Thrifting

It has been a summer of good thrifting, including an epic bag sale where I bought four sets of my eldest son's parish school uniforms at a $5 bag sale. Some recent finds...

I have been married nine years, and have had children for most of those years, and have finally embraced that I will never have a set of matching glasses. This is for the best, as it is easier to identify whose glass is whose and vintage juice glasses are ideal for small hands. These fun flower painted glasses are girly enough that no one else in the house will use them, and the smaller glasses (mostly Duralex) are for the kids. The Anchor glass ramekins have a tailored rim and are ideal for my baby, who recently started solids. The syrup jug is perfect for our weekend pancake/waffle tradition- I buy maple syrup in bulk, and had been using the creamer jug until now. $2 for the lot (half off dinerware sale). 

The clear ramekins have been so useful, I was glad to snap up some more, plus a few school related items- a set of school uniforms, a small insulated container for a lunch box, a thermos (which exploded upon washing). Add in a couple place-mats in my favorite color to save tablecloths from messy eaters and a few garments for the littles. ($4 for the lot, plus an un-planned Marie Kondo-ing of my countertops in the process of cleaning up broken glass)

Happy Apple was a favorite childhood toy of my husband, and my mother-in-law still has it for grandchildren's play. I have seen a few secondhand in the $20 range- so when I saw this one for $1, I scooped it up.

Chilled Soup for Hot Summer Days

The weather has been hot, but that's no reason to put away your soup tureen. I serendipitously discovered that pureed cold vegetable soups are an easy way to get my picky vegetable eater to get important nutrition as well as to make use of some of the less popular portions of the plant- all the benefits of hot soup, with no burned mouths. 

 

This chilled cream of tomato soup is so easy that my incoming kindergartner can make it. Puree one 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes with a 15 oz can of coconut milk until smooth, then stir in a pinch of dried basil and white pepper. Chill at least two hours and serve in chilled bowls.

Broccoli was one of the first vegetables to come in at our farmers' market, and my family has been enjoying it grilled. But what to do with the stalks? Turn them into a delicate, fresh green soup. Dice three or four stocks very finely, and blanch stalks and a few scallions trimmed of roots, and a few stalks of any fresh herbs you can spare (lemon thyme is my favorite). Then puree the vegetables with 6 cups of stock and a dash of lemon juice. Season to taste with salt, white pepper, and dill.  Chill at least two hours and serve in chilled bowls.

Both recipes serve four.

Today at the thrift store

A few weeks worth of finds here...

Week 1, for $3.57 total

Lady's Lands End down vest, like new ($1)

Children's shirts (8 at .25)

1 magazine and 1 book (2@.10)

Our parish thrift store doesn't really display clothes by seasons - aside from very explicitly Halloween or Christmas apparel, all seasons are available at any time of year. I am starting to look ahead to summer wardrobes for my boys. My younger son is in good shape with a lot of hand me downs; most of the shirts pictured are for his older brother. I am finding it increasingly hard to find thrift store bottoms for the latter (size 5 or 6) but hopefully one day soon my luck will change. I was really excited about the vest- I have been wanting one for a while, and it has been just the thing to keep me warm in our Victorian house.

  

 Week 2, for .79 total

Children's flannel and sweater (2@.25)

10 vintage all in one note cards (.10)

1 magazine (.10)

Still no luck in the separates department, but a much needed flannel shirt for "Cowboy Day" during Catholic Schools Week.

Today at the thrift store

"If possible, do not be concerned about what you are given to wear at the change of seasons, whether each of you gets back what he had put away or something different, providing no one is denied what he needs." (Rule of St Augustine, Chapter V, Para 1) 

Our local thrift store is a wonderful example of this paragraph in the Rule of St Augustine. It is operated by our parish, and provides about 10 percent of the operating expenses for our parish school- no small feat given that it is located in one of the poorest counties in the state. Garage sales are not very typical in our area so I am glad to have our parish thrift store for clothing my growing family. Children's clothes in particular are priced low to help families. 

At the start of winter, I calculated that I spent $6 on my older son's winter wardrobe, including parka and snow pants. And as I gathered up the outgrown summer clothes, he asked me if I was taking them back to the parish thrift store for another boy to use (yes- after his younger brother has a turn with them). 

"She is not concerned for her household when it snows—

all her charges are doubly clothed." (Proverbs 31, 21)

From bringing up a baby on a grad school stipend in Boston to living on one income in a rural town, over the last several years I have had the opportunity to hone my thrift store shopping skills. Each week, I'll share what I have been able to find for my family at the parish thrift store to encourage frugality. 

