Principles of Frugal Cooking - part 2

Copycatting your favorite restaurant meal.

What restaurant do you love the most - you'd go there every week if you could. You mouth is watering right now thinking about it, isn't it?
It may seem like you could never duplicate that yummy food at home, but it probably not as hard as you think. It may take a few tries, but soon you'll be an expert, and never have to eat out again! (okay that maybe is not true, but when you get the craving, but don't have the cash, at least you have an alternative)

The extra nice thing about cooking restaurant food at home, is that you can cater to your own tastes. You can vegetarianize things, or use organic ingredients.

So far I have made Taco Pizza, Southwestern Eggrolls from Chilis (vegan), and Curry Noodles from our favorite Thai place (but I never wrote the recipe down - grrrr)

Here is a site for your inspiration - Copykat.com, or you can just type in your favorite restaurant meal + 'recipe' into Google and see what comes up.

Principles of Frugal Cooking

Frugal cooking is not all about trying for a great bargain and clipping coupons. Stretching your food budget continues into the kitchen, where cooking on a budget becomes an art and a skill. A woman said on her frugal website once, that we spend most of our time eating and sleeping, so she tries to make both experiences as quality as possible, even on a very limited budget.

Presentation is a huge part. When you go to a fancy-pants restaurant, the more the food costs, the prettier it looks on your plate. Even if it’s just spaghetti with red sauce, the chef will make sure that your first impression of his cooking is as pleasing to your eyes, as it will be to your mouth.
When you’re planning your meal, try for an array of different colors, shapes, and textures. Cut your veggies or your sandwiches differently. Make designs with the sauce around the edge of the plate. Grind a little fresh pepper or sprinkle parsley on top to make it look a little more interesting. All of these are very little things you can do to make the food look less like Aldi bargain food and more like a gourmet meal.
At our house I pretty much always plate things before bringing them to the table. I can arrange the food how I want, and Brent sometimes has no idea what we’re about to eat until I set it right in front of him.
“Mmm, this looks awesome” is something every cook wants to hear, even before the first bite.

How I feel about our debt

How do I feel about our debt? Debt Hater answered this question about her own situation, and then asked others to comment. Debt Hater was mostly commenting on her credit card debt, and we have a little bit of a different situation, so I’ll talk about that.
Our debt right now is a business loan that Brent and I got in February of 2004. Brent was working at a crappy job and wanted to start his own video production business. I was working full time then, we had only a small car payment and a cheap apartment, so we thought - what better time to do this. So he gave his two weeks notice - and at a great time too because his office was just about to announce that they were moving everyone to a different city.
The thing about video production is that you need a good amount of equipment to make it work. You can’t just do professional grade stuff on your Dell Home PC. So what Brent had to do was drive an hour and rent a production studio for $100 per hour every time he wanted to do a project. This was huge pain, obviously. After about a year of doing this, Brent decided to venture out to buy the equipment and set up his own studio. So we got a loan for $25,000. About this time his business dropped quite a bit. He still had enough work, especially right when we needed it, but he also had a lot of free time. So he started spending a lot of time volunteering at our church, and using his equipment to make videos for them. Eventually they hired him as their Tech Director, and that is where he has worked for almost 2 years. So now, even though Brent really isn’t doing any work with his business, we’re still paying the loan. I can’t really say that his business failed, because it could have worked, but our circumstances and priorities changed. Now he’s slowly selling off some equipment, getting different stuff, and our church has the best tech team in the state :) I don’t regret or resent getting this loan. Don’t get me wrong, I will be so glad when it is paid off and gone, but it was not a rash decision or a bad move for our family. I asked Brent how he felt and he said, “without it we would have been screwed” and “I feel like it got us out of a very bad situation [his old job], and got me my dream job”
Our other debt is our car loan. We have about $8K to pay yet. I don’t regret this either. We only had one car, and it was really falling apart. We didn’t have the money to fix it (could have been up to 2K for repairs – I don’t think the car was even worth that), and it was a miracle it made it as long as it did. As I said in a previous post, Brent researched for a long time for what car to get. Yes, we could have gotten a cheaper car, and we did look around some, but I think we made a good choice. Our car will be around long after we pay off that loan. Hopefully by the time we need a second car again, we’ll have some money saved up and we won’t have to get a loan, but if we do, I trust that it will be the right decision for us at the time.
So all in all, we have about 16K in debt. My pie in the sky goal is to pay all off by next summer, and we’re on a good track for that now. We’ve learned a lot about business and money and debt and saving in the four years we’ve been married. Our pie in the sky goal is to pay all off by next summer, and we’re on a good track for that now.

