What am I gonna do with that man?

I'm a simple creature. I like soup made from random leftovers. And books. I can read the same books over and over and over again. How frugal is that? My clothes? Mumus, people. For younger(ish) women. Comfortable, cheap, available at your finer stores like Target, Gap, Old Navy. I've got clothes dating back to 1990-something, which means that I either dress hopelessly out of date or am very good at purchasing classic pieces.

Then there's my spouse. The man with 1000+ CDs. The man who literally orders a book almost every single day from Amazon. The man who drinks vodka, which I've discovered is not cheap in some brands. The fella who buys so many supplements that he actually gets to that "free supplement purchase" dot on the Whole Foods supplements card several times a year. The guy who's got to have 50 pairs of underpants, 50 collared shirts, 50 t-shirts in good condition. A house with a certain square footage. I exaggerate (but only slightly), but you get the idea. The finer bourgeois things in life.

I've encouraged retrenching, a la Persuasion. Smaller house, cheaper school district, homeschooling. That's a no-go for the Viking. I think it's because he's tall. Tall people are probably more uncomfortable in small houses, perhaps. Not that our house is a palace--it's not. But I could live in one much smaller. Of course, I'm almost a foot shorter than the Viking, so that's easy for me to say.

Anyway, I, the Frugal WAHM, have a fairly consistent tug o' war going with the Not-so-Frugal Viking. I could live in a cabin without running water. He yearns for one of those 100-sqf shower stalls, fully tiled, ready for him and his 20-minute showers. Because I'm pleased to have married a man who is a constant reader and I myself understand fully the deep pleasure of reading, I don't give him any crap about the books. Because we live in Texas and find it depressing, I don't give him (much) crap about mild self-medicating with vodka or needing a relatively large, air-conditioned indoor space. Because he's not allowed to go to work naked, I in good conscience cannot bring up clothing purchases. I get to sit around in my ancient mumus and work at home. He, as a WAWD, must look reasonably decent.

We don't have disagreements over our differences. I knew when I married him that he was more...materialistic...than I. He likes...stuff, especially many choices in the way of books and underpants. I am not such a huge fan of stuff, except for having a house full of bookshelves full of books. I guess I've answered my own question in the title of this post. What am I gonna do with that man? I'm gonna stay right here with him, borrowing all of his books, that's what.

Frugal tip of the day: If you're naturally frugal, marry someone who isn't. That way, you can borrow their books.

This is the Happily Married Frugal WAHM, signing off.

TFW

Frugal is hard, fish was good

I don't want to talk about it.

Costco (shakes fist), you devil of an enormous store packed with delicious bulk goods! Grrrr.

Anyway, I made the Baked cod wrapped in bacon with rosemary last night (p. 256, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution). The title pretty much says it all. Roll the filets around in chopped rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper. Wrap in bacon. Sizzle in olive oil in the oven at 475 F for about 12 minutes. Prep time is about five minutes, cook time is...well, you just read that. You, too, can look like you actually know what you're doing in the kitchen. The recipe calls for four strips of bacon per filet. Not wanting to kill us all on the spot with sudden onset myocardial infarctions, I reduced that to two strips, which worked just fine.

To go with this, I made a basic dark green-leaf salad with homemade Caesar dressing that was totally to die for. Totally. And I also dished up some leftover basmati/brown rice sizzled a bit in olive oil, fresh Parmesan, a dab of heavy cream, salt, pepper, and garlic. This dinner was divine.

Costco, on the other hand, is a terrible warehouse-sized Lucifer, bright lights and all, that I can avoid no more easily than a moth can stay out of the flame.

Frugal tip of the day: Hi, I'm the Frugal WAHM, and I am a Costco addict (shakes fist at Costco).

This is The Frugal (I'm trying, I'm trying) WAHM, signing off.

TFW

But we dance to the music

Is there a more unexpected lyric in the lineage of rock 'n' roll music than the one that Shane MacGowan growls out in the call-and-response gritty romance known as "Fairy Tale of New York"? The woman (the now deceased Kirsty MacColl) sings, "You took my dreams from me, when I first found you," and he rumbles back, suddenly, achingly, "I kept 'em with me babe, I've put them with my own, can't make it out alone, I built my dreams around you."

