Frugality Check: Benefits of line-drying

I’ve been cleaning my house, lately [it’s mostly OK now BTW] and in the process, I have been doing absolute shittons of laundry. Y'know, mostly because there were drifts of dirty clothes in there that were a foot deep.

I had been doing a load a day, but thanks to my unsister, Powerhouse, I’ve been going through load after load after load. And putting it all on the clothesline to benefit from the absolutely vicious summer sun.

I haven’t been benefitting from said summer sun, I’m as red as a beet and sore to boot.

BUT.

There are distinct advantages to using a clothesline rather than a dryer. And here they are:

1) it’s quieter
2) sunlight is free
3) it’s exercise [try pegging up a wet doona and tell me I’m wrong]
4) sunlight kills all of the bed-loving pests that make us itch
5) the smell of sun-dried cloth is practically orgasmic
6) it uses less electricity
7) it can be a social activity
8) there are no tiny dust particles floating through your house and causing breathing problems as a direct result. 

Yes, it’s old-fashioned, but that doesn’t automatically mean that it’s bad. Yes, it takes some effort, but I’d take people power over fossil fuel any day. All people power needs is food for fuel, and you can grow your own (see previous posts). And yes, you do need to keep an awareness of the weather.

You are also allowed to keep a dryer for the wet weather. Just because you’re going frugal doesn’t mean you have to throw out everything that ever cost money.

Consider this, though: The average Hills Hoist can hold about four loads of washing. A dryer can only contain one. On a hot day, a load can be dry before you’ve finished hanging up the second one. Dryers always take ages.

Just remember to be sun safe, okay?

Mince Soup

This is another one of those “primary ingredient plus whatever you have lying around” recipes. Again, it’s just a few ingredients away from being a stew.

You will need these tools:

1 big pot
1 ladle or spoon for stirring
1 handy heat source like a cooktop

You will need these ingredients:

water
about 500g mince of your choice
sauces/flavour/herbs/spices to taste
vegetables
thickening or noodles optional

Method:

half-fill your pot with water and set it to boil
add mince and stir vigorously to break it into little eentsy-weentsy pieces
add herbs/flavour/sauces
bring to boil, then reduce heat to medium-high and add veg
add anything else that takes your fancy

Can be served over rice, with bread, noodles or on its own. Theoretically can be portioned and frozen - but mine’s never lasted that long.

Slow-cooker Glop

This one’s for the busy people. Slow cookers are handy little gadgets that allow one to, say, set up a pot roast before you leave for work.

Everything I cook in my slow cooker always ends up as Glop

You will need these tools:

1 slow cooker
1 thing to make it go
1 thing to serve/stir
1 method of cooking rice

You will need these ingredients:

500g protein of your choice, preferably in bite-sized chunks
1-2 jars of simmer sauce
vegetables to taste
rice
water 

Method:

Place protien in slow cooker with simmer sauce and vegetables. Add enough water to cover and start the cooker
When you come back, prepare the rice
Once rice is cooked, add rice to slow cooker
Stir well
Serve glop

Theoretically, glop can be portioned and frozen, but mine never lasts that long… 

Sausage Soup

This is another one of those “scratch” recipes, in which you scratch together whatever you have going and put it in a pot.

You will need these tools:

1 big pot
1 handy heat source, like a cooktop
1 big spoon/ladle
1 knife or other means of chopping things 

You will need these ingredients:

sausages
water
sauce/flavour
herbs/spices
vegetables

The quantity of these is up to you. Optional extras include: soup mix, rice, potatoes/potato powder, and anything else you like the look of, really.

Method:

Boil water in pot and add sausages
Once sausages are cooked, cut them up into bite-esque sized chunks
Return sausages to water and add the other ingredients
Serve with bread or on rice or on its own.

This is not cordon bleu. This is not fine dining. It is one stop away from Glop [next recipe!] and a few extra ingredients away from stew. What it is is cheap and easy to make after a long, hard day. 

Fried Rice? So Nice!

At last! A recipe with more than just vague hints [seriously, we’re on the internet. You should know how to google stew recipes] and some actual directions.

You will need these tools:

1 large cooking container. Woks are great, but you don’t have to have them
1 means of cooking rice. Rice cookers are great, etc. etc.
1 or more handy heat source(s) like a cooktop
1 big sturdy spoon or spatula. Trust me, I mean it when I say sturdy.
Muscular strength.

