Anyway, enough said about that. Almost Frugal just posted a great article on buying bulk and how it saves money. And she looks at all the aspects of it, not instructing you just to go get everything super sized, but to find the best buy for your money as well as finding space and time to handle those large sizes. Pin pointing what you use a lot of on a regular basis is key.

Jason and I have found that buying chicken (which we can freeze) and paper towels (which we can store away) are great ideas. Buying hummus though – not so much. I just couldn’t eat enough of it before it went bad. Some things you just might not know one way or the other and so you can always test it and if it spoils (or is hidden away for months) then take it off your bulk buying list.

Anyway, enough of that. Go read the article. It’s really helpful if you are thinking about (or already do) buying in bulk.

See you soon!
Kristin

ps – see what happens, I’m all “I’ll post tomorow” and I don’t for a week, but then I’m like “I’ll post in a few days” and then I post the next. So it goes. Where is that ellusive rhythm anyway?

I have a new recipe to post on Tuesday, so I’ll see you all then!

Happy cooking!
Kristin

And with those 4 things you can make a delicious snack, dinner, lunch, treat in about 10 minutes. And if you have a little ham or veggies or whatever you find around it makes it all the better.

::Traveler’s Pizza::
Cut the baguette into a 6 inch piece and slice down the middle so you have two flat pieces (the top and the bottom).

Put 1 Tablespoon on each side, then chop up the garlic and any other toppings, toss on a little cheese and bake.

You can bake it in the oven at 375 for 10 minutes or in the toaster oven on medium toast – you just want to melt the cheese.

The really great thing is that anything that looks good to you while you are wandering around – eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, onions, odd things you don’t know what they are, can be used to really dress up and fill out this little mini pizza. And from one baguette you can usually get about four 6″ sections – so at least 2 days of meals. You can change up the sauce too and use pesto or hummus or mustard, add some greens and you have a tasty sandwich to take out with you. Bagels can also be used instead of a baguette.

I’m going to make more tonight, and I’ll have my camera then so I’ll post a picture later after dinner.

My plan is to find some tasty clam chowder for lunch – they serve it in a sourdough bowl around the bay – i’ve seen it from 7.75 to as low as 5.25, so I’m hoping to get it for 4.75 today if I can find a shop that’s not a touristy area (aka not pier 39!).

See you all later!
Kristin

First thing: I’m leaving the San Francisco for 2 weeks and will be putting the 600 for 6 month experiment on hold.
Second thing: I’m actually already in San Francisco and Jason and I decided to restart the project on July 1st.

Redos are part of the game right? Well, once we got started three big things happened. One we realized “wow, this is freaking hard” and two “Kristin is going out of town to the good food capital of the freaking US and will be eating out more than normal” and three “did you save that receipt? no? I thought you did”. Woops.

Mainly though we decided that we would stay on track and keep learning new things about how to be thrifty and keep track of it all, but we would officially start tracking on July 1st.

We really need to figure out a way to keep track of receipts and expenses, for things like when we go to the farmer’s market. A central collection location in case we can’t enter them in right away.

So that’s the plan for that.

So what’s the plan for while I’m here in SF? Well first off there are so many thrifty foods to find so I’m going to start documenting where I’m eating and posting about that. and secondly, since I’m staying at a hostel and have access to a kitchen, I’m going to start taking pictures of and posting recipes of what I’m eating.

I don’t have my camera tonight (forgot it at a friend’s) but I’m actually going to go downstairs and make some chow in a half hour. So I’ll post about that in the morning before I head out for another adventure. I’m going to try to score some cheap clam chowder for lunch.

See you all soon and sorry about the unplanned lack of posting that happened there. You can see all about the maker’s Faire on Craft Leftovers!

Have a great night!
Kristin

Just a few of my favorite things went into these cookies. I just dug around in the freezer and cupboards and whipped these up last Thursday night. They started out as cookies, but I really feel like they came out more like scones – delicious either way. I have to admit I’ve been eating them for an afternoon snack, breakfast, and dessert. What a useful treat to have around the house, right? Haha.