That broguish rumble is still there, characteristic, Irish, and still oh-so Shane MacGowan. A mouth full of liquor-soaked marbles, the spokespiece for some of the most erudite and poignant lyrics in rock. There are no dreams for MacGowan to build around anything but the bottle, it would seem, but it doesn't stop him from tottering to the mic on cue, mumbling something almost completely unintelligible, and then growl-slurring out everyone's favorites.

The Pogues haven't visited our fair city in 20 years. So when the tickets went on sale, we were sold. We arranged a sitter for the evening, someone recommended to us by a family friend. We were solid gold to put on some big black boots and stand in the muggy Austin rain to watch our favorite Irish band rock it out. Fiesta!

And then, one hour before ETD, the "sitter" called. Oh, she said, something happened in her family today, and she couldn't make it. My professorial "I've heard it all before" antennae went straight up, and my BS-o-meter flipped over to the high-frequency register. She didn't elaborate on the "something," but went on to say, "I've got a friend who can do it, though. He's 21. My family's known him forever. He's done babysitting for a lot of families." That may be the case, but I don't let strange men come to my home and babysit my three sons. Sorry. Click. I later learned that something strangely similar had happened from the same quarter with a neighbor's family.

Scramble. Scramble. Scramble. I called neighbors. I called teachers. I called everyone I could think of, and came up empty. In the end, we ended up doing what we had tried to avoid: Having the Viking's near-octegenarian parents come to our home yet again to sit with the boys.

And we went out and danced a few jigs (well, I did; the Viking emphatically does not jig or dance. The most we get out of him is some mild head bobbing). The crowd was rowdy but not wild, possibly because we were all obviously 20 years older than we'd been the last time the Pogues came around. Even the band's sound board guy was a greying 50- something. Only one person ended up with the medics. The rain didn't start until the second encore, and I had one beer too many (passengers get to do that). Had to do something with that $50 we saved by our babysitter bailing out on us.

Like everyone else, we danced and we danced (well, I did) and gave the Pogues our best regards. Let them go, boys. Methinks we shan't see them come around again.

Frugal tip of the day: Hire a babysitter who will be a no-show. That way, your in-laws will end up sitting last minute purely gratis. That frees up $$ to buy one beer too many.

This is The Wee-bit Tired Frugal WAHM, signing off.

TFW

I made a curry!

The chosen recipe is for a "bastardized British dish" of curry, chicken tikka masala (Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, pg. 82). I've discovered the truth about cooking ethnic: it's not any different from cooking my ethnic (what is that, you may ask of this American northern-European-extracted mutt? Southern, people. Southern.). Just as you've gotta be sure you've got cornmeal around if you're cooking in the South, if you're gonna make curries, you need...curry paste. And coconut milk. And yogurt. Possibly some ginger. Chile.

The top 5 experiences from this, my first venture into Homemade Curry Land:

1. My spouse, the Viking, averred that I "should charge admission" for this one. He's a nice guy but not given to hyperbole, so I took that to mean, "This is really good stuff."

2. There's a typo in the recipe where it refers to "coriander stalks" when it means "cilantro stalks." This had me wasting about four minutes while I dug out coriander, re-read the recipe, put the coriander back, and moved on. True confessions: I skipped all the cilantro because the Viking doesn't like it.

3. I think maybe the can of water is too much. I'd suggest adding about a third of that, seeing if the curry has the right consistency, and then adding more water as needed.

4. Prepping the curry from first slice of onion to final addition of water, took less than 20 minutes. I think that rocks.

5. As I stood there watching that deliciously red, spicy creation bubbling in the pan, I realized I'd just Made a Curry! And it was exciting and far cheaper than ordering it from our local Indian place.

We happened to have some leftover naan in the fridge from some recent Indian takeout from that very restaurant. I made a salad dressing of natural yogurt, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper, and a splash of red wine vinegar, and we had that with a very basic leafy salad before having the curry over steamed basmati rice. And I have to say, I'm with the Viking. We should charge admission.

Frugal tip of the day: Want that curry taste without the curry expense? Make your own! Not rocket science, I know, but to this gal from Waco, Tex., it's an exotic and thrilling frugality tip.

