Wednesday, May 19, 2010 by Hodding.

The above title is all I’m going to say about my long absence/abstinence from writing here.  Some pretty cool stuff is in the works regarding my writing and being frugal that partly explains neglecting my blogging duties BUT I can’t reveal them just yet.  I’m hoping next week.

In the meantime, I’d like to report that Lisa and I have been working until 9-10 at night to get our various gardens in.  Literally.  And the thing that kills me is when I stop by a friend’s house to pick up a bicycle Angus has left behind (along with his scooter, baseball glove and muddy clothing) she has immaculate raised-beds all lined up in neat little rows AND, worst of all, not only are her sugar snaps a good 18-inches tall but she even has pole beans beginning to wrap their way around her perfect, plastic-coated metal poles shaped like a tee-pee.  What the hell?  There’s not even a speck of dust on the hemlock boards that she made the raised beds out of.  Even her weeds are trimmed back…well, ok, she doesn’t have weeds but if she did, they’d be looking sharp, I know it.

Then there’s us: garden plots that look like battlefields, dirt not only spilling out of the gardens’ borders but also littering the inside of our home (along with bits of horse manure we retrieved from our doctor’s backyard), and not a single plant emerging–except for the 200 or so strawberry plants that were already there.  Our living room looks like something Lewis Carroll* might have dreamed up with florescent bulbs resting on paint cans lining our dinner table so our precious baby seedlings will grow big and strong, despite the fact we began most of them about a month late (the baby tomatoes are looking mighty good, though, since I re-planted them up to their necks [bottom leaves]). And at least half a dozen of our hens’ backs are so red and irritated–and are missing so many feathers thanks to a certain roosters talons–that I’m considering filing rape charges against Snowflake, our rooster.  Eliza, in fact, has begun to ask me on a daily basis, “Will you please kill him today, dad.  Please  I hate him.”  Who knew roosters were so violent?  I am going to do away with him and the only reason I haven’t yet done so is that I want to incubate another dozen or so eggs.  I just keep forgetting to set up the incubator.

Maybe going public will urge me into action?

Ok, so we’re a bit messy, way behind our fellow vegetable-growers and are harboring a criminal but, hey, how about those falafel sandwiches and mint-lime slushies we just had?  As my loyal readers know, my downfall was my stomach and my taste buds.     I lived to eat something new, delicious and, more often than not, expensive and I fed this habit by eating out 2-3 times a week–or more, if you count those coffee-and-a-muffin mornings.  So, to pull off this frugal living, the one thing I had to still do was make sure we ate as well as–or better than–we did while being spendthrifts.  Boy, did we succeed the past few days.

On Monday afternoon as we shopped for milk, cheese and a few other essentials, Eliza announced, apropo of nothing, “I want some falafel.”

Huh?  This was a total surprise.

Don’t get me wrong, though.  I was happy it wasn’t, “Dad, I want to get my nose pierced.”  Or, even worse,  “Dad, I’m pregnant and my boyfriend and I are running away to the circus.” (She’s 14 and I’m totally not ready for either statement.)  It’s just that we’ve only made falafel 2-3 times her whole life and I didn’t think she really knew what falafel was.

Thank God I was wrong.  The thing I miss the most sometimes, when mostly-never eating out, that is,  is fulfilling my taste cravings.  I especially miss street food along the lines of Chinese pork buns, chicken shawarma in a pita, grilled baby octopus (northern Thailand, of all places), roasted maize sprinkled with chili and lime, etc.  Strong, mouth-watering bits that transport one’s culinary soul.

So in steps Eliza’s falafel.  As some of you may already know, the falafel themselves are fairly easy to make and tasty but are nowhere near where the excitement is.  Mix together some shopped up chickpeas, matzo, and spices.  Roll the mess into balls, deep fry for 2-3 minutes (in my case, said frying takes place in our garage; Lisa HATES the smell of fried food so she bought me a commercial fryer a while back that I’m supposed to use out there–which works for both of us because now that I don’t ever have to hesitate when wanting to fry!) and they’re good to go.  It’s what you put on the falfael, inside the pita, that makes this a transformative experience.  And our sauces did not fail: creamy, full-fat Greek yogurt cucumber sauce with fresh mint plus a sublime, sinfully smooth-and-nutty tahini sauce.  One bite and we were transported to the Mid East–although there was a short detour when Helen, 12, asked if these were also popular in the South.  Turned out she was confusing the US’s midwest with the Mid East.

