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Amazing Cashew-Yam Casserole

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So last night M’hijito and I went over to his friends’ house, watched the twins play, admired the laid-back dogs, socialized with 87 degrees of friends and relatives, and ate ourselves stupid. Among our contributions to the feast was a cashew-yam casserole resurrected from my hippie-dippie youth.

A vintage recipe, one might say. Served up in a vintage orange enamel pan with an avocado green interior. 😀

It went over well: the young people liked it. Maybe you will, too. Here’s the trick:

Get your hands on…

• about 2½ pounds yams or sweet potatoes
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 egg
• ¼ orange juice
• ¼ dry sherry
• 3 Tbsp butter, melted
• about 1 tablespoon grated orange rind (optional)
• ½ cup cashews, coarsely chopped
• small amount (about 1/6 cup) sugar, to taste (I used demerara sugar; brown sugar’s nice; white sugar will do the job)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Wash the yams and trim off any scruffy parts. Cut them in half or thirds. Place them on a baking pan (I like to line the pan with a sheet of tinfoil, thereby minimizing clean-up), set them in the oven, and let them roast until they’re tender all the way through — about 45 minutes or an hour.

When the yams are cooked, remove them from the oven and let them cool until you can handle them. Peel off the skins (they should lift off in your fingers) and trim away any caramelized spots and flaws. Smush them with a fork and then measure: you should have about three cups. Transfer the cooked yam into a mixing bowl.

Add cinnamon, salt, egg, juice, sherry, orange rind, and sugar. Using an electric mixer, beat the mixture like crazy until it’s nice and fluffy. If it seems too dry, add a little more juice or sherry. Mix in two tablespoons of the butter.

Spoon the whipped yams into a one-quart casserole or soufflé dish. At this point, you can cover and refrigerate the dish, if you’re making it ahead of time.

Melt the rest of the butter and mix the cashews around in it to butter them well. Sprinkle over the casserole and bake, uncovered, in a 375-degree oven until heated through: about 15 minutes, or about 35 minutes if refrigerated.

You can place this dish in a 325-degree oven with a turkey, baking it a little longer to make up for the lower heat.

Also, you can double it for a large holiday meal; in that case, bake it at 325 degrees for about 1 to 1½ hours.

Freedom Remorse? Short-Timer’s Syndrome and Second Thoughts

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Only about two weeks left in this semester, thank God. That’s five more meetings of each class, and two weeks of interaction with the apparently comatose magazine-writing students. I’m going to be so, so glad to be free of ever having to teach freshman comp again (…i hope). You ain’t seen short-timer’s syndrome until you’ve come to the end of a semester of wrangling freshmen. But as you can imagine, I’ve had predictable second thoughts about walking away from my only steady source of earned income. Well…sporadically steady.

Oddly, though, I haven’t felt as jittery about it as I’d expected. The truth is, over the past few months, I’ve pretty much stopped obsessing about money. Once or twice a month, I go into Quickbooks to log my credit-card charges and the very few checks I write, and that’s about the last of think of it. I expect it’s because living on $26,820 a year, net Social Security and teaching pay, has demonstrated that I really can live on very little money. And my gross annual teaching pay is only about 3 percent of retirement savings. So the truth is, even in the unlikely event that The Copyeditor’s Desk never makes another dime, there’s plenty for me to live on. Modestly, but adequately.

Too, the little revelation that came to me earlier this year, when ex-DH underwent quadruple bypass surgery at about the same time a Mayo doctor was speculating that I had a gastric cancer, has made me care a great deal more about enjoying life and a great deal less about pinching pennies.

In the Insight! department, another little revelation occurred to me this morning. A lovely person purchased the latest of those pretty necklaces I cooked up, and so I set to constructing a third one. It takes about three hours to arrange and string those tiny little beads into a 40-inch “lariat.” That’s exclusive of running around the city in search of the beads, of course.

So let’s say I manage to net $90 on a sale (that would be extremely good, but it could be done if one were making enough of them to buy the parts wholesale). You realize, that’s $30 an hour: exactly what I earned at the Great Desert University when I worked there full-time in a managerial position. Exclusive of the two hours a day, ten hours a week, of commute time.

Yes. I can earn as much as a Ph.D. in an administrative job informed by 15 years of academic experience, 10 years of journalistic experience, and 25 concurrent years of editorial experience…by stringing beads.

{Sumbiche!}

Several small changes will help as things get tighter, if in fact they do get tighter.