This is The bucolic Frugal WAHM, signing off.

TFW

Shells in fat

I joined la revolucion again last night, this time producing the recipe on p. 52 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution cookbook, "mini shell pasta with creamy smoked bacon and pea sauce." It promised to be something appealing to children. It promised to be something adults would like, too.

I'd say that overall, it kept those promises. In the interests of sticking with the Brits, I now bring you my top five experiences with producing this dish, with thanks to Hi Fidelity and Nick Hornby.

1. I've never in my life fried bacon in fat, much less two fats (olive oil and butter). Watching those lipids heat up, bubble, pop, sparkle, and sizzle was hypnotic and slightly dangerous.

2. Given the above and the addition of heavy cream, I'd assume that a single serving of this dish will set you up with sat fat for a week.

3. When Jamie says, "two tablespoons" of heavy cream, for us that means at least twice that amount to achieve the "creamy, silky, and delicious" sauce we seek.

4. Grating Parmesan cheese yourself is a full upper-body workout. I mean...dayyyumm.

5. Jamie recommends "shaking" your pan twice in this recipe. My pan didn't shake very well, so I opted to stir. I guess it's a Shaken vs. Stirred controversy, and Jamie, suitably, is the James Bond to my...not James Bond.

I timed it again and found that the bacon frying by far took the longest time, sizzling away about 10 minutes of the cooking time. Overall, prep time was about 25 minutes, but that includes the fact that I was constantly dodging around the resident Viking in our small kitchen. He'd come home from work early and seemed to always be standing right where I needed to be.

As noted, the amount of heavy cream the recipe called for didn't seem quite sufficient, and I doubled it up. Perhaps it's because I'm a Southerner and have excessive expectations about fats. If so, I'd say that this dish lived up to them. I also used whole wheat pasta shells because, well, they're better healthwise, toothier to the bite, and just overall more satisfying.

Kid meter: They loved it, even the picky first grader. Ate all of it. Of course, they had to ask first about every single visible ingredient before putting fork to pasta shell. This time, I could honestly promise them that not a single onion had ventured near their food.

I served this up for the adults with my version of the Evolution Green Salad on p. 108: butter lettuce, bacon, fresh Parmesan. I excluded pine nuts and also made my own dressing with mayonnaise (raw eggs give me the creeps), a bit of cream, salt, pepper, lemon juice, red wine vinegar (just a splash), Parmesan, and garlic. It turned out to be a pretty righteous little dressing. Add in some ciabatta, and we rocked it Italian style in the late evening. "Rocked" being a word with broad meaning encompassing everything from rowdy rumpusing (not us) to sitting quietly at the table eating semi-Italian food while reading (us).

After our bacon explosion dinner (bacon salad, bacon pasta), we're probably about bacon'd out for now. We'll knock off the leftovers tonight ("Hello, 911? I've OD'd on sat fat"), and then my next outing with Jamie is going to involve curry! Finally.

Frugal tip of the day: Don't waste time accumulating your saturated fat over several days. Just make this dinner and get your week's worth in a single sitting.

This is the Saturated but not Fat Frugal WAHM, signing off.

TFW

Progress on unprocessed (or, How I made good beef stew)

I made our first Revolution recipe. For the debut, I decided on something pretty straightforward, universally palatable: beef stew. I admit, the big attraction was the fact that I could pour more than a pint of beer into it. Who could resist that?

In the interests of Mr. Oliver's request that we "pass it on," I'll pass it on in brief here and say that the complete directions can be found in his book on page 180. It required a couple of celery stalks, couple of onions, couple of carrots, bit of flour, can of diced tomatoes (that's to-mah-toe for those of you who read British), olive oil, and his favorite seasonings, sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper.

About a pound of stewing beef, a few bay leaves, and...yay!...16 ounces of ale (two cups). Guinness, Bass, mmmm....I used Newcastle because it's what we had, and I like it a lot. The bonus here is that you have to open two bottles to get 16 ounces, but you use only four from the second bottle, leaving you a tasty 8 ounces of ale to work through while you deal with the rest of this recipe. Beer-based cooking at its finest.