Wonder Blend Scookies

Ingredients:
1 banana
1 stick softened butter (8 T)
2 t vanilla extract
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. baking powder
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cup white all purpose flour
1 cup chopped walnut
1 cup dark chocolate chips

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mash up bananas and blend with softened butter – add sugar and mix together.

Add remaining ingredients except for walnuts and chocolate chips. Once thoroughly mixed, stir in chocolate chips and walnuts.

Place drops of batter onto cookie sheets – about 1 1/2 – 2 T per drop.

Bake at 375 for 12 – 15 minutes.

Makes: 18 – 24

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And then there was one. I actually had to make sure we didn’t eat the last one so I could take a picture of it. I chomped through this last one while I was finishing up this post Delicious!

See you soon!
Kristin

Dirty Dish Detergent

I wanted to start out with a small batch just to see how it worked – I think a good idea for anyone who hasn’t made their own before.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup borax
1/2 cup baking soda
1 package of lemon-lime kool-aid
1 glass jar to store it in – had have a bunch of these nice jars from when we were roasting our own coffee so I thought I would use that to set on the counter, it looks nice. A vintage mason jar would work equally well.
1 larger container to mix it all in (with a lid)

Directions:
Add all the ingredients together in the large container, break up any larger chunks, snap on the lid and shake, shake, shake! Once thoroughly mixed together put into your jar for storage.

Use 2 T of mixture per load – 1T in the closing container and 1T in the open one. If you have a rinse additive receptacle (which we do not) you can add the vinegar to that to get a super sparkly streak free rinse.

I had a nice load of dirty dishes waiting for me this morning and I have to say I’m pretty impressed with how they turned out. The one thing that I’ve read over and over is that you need to really get the food stuff off your dishes before washing them in the dishwasher – which is pretty standard for our dishwasher regardless of homemade or store bought detergents. One spoon turned out a little slimy – I put it in there without wiping it off at all and it was caked with curry gunk – so I think that’s not bad at all. In fact, I think that is better than it would have turned out using the store bought stuff I had been.

Stretchy Dollar has a nice write up on different issues and solutions with homemade dishwasher detergent.

And TipNut has a whole category just for cleaning recipes and posts they have written up, you can see the catagory list here.

Next on the list to try is toilet bowl cleaner. I just ran out and I really don’t want to spend $3 on another thing of it. Do any of you know a good recipe for it? What do you use? Comment with links! I’ll post about that one and how shiny it keeps my crapper.

Have a great day!
Kristin

ps – I have 3 recipes ready and waiting for me to post – what do you want next? healthy cookies or chicken tacos? Let me know and I’ll add it on Thursday.

His membership is up next week and so yesterday we seriously talked about going to a different gym – he gets a free membership to the Ames Racquet and Fitness Center and we could apply what he was paying toward the iowa state gym to my membership. After chatting about it – and we had before it was more like “let’s make a decision about this” kind of talk – we decided to go for it!

We are on day two of working out together. He seems to be enjoying it and has said as much and I know I’m loving it. It’s so great to have someone to push me, to change up my routine a bit, and to be able to have someone there to make sure I’m keeping my form. And the same goes for him. Sure he would get someone to spot him for bench presses, but pretty solo on everything else. Well, no more.

So far it’s been great for us. And because we are on such different levels – me squatting just the olympic bar and him doing the 250+ for squats- it’s not competitive at all. And because his focus is on weight lifting (what he really loves) and mine is on cycling (what I really love) and an eventual triathlon (what I really want) we are balancing each other out – I’m lifting more and he’s starting to ride his bike again! Perfect!

I’ve posted before about eating for when you are exercising intensely and how it’s completely new to me. And I’m learning bit by bit. I have been drinking more water each day, but not quite as much as I should and will continue to work on that. Even though I wasn’t planning on controlling portion size these past two weeks it’s come about pretty naturally. I’m just not as hungry any more and have almost completely stopped eating late at night. I’m also eating smaller meals more often. So I’ll continue to focus on drinking more water for the next two weeks until it’s a habit to just drink more. My caffeine intake has also been pretty good. I’m down to just one cup of coffee a day and I’m going to start switching over to half decaf this week.