Not buying gas to drive from pillar to post four days a week. This month I spent two hundred forty-eight dollars and seventy-eight cents on gasoline!!!  That’s $90 more than in August, when I wasn’t driving to campus.

Not paying the Underlings to provide teaching assistance.

Not passing by an upscale Costco outlet on the way home from campus.

Then there’s the turkey roasting on the grill for Cassie the Corgi, as we scribble. Safeway was peddling the things for 79 cents a pound. It certainly isn’t premium meat — it’s pumped full of saline solution and chemicals — but last year when I got one for her, the meat wasn’t inedible. She can’t tell the difference, anyway, and the meat from one of the things will keep her in food for a good month.

To make things better, one of my friends on the choir qualified for Safeway’s turkey giveaway. They foisted it on her even as she protested that she had no use for yet another turkey. She was trying to find a home for it, and I talked her into giving it to me. That will provide at least two, maybe three months of meat for Cassie.

Meat has become so expensive I no longer can buy  hamburger for Cassie, and the Safeway has stopped putting cheap cuts of beef on sale at affordable prices. Since about half of her diet consists of animal protein (and it probably should be more than that), the cost of feeding her has gone way up. For the short-term future, then, the meat from two fourteen-pound turkeys represents a significant savings.

So, I don’t seriously think things are going to get any worse, financially, than they are. Barring a miracle, they won’t get any better. But with the money situation already about as bad as it’s ever likely to get, I don’t believe I have much to fear.

Writing God a Thank You

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My friend Darin Garcia, whose company K&J Windows installed the new doors and windows I craved after the late, great garage invasion, has come up with a charming new website that I think has got to be unique, or very close to it: Write God a Thank You.

The idea is that members of the social website will be able to express thanks for the positive things in their lives and share it with their friends. From WriteGodAThankYou.com, these messages of gratitude can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Google+, or, if one prefers, users may create private gratitude lists and prayer journals.

Even if you’re not religious, this idea has some interesting aspects. As it develops, quite a few studies have shown that mindfully reflecting on one’s blessings, rather than dwelling on the troubles and annoyances of life, creates an amazing range of benefits. A pair of researchers at UC Davis reported that people who kept a gratitude journal exercised more, experienced fewer ailments, felt better about their lives, were more optimistic, and made better progress toward personal goals than those who recorded hassles or neutral life events. They also found that people who gave thanks daily “were more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or having offered emotional support to another.”

As readers who’ve been around for a year will recall, even a skeptical old pessimist can take a few minutes a day to focus on the positive aspects of life. Whatever those might be.

Try it. You might like it.

First sale!

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The necklace we were contemplating the other day (in some mighty poor photos) sold for $110! That’s after I asked $100 for it—the customer decided it was worth more than that.

Who am I to argue?

Gosh. This is the first thing I’ve ever made that someone else ventured to buy (well…other than books and magazine articles). How neat!

It gets better. Our stellar First Customer works at a large country club. She kindly gave me the grand tour (and “grand” is the word for it!), with the new lariat necklace draped around her neck. When she introduced me to her boss, the boss admired the thing and when she found out I made it, she was interested in getting one, too. And so was another employee.

The country club has a crafts sale, which unfortunately happened about a week ago and will not be repeated this year. However, it was suggested that if I’m still in the “business” (as it were) of selling these things, by next fall I might like to participate.

😀

How about that?

This evening I finished another one, craving to use a pretty Talavera-style cross and a cute “message” charm I’d found—First Customer wished not to be confronted with religious symbols. Having spent a bit more than I should have on the first effort, I recycled some hematite beads from a large, rather heavy necklace a former student gave me years ago. The beads were pretty but three linked strands were rather much of a much.

The idea of building a single long strand seemed like the highest and best use for the things. Quite a few glass “pearls” and tiny silver seed beads remained from the last project. These all went together nicely to create a light, rhythmic pattern of brights and darks—turned out kinda pretty. IMHO.

As usual, you have to click on the image to see a higher-definition picture.

Originally I planned to keep it really minimalist and add only the little cross and the “Sing” charm, but then decided the effect was more stark than minimal and so added some frou-frou. And some color in the form of a few red beads:

This morning I’ll wear it to choir… Who knows? Maybe Client No. 2 will surface.

Or maybe you’re Client No. 2. If you’d like to purchase a lariat necklace like these, contact me at funnyaboutmoney {at} gmail {dot} com. Each one is different; no two are alike. If you have a general color scheme in mind, let me know. And give me a week or ten days to make it, since a fair amount of time is required to track down the most desirable beads.