My very, very, most bestest money saving tip

My very best money saving tip is to research before you buy anything.

Some questions you should be asking before you make any purchase -
Do I even need the thing I want to buy, or will something else work?
Where can I get the best price?
What do other people think of this product?
Will it suit the purpose I need it for?

Most importantly - where can I get the best quality for my dollar?

Sometimes cheap things fall apart easily; expensive things are sometimes overpriced. Where is the happy medium? That's what you have to find.

Brent wanted a drill for Christmas. He did some research and they all said the best drill was $300 or so. But he wasn't going to use it very often, so he didn't need such an expensive tool. On the other hand, he didn't want a Fischer Price My First Drill. So he asked an 'expert' (my dad) and they found one that would suit his needs for a good price. They got a drill that was around $65 that was designed for light use. It may not last a very long time, but it's cheap enough to replace when we need to. The super expensive drill would have lasted longer, but even the cost of a replacement battery was out of our budget.

The more expensive the purchase, the more research you should do. Brent gathered information for almost a year before we got our current car. It has great longevity, top rated safety, and it also has massive depreciation - so we could get it for an affordable price. On the other side, we bought our coffee table at Ikea (nothing against them - I love Ikea), but it was cheap and now it's falling apart - our cats actually have unscrewed the fasteners - cheap piece of crap.

Right now Brent really really wants a new PC, but he's going to wait until Windows Vista and DirectX 10 Graphic Cards come out next year and that will save him some cash. (While computers go obselete fairly quickly, there are times when the tech makes a huge jump and you should wait until those times to buy - I really don't know much about this - Brent is mostly telling me all about it)

Anyway, gather as much information before you buy anything - get good stuff, save money, and minimize buyers remorse.

Also, check out everyone elses very, very most bestest money saving tips at NCN, and then add yours!

Freakin' hot hot hot

I have reached my hot weather breaking point. During the day when it gets to be 85 F, that's when I need to turn on the air conditioning. In the evening it can get warmer because we're just sitting on the couch with the fan blowing at our faces, but during the day when I'm cleaning and cooking, I can't stand much more than 85. Of course I was wearing long pants and shoes, so I probably could have shed some clothing and been okay, but I think it was a reasonable temperature to turn on some cool air.

Yesterday was only the second or third time we turned the air on, and we turned it back off a few hours later, so that's not bad for being mid summer already.

Here are some of my tips for not dying of heat stroke.

- Wear less clothing, turn on fans, all that usual stuff
- Drink a crapload of water. Your body's natural cooling system is sweat, so you have to replace all that water you're losing
- Close the curtains - and get insulated curtains if you can. Insulation is just as important in the summer as in the winter. We have a west facing picture window and our living room would become a sauna in the summer - even with the air blasting. Now, with an insulated curtian, it is much more tolerable. Still the hottest room in the house, but not unbearable. I'm amazed at how well this works.
- Better yet, don't have a west facing picture window.
- Take a quick cold shower. For bonus cooling; don't dry off and lay nekked and dripping wet on your bed with the celing fan on high. Feels soooo gooood.
- Try to avoid using the stove and the oven (not an excuse for take-out), but if you must, you can still eat outside away from the hot kitchen. I don’t know why people only eat outside when they're grilling. It's so nice!
- Build a fridge tent - Simpson style. Okay, this one doesn’t help with the energy bills, but it sure seems like it would work :)

Halfway done with my first knitting project

Energy Savings for the Lazy Mac Owner

On the MacCast, they gave a tip on how to schedule your Mac to turn itself on or off at certain times of the day. I usually turn mine off while I'm sleeping and at work but sometimes I forget, so I put this to use right away.

Go into your System Preferences, Energy Saver and click on the Schedule button. You can tell it to only auto-start (and shut off) only during the week, or only weekends, or both.

