Chicken Teriyaki Bowl #7

Business has been a little slow, with two major projects on temporary (I hope) hold.  Cash flow is a little tough and groceries are getting really expensive.  Since I have more time than money right now, here’s how I’m saving the latter without really changing how or what we are eating:

Baking bread

Baking bread actually takes only 20 minutes of time, including cleanup.  I mix and kneed everything in my stand mixer and raise twice.  Each loaf costs about .35 USD in materials.  The loaves are about 2/3 of the size of a store loaf, but still, store loaves are running $2.50-$3.85 for the kind of bread we buy.  We eat a lot of bread; the two of us probably go through 2 loaves a week, so this saves an average of  $22.60 per month.

Making Granola

My DH won’t eat cheap cereal - generic corn flakes or puffed rice.  So we can count on at least $4.00 for a box of cereal.  Have you noticed how small cereal boxes are getting?  Luckily, he loves my plain granola.  I buy the Quaker Oats at Costco and use molasses/honey/maple syrup/brown sugar for the sweetener.  I buy molasses, honey and maple syrup when they are on sale or a good price at Costco.  A couple of tablespoons of oil, water, cinnamon and vanilla and we are good.  The cost comes to just under .09 per 1-cup serving.  The time spent to make 3 batches (I make smaller batches because they toast easier and I only have one edged cookie sheet) is a total of an hour (lots of in-between time). I figure we are saving about 30.00 a month on cereal!

Yogurt

Yogurt is super-easy to make.  Milk is running 3.56 a gallon here, which makes about a gallon of yogurt.  A quart of yogurt (the good kind) is usually on sale for 1.99-2.50, so the savings is 5.42 a gallon.  We use lots of yogurt in smoothies and as sour cream in cooking.  We save about 10.00 a month on yogurt.

Home Made Pizza

When I make bread, I also make pizza dough, raise it once and freeze it.  It thaws pretty quick in warm water (I freeze it in a ziploc) and is better for us than store bought or delivery.  We always have ground venison or elk, and I just reduce some canned tomatoes for the sauce.  The cheese is the costliest part.  The pizza we usually get costs 11.49.  The made pizza costs about $3.75.  We usually do pizza on Fridays, so we are looking at about 32.00 in savings a month.

Fruit Stand/Farmer’s Market

We have lots of fruit stands and a weekly farmer’s market in the summer time, so I hit them to get very cheap fruit and vegetables.  Of course I’m stuck with what is in season!  We’ve have asperagus (.85/lb) for two weeks, and I also pickled a bunch.  Peas are also out (.65/lb) and cherries.  Asperagus at the grocery store during this time was 1.99/lb, there were no peas.  I figure I save about 15.00 a month shopping at the fruit stands.

Now if only the DH could be convinced to brew beer again, we’d REALLY see the savings!

Let me know in the comments how you save cash by exchanging your time for money.

Beyond Paper, the dba of my current business, evolved out of my original Virtual Assistance business, Digitalgybe.  Since my work focused heavily on the tech side of VA, Beyond Paper was a moderately clever name. (Digitalgybe is a whole ‘nother story and too hard to remember, spell and explain to people.)

My business has changed dramatically, however, and now I concentrate solely on programming for websites.  My elevator speech goes something like “You know when you push a button on a website and something happens?  I make that magic happen”.

Beyond Paper just doesn’t fit for my new business, and I’m looking for a new name.  Any input, suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated!

While camping this weekend we were just hanging out enjoying the birds when something flashed by us.  When I looked I noticed a dead chipmunk on the ground, which hadn’t been there a minute before.  Another flash, and I now see it; a long-tailed weasel.

She ran back around, after checking us out carefully, grabbed the chipmunk and disappeared.  Five minutes later she flashed by again (sans chipmunk), ran into the bushes and came back with a second dead chipmunk.  By this I assumed she was a female, hunting for her babies.

The biggest surprise was how small she was - maybe 18 inches tail-to-nose.  The chipmunk probably massed almost as much as she did.

It was very cool, though, and a good reason to just sit quietly and enjoy the birds.

When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.  Carr, Nicholas,  Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Atlantic, 10 June 2007.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone even slightly acquainted with me;  I’d make a lousy 1930’s style wife.

13 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

My dogs were barking longer than usual at something.  From the window I could see they were all staring at something in the road.  It was a little red finch that looked stunned, like it had hit a car.  When I approached it fluttered a bit, but I picked it up and it calmed down.

Except for some rumpled feathers on its left wing, it seemed OK and not in pain.  I walked it over to the flower bed, but before I could place it under the wisteria, it fluttered down into hiding.

The dogs lined up against the fence and eyed the spot all afternoon.  By the next day, the finch was gone; hopefully under its own power and not due to the cat.

OK, stop now if you don’t want to have the Indiana Jones movie spoiled.  As if I could make it any worse than it already is.

Truly, this was the worst movie I have seen in some time…and I am an avid Mystery Science Theatre fan.  In fact The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would make a great MSTK movie.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am able to suspend my disbelief.  I’m a huge SG-1 and SG Atlantis fan.  I loved the original Battlestar Galactica.  I even liked that really bad Flash Gordon movie.  Ten minutes into this movie, however, I was cringing in my seat.