Which leads me to that last subject for today: the $600 budget for 6 months. So far we are doing really well (I just finished updating the spread sheet so it’s current), but this week – specifically tomorrow – we are going to have quite a few big purchases. It will be interesting to see how it balances out over the course of the month. We need to get toilet paper, dishwasher detergent, rice and coffee. Basically some bigger bulk purchases. It will be a little disturbing see the total left in the account drop so suddenly.

Oh really quick, you might be interested in this if you are working towards getting fit/loosing weight/doing a triathlon:I found this article on the dynamic nature of calorie consumption and how it effect fat loss and muscle building over on BeginnerTriathlete.com. I think it brings up a lot of interesting points.

I have another more “kitchen” related post in the works that will be up sometime over the weekend. Maybe Saturday evening?

See you then!

Kristin

Here is how I made my jam

Supplies
8 – 8oz jars with rings and new lids
1 LARGE sauce pan – I thought mine was big, but now I know better
1 HUGE crock pot (like those enamel speckled ones) – it needs to be able to have a rack in it and then the jars and then 1-2 inches of water and then another 2 inches above that for boiling room – i used my pressure cooker and just didn’t seal the lid (which I read works and it did)
tongs of some kind to pick up the jars – jar tongs are best but not required

Helpful but optional supplies
small sauce pan for lids
magnetic lid stick (picks up the lids nice and easy out of the hot water)
jar funnel
stick to release air bubbles (a really clean chop stick works well)

Ingredients
1 package pectin (comes with instructions – I used Sure-gell)
7 cups granulated white sugar – holy crap that’s a lot of sugar
2 cups crushed strawberries (1 lb container)
2 cups blackberries or raspberries crushed
1 cup blueberries crushed

Directions
Make sure to follow the directions contained in the Sur-gel box – they have it down to a science. I pretty much followed the instructions – except the berry ratio is different. Here is how it went down and what I learned along the way.

I started out by mashing all my strawberries (cleaned and halved) and then realized that I only had 2 cups mashed.

So I added the additional blackberries and blueberries and mashed some more.

And I still had some HUGE chunks of strawberries – so I decided to whip out the good ol’ immersion blender and get rid of some of them. It is still pretty chunky, but not bad.

I put the berry mixture into my biggest sauce pan and started heating it up to a boil. I added the pectin to the berries and stirred often until it came to a full boil and continued to boil even when stirred.

In the meantime I sterilized all my jars and rings just for good measure, I figured it wouldn’t hurt any. I took them out of the pot after a few minutes and got them ready to receive their jam. I took the pan off the heat and dropped in the lids to sterilize those too.

Then I added all the sugar and stirred while it came back to a rapid boil – it actually spilled over a little bit, but not too bad, I had to stir really carefully. I let it boil while stirring for exactly one minute. Took it off the heat and poured into my jars. Capped them – You just put the lid on and then screw it on, not really tight, like don’t wrench it closed. Then I placed them in my pot and poured a little boiling water over the top to make sure they were covered all the way. I boiled them for 10 minutes. It’s kind of neat because you take them out of the boiling water, set them on the drying rack and “pop pop pop” all the lids get sucked in as soon as they start cooling down. Once they are all the way cool I’m going to take off the rings, wipe them down, and store them for later tastiness. I did keep one unsealed and am just letting it set up. I made some super heavy whole grain bred on that would just taste wonderful with some treo berry jam.

Craft Cat Molly stared like a big creep-o the whole time I was making the jam. I would like to say she was supervising, but I think she was just plotting my death.

She said you should check out these great resources for preserving fresh produce:
Canning USA – we really liked their videos on salsa and tomatoes in general
Pick Your Own.org – she has a nice faq for strawberry jam and some nice pictures of the process
Ball has a great section of tutorials for low and high acid canning that you can go through on the site or download the pdf
National Center of Home Preservation – this is probably THE best source for safe preserving methods and recommendations

Oh and I picked a book from the Ames Public Library today called The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest by Carol Costenbader And it is packed with a ton of great info on all types of preserving from drying to canning to cold storage. Plus there are 150 delicious recipes for making all sorts of chuntneys, relishes, pickles, vinegars, jams, and jellies. Yum yum yum. I still haven’t used my gift certificate to better world books so I think I will to get a copy of this. I think it will prove to be a valuable resource all year round – but especially when looking for ideas on how to use up all those great veggies this summer.