😀

In other precincts, over at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, Crystal and Mr. BFS are feeling a bit unnerved at the confluence of moving expenses and holiday expenses. They’re determined to get spending under control and pay off the mortgage on their rental house in 2013 and max out their 2012 Roth IRA contributions and their 2013 Roth contributions. Don’t expect much of themselves, do they?

Budget Glamorous explains how to become involved in an international homestay program, and better yet, tells some stories of her adventures as a foreign-student landlady (and stand-in mom?).  Interesting thing to do, and you can even earn a few dollars for your efforts.

Frugal Scholar and Frugal Son are seeking suggestions for things to sell at a fund-raising bazaar.

At WindyCityGal’s Weblog, Linda is abhorred by inconvenient changes in the squall jacket by Land’s End. She contemplates buying the men’s version, which, par for the course, is better designed and more functional than the new woman’s style.

NicoleandMaggie contemplate potty training in the context of upper-middle-class high-pressure.

At NZMuse, eemusings directs our attention to a new-to-me cloud storage bin for photos, SnapJoy. So far, it’s free, and it looks like it holds a lot of stuff with minimal hassle.

At Planting Our Pennies, Mrs. PoP breaks down the property tax bill, to interesting effect.

At The Blue-Collar Workman, TB visits an abandoned old building in a blighted area and is surprised to find antique printing presses and assorted metal gear untouched.

Donna Freedman has a gently funny post advising on ways to pass the time while some merchant has you on the telephone “hold” button.

Meanwhile, her daughter Abigail is pleased to find a so-called “spoiled” Black Friday ad (one that has been leaked before the corporation’s embargo date), and she points out the excellent reasons for the frugalist to know what will be on sale and by how much.

Money Beagle has one last camper adventure of the year. One tries not to giggle at other people’s  headaches, but…heeee! SDXB and I were so lucky to have foisted our camper onto one of his old cronies before it started to cost us a lot of money.

At My Journey to Millions, Evan dispenses some wise and little-known advice about the people you need to name in your estate planning. If you haven’t read this post, you should: it’s extremely important.

101 Centavos has a very interesting post on Sallie Mae—what it is, what it does (some of which possibly it ought not to be doing…), and what its prospects are. In case you’ve been living in a cave, this outfit has a great deal to do with the cost of student loans—yours or your kid’s.

There’s a nice post at Afford Anything on what money actually can be said to buy.

The recent catastrophe on the East Coast leads Nickel to discuss, at Five-Cent Nickel, what renter’s insurance does and (most importantly!) does not cover.

At Bargaineering, Jim trots out the old chestnut about legalizing marijuana and gets broad reader response.

Speaking of reader response, wanna stir up a hornet’s nest? Do as Shawanda does at Fabulously Broke in the City. Amazing how hot under the collar women get about certain subjects.

Free Money Finance asks what figure you’ve set as your “retirement number.”

At Get Rich Slowly, April Dykman holds forth on holiday come-ons to get people to sign up for loyalty cards, one of my favorite hobbyhorses.

Did you realize credit unions have started ripping off customers with fees, just like banks? Mrs. Accountability notes that hers dinged her, and several readers report similar experiences.

At Gather Little by Little, Stew uses the holiday season as a teaching moment, guiding his kids to consider value vs. cost.

Funny’s Fine Jewelry: Great Christmas Gift — or Indulgence

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Funny just came up with a new sideline: gorgeous beaded lariat necklaces! Perfect as a Christmas gift, or better yet, as a gift for yourself—because you deserve it.

I saw one of these at an arts fair a few weeks ago and, since I learned to work with beads some years ago, realized I could make them. So I dove into the old crafts drawer that has languished ever since I lost my job and had to focus all my time and energy on teaching and operating two businesses, and then it was off to a couple of purveyors whose commerce I once habituated.

Yes…two of them were still in business, although during the Recession That Was Not a Depression, one had moved and much reduced the size of its stock. The reason why was pretty obvious: prices, especially of silver beads, are through the roof. The better qualities of silver charms and beads cost several times what I used to pay for them, and small in-line metal beads are no longer sold in strings but in small packages. This increases profits for the store but also makes it possible for the customer to buy just a few, rather than going broke buying a passel of them.

This puts making bead jewelry, at least of a quality that you’d  like to be seen wearing in public, pretty much out of the average hobbyist’s reach.

Oh well. I was determined to try to reproduce the lariat I’d found—and purchased, for a pretty penny—at the art show.