Today, for $2.94, I bought

-a ladies J Crew dress ($2)

-a toddler polo (.25)

-child's Wrangler jeans (.25)

-current issues of Cooking Light and Food & Wine magazines (2@.10)

A $9 pork shoulder, 6 ways from Sunday

It took me a long time to come around to the idea of a Sunday roast. My parents grew up without refrigeration, and as a result, even once we immigrated to the US, each meal was cooked daily with no concept of leftovers. My first "how-to" encounter with a Sunday roast was about 10 years ago in a Nigella cookbook, where the roast was accompanied by several labor intensive sides, leading me to conclude, "Sunday, the day of rest for everyone but Mom." While I appreciated the low effort of Sabbatarian baked beans, I wanted the Lord's Day to have a more special meal. Eventually, by cooking my way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I was able to get pretty quick at getting a braise underway. I came to realize that no thirty minute meal had anything on the Sunday roast and its trickle down effect making the rest of the week easier.

Pork prices have been low lately, and I bought a couple 7 lb bone in pork shoulders in COV for about $9 apiece. I consider myself a pretty frugal cook who doesn't waste food, but even I was surprised how many meals the roast contributed to for my family of four this week. (NB: We were supposed to have company over on the "roast" night, but they cancelled due to illness, so there was more leftover meat than planned).

1. Roast
This slow cooked pork shoulder recipe is about as easy as it comes and you wouldn't believe meat cooked for 6 hours could be so pink and tender.  Add a side of crockpot mashed potatoes and a cabbage slaw, and you would be hard pressed to find an easier Sunday dinner.
 
2. Pulled pork
I mixed half the remaining meat with homemade barbecue sauce for pulled pork sandwiches.

3.Pork fried rice
I used the remaining meat to make fried rice.

4. Pork Skin
There was a crisp pork skin on the roast that I used to flavor braised green beans, a side for the pulled pork.

5. Bone simmered into a stock
I simmered the pork shoulder bone with other kitchen scraps to make a couple quarts of stock for soup.

6. Fat rendered out 
When preparing the glaze for the roast, I skimmed about 2/3 cup of fat into a jar and refrigerated it. Just a spoonful has added a lot of flavor to sautees and refried beans, and has been the base for gravy.

So, to recap, a $9 pork roast provided the meat for three dinners and flavored several other dishes. Not too shabby.

Frugal Pesto, two ways

 

Top left: herb stem pesto salmon artichoke pizza

My family loves pesto, but in our small town, pine nuts are hard to come by and the grocery stores only sporadically stock prepared pesto. Instead, I have started using roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds in place of the pine nuts -an 8 ounce bag runs about $1.50.

This week, I made a couple frugal pestos from pantry and fridge/freezer staples. I haven't had much luck with incorporating herb stems in stock, but they work as well as leaves in marinades and blended sauces. Neither was on the menu in the forseeable future, so I opted to turn them into pesto rather than let them go to waste. I used the same formula a few days later, swapping frozen peas for the cilantro and enhancing its flavor with dried mint. Each recipe makes about a cup of pesto.

 

Herb stem pesto

1 bunch cilantro stems

2 cloves garlic

1 scallion (green and white portion)

1/3 cup sunflower seeds

2 T olive oil

1/2 t lemon juice

Blend all ingredients in a food processor or blender.

Pea pesto

2/3 cup frozen peas, thawed

2 cloves garlic

1 scallion (green and white portion)

1 mint tea bag

1/3 cup sunflower seeds

2 T olive oil

1/2 t lemon juice

Blend all ingredients in a food processor or blender. 

Slab piecing + Easter cards

 

 

I recently came across the book Sunday Morning Quilts at my public library and can't recommend it enough.  It is chockful of ideas about how to make the most of fabric scraps - from organizing them to incorporating them into new projects.  Although I'm not a quilter, the parish thrift store has baskets of tempting fabric scraps available for a pittance (the fabric for the apron pictured above ran me 25 cents).  Many of the book's projects are built on the technique of slab piecing - putting together scraps or strips to form a "fabric."  Think Log Cabin, but with the strips all different widths to make the most of leftover fabric or crazy quilting on a larger scale. 