So have any of you ever canned before? What do you like to preserve? Have you ever done cold storage to keep potatoes fresh longer? I’ve been thinking about trying it for this year’s potato crop – if I don’t eat them all first, haha.

Have a great night!

Kristin

ps – in honor of full disclosure, I just wanted to let you know I posted this over on Craft Leftovers too

After an average of 4 hour a day for the last 3 days (saturday, sunday and today) I finally have everything all set and planted. Just some twice a week weeding, daily watering, and more seeds in 3 weeks so we can get some staggered harvests.

So what did I plant? it’s a long list.

Herbs

Cilantro
Dill
Oregano
Chives
Basil
Sage
Parsley

Leafy Greens

Arugula
Lettuce – four seasons
Lettuce Romaine Cos
Lettuce Salad Bowl Red
Lettuce Tango
Lettuce Blackseeded Simpson
Lettuce Oakleaf
Lettuce Romaine Cimmaron
Lettuce Ruby
Spinach Bloomsdale
Tatsol
Swiss Chard Golden
Swiss Chard Magenta
Endive Broadleaf Batavia
Mustard Mizuna
Mustard Red Giant
(all the the above were in a great huge packet labeled Sassy Salad Mesclun)

I already kicked a bird out of the salad patch – he was eating up all my seeds! B@#%ARD!

Vegetables

Tomatoes – beefsteak, large red cherry, celebrity, and rutgers select
Eggplant
Cucumbers
Jalapeno Peppers
California Wonder Orange
Poblano Peppers
Sugar Snap Peas
Carrots – danvers half long, little fingers, danneens
Table Queen Squash
Small Sweet Pumpkin
Black Beauty Zucchini
Cantaloupe
Black Diamond Watermelon
Beet – Detroit Dark Red
Peas – Early Frost
Okra
Radish blend
Green Pole Beans

Underground

Onions – yellow and white
Shallots
Garlic
Potatoes – red, russet, sweet potatoes, and some other potato I can’t remember the name of

Flowers

Cardinal Climber
Zinnia
Canterbury Bells
Aster
Bachelor Buttons
Candy Tuff
Four O Clocks
Sweet Peas
Black Eyed Susan Vine
California Orange Poppy
Columbines
Morning Glories
Moon Flowers
Lavender
Marigolds
Grandmother’s Cut Flower Garden (seed mix from botanical interests)
The flowers are mostly borders or fit in with the herb patches. I had a lot of really old seeds from 4+ years ago that I just spread around. So even though the list of flowers looks long, I’m expecting most of them will not be showing their pretty heads around the garden this year.

Today I did the final planting and built a compost bin. When I got home I did my frist test run of canning. The way I figure it I want to have everything all square and figured out by the time I start getting huge yeilds of tomatoes and basil (I planted so much basil so I could make a ton of pesto and can it for the winter). I’m going to do another test run of canning tomorrow and I’ll take pictures so I can post them and some general instructions and links to canning veggies.

Oh you can see how I built my compost bin on Craft Leftovers – like how I built up the pile and also how I made this “open” pile into a dog safe pile.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a post about canning. I can’t wait to try my hand at strawberry jam – yum yum yum!

++Kristin++

We both seem to be on the right track with exercise, but food is a different matter. I want eating Healthy on a budget to be a main component of Thrift Kitchen.  I’ve cooked from general healthy eating to vegan to organic to vegetarian to flexitarian, but some key things have always alluded me and that’s what I’m starting to work on this week. I honestly feel a little at a loss as far as how to cook when we are trying to both cut our fat and increase our muscle – something I’ve never done before.

First I did a lot of research to answer a few questions I really didn’t know the answers to and found a few great articles and sites on: eating healthy, loosing weight safely, and eating to compliment exercise over the long term:

Zen Habit’s 5 Step Weight Loss Plan - I really like this article and feel like it’s everything I’m trying to accomplish in my own life.