Here’s the result…

(Click on the images for larger, higher-definition pictures)

A lariat is a long, slender, single-strand necklace meant to be tied, looped, or wrapped around one’s neck. The photo above shows how you’d loop it. You also can tie it loosely in one or two places or simply wrap it as many times as you please to make a choker or a bodice-length necklace. The one above is 40 inches long, not counting the bangles; the two sets of bangles on the ends add another six inches, for a total length of 46 inches.

Here’s how you can wrap one of these, showing the lariat I bought at the artwalk:

For a choker effect

To make a multi-strand necklace

Fun, huh? It’s a necklace for all seasons! You also can tie it around your waist, if you’re the slender type–probably wouldn’t want to do that if you planned to be very active, but if all you’re going to do is stand around a party and wave cocktails in the air, it would make a nice accessory.

The one shown in the top image, I made for a woman who didn’t want to see any religious icons in the charms. It’s not so easy to find high-quality silver charms that don’t involve angels, crosses, dreidls, and the like, but after a fair amount of searching, a few did surface. I like this tree of life, which also has an intricate engraved pattern on the back:

My son tried to persuade me that it’s the sacred tree god of the PadaPluBoombahs, but I kinda doubt the customer will know that bit of arcana. 😉

If you’d like one custom-made for you, get in touch with me at funnyaboutmoney {at} gmail {dot} com. I paid $120 for the one I bought at the art show, but I can share one with you for $99.95. Each one is different—no two are alike. Give me about a week or ten days to make it, since they’re hand-made and I shop at several places to find exactly the right beads and charms.

I think I’ll call this enterprise…

The Beady-Eyed Babe

Shoring up the Defenses, and Tales of Perps and Dumb Marks

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The other day when I remarked that some clown was (or maybe was not) ringing the doorbell after dark but the motion-sensitive coach light near the gate hadn’t clicked on, TB of Blue-Collar Workman commented that it’s a good idea to install motion-sensitive lights high enough to be out of reach of a six-foot-tall man, since, as we know, one thing these guys like to do is unscrew your porch light before kicking in the front door.

That struck me as a real good idea, so I went by HD and bought a couple of China’s best motion-sensitive searchlights. I hate those things—they about put your eye out. IMHO, the dark is supposed to be dark, and I happen to much prefer it that way. Oh well. We’re not in Kansas anymore…

At any rate, Dave the Electrician and his sidekick came by yesterday and installed them. Dave thought it was a great idea. He put one on the west side, where the motion-sensitive light stopped working years ago, and another on the east side, positioned so that walking by on the sidewalk shouldn’t kick it off, but trying to climb the wall sure will. Its range covers the length of the wall that isn’t obstructed by thorny vines…and also, if any dude cares to try to climb through a bougainvillea, he’ll have plenty of light to show him the way.

The one on the west side is especially great, because it comes on if you walk up the driveway or if you walk across the yard on the west side, or if you’ve come over the back wall it will come on when you approach the area where the west-facing sliding door is. This means that when somebody (or somebody’s cat) is out there, I can see through that damn sliding door and spot the poor wretch.

There are a lot of trees out there, and so o’course it’ll be on all the time a light wind blows. I suppose when it gets windy I could bestir myself to walk into the garage and turn off the switch. That requires more ambition than I usually have, though.

The other day TB, trying to make peace with Lady Karma (one expects), fessed up to his youthful life of crime and offered a long series of excellent tips on how to protect your car from break-ins. Some of these are common sense and some are pretty subtle—it’s a worthwhile read, unless you enjoy engaging with insurance companies and car repair guys.

TB’s post reminded me of a hilarious episode that happened here in the neighborhood. My neighbor across the street at the time (this was when I lived in the old house) worked as a kind of man-for-all-seasons for a spectacularly wealthy Scottsdaleite, and since he was largely on call, he would come and go at odd hours.

One morning he was about to leave for work. He’d climbed into his car, turned on the ignition…and realized that damn! he’d left his coffee in the kitchen. So he jumped out of the car, trotted back in the house, poured his coffee and shut off the Mr. Coffee, and darted back out to get back into…a missing car!

Yes! In the time it took the guy to walk into the house, pour a cup of coffee, and walk out, some dude had walked up, seen he’d left the keys in the car, and driven off in it!

😆 😆 😆

So, there you go: Never. Leave. Your. Keys. in. the. Car. Tip of the day.

Image: Motion Detector Attached to a Garage. CHG. Public domain.