jars Lisa recently found on sale.  Which brings me to the point of this blog (finally, some might say): one of the great things about being frugal is all the wonderful, low-cost, hand-crafted presents you come up with.

And here’s a boast for the ages:

Frugal people make great lovers (if you define a lover as someone who gives thoughtful, homemade presents to his/her friends, that is).

Posted in Frugal presents, Making jelly | 18 Comments »