Veggies go in first, roughly chopped, with the oil and bay leaves for about 10 minutes. Toss in meat and flour, pour over ale and tomahtoes. Stir, season. Boil briefly. Let simmer for 2.5-3 hours, checking occasionally to alleviate any dryness with a bit of water.

Voila. There is stew.

Mr. Oliver promises us that many of his recipes take 20 minutes to prepare. So, I timed it. Grand total? About 23 minutes, and that was likely because I was also dealing with multiple offspring-generated interruptions during the process.

As a note, I simmered it for only about 2 hours because I have almost no patience or time, and it was fine.

Oliver offers up some "toppings" for stew in his book, and I opted for the sliced potatoes, boiled for 10 minutes, sliced, spread over the stew in a baking dish, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with thyme, then popped in a 350F oven for about 35 minutes. We had this two nights in a row with some good wheat rolls. And it was really, really good. Meat tender, stew gravy just right in ale-laced flavor and consistency, potatoes perfect, vegetables perfect. You'll note that this recipe does not involve browning the meat first. And you know what? That's really OK, no matter what your mother thinks.

Wow. These chef types really do know how to put together a recipe for regular people. I was kinda hoping to crack into something involving special vinegar or a dish with the word "curry" in it, but that'll come soon, I'm sure. I didn't buy all these fancy-ass dark bottles of stuff for nothing.

In other news, on the Unprocessed Food o'Meter (UFOM), we're scoring quite well. In the last three days, the only processed food we've had at home has been whole wheat sliced bread and that can of tomahtoes. Not bad for the average American family of five. The UFOM gives us a whopping score of 95 for that. I'm sure there are speed bumps ahead, though, in the form of a giant can of ravioli waiting to be cracked open on one of those days when even standing in the kitchen seems like a torture.

Coming up next: A (possibly) kid-friendly mini-shell pasta with a creamy smoked bacon and pea sauce. Except that it appears to be against the law in Texas to sell mini-shell pasta (Whole Foods, HEB, Sprouts--I'm talking to you!), so this will be medium-shell pasta with a creamy smoked bacon and pea sauce. Hopes are high. Except for the three-year-old. We have no hopes in that neophobic quarter whatsoever.

Frugal tip of the day: Drink the leftover ale. What else are you going to do with it?

This is The (highly unprocessed) Frugal WAHM, signing off.

TFW

First, we must unpack

Out with the old...

...in with the new.

I've got $300 worth of unprocessed foods sitting in my kitchen. Spices. Oils. Possibly unguents, although I don't think that's food. I'm fully expecting to transport us all to the "Far East" (how far depends entirely on where you are right now). But first, I have to transport all of this crap into the cupboards. Which are already full of...spices, oils. Possibly unguents. Sigh. When people talk about adventures, no one ever mentions the little stuff. The preparation. It's always all about the adventure part.

In keeping with that grand tradition, I'll spare everyone the gory details of how one Frugal WAHM made the decidely unfrugal decision to toss out the 10-year-old basil that's moved seven times, the ancient cream of tartar that she only used as a diuretic during her pregnancy with her now eight-year-old son, the (gasp) crackly, greyed bay leaves that have sat in a (slightly) open bag for God only knows how long.

Instead, we'll just start with a sparkling new cabinetful of spices, oils, and possibly unguents. And let the adventures begin.

Frugal tip of the day: Don't move old spices seven times. Use them or lose them.

This is The (adventurous) Frugal WAHM, signing off.

TFW

Frugality revolution

I just spent $300 at the grocery store.

Doesn't sound very frugal, does it?

But I'm now prepared for the Apocalypse or Y2K10 or any other catastrophic world-ending event that requires one to hoard sugar and guns, following the immortal advice of the late Rev. Falwell.

What I'm really prepared for (I hope) is a new effort on my part to cut out the processed foods. We're pretty good about it anyway, limiting it to a couple of canned goods a week, store-bought wheat bread, an already roasted chicken. But we're about to get even better (wrote The Frugal WAHM hopefully).

The Frugal WAHM has even purchased apples to make applesauce. Things are getting kinda scary organic Betty Crockerish around here. Actually, they're really getting more Jamie Oliver-ish. I've bought into his Food Revolution. Got the cookbook. Got the list of pantry essentials in the front and just bought most of them (hence the enormous grocery bill, and no, it does not include guns. This is Texas. I'll just borrow one from a neighbor. Guns are like sugar that way around here). Gonna make at least a couple of these recipes a week.

