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Frugal Friday Recipes: Beef Burgundy

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Having run low on craft projects, I’ve decided to change the Friday department to recipes and cooking posts, something I’m never likely to run out of.

Last weekend I made an awesome boeuf bourguignon for some friends. It was mighty pricey: about $45 for all the ingredients. But so far, that roast has yielded 12 servings…and counting. The guest meal was wonderful, and every leftover variation has been really good, too. So, I thought I’d share the original recipe with you. Next week: all the meals that came out of it.

This recipe is not hard to make, but it requires a half-day to cook. So, plan to be around the house while it’s simmering.

You’ll need…

  • 3- to 6-pound rump roast (other cuts of beef will work)
  • 3 or 4 pieces of bacon (probably not necessary for chuck roast)
  • olive oil
  • 1 or 2 cut-up carrots
  • 1 large or 2 small cut-up onions
  • 1 bottle inexpensive but drinkable red wine
  • 1 can or box of low-salt, high-quality beef broth or beef bouillon, or two or three cups of home-made beef broth
  • 1 bay leaf or sprig of rosemary
  • 1 tsp (more or less) thyme
  • 2-inch strip of orange zest, or 1/3 tsp bottled orange peel
  • 1 large or 2 moderate-sized tomatoes
  • tomato paste
  • 2 or more cloves of garlic
  • salt and pepper
  • about ½ pound fresh mushrooms
  • about 20 small white onions
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • sour cream, if preparing gluten-free meal; or a tablespoon or two of butter with a like amount of softened butter
  • good-quality egg noodles (or, for gluten-free dining, potatoes or rice)
  • sharp paring knife
  • saucepan
  • deep, heavy frying pan or large-diameter stock pot, with lid
  • another frying pan
  • stock pot or other large pot for cooking noodles
  • water
  • cutting board
  • serving plate

First, place the bacon in the saucepan with a couple cups of of water. Heat the water to a simmer; allow to simmer about ten minutes.

Meanwhile, wash and cut up the carrot, onions, and tomatoes. Peel and chop the garlic. Set aside.

Drain the bacon. Dry it in paper towels. With a sharp knife, slice the fat away from the meaty part of the bacon strips. Slice the fat into thin pieces.

Dry the saucepan. Skim the bottom with a little olive oil. Place it over low heat with the meaty pieces of the bacon. Let the bacon meat cook slowly while you’re doing the next step.

Rinse the roast and dry it well with paper towels.

Cut the strips of fat into one- or two-inch long pieces. Take your knife and punch a hole in the meat, and then with the tip of the knife gently push a strip of bacon fat into the roast. Be careful not to cut yourself.

Repeat this until you’ve worked the bacon fat into holes all over the meat, top, bottom, and sides.

Keep an eye on the cooking bacon meat while this is going on. When it’s crisp, turn off the heat and set the saucepan aside with the bacon and cooking grease in it.

Pour enough olive oil into the big frying pan to skim the bottom. Place the pan over medium to medium-high heat, warm the oil, and then brown the meat on both sides. After you’ve turned turn the meat to the second side, add the cut-up onions and carrots. Stir around as the meat continues to brown. After they seem to be cooking, add the garlic.

When both sides of the meat are nicely browned, pour in about three-quarters of the bottle of wine. Add enough beef broth to just cover the meat. Add the tomatoes, the orange peel, the thyme, and the bay leaf or rosemary. Stir in a heaping tablespoon of tomato paste.

If the broth is not simmering, leave the heat on medium-high until it comes to a simmer. Then turn the heat down so that the pot will stay at the simmer. Cover the pot and go away.

Depending on the size and the cut of the meat, cooking should take two to four hours. After about 90 minutes, check every 15 or 20 minutes for doneness. The finished meat should be tender but preferably not disintegrating.

While the beef is cooking, wash and dry the mushrooms and cut off any tired-looking ends of the stems. If they’re very small, leave them whole. If they’re more than an inch or so in diameter, slice them in half or quarters lengthwise. Peel the onions (an easy way to do this is to drop them into a pan of boiling water for a minute or two, then drain them into a colander and cool quickly under cold water), slice off each end, and cut a cross into the root end of each onion.

Take the onions and place them in the saucepan you used to cook the bacon meat. Place the pan over medium heat and gently stir the onions and fried meat around for a couple of minutes. Add about ½ inch of water to the pan, cover, and simmer for a bout a half-hour, until the onions are just tender when pierced with a knife. Set aside.