You will need these ingredients:

Oil - what type is up to you. Experiment with a few if your budget allows.
Rice - about a rice cooker’s worth when cooked.
2 eggs, whisked or beaten.
½ cup peas or dice-cut vegetables
2 grated carrots
soy sauce to taste
herbs and spices to taste

You might also want to include some of these ingredients:

½ cup cashews or peanuts [or both]
½ cup cooked, peeled prawns or shrimp [Other types of seafood are OK]
½ cup other source of protein and iron [minced meat is good, but if you’re a vegetarian, you can put what you like in]
½ cup diced onion

METHOD:

* Cook the rice and set it aside
* Line up all your ingredients by your cooking implement(henceforth dubbed “wok”), because once you start, you can’t stop
* Pour a generous amount of oil into the bottom of your wok and add your herbs and spices. Turn the heat on to medium-high [the high side of medium]
* Wait until the oil flows readily or the herbs start sizzling before you add anything else
* If you’re adding nuts, add the nuts and lightly brown them. Otherwise add the eggs
* Stir like a mad thing. You want small bits of egg all through your rice, so make sure the bits are tiny
* Add your protein(s), followed by the vegetables, saving the grated carrot until later
* When these look cooked, add the carrot and then the rice
* Around now, it gets to be a solid gold bitch to stir (See what I mean about muscular strength and sturdy spoon/spatulas?) but you still have to add the soy sauce
* Serve on its own or as a side to anything.

Fried rice freezes very well - and you MUST pack it away one way or another immediately after cooking. There is a lot of flexibility in this recipe and it suits all tastes.

You get a lot out of a little with this one. Ideal for trimming that food budget!

How to Stretch a Stew

There are as many recipes for stew as there are people who cook it. You might like a different kind of stew, but the core is the same:

* A lot of water
* Some kind of key protein [meat is traditional, but not necessary]
* Lots of vegetables
* Thickening

One of the key ideals of stew is that it can be stretched. You might portion yours up and freeze it straight after it’s cooked, but even then, you can stretch one portion of stew to make many more.

1) Water it down. Say your stew is stiff enough to make bricks out of. Turn it into a soup by watering it down. As many as five portions out of one! Serving with bread also helps fill those hungry stomachs.

2) Thicken it up. Stew a little too runny? No problem! Add some pearl barley, split peas, soup mix, lentils, rice, or potato powder to the mix. Or any combo of the above.

3) More body. Add more meat or veg, add more sauce, add more herbs and spices. You can always put more in a stew.

Remember - it is not recommended to store your stew in the pot for more than two days. After that, it starts to go off [quicker if you didn’t refrigerate it!] and your health is at risk.

For best economical advantage from a stew, add the date stored to your freezer containers and use the oldest samples first. Even freezing is not forever, so be careful about obeying the recommended storage times in your freezer.

Budget Busting in the Kitchen

Many of you know a few tricks, but these are some of mine. If you only have a little left to spend on food after taking care of all those bills, you need to make it stretch. And you also need to make sure you get a balanced diet. We’ve all heard the urban myth about the college kid who made a buttload of porridge etc. etc.

Anyway, over the next few days I’ll be sharing some budget-stretching recipes, but these are my generic hints and tips.

1) Own a freezer. It doesn’t matter how small it is, you can store a lot of stuff in there, including serving-sized portions of leftovers.

2) Where possible, buy in bulk. Remember economies of scale? Companies save cash by purchasing pallet loads of whatever they need. Obviously, they don’t sell pallets to plebes, but you can do the next best thing once you find where they sell it.

3) Be prepared to shop around. I know, going on a several hour journey to save a few cents isn’t sane, but knowing every last cheap vendor in your area makes a whole bunch of sense. Especially if you have a couple of places that let you buy items by the box load.

4) Change your purchasing to cash only. Cash is way more tangible than e-cash. Cards of any kidney make it easier to spend more. After all, when you hand over money, you get less back - but when you hand over a card, it remains apparently unchanged.

5) Learn how to cook for yourself. Pre-packaged, pre-processed, chemically altered and otherwise “convenient” food winds up being more expensive. Home cooked does take time, but you know exactly what went in there. Plus, if you cook a LOT, you can have plenty in the freezer for those “blah” days when you don’t feel like raising a spatula.

Just doing these five things can change your personal economy. It won’t happen overnight [especially if you have to buy a freezer] but it will make a change.

Glop

This is a family recipe that can be traced back to MeMum [Hi!] who could not make tuna rissoles to save her life. After a very trying day, she just gave up and fried the entire mess and called it Tuna Glop.

