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Various Cool Stuff

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How cool is this, for example?

Newport

Thos. Moser is having a 15%-off sale on office furniture, among it this chair that I’ve coveted for…oh, about forever. Even at the discount, though, the price tag is in cardiac arrest territory.

Oh, well.

BeePollinatingFlowersAt Windy City Gal, Linda has something much cooler: a real beehive in her backyard! And someone to take care of it, too. Such fantastic little creatures!

Meanwhile, Revanche and PiC covet a backyard, too: they’re beginning to contemplate the possibility of buying a house — a daunting prospect when you live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Asian Pear awakes in the wee hours and shares the thoughts that keep her up at night.

At Afford Anything, Paula’s boyfriend Will gets his aged Accord stolen! They’re in no hurry to buy a new one, but sooner or later will have to go through that hassle.

Donna Freedman holds forth about the flabbergasting number of mosquitoes that come out during an Alaskan summer. Ugh! Horrid things…I’ll take 115-degree days over blood-sucking insects any day!

At Bargaineering, Jim Wang is planning a Tweetchat on teaching new college graduates about life in the real world; he solicits reader ideas.

StackingCash worries that retiring Boomers will suck so much capital out of the stock market that the whole house of cards will collapse.

At Blue Collar Workman, TB advises on protecting your home from flooding. Good ideas there. I need to find out how to get a back-up generator connected…

At Prairie Ecothrifter, Marie has posted a very nice article outlining ways to cope with stress-related insomnia.

At Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, Crystal (who has a cute new haircut) and Mr. BFS are paying close attention to food costs (they have a “food fight” going on :-D) and dieting, two projects that seem mutually exclusive.

Planting Our Pennies has emitted several engaging posts this week. Start with the current chapter of an ongoing horror story and read back. Think I’m going to send a link to the real estate leverage piece to my business group, which is richly larded with real estate and lending professionals.

At Five-Cent Nickel, Suba Iyer shares some good advice about arranging your affairs for your family should you die or become incapacitated.

Mrs. Accountability serves up an easy and scrumptious grilled pork loin at Out of Debt Again.

At Frugal Confessions, veteran renter Amanda offers several ways to cut the cost of your rent bill, some of which are pretty darned clever. None of them include “pack up and move.”

Like the PoPs, Evan has been up to all sorts of entertaining stuff at My Journey to Millions. A little rabble-rousing: thoughts on taxpayer-funded regulation of consensual sex. Then, a severe temptation to pass judgment (who, Evan? surely not! ;-)) elicits a lot of reader comment.

At Frugal Rules, John celebrates a whole year of freedom from the gerbil wheel and reflects on the joys and challenges of self-employment.

The newlyweds of NZ Muse continue their journey though Asia. Since this pair likes to eat, they dish up some very fine food porn after their better restaurant adventures.

And the less newly wed nicoleandmaggie celebrate an anniversary with a lovely retrospective post, very beautiful indeed.

Frugal Scholar helps Frugal Son move into his new house, with mixed emotions.

And so it goes…

Images:
Newport Chair. Thos. Moser Furniture.
Pollination by a bee. Louise Docker. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

 

Summer is the most expensive month…

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More crazy bills, one right after another. What is it about extra expenses that causes them to cluster in the season when your regular costs are at their highest?

The water bills are in low orbit. The power bills are just below them, hovering in the stratosphere. In another month I get to pay for yet another nuisance emissions test and fork up some more money to register the car.

Soooo…. Last week M’hijito and I had to cough up $370 apiece to get a gigantic tree in his front yard trimmed back. Almost eight hundred bucks is a helluva lot better than the $2400 fine we’d have to pay to the city if the garbage truck drivers complained about the way the thing was taking over the planet. It was not only trying to consume the neighbor’s front yard, it was radically in violation of the city right-of-way code.

Naturally, a few days later he had some strange health episode that sent him to the ER — allergic reaction, apparently. It subsided before they could start drugging him up, but that visit will cost him $500, the full deductible on his health insurance.

On my part, this tree-hacking bill came right after a $350 brake job and car maintenance bill.

And now it’s time to get the accursed palm trees trimmed. Early each summer, Mexican fan palms sprout these huge, spiny flower fronds. They look sort of like plant fireworks. And they drop tiny, sharp, POOL-CLOGGING blossoms into the water. With them come long stringy things that choke Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner and these hideous white grubs that live up in the trees. Don’t know what these three-inch-long worms are, but they get stuck in the skimmer and pump pot baskets and are absolutely gross to clean out. Ugh!