Pour some olive oil in a clean frying pan and place over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the mushrooms. Stir or toss the shrooms until they’re lightly browned, around five minutes or less.

When the meat is done, take it out of the pan and set it on a serving plate.

Meanwhile, place a large strainer or colander over a large bowl, and pour the pan juices through it. Push the juices out of the vegetables, and then discard the vegetable residue. Pour the juices back into the pan, and place the pan over high heat on the stove.

Allow the stock to boil down about 50%. If desired, add a little more wine or tomato paste, or both. Herbs can also be added-more thyme, a bit of marjoram, a dash of lavender, whatever you have at hand. When the stock has cooked down to about three cups, lower the heat.

If you wish to thicken the stock with sour cream, wait until you’re ready to serve the meal. Then reheat the stock gently but do not bring it to a boil (if it boils, the sour cream will curdle). Stir a few tablespoons of sour cream in to thicken a bit. This is useful if a guest is sensitive to gluten. To serve a gluten-free meal, substitute potatoes or rice for the pasta.

But if everyone can eat flour, the classic way to thicken this sauce is with a beurre manié. Take equal parts of white flour and room temperature butter and mash them together. One or two tablespoons apiece will probably do. With the broth simmering vigorously, stir pieces of the flour-butter paste in a little at a time, stirring until the sauce thickens. Taste the sauce; season with salt and pepper if necessary.

Place the meat back in the sauce and add the onions and mushrooms. The roast can be served immediately or may be set aside and reheated later.

If you are serving noodles, fill a stock pot with water and place it over high heat. When the water comes to a boil, add a package of noodles and cook until just soft. If you are serving potatoes, peel and boil them (or simply clean and boil, if you are using tiny new potatoes or fingerlings). If you are serving rice, cook according to package directions.

Slice the meat and serve with the sauce and noodles (or other starch). A generous green salad will suffice for vegetables and extra color.

Net Worth Update: Better than expected

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One good thing about being a pessimist: you’re never unpleasantly surprised. What surprises come your way are always pleasant.

Despite the market roller coaster, my investments are doing better than expected. The Vanguard mutual finds are holding their own, and the broad array of securities managed by the amazing Dick Stern and John Reimer actually earned $1,500 last month.

I ran a net worth calculation last night: over nine hundred grand. Looks like I should turn in my notice this very morning, right?

Well, there’s a problem: besides the fact that it’s all on paper, I’m house-poor. Those figures include the $300,000 value of my own paid-off dwelling plus my share of the Investment House, which M’hijito is occupying while we wait for its value to grow. My liquid holdings are worth only a little over half my net worth. Combined with the piddling Social Security I would get if I quit now (or, for that matter, that I will get if I manage to hang on to my job for another three years, until I’m 66), it will not generate enough for me to live on.

I use almost all of my net salary to support the house, the yard, the dog, the car, a small savings project, and myself. Because I telecommute several days a week, never eat lunch out, and wear Costco jeans to work, the fact of the matter is that quitting my job will not result in any day-to-day savings. To gross an income equivalent to my present net income would take 6 percent of my cash holdings. That’s about 2 percent too much.

My share of the Investment House mortgage is $1,000 a month, which comes out of the proceeds on my investments. We will save $200 or $300 a month with the refinance on the Investment House. But that notwithstanding, my savings plus Social Security will not generate enough to support me in my present home.

I figure I need to work until I’m 70-almost seven more years!-if I’m to stay in this house for the rest of my life.

Since GDU is millions of dollars in the hole and my own college just had its budget slashed by $2.8 million, a nonessential job with a year-to-year contract such as mine is not bloody likely to last another seven years.

If I lose my job within the next four or five years, my plan is to sell the house and move out to Sun City, where acceptable housing is cheaper and the cost of living is amazingly low. Taxes are a third of what I’m paying here and auto and homeowner’s insurance are half the gouge in my present Zip code. Utility bills are lower, because the houses are smaller and they all have (hideous!) gravel landscaping. Grocery stores are much closer and can be accessed in a golf cart, and other routine shopping destinations, such as Home Depot and Costco, are also far closer than they are to my present “centrally located” house. So, gasoline costs would be lower even if I kept the Dog Chariot.