Thirsty, we whipped up a batch of mint-lime slushies (Angus, 7, wanted the slushies and Anabel, 14, suggested the mint), using store-brand frozen limeade concentrate, ice, and some more of the fresh mint.   Helen, 12, by the way, had no part in the making of any of this because she is doing two sports this season–track and field and soccer–and has no energy to do anything at home besides moan and groan.

Gotta go–just writing about it all makes me want to do the entire meal all over again.  I’ll try and post some photos later.

*By the way, despite the assertion of those in favor of recreational-drug usage, Lewis Carroll (given name Charles Dodgson) was apparently not a drug addict and was also not high on anything while writing Alice in Wonderland.

Posted in Frugal Cooking, Frugal dish, Gardening, Hens, Roosters | 17 Comments »

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 by Hodding.

I promise I am posting an entry later today… well, tonight most likely.  I have no excuses beyond the fact that swim season has begun.  I’m the head coach and now have 80 swimmers.  We only had 40 when I began coaching two years ago.

I’ve also been overwhelmed with fall-type mini-farm chores.  It’s amazing how long it takes to distribute 3 (8 X 5 X 3) trailer-loads of composted horse manure.  Yes, you read it correctly.  Lisa and I did strike the motherlode of perfect, ready-for-planting horse poop!  A few weeks ago I casually mentioned (be careful what you casually mention, considering my very tired back) to our family doctor that I was looking for a greenhouse.  I’m not sure why I told him.  he live sin town and certainly doesn’t have the time for hobby-planting.  Well, his eyes lit up, his face said, “Ah, a sucker at last!” and he gushed, “Yes, Hodding, I do.  We have a greenhouse!”

He quickly got  controlled himself, though, and continued in a carefully controlled manner: “Uh-hhhmmmm. My wife and I just might have what you are looking for.  I’ll have to check with her to make sure she really doesn’t want it anymore.  I’ll call you later in the week.”

Ok, ok.  He didn’t really get a hold of himself.  Instead, he made it very clear that he would do just about anything if I were to take it off his hands and even admitted that it was a bit beat up.  I told him I didn’t care.  It’d be a starter greenhouse and how could I be choosy?  He was giving it to us.

Sensing this was “my moment” I went fro broke and asked him for the other item we’re desperate for: “You don’t happen to know anyone who has some extra horse manure, do you?”

And that’s when he almost fainted.

“Well, let me see how I should put this, Jesus, my savior (ok, he didn’t say that but I could tell he was thinking it).  I should contain my utter glee at the thought that somebody wants to come over and remove even a smidgen of this accumulated waste but I can’t.  So, in short, yes, Hodding, I do have manure.  Way too much manure and you can take as much as you’d like.”

It turned out that the greenhouse has seen better days but I think I can get it up and nurturing again.  If not, I can use the metal pipes to make a roof for our various broken-down very small boats so they can be safely stored for the winter.  Thank Man for global warming! Tt’s been the warmest November in Maine that I’ve ever experienced and I’ve had extra weeks to winterize everything.

Back to my story: The greenhouse may or may not get us growing things this February but teh manure.  I’ve never seen such perfect, aged manure my entire life.  Admittedly, I’ve never been on the lookout for quality, aged manure until now but even so, even subconsciously, I’ve never seen such perfect, fluffy aerated garden-candy (should I trademark nickname?  Lisa?).  As I waded past the mounds of fresh, greenish briquets of horse manure to stab what looked like a mound of topsoil, I furtively glanced around to make sure nobody else was witness to my discovery.  When my shovel entered the mound like it was stabbing a hill of popcorn I actually squealed with delight.  This was it!  The gift from heaven that I’d been hoping for.  With this mother-nature-processed poop, our gardens are going to make leaps and bounds into a totally different, higher class of gardens.  I wanted to shout for joy–and did, of course–but then I got back to loading up the trailer.  Boy, if there’s one thing a lifetime of writing has prepared me for it’s shoveling shit.  I scooped the poop for two hours straight (and am going back for more as soon as I’m done writing this.  I don’t think I could ever get tired of doing it.).

With this poop, Lisa and I will enter the realm of–dare, I say it? yes, yes, I do.  this manure is simply too superior not to crow a bit.  With this poop, Lisa and I will rival Evan Coleman, the current reigning king of all that human’s grow.

Yeah, okay.  I just went too far but I’m so excited.  I can’t wait to post pictures of what we grow next spring and summer with this stuff.

Now if I could only get that greenhouse back together…

Postscript:  Like I said at the top, I promise I’ll make an entry later tonight.

Posted in Frugal winterizing, Perfect manure, Extreme Frugality, Gardening, Hens | 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 »

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 »