Frugan February!

This month I'm eating everything frugan.  This is a taste of how it's going:

The tortilla española is a perfect frugan meal--full of ingredients easily acquired, painless to make, warm and filling.  I put together a couple potatoes and onions salvaged from the garbage, some meatless Italian sausage that I had leftover in the freezer, 5 eggs, creme fraiche my roommate had left behind, and a glass of delicious boxed wine purchased in New Hampshire, the land free of sin taxes.

Lunch at the office--cottage cheese from the trash, leftover quinoa salad I had made from onions, spinach, mushrooms, and quinoa from the garbage and then frozen, and some pudding from Wal-Mart (yes, Wal-Mart.  My boybott is on hiatus while they seem to explore sustainable business practices with a good deal of dedication).

The next night I took three bean stew that I had from the trash, fancied it up with some of the quinoa salad that I still had leftover, and heated up cheese toast with bread from the trash, cheese leftover from my roommates who had moved out, and some sate seasoning from my mother.

A little lagniappe

Oof it's been a while since I posted, but that's because I took a little sojourn to Uganda.  Before I set off though, I had moment of foresight.  In anticipation of making dear friends with whom I would want to leave a farewell gift in appreciation of their friendship, I brought along some of my superfluous frugan niceties.  Plus, I always like to give a gift with a little more utility than flowers or cards or chocolate.  Pictured above are a digital camera from the NYU dumpster and a tape recorder from the Columbia post-graduation dump.  Also, yummy mens cologne and lotion that someone had left behind in the Business Class goodie bag on Emirates.  The happy camper Brother Andrew writes, "Thank you very much for my gifts which you gave me i am still very happy I now  know  how to use both the camera  and the Re coda, at first I could use it with out a flash but now i am ok."  So much better than gifting the landfill.

Lost in the food court

This is what I wanted.

I watched the woman place her shopping bags on the floor, slip onto the red naugahyde stool, swallow a few bites of her cheeseburger, nibble on her onion rings, crumple her napkin, slide a few bucks under the salt shaker, and shuffle off.  What was left was really exactly what I wanted--half a cheeseburger, half an order of onion rings--and just because it was, for free...and about to go to waste.

This is what I got.

I had a little angel-devil dialog with myself as I waited my turn in line, peering over at the site posted above.  Dispute settled, I paid $14 for a cheeseburger with grilled onions, an order of onions rings, and a peppermint oreo shake.  In the wake of some user or technical error, what actually turned upon my tray were two cheeseburgers with grilled onions, two orders of onions rings, and two peppermint oreo shakes (I gave one away to a teen boy).

There I sat, alone in the food court of a shopping mall with $14 less than I wanted and some 3,000 calories more than I wanted. All because I had a bit of silly tact ingrained in me a little too strongly.

Sharing is caring

One of the niceties of urban hunting and gathering is the generous stockpile that it generates in the pantry.  When my brother comes over to study, I can make him a snack.  I rest easy knowing there is always something to whip up, and I don't think twice about the cost (in fact, there is always plenty of food solely because it is free, otherwise I think my cabinets would be quite barren).  On this day, I had hamburger buns, onions, and sloppy joe sauce all from the trash, so I paired them with some ground chuck in the freezer, and in minutes I had a hearty delicious dish to fill the belly of the brother.

Life after a UPC

This is a nice find, because while I don't rely on frozen meals day to day, and would rarely spend the money on them, they are convenient, and these being Amy's pretty near delicious and not horrendously life-reducing.  I took plenty, but left behind plenty more.  Each had been stripped of its UPC code.  I presume this has something to do with audits from the distributor or whomever regarding what did and didn't sell.  This practice doesn't affect the edibility  of a product like these frozen meals, which contain an inner plastic sheath, but that's not true of everything.  Milk for example is a liquid and liquids don't remain within the bounds of a container once a 1.5" x 1" rectangle has been cut from it.  Needless to say, the milk is poured down the drain before the jugs make it out to the street.  I find milk to be a most divine drink, and it saddens me terribly to come upon piles of drained containers, each with a matching puncture wound.

More from the store

I mashed the potatoes  and roasted the carrots and yams, threw in some frozen peas and an organic Italian sausage that I had on hand.  The next night I sauteed some onions and kale that I had from a previous trash trip and mixed it with one of those packets of Indian curry from Trader Joe's and blanketed it over the freshly baked (albeit Pillsbury) bread pictured above.  Perfect easy meals for chilly autumn nights!

Halloween

Halloween costumes can be the cause of such stress!  They're cheaply constructed, generic, and expensive.

Some thrift stores set up Halloween sections during this time of year.   If you live in Los Angeles, at the moment there is a large section in the Goodwill at the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and 6th St in Santa Monica.  I'm sure other thrift stores have a similar set up.  They may not have the hottest superhero your child most desperately needs, but they're likely to have more unique options (no one wants to show up wearing the same thing as someone else), and still allow your kids the fun of roaming the aisles to pick out his or her own costume.   I think it's also a good chance to instill that Halloween really is about having fun, getting dressed up, and stuffing yourself with candy.  And just as much fun can be had in a used Gumbi costume as in a brand new Iron Man costume.

I've also heard of parents organizing costumes swaps.  Both are really great ways to get kids fun new costumes on a budget, and while helping to minimize clothing manufacturing and landfill use.  If you're in New York, go to this one that my friend is organizing on October 24th !

Another idea is to convert an old costume into something new.  With new accessories a fairy can be adjusted to a princess, remove the padding and get a new nose and an elephant becomes a seal, dye a good witch dress and it becomes a wicked witch.

You can also make your own costume.  All of my favorite costumes growing up were made by my mom.  They were nothing too elaborate, but it ensured that no one else would have the same costume, and I got to help her out and  suggest changes here and there, so I got just what I wanted.   We also stored costumes away, so I often wore what my brother had worn a couple years prior.  They also had a great homemade touch--accents and accessories were actual tactile objects, not just screen printed onto chintzy fabric.  Scrap fabric, string, glue, tape, paint, and carboard boxes can take you a very long way.   It's so much fun to get creative with kids.  Making costumes with them is a great way to stretch their imagination and encourage them to find ways to translate that imagined idea into a functioning frock.

Cupcakes and cupcakes and cupcakes

What a welcome treat en route from one bar to another on a Friday night!  And it wasn't even  my idea, it was that of my wise disciple pictured here.  Cupcake Shop + Garbage Bags = Bounty.  The formula just came to her.  That's what happens when you start thinking right.