I’ve changed things around a bit and created All Purpose Glop

You will need these tools:

1 mixing bowl
1 method of mixing
1 satisfyingly enormous frying pan
1 spatula or big spoon
1 handy heat source, like a cooktop

You will need these ingredients:

Any leftovers you happen to have hanging around that will go together
Some variety of carbohydrate [rice or mash is a favourite]
Some variety of binder [eggs are good, but if you know an egg replacement, let me know!]
Cooking oil
Vegetables, herbs, spices and/or sauces to taste

Method:

Break any proteins up into small pieces [same for larger veg]
Mix carbohydrates and binder in a bowl
Add proteins and vegetables
Mix in well
The goal consistency is thick cake batter, not bread dough. Add ingredients until you get there
Oil pan and heat it to medium heat
You have two options at this point - (1) Fry serving-sized patties/pancakes of the stuff or, (2) bung it all in and stir/flip bits until it’s all cooked

Whether you serve this as a side or on its own is entirely up to how long a day you’ve had.

Compost Hint: Empty Your Mulch Bucket Often

Composting and mulching is a natural process involving organic waste. And as such, it is almost inevitable to attract… little visitors.

Insect visitors.

That lay eggs in your mulch bucket.

I don’t want to be too gross about things [hence the lack of instructional pictures] but I’ve been a little too busy, sore and tired to go empty the mulch bucket into the compost bin, these last few days.

That bit me in the butt.

Big time.

Let’s just say I found a fine crop of live fish bait in the making, writhing around in my kitchen scraps. Gross.

But here’s what to do if this happens to you.

DO NOT panic or reach for the bug spray. We’re keeping this organic and chemical free, remember?
DO take the mulch container outside as soon as humanly possible.
Add a layer of cellulose to keep the little visitors inside.
Tip the contents wholesale into your compost tumbler.

You will, at this stage, find a few reluctant hangers-on in the bottom of your container. Your options are:

a) Use a generous handful of cellulose to sweep the hangers-on out and tip that into your compost tumbler.
b) Use hot water to kill the hangers-on and clean and sterilise your container in one fell swoop.
c) Grab the chemicals and spray the living crap out of everything.

Note, I do not recommend option C.

I chose option A, as grass clippings are free and plentiful. And, as it turned out, pretty pleasant in the nasal department. A couple of stirs around with a really generous handful of dead grass and there was no trace of my unwelcome company.

And don’t worry about the little visitors ruining things inside the compost tumbler. Compost generates a LOT of heat, and the whole box and dice pretty much gets most of the sunshine all day. Most, if not all of the little visitors will have passed on by the afternoon.

It’s not a nice topic, I know, but it is almost inevitable. It has to be dealt with and this is the more eco-friendly way of doing so. 

Final installment! For now, anyway.

Last steps of prepping the planters is to place a the cloth over the stones to prevent soil escaping the planter. You can also use any old rag that comes to hand, or dryer fluff if it doesn’t.

I put the lid back on to stop the local wildlife from stealing the cloth.

Why not just put cloth in the bottom, you may ask. Well, stones aid drainage and give water a path to escape. The plants I’m planning to put in those pots are ones that like dryer roots.

If you don’t like the idea of using rocks at all, try it with mesh and cloth [trust me, you NEED the mesh!] and share your results. I’d be interested to know the outcome.

Next step: Making soil.

You need a compost tumbler - they’re available in all sizes at big garden shops - a source of mulch, and a LOT of time.

Step 1: Gather household organic waste. Do not gather things like bones or plastics as they do not rot as easily as the rest of it. As a general rule, if it’s soft and goes rotten, it’s mulch/compost.
Step 2: If possible, gather lawn clippings. If not possible, any old source of cellulose will do. Old newspapers, shredded junk mail, you name it. You need cellulose to absorb the moisture from the other organic wastes.
Step 3: Place in tumbler and tumble. This is some lawn clippings I put in the previous day. As you can see, they still resemble lawn clippings.
Step 4: Add more. Often. In goes the assembled organic waste from today.

Compost takes a LOT of time. Most compost-tumblers I’ve seen have little grilles placed in their construction somewhere for the finished compost to fall out. Just place a convenient vessel underneath and you’re set to gather the compost when it’s ready.

We used an old kiddies’ wheelbarrow that was lying around neglected. You can use anything you please.

According to the instructions for my model, a proper compost can take as little as six days to create. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Compost is, in essence, a very rich soil that plants adore. If you’re planting carrots, you may want to mix in some bark-chip potting mix to prevent mutant carrots from forming.

Me, I don’t give a pink flying crap about getting mutant carrots. For me, that’s more carrot for the buck.

More on my little eco-garden when events dictate.