Trouble is, I don’t want to live in Sun City. It’s safer and quieter (as in “the quiet of the mausoleum”), but it’s a ghetto for old folks. I don’t want to live where everyone looks like me, and I don’t want to move away from my friends and what’s left of my family.

But if I lose my job, I won’t have a choice.

If I manage to stay here, when I die my son will inherit a paid-off house. If he’s still living in the Investment House-which he could be…at my age my mother had one year left-he also will inherit enough to pay off the mortgage on that place. He covets my house, which would be an excellent home for a young man or…oh, say, a young man, a wife, and a kid or two? He could either sell the Investment House and put the proceeds in the stock market or rent it for a nice stream of secondary income. Or he could sell both houses and move into a much nicer place.

Any of those would be good.

In the meantime, the fact that I’m worth damn near a million dollars and cannot retire absolutely blows me away. My father thought he would have it made when he reached his savings goal of $100,000. And at the time he did quit his job, that was enough to support him and my mother in what they regarded as comfort. Then came the inflation of the 1970s. By the end of his lifetime he barely had enough to keep a roof over his head. And my father was the Emperor of Tightwads.

Even if I had a million dollars in cash, the return combined with Social Security would not replace my income. I probably could live on it…now. But in ten years? twenty years? If I escape the family disease, I easily could live into my 90s. That’s another thirty years! Wow.

Save, young pups. Save, save, save!

Managing Your Emergency Fund: The paycheck-to-paycheck safety net

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In the hideous biweekly pay environment, no matter how you try to arrange things there will be times when you will find yourself without enough to cover your normal bills. This happens because paydays move around, so that occasionally your second paycheck of the month arrives after your bills are due and after other living expenses have consumed most of your first paycheck.

That’s the case for me this month: automatic payments for all my utilities and two insurance bills are made by the 20th. My Visa bill will be due about then, too (fortunately, it will be small). Normally plenty of money is in the account to cover all these expenses, because normally by the 20th two paychecks have been fed into that account. The first paycheck covers my recurring expenses and a few other living expenses; the second covers the rest of the grocery bills and such costs. But not this month: in April I don’t get paid until the 25th.

On April 20, when the American Express billing cycle closes, I will be $200 in the hole.

The credit union, however, will think I have $300 left in my checking account. The only reason the account will appear to be in the black even after I’ve spent $200 more than I deposited it is that I keep a $500 cushion in that account. I make it a matter of principle never to go below that $500 cushion. So, in my universe a balance of $500 is the same as zero, and a balance of $300 means the account is really $200 in the red.

The only thing between me and two hundred bucks’ worth of bounced transactions is an emergency fund of a few hundred dollars.

As we have seen, I have about $18,000 in an emergency fund, enough to tide me over for six months should I lose my job. Since I started setting money aside in a fund to pay off the low-interest Renovation Loan, I’ve managed to squirrel away another $13,000, which if push came to shove could serve as more emergency cash. Most of this money is kept in conservative mutual funds, where it earns a little interest.

However, I keep $500 of it in my checking account for exactly the kind of short-term emergency I’m experiencing this month.

The April 25 paycheck will replenish the checking account’s emergency cushion and cover the rest of my April bills. But May also will see the second paycheck come in after all my recurring bills are due, and so once again I will need that $500 cushion to keep from overdrawing the account.

A back-up for the checking-account cushion is check-bouncing protection, a line of credit extended by the credit union which, for a fee, will cover overdrafts up to $3,000, about one month’s net pay. As long as no payments are drawn on this line of credit, it costs me nothing. If I bounce a check or EFT, the interest will be around 11%, but if I repay the overdraft immediately, it will cost me just a few dollars—a far cry from a bounced-check penalty and the umbrage of creditors.

So, here’s a sensible approach to managing emergency funds as they accrue:

1. First, build a cushion in your checking account that will cover a short-term overdraft.

Consider this amount to be your “zero” point! When your balance approaches the amount of your cushion, regard it as actually approaching zero. When you start to eat into your cushion, your checking account is in the negative numbers. Behave accordingly: quit spending and find a way to replenish the checking account as fast as you can, even if it means transferring funds from savings.

2. Once the checking-account cushion is in place, continue building your emergency fund, but plan to invest the bulk of the money in an interest-bearing account. When you reach $3,000, for example, you can open a low-expense fund at Vanguard, where a money market fund pays as much as the highest-paying bank savings accounts do and where other relatively safe instruments return around 8% over time.