So Gerardo and his guys are here this morning. They were supposed to show up around noon, but today Gerardo decided to invert the mañana principle and appear at 7:30. This was smart on his part — the heat has yet to come up; by noon it will be killing.

However, choir has to sing at a wedding to day. I have to be out of here in half an hour. My hair was up in curlers when he surfaced, and my face still isn’t painted, and I have NO IDEA how much to pay him.

On that note, come to think of it…I’d better start running. Again.

***

Wah! WRONG DATE! Fortunately I realized before racing out the door to the Cult HQ that I entered the wedding on the wrong date. Otherwise I’d be even more ridiculous than I usually am.

Okay. This gives mit the entire freaking day to amuse myself and clean the palm tree mess out of the pool. Heh…probably cleaning the pool is gonna take the entire freaking day, too…

🙄 😆 🙄

Life’s Daily Message: Don’t Get Cocky…

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So I was feeling pretty smug this morning, trotting around the park, having dropped off the fat-loss plateau to the tune of another 1.5 pounds. Coming into the home stretch of Mile 3, I see a plump lady gamely running through the early morning heat. She has another 30 pounds to go, I figure.

Nya nya! I’ve only got 9.4 pounds left to shed!

Ahead of me I spot another woman, a large woman with a terrible limp — looks like she might have injured a hip that never healed up right, or maybe she has a birth deformity that’s nearly got her crippled. She’s a tough gal; she’s not giving up, but wrestles herself along the sidewalk with a twisting, rolling gait that must be exhausting to sustain for any length of time. My guess: 40 to 50 pounds overweight.

Thank God I don’t have to deal with that much fat!

As I come abreast to pass her, she pauses to gasp for breath, so we see each other face to face for the first time. And…my god!

It’s not a woman!

It’s a boy. He looks to be about 13 years old. Holy mackerel! The overweight probably derives from a combination of the injury or birth defect, mean classmates who make him feel inferior, and lots of computer gaming.

Baby boy, what happened to you?

Of course one doesn’t vocalize any such question. Instead, I smile vaguely and proceed around him at speed.

Forthwith I reach the end of the three-lap park circumnavigation and am flying up the feeder street toward home. At the corner, in front of the house that always has all the gay decorations at Christmas, I see a lady in a bright pink bathrobe, sitting on the ground by her garden.

She says something softly, and it takes a second to realize what she’s said is “help me!”

She’s fallen on the ground, evidently trying to get the newspaper.

I ask her if she’s hurt. She says she’s not, but would I help her get up.

She’s as tall as I am, but so frail and wasted she looks tiny. Under the bathrobe, she’s wearing an adult diaper that looks like it’s wet.

I take her hands while she struggles to get her feet under her. We try to get her upright, but it doesn’t work. She’s too heavy for me to lift, and she’s too weak to pull herself upright.

I say, “We’d better call 911.”

She says, “Get my husband.”

“Is he inside the house?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Chuck.”

I stick my head inside the front door and holler for Chuck.

No answer. The house is neat as a pin, spotless, and odorless. But other than that clue (this lady obviously couldn’t keep house at all, much less maintain a house and yard to perfection), there’s no sign of anyone else in the house. Maybe he’s still in bed.

I enter the home, still calling his name, and walk down the hallway toward the bedrooms.

Silence.

A closed door. I knock on it and call his name a couple more times.

Just as I’m thinking the woman is confused and only imagines her husband is still with her, he calls out from behind the door, “What is it?”

When I explain that his wife has fallen out front and that I’m not physically strong enough to lift her, he says he’ll be right there. Evidently this is not the first time.

A compact, fit-looking man, he appears to be in his early 80s. He hurries outside.

On the grass by the sidewalk he kneels beside his wife and caresses her face.

This is a man of extraordinary kindness, loyalty, and grace. He speaks quietly to her, and then he manages to haul her to her feet. The trick, it develops, is not to try to pull her upright by holding her hands, from the front, but to get behind her and lift her by her shoulders from the back. Again, she has to get her feet beneath her, a painful and difficult process.

Once she’s upright he holds her in his arms. She still isn’t walking — says she can’t balance upright but feels like she’s falling forward.

I ask him how else I can help them. He says it’s OK, that they’ll be all right.

Why do I doubt it?

As I walk away, I look up into the cloudless blue sky, symbolic abode of my personal deity.

Hey! You — the one with the omniscience and the universe and all that… What the hell are You doing back there? Either make it right or make it stop, will You?

The mockingbirds sing. The doves coo. The quail crow. The waiting sky resonates with construction and traffic.