Like other humans, I'm harkening to a need to follow a rules list, some set of guidelines for living. For some women, it's biblical inerrancy. For others, it's diet books involving lemon juice or bananas or Skinny Bitches. For me, it's become unprocessed foods. Or possibly the prospect of making my own curries, given my obsession with said spicing. My friend Jamie O. and I share a deep and abiding love for curries. He also wants to do a sort of "pay-it-forward" recipe-sharing campaign, so if I've got one that works, I'll pay it forward right here, avoiding copyright infringements while I'm at it.

So, to recap: All fresh or fresh-frozen ingredients. Scratch foods. My initial investment of $300 should dwindle to less than $100/week with all this fresh-based cooking. I can do these things because I'm a WAHM, theoretically. I've even got high-flown visions of finally making my own (decent) bread from scratch.

Remind me of that when it's Thursday night, I've worked eight unbroken hours at my desk, my kids really need to eat something, anything, and I must lift my pale, tired hands and peel potatoes or cut fruit or steam vegetables or boil water for rice. Or, I could fall off the frugal-nonprocessed food wagon and pop some frozen nuggets in the toaster oven. Right? I mean, what are rules for, if not to be broken?

This is the enthusiastic-in-that-haven't-done-a-thing-in-yet FW, signing off.

TFW

In which memories prove expensive

We took our offspring to see Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson last night. This was a frugal move in a sense because for each adult ticket, a child got in free, so we only had to pay for three tickets. The not-so-frugal part of that was that the three tix still clocked in at a smidge over $200.

But now our children will be able to say that they saw Dylan and Willie, live and in person. And very loud. Worth dropping $200, right?

Except that we also dropped another $100 at the show. No outside food, no outside drinks = we were beholden to $4 lemonades and expensive by-the-slice pizza. And it was an evening in which even our neophobic near-three-year-old decided he was having a growth spurt and needed two slices of pizza. All told, the damage was about 10 drinks (it was triple-digit heat), six slices of pizza, two hamburgers, three hot dogs, three snow cones, and an order of fries.

So, I figure it was still frugal, based on the following calculations. $300/five people = $60/person. We were there 4+ hours, so 60$/4 = $15/h per person for food and entertainment. Seems like a pretty good deal. And if you throw in the memories...well, those are supposed to be priceless, right?

Frugal tip of the day: When costs start to seem a tad unfrugal, break out the fancy math to make yourself feel better about it. And don't forget to factor in the pricelessness.

This is The Frugal WAHM, signing off.

TFW

In which a baby defies frugality

Well, he's not actually a baby, but he's The Baby of The Family, so we continue to call him that. He's almost three. He's what we call "neophobic," which means that he does not eat most foods. Our other children are not like this at all, so his behavior confounds and confusticates us. His food list includes the following:

Fruits (tastes vary daily)
The tops of muffins (what is a Frugal WAHM to do with the bottoms?)
Pepperoni pizza (but he refuses all other cheeses, meats, and anything else with tomato sauce)
Cereal (one kind)
Any bland cookie (but only part of one)
Macaroni, no cheese
Popsicles (homemade, fruit juice)
Pancakes
Oatmeal
Goldfish crackers

And he likes to suck on lemons. Raw lemons. Straight.

We present him with all foods that we eat. Repeatedly. For years, we have done this. To no effect. He's almost three. He's huge, so from the above list, he must be getting something significant. You'll notice that except for the pepperoni, he's a devoted vegetarian, practically vegan.

So, I had this leftover pancake, remaining from the morning my younger sister Miss Frugal WAHM'd me. I had a Very Frugal Plan for that pancake, involving giving it to Mr. Pickypants for dinner. I warmed it ever so slightly (if things are remotely hot, they don't get touched), and served it up with a drop of syrup.

And he didn't eat it.

I do have some leftover, drying up lemons I can give him. Maybe I'll try that tonight, see how my little Not So Frugal Fella likes that.

Frugal tip of the day: When conceiving, try to conceive a child who will not be neophobic.

This is The Frugal WAHM, signing off.