Losing weight safely – an interesting article by the fda.

Healthy Eating: Tips for a Healthy Diet – there is a lot of information here and I’m bookmarking it to refer back to it on a regular basis. The website in general seems to have a lot of great articles on healthy lifestyles instead of “dieting” which is really helpful.

10 Ways you can Stop Dieting and Change Your Lifesytle Eating Habits - an article with some really interesting points. I particularly like the part about “no cheating” and how you should focus on goals and rewards instead – like having a glass of wine with dinner on my rest day if I’ve followed each day’s routine that week.

These are just 3 of a few of the millions of articles on lifesytle eating habits, but were personally the most helpful that I found. Do you have a particularly good article or website that you have found helpful to you and your goals of healthy eating?

After reading all these I decided that I would focus on developing 3 new eating habits over the course of 6 weeks – focusing on a new habit each 2 weeks and building them on each other.

1) Weeks 1 & 2 -more water less caffeine – I hardly drink any water except when I’m cycling and even then I don’t drink nearly enough. My goal is to drink 4 glasses of water a day (not enough I know, but a start) – approx 48 oz. I will drink one glass with each meal and then one glass after working out (carido or weights).

2) Weeks 3 & 4 – Smaller portions . I’m going to really start cracking down on portion sizes – especially for things like pasta, rice, cereal, and bread. I just straight up eat to much at just about every meal.

3) Weeks 5 & 6. More veggies and fruits - in the third week I’m going to eat a larger portion of veggies with every meal and eat one fruit each day (i know, not enough, but a start in the right direction).

and even though I’m stating these over the course of 6 weeks, it will more likely just happen naturally as I start cooking for a more whole diet.

I read this great article on the simple dollar about establishing new habits and I think it applies across the board from eating to exercising to reading.

If you don’t exercise, well, you should! Read 4 Simple Steps to Start the Exercise Habit and How to Make Exercise a Daily Habit to help get you started. There is also an article on Beginning to Run and 10 Breakfast ideas that are worth a read too.

Some general things for me for this week and the next:

Keeping the junk out of the house. I know it’s hard sometimes and it feels like I’m denying myself, but just not buying that bag of chips really will keep me from eating it. If we have chips, we eat them. If we don’t have chips, we don’t. We just finished off our “junk food” and so I’m just not going to buy anymore. Looking at snacks – simple tips are to substitute healthier alternatives. For instance, if you are craving salty/crunchy try some popcorn with sea salt instead – if you are craving sweat and creamy, have yogurt blended with some fruit. I’ll be focusing on these kinds of quick snack recipes over the long term because I for one am a snacker.

More Water, Less Caffeine and alcohol. Now i’m not saying do without, but cutting back is a great way to save some money and feel better in general. I don’t feel deprived if I have my morning coffee, but I do if I try to cut it out all the way. Same thing with wine – if I say “no alcohol allowed” then I tend to just binge eventually and end up being realllly addicted to caffeine or having too much wine and feeling like garbage (or like I was hit with a garbage truck). Instead I’m going say coffee in the morning is fine, but in the afternoon it really does effect my sleep so no thanks. And with wine, I’m going to keep it to dinner on Sundays only if I’ve completed each day’s routine (so no skipping cardio because it’s raining or weight lifting because I’m tired). There is also just the fact that drinking a lot of coffee and wine is expensive and no longer fits into the budget, water on the other hand is free and makes you feel really good.

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I’m going to continue to post on this topic, I’ll keep you updated on how I’m doing on my goals and new recipes I’m making to help stay on track with both our budget and our lifestyle.

In other news, we are doing pretty well on the food budget so far. And I feel like our frig is still stocked. Not eating out has really help cut back + not getting some of the more pricy items we “want” and replacing them with what we need. Oh and buying produce that is season or on sale really helps cut costs – like red onions were just 62 cents per pound last week! Perfect!

Well, i’m off to do today’s weight trainign and then post on Craft Leftovers. See you soon!
Kristin