3. Get overdraft protection with your bank or credit union. If your bank charges you for this service, move your accounts to a bank that restrains itself from gouging you.

Overdraft protection is your emergency fund’s emergency fund. In the event of a minor disaster-a late paycheck, for example-it gives you an extra safety net. Arrange for this while you still have a job, because of course if you are unemployed you’re unlikely to qualify for a line of credit.

categories: personal finance

2 Comments from iWeb site

Mydailydollars

Good advice!I certainly sleep better at night with a small emergency fun, even while I’m paying off my credit card debt.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 – 08:19 AM

Mrs. Micah

When in college, I had $200 which I considered untouchable. And my account never went below that…but if something had come up, it could have. I also had savings linked to my checking, which helped just in case.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 – 09:56 AM

Monday Household Hints: Fix carpet dents

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Often when you want to rearrange the furniture, you find crushed-down spots in the carpet where the legs were sitting. Sometimes these dents won’t go away. Here’s a way to fluff the carpet back up, eliminating the dents or at least making them lots less noticeable.

apr7plasticthingYou’ll need:

  • Steam iron
  • Distilled water
  • Spray bottle
  • Clean white cotton fabric, such as a “flour sack” type kitchen towel
  • Strong fingernails or small plastic bag clip of the sort that comes on bags of bread and produce.

Fill the spray bottle and the steam iron with water. Fold the fabric to make it three or four layers thick. If you’re using terrycloth bath toweling, one layer will do.

Remove small children and curious pets from the room.

Plug in the iron and turn it to a temperature that will activate the steam feature. Before proceeding, test this method in a hidden corner:

Spray a patch of carpet lightly with water. Place the folded fabric over it. Run the iron over the towel, liberally steaming. If your iron has a blast-of-steam feature, use it. Be careful to use the iron ONLY on the fabric; do not let it touch the carpet. Now check to be sure the carpet is OK. If you see any sign of melting, you will need to use the second strategy, described below.

1. The Easiest Strategy

Generally, as long as you keep the iron on the fabric, you will have no problem even with synthetics that would melt if touched with a hot iron. Once you have tested in an inconspicuous spot and confirmed that this method will not harm the rug, take the iron, fabric, and plastic bag clip over to the carpet dents.

  • 1. Lightly spray the dented area with water. Do not saturate the rug.
  • 2. Place the folded-up cotton fabric over the dent.
  • 3. Run the hot iron over the fabric for about a minute, steaming generously.
  • 4. Lift the iron and quickly set aside in a safe place. Be sure no small children or pets can come in contact with the hot iron.
  • 5. Set the hot fabric aside and, using a fingernail or the bag clip as a pick, gently lift the nap.

If the furniture has been in place for quite a while, you may need to repeat this process several times to bring the nap up to its normal height. Be patient and don’t scrub at the carpet or otherwise get rough with it.

2. For Synthetics That Threaten to Melt

If your carpet is made of a synthetic that doesn’t take well to heat, try this approach.

  • 1. Fill the steam iron with distilled water and turn to “Linen”
  • 2. Hold the hot iron about two inches above the carpet dent. BE CAREFUL not to let the iron contact the carpet!
  • 3. Press the blast-of-steam button to irradiate the dent with plenty of steam.
  • 4. Quickly set the iron aside in a safe place. Be sure no children or pets will come in contact with it.
  • 5. Using your fingernail or the plastic bag clip as a pick, gently work the crushed nap to lift it up to its normal height.

This process may need to be repeated several times to restore the dented spot.

categories: Household hints

1 Comment from iWeb site

BeThisWay

Good tip!

I’ve also had some success just putting some ice cubes in the dent and fluffing it up when the ice has melted…

Monday, April 7, 2008 – 08:02 AM

In the Nick of Time: A new income stream appears

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Now that GDU has rendered the teaching gig so outrageous, so underpaid, and so grossly immoral that even I, Queen of Creative Malingering and Dark Angel of Cynicism, will not take on another online course, I cast about for another way to generate the extra money needed to pay off the Renovation Loan during my lifetime.

One of my research assistants has been working for a small publisher of mystery novels. The proprietors are paying her $12 an hour to read page proofs. This works out to about 10 pages an hour or around $360 per book. She says they’ve given her four books to read since the first of the year.