If She has an answer, She chooses not to share it.

Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori.

Frugal Coup of the Day!

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Well! I pulled of a frugal coup this morning, without even hardly trying.

The wardrobe has been running short on plain, easy-to-care-for, unobtrusive knit tops that I can wear on the junkets around the park (now three miles long, in 90-degree heat at 5:30 in the morning), loaf around the house in, and not look too unpresentable in at the grocery store. The ones I’ve had have just worn out. After the last closet-cleaning frenzy only three such priceless garments were left.

The early mornings are now pushing humid and hot enough that I’m soaked by the time I get back to the house. Running the laundry every three days is not how I want to amuse myself.

A year or more ago, I found plain, unadorned, well-made Calvin Klein T-shirts at Costco. Went back to acquire some more. Naturally Costco isn’t carrying them anymore.

So on the way home from this morning’s Scottsdale meeting, I stopped at the mildly upscale Biltmore Fashion Square and popped into Chico’s, which I recall as usually having such shirts on sale during the summer.

Nope.

They had a few V-neck shirts. I hate V-neck T-shirts. I want crew necks.

Over to Black & White.

Nope.

Ann Taylor.

Not a chance.

Brooks Brothers.

Like, I’m sure. 🙄

Finally dragged into Macy’s. I really don’t like shopping in Macy’s. It’s such a jumble of stuff that if whatever you want is in there somewhere, you have about a snowball’s chance of finding it. But what the heck. The alternative to was to buy something from Amazon, sight unseen.

Trudged through the second-floor women’s clothing department. Found two, count’em, two that pretty much filled the bill: $25 and a 25% discount. Traipsed through the swimsuit department looking for a cover-up that might work. Actually found one: $78.

😯

Moving on, I picked up a third knit T-shirt, cutely screen-printed, on the way to the checkout — $30, the same 25% discount. None of them thrilled me, but they would do. Not exactly what I wanted, but close enough. One, I saw at check-out, had some sort of frou-frou smocking in the back.

{sigh}

Shuffling off the escalator and through the main floor toward the exit, I had a thought:

Maybe I should look in the boy’s department? Or…what about in the men’s department? Men wear T-shirts!

Hence a detour into Men’s Wear.

Actually, I found two really cool T-shirts, one of them a Tommy Hilfiger in deep-ocean blue with this wild octopus on it. Continued shoofing around…and lo! What should appear, tucked away in a back corner, but a big display of ABSOLUTELY PERFECT 100% cotton T-shirts in every color of the rainbow!

And! To gild those lilies, the things were marked $7.98 — regular price!

The men’s “small” fits like it was made for me. The “medium” is a little large — not unsightly, but extremely comfortable.

I grabbed one in bright teal blue, one in little-old-lady violet (yes! can you believe…in the men’s?), and one in tan. If there’s any cash left at the end of the month, I may go back and get the bright pink and the deep purple and maybe a green.

So I take these three finds to the Men’s Wear checkout guy and explain that I searched all through the women’s department looking for something like these and now I want to buy them from his stock and I want to return the overpriced stuff I bought upstairs.

w00t! After the returns were tallied and the guy’s T-shirts were purchased, the AMEX card still had a net credit of $32!

 

How to Make Authentic Curry Powder (and what to do with it)

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P1020434Mmmmm! Too bad blogs don’t have Smell-O-Vision. I wish you could enjoy the richly exotic, spicy fragrance of the curry powder I just whipped up in the kitchen.

You’ll recall the curry powders residing in the pantry came up wanting because they contain a lot of salt, an ingredient I’m supposed to avoid these days. Just one teaspoon of the Madras curry powder would dump 13% of your RDA into a dish — and a teaspoon is barely a taste in a good stir-fry or curry stew.

So, I wanted to concoct my own, something I’ve done in the past, to excellent effect. Here’s how to make a very fine

Curry Powder

P1020430(Click on the images for higher-resolution views.)

You need…

• 3 tsp turmeric
• 3 tsp coriander seeds or 3 or 4 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp whole cardamom seeds, hulled (i.e., get the ones that are not inside the papery pods, which are a nuisance)
• 2 to 4 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/2 tsp ground fenugreek
• 1/4 tsp whole cloves
• 1/2 stick cinnamon
• 1 tsp dry, ground ginger
• 1/3 tsp yellow or black mustard seeds
• 1/2 tsp whole white peppercorns (black would probably do)
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Measure the ingredients into a blender jar. When everything is loaded into the blender, turn the machine to high and pulverize the bedoodles out of the stuff. It should be reduced to a fine, fragrant powder, with no chips of seeds left.