First of all, please don’t expect me to believe that a whole platoon of Soviet military can make it on to a highly classified base during the era of the red scare 50’s.  No frickin’ way.  I will, however, give you the warehouse with all of the stored goodies (including the Ark of the Covenant, LOL).  The lead-lined fridge saving Indy from the atomic blast?  groaningly stupid.  Really.  People in the theatre actually groaned.

I liked the off-hand reference to McCarthy-ism and Indy getting the sack from the college because if it.

I liked Shia LaBoef’s character, even though it sounded like he said his name was “Mud” instead of “Mutt”, so I thought of him as Mud the entire movie.   My husband pointed out the whole “Indy named himself after the dog, his son names himself Mutt” thing to me later.  In fact, I would say Shia was the only character in the movie who didn’t act embarrassed by his role.

So we end up in Peru, in a graveyard, looking for a crystal skull that Mutt’s pseudo-foster-father hid.  Standard Indiana Jones stuff, I’ll give it a pass here.  As per usual, hero gets the coveted item, bad guy (girl) captures him immediately.  Standard Indy plot device.  Marion appears, along with crazy professor guy.  Marion and Indy fight.  I will admit that I love it when they argue.  They have a Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn-ish kind of aura when they do.

BTW - the Australian accented guy?  Why exactly was that character necessary?  How did he move along the plot in any coherent way (not that the plot was coherent to begin with)?  Let’s face it, he was thrown in to show (again!) how bad it is to be greedy.  Oh, and to explain that he and Indy were in the War.  When, exactly, Indy found time to be in the War, I don’t know.  Additionally, Indy doesn’t really seem like yes, sir, Army material, does he?

So, now we are in the Amazon.  My guts tell me that there aren’t that many cliffs in the Amazon basin (which is, in fact a wide, flat basin), but I’ll admit that they could be higher up in the Andes.  Typical chase scene which could have been cut in half (I actually got bored).  Insect of the movie was the ant, which gave me the creeps.  I’m going out today to spray around the house.

Blah, blah, heroes escape, find secret passage, bad guys track them (oh, THAT’s the reason for the Aussie).

I’m actually OK with the whole alien/crystal skull thing, but thirteen crystal skulls should not a whole alien make.  That was dumb, but I may be prejudiced by SG-1.  Also, why did crazy guy suddenly get sane?  Because the skull was returned?  No idea.  Anyway, la la la, happy ending, Indy makes dean, he and Marion get married and Mud Mutt is annointed the new action hero.

This is how bad the movie was:  I never once was taken outside of myself.  At all times, I was simply watching this groaner in a movie theatre.  In fact, halfway through I even thought if we leave now we could probably sneak into Prince Caspian.

What kind of government forces people to make gasoline out of food, artificially boosts the price of corn to $6 a bushel, guarantees that inflated price as the “base” for higher federal subsidies to corn farmers in the future, and then tries to hide its own depredations by excluding high food prices from its measure of “core” inflation?

ERNEST S. CHRISTIAN and GARY A. ROBBINS, Stupidity and the State, Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2008

via B.L. Ochman’s weblog

Update:  It’s a marketing campaign

I’m the collateral party to a residential rental business.  We live on-site at one of the properties we own (with an attached office).  My husband and his father run the business.  Although I don’t participate in the business in any way, here are some of the things I’d really, really like to say to renters:

Emergencies

An emergency that requires you to contact your landlord immediately consists of one thing:  imminent damage to the property.  Don’t call (or come knocking at the door) at 10:30 at night because your neighbor is noisy - that’s what the cops are for.  Lack of air conditioning, a leaky faucet or the fact that you stuffed a spoon down your garbage disposal (again!!!) can wait until normal office hours.  Really.  And by the way?  Don’t tell us at 5:00 pm on Friday about the air conditioner that has been broken all week.  Guess what?  Repairmen don’t work on weekends!

Rent is due on the first day of the month

Sure, we extend you a grace period up to the 5th, however that doesn’t mean that we are going to answer the door until midnight to take your rent.  You know where we live.  You know our address.  You even have our phone number.  If you can’t pay your rent during regular working hours, call and make an appointment or mail us your rent.

We Aren’t Your Case Worker

We don’t exist to solve your problems for you.  If you get mail for a former tenant, just write “No longer at this address” and put it in the mailbox.  If your cable isn’t working, call the cable company.  If your sister won’t stop harassing you, get a restraining order.

We Aren’t Deaf (Corollary: We Don’t Have to Answer the Door)

If you ring the doorbell twice and no one answers, assume no one is available.  If you need something, we gave you our phone number to call for a reason.  It is also by the door (with out working hours).  It doesn’t matter how long you ring the bell, pound on the door or shout, if no one is in the office the door isn’t going to get answered.  If it is after working hours guess what?  Even though our lights are on, we are closed.  CLOSED.  Go away.  Quietly.

And Finally…

There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER, short of extremely imminent damage to property, to ring our doorbell at 7:00 AM on a Sunday morning.  And let me make this perfectly clear:  the fact that a feral cat just had kittens under your porch IS NOT an emergency for your landlord…though it could quickly become a medical emergency for you if it happens again.