By the month, that would come to about half of what I’m earning per class. But even if course enrollments were limited to the caps the university has had, reading page proofs of a mystery novel would amount to about a tenth of the work entailed in a month of teaching an online university writing course. And now that the caps are gone-well, the publisher’s pay would easily work out to far more, per hour, than an adjunct professor would earn pretending to teach “writing” to 100, 200, maybe 300 on-line students.

I called the publisher’s shop and was greeted with what sounded like sincere interest.

Given a Ph.D. in English, a job directing an editorial shop, several books of my own in print, and 20 years’ experience writing for and editing commercial publications, I suspect I’m a shoo-in.

If I could find one other publisher looking for someone to do similar work, it would replace the teaching pay.

Actually…. If they can keep me busy twelve months a year, just this one gig would come fairly close to replacing the teaching pay. As a practical matter, because GDU has a six-week-long winter break, the spring and fall semesters occupy only about 7 ½ months of your time.

$360/month over 12 months = gross $4,320 = net $3,110

Pay for one $3,500 course = gross $3,500 = net $2,110

Pay for two $3,500 courses = gross $7,000 = net $4,200

Of course, I’d have to pay taxes on the freelance editing pay, and I would forego the matching contribution of 7% of that $4,320 to my 403b plan (in fact, if I were teaching, the match would be 7% of $7,000 gross pay). However, because I deduct my entire life, I always end up with a couple thousand dollars of state and federal income tax refunds. Since I’m putting all the freelance money into savings anyway, I doubt the loss will matter. Moonlighting for GDU, because all sorts of deductions are ripped out of my paycheck, I only bring home about 60% of gross pay. I’ll cheerfully forego the $490 match to the retirement fund for the privilege of not teaching in the new madhouse regime, thank you very much. I mean…we’re talking about being paid to read mystery novels.

A second client paying comparably and giving me a comparable amount of work would bring the annual freelance pay to $8,640 (gross) or about $6,220 net. The amount of work-in terms of hours and of onorousness-would be significantly less than teaching two sections of undergraduate writing courses, and the pay, significantly more.

Let’s see how this works out. Pray for the best!

Saturday Roundup: A day late and a dollar short edition

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This weekend’s round-up of interesting and entertaining posts is a day late because I spent yesterday shopping, cleaning house, and preparing dinner for friends. A great time was had by all: following a Julia Child recipe for beef bourguignon, I turned a pot roast into something awesome.

A dollar short because pot roast is not pore folks’ food any more. Good grief! In the first place, I couldn’t find a decent roast. Neither Safeway nor Costco had a chuck roast capable of rising to the occasion: Safeway’s was actually chuck steak, an inch or so thick, and the only “chuck roast” in Costco’s meat case was two small pieces wrapped into a single package. Both choices were overpriced, higher than the much larger rump roast that I got on mark-down at the Safeway. By the time I finished buying the meat, some dried noodles, a few stewing vegetables, a box of relatively unadulterated beef broth, and a bottle of cheap wine, the dinner cost almost fifty bucks!

Rump being an altogether-too-chewy cut of lean meat capable of cooking up into shoe leather, I had to bard the darn thing with parboiled bacon fat, a lengthy process and a nuisance. But it turned out more than good enough for government work.

It seemed strange that no beef roasts, to speak of, were available at mid-morning on a Saturday. Are we looking at a meat shortage? Or should we join My First Million in contemplating the possibility of a coming famine?

For those of us who have been reduced to penury by the weekend grocery bill, Catherine Shaffer reminds us that DVDs are to be had for free at the local library; at Wisebread she explains how to get your hands on those perpetually loaned-out new releases and popular television shows. Trent and Mrs. Trent are experimenting with cloth diapers (hope they save enough to cover the cost of the extra diaper rash cream they’ll soon be needing…ouch!). Poorer Than You has an eye-opening post about how to foil those darn messages from your printer that tell you the ink cartridge is almost empty-when it’s not. And over at Get Rich Slowly, the project to track the cost of growing garden vegetables proceeds: so far, JD and Mrs. JD have spent $157.30 to arrive at the robust seedling stage.

The Mac is really annoyed at having been made to do things it didn’t want to do, and now it’s galloping along at the speed of a stampeding snail. So, it’s time to shut everything down and reboot.

Or better yet, to shut everything down and go dine on some leftover pot roast. Outta here! A fine Sunday evening to all!