Yesterday, as I mentioned in passing, I bought a lot of these spices at Penzey’s, an upscale gourmet store, because I didn’t want to drive all over the city. However, if you have some time on your hands, many of the ingredients can be found much more cheaply at Asian or Mexican ethnic markets. Many, too, are packaged by American companies and retailed at ordinary supermarkets. So, by way of stocking up frugally, take a few days and seek out these goodies at decent prices. Try to get whole seeds, which make a much more fragrant, vibrantly flavored product.

Cumin is the dominant flavor of curry. I used four teaspoons because I happen to like it quite a lot. However, if it’s not your favorite flavor or you’d like to accent one or more of the other flavors, you could cut it back to two teaspoons.

Many US recipes ask for white peppercorns. However, the peppercorns and the red pepper are there only to give the curry a little “hot” kick, which, IMHO, ordinary black pepper will do just fine. Regulate the amount you put in according to your taste for heat. Same for the mustard seeds, which also add zing.

Turmeric is what gives curry its classic yellow color. It stains — don’t wear white clothing when you’re working with it, and be aware that it can stain tile grout. If this is a concern, cover the work counter with wax paper before beginning.

Use your product in any recipe that calls for curry powder. Here’s one brought back from my ten years in Arabia that’s as authentic as curry gets — in fact, curry powder per se is not especially authentic but is an artifact of the British Empire. That notwithstanding, it’s very delicious.

Here’s an impromptu curry stir-fry I came up with a while back:

Curried Stir-Fry

You need…

• chopped greens, such as Napa cabbage, bok choy, spinach, kale, or a combination thereof. If you’re using kale, cut it up fairly finely; other greens can be coarsely chopped. I use about 1/2 head of Napa cabbage for myself, which provides enough left-overs for a second meal.
• a clove or two of garlic, finely chopped
• about 2 Tbsp curry powder, more or less, according to taste
• two or three green onions with their green tops, cut into 1/2-inch to 1-inch lengths.
• a carrot, chopped into small pieces
• other veggies such as tender asparagus, broccolini, bean sprouts, tiny canned corn-on-the-cob, etc., as desired; cut larger items into pieces
• some sweet mini-peppers or a ripe bell pepper, cut into bite-sized pieces
• fresh ginger, grated (grate maybe 1/4 to 1/2 inch off a piece of fresh ginger) (wash it first; no need to peel)
• a small can of coconut milk or an even smaller can of coconut cream (failing this, some chicken or beef broth will do, or white wine, or sherry)
• tamari or soy sauce
• animal protein as desired (optional): a few nice shrimp or scallops, or some thinly sliced beef, pork, or chicken
• a little olive oil (or a blander oil if you prefer)
• a little sesame oil

This is so easy! And it goes very fast once everything is cut up and assembled. While you’re cutting up the veggies, cook some rice or Asian noodles, so they’ll be ready about the time you start cooking the stir-fry.

Skim the bottom of a big frying pan or wok with the oil. Heat over medium-high heat. Add the ingredients in order, roughly from the longest-cooking to the shortest-cooking. Thus:

Put the carrots in the hot oil first. Stir to get them started cooking.  Add the peppers and any other veggies you have on hand, other than the greens. Stir some more, to coat with oil and get the cooking started.

If you have shrimp, scallops, or meat, add that next, along with the garlic and the ginger. Stir quickly until the meat looks cooked on the outside (this will be very fast with the shellfish, so pay attention). Be sure to keep stirring to avoid letting the garlic scorch. Add the curry powder at this point, too.

If you are not including meat, add the green onions right after the first round of veggies. Stir briefly. As the pieces from the tops turn bright green, add the garlic, ginger, and curry powder, stirring constantly.

Finally, stir in the chopped greens.

As the greens start to wilt, add the coconut milk (or broth or wine) and the tamari (or soy sauce). Continue stirring over a fast simmer  until the greens are nicely wilted and soften, but don’t overcook.

If you’ve prepared Asian noodles (or cooked some angel-hair or fettucine pasta), add these at the last minute. Stir around to saturate well with the sauce and serve it up in bowls.

If you’ve prepared rice, serve the stir-fry over the rice.

Very tasty, and good for you, too. Omitting the tamari (or soy sauce) will produce a dish that resembles Indian food (or at least, what Westerners imagine it to be). If you decide not to use the salty soy product, then season the dish with salt to taste, either before serving or at the table.