I have my computer plugged into a power strip also, so I can shut off the power strip and prevent all that phantom power usage, but this Mac tip will be great for those weekends when I stagger straight to bed at the late, late hour of 11 PM.

Does anyone know if Windows has something similar? probably not, since windows sucks.....

Redecorating

So Brent and I were talking yesterday, and we both expressed interest in wanting to redecorate our house a bit and make it more inviting. Some friends of ours just bought a new house, and Brent's parents are thinking about their next home too, so it's hard not to get the jealousy bug when we sit on our Goodwill couch and look at all of our Ikea crap furniture and clutter. But we do have to remember that we are not in the life stage that these other people, and it's not worth it to fall into debt on this stuff. Especially since we rent, we don't want to go all out, and then have to move in a few years - and then want all new again.

So we drew up some plans and ideas for some of the rooms and talked about what we wanted to do. Some of the things were free - like moving a table from the Living Room into my office. Some things cost a little more, and will be put on the back burner until we can find a really good deal.

Here are some cheap things we plan to do to redecorate....
- Repaint my office (all the other rooms we repainted when we first moved in)
- Fix all of the gouges in the walls from our cats and the furniture
- Switch the rooms around (Brent's office will become the library/media room, and the junk room will become the guest room)
- Declutter! C'mon, we don't need all this stuff!
- Slipcovers for our mismatched furniture - although I'm not sure how cheap it will be, it will be less than new furniture.

I'll let you all know how this goes.

The Great Vegan Experiment Gone Awry

What I mean by awry is that after the experiment was over, I decided to continue with this lifestyle. I'm a vegan now, I guess, although I hesitate to call myself one because I'm not exactly hard-core. I have not eaten meat for 2.5 years. I no longer will consume dairy, eggs, or honey in their obvious states. However, if I am a guest in someone's home, or at a restaurant, I will not fret over minute hidden ingredients. I will do my best. So I guess I'm a vegetarian with vegan tendencies. And I have been now for one month and six days.

Why, you might ask? Mainly, it goes with my new motto of "Doing the best for me, my family, and the earth". It's better for me and my family because I'm cooking healthier and cheaper. It's better for the earth for many reasons. First, the animals, of course, who even if they are not being eaten directly (laying hens, dairy cows, etc.) are still suffering from the same awful abuse and shortened lifespans. Second, factory farming is an incredibly inefficient system, and that takes toll on the environment. The amount of grain and water would be better used elsewhere, and the amount of waste produced could also be avoided.

There are countless other reasons why people choose to become vegan - I have only listed a few.

Here are a couple of my fave vegan links to close this post with..

Vegan Freaks - Mostly I listen to their podcast, but sometimes I browse their forums. Note, this website contains strong language that may not be suitable for all audiences.

Vegan Lunch Box This kid's lunches look better that what I cook for dinner sometimes.

What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway? Mmmm yummy food pictures....

Halfway through the year, and way under budget

Brent gets a housing allowance from his job and a portion of it is set apart to be for our utilities. So far for this year, we are less than one third through what we are allowed. Sure, we're just starting super hot season where the air conditioning runs constantly, but we will easily come under budget for the year, with hopefully a lot to spare.

Almost ripe

Protecting your Investments - Claying your car

Brent spent most of the afternoon washing, waxing, and claying our car. He hired a friend to help and show him how.

Even if you wax your car regularly, bugs, dirt, and industrial fallout will get trapped in the wax and will eventually damage the paint and lead to rust. The only way to get that junk out is to use clay bar. It basically works like if you were to smush silly putty or tickytack into something and all the dirt would stick to it. (Uh, don't use silly putty or tickytack to clean your car though....)

So anyway, now our car feels as clean as glass. It will last about a year before we'll have to do it again.

Keeping your car nice and shiny may not prolong the running life, but you will stay happy with it longer because it looks so awesome.

Also, a nicely waxed car will get better MPG because of the slick surface - better aerodyanmics.

Here is a link about how to do this yourself, but I would recommend talking to a professional because doing it incorrectly could damage your paint.

And Here is a link for some car obsessed people for everything you want to know.

Brent is one of those car obsessed people, and he insisted that I post a pic of his second love (after me, of course).