 

My forays into slab piecing left me with some small irregular pieces.  I'm the first to admit you will not find me making a postage stamp quilt.  A particularly bold paisley reminded me of Rechenka's Eggs, and I made these Easter cards from fabric scraps and basic office supplies:

 

Supplies
5x8 unlined index cards
(Optional - printer with black ink)
2-3 brown paper grocery bags
(Optional - Brown marker, crayon, or stamp plus ink)
Colored fabric scraps
Scotch tape
Glue stick

Directions
Print or hand write text on to the cards. 

Cut the wide front and back panels off the bags.  Remove handles or areas of double thickness. Fold each panel into a square twice - now you have a square 1/4 of the size of the original paper.  Fold it into a triangle from the center to the outside edge and cut basket (split in half vertically across the diagonal fold) like you would a snowflake - 4 baskets.  If desired, use markers or stamps to add some texture to the baskets).  I found it easiest to cut proportional eggs if I held the fabric in small half square triangles, but there is a lot of wiggle room, as a large portion of the eggs are covered by the basket.  Use tape to position eggs on the wrong side of the basket and then glue in place.

 

Bon appetit

"Cooking is crafty, self-empowering, and the closest existing thing to old-world magic. By trading money for raw roots, a thatch of herbs, and a slab of protein, you can transform it into something not only edible, but delicious—that’s powerful alchemy. Plus, making your own food almost guarantees you’ll eat better and feel healthier. It will also give you a chance to engage with the people around you, from the farmer who sells you produce to a loved one you feed to the relatives whose recipes you keep tacked to the fridge." (full post)

Via GOOD, a 30-Day Challenge (with a tip for each day of the month) to encourage eating at home- something from which everyone from families to new grads just starting out can benefit.

Image source

More winter weather ideas

Marilla sighed and then said proudly: "I'm giving Anne that half-dozen braided rugs I have in the garret... I made them from the nicest rags, and braided them in stripes."
(L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams)

With an oddly shaped entry way, I have been hard-pressed to find an indoor doormat. Appreciating the aesthetic of rag rugs, I turned to Vintage Chica's tutorial to make my own from quilting scraps and men’s shirts in too poor condition for donation. I hit on this method by luck of the draw, but what I like best is that there is no need for seaming as each row connects to the next and that there is limited tying needed due to the switchback style of cutting strips.

A Whiter Shade of Green

Recently, born out of a sense of thrift more than anything, I decided to make a major change in our kitchen and cut paper towels out of everyday usage. The most painless way to do this, especially since my husband does a lot of the kitchen clean up, was to replace them with something that resembled paper towels as closely as possible. There are a lot of cute designs for flannel or terry cloth kitchen towels, even some with waterproof backs, or snaps so they can reside on a roll holder, but I knew that anything that looked even vaguely "good" wouldn't get used for real messes. So, I chose to go the very simple route by tearing up a few floursack towels (a dozen for $12 at Sam's Club) into 12 squares each, and taking the opportunity to test out some of the various finishing stitches on my new sewing machine.

I picked up a tip towel basket at Target; it's the perfect size, though truth be told we usually just stuff them in there, rather than folding them as in the picture, so anything that fits on your counter would work (an old CD crate, perhaps?). Our laundry closet is right in our kitchen, so we just have a plastic bin that lives on the dryer for the dirty ones, but a little bag in a cute print could hang on the oven handle to catch the used ones.

We're a small family that does laundry frequently, so 2-3 dozen has us covered for now. We still keep a roll of paper towels under the sink for the greasiest tasks like draining bacon or seasoning cast iron, but it often goes quite some time between uses. The only trick has been remembering not to throw the cloth towels away, as they're so similar to using paper!

Hint of the Day: Freezer Paper

With a small family, repackaging and freezing meat is a necessity if we want to get a good price and still have some variety in our diets. Recently, I've made the switch to freezer paper to save money (6¢/ft vs. 7.4¢ per quart Ziploc), but I've found a few other advantages, as well. The freezer paper lays flat on my scale, making it easier to weigh out the amount I want; I don't have to worry about getting raw meat on the outside or the zipper, and I don't have to go hunting for a Sharpie in order to label them.

I admit, I also like the look of those little white packets all lined up in my freezer. Sort of a "brown paper packages tied up with string" feeling.

Related: How to Wrap Meat like a Pro

Around the world in 48 hours

I followed this decoupage tutorial to give new life to an old wooden folding table that my husband bought his first year of graduate school, and had been loved with ink stains etc since. If I lived in a house and tended to keep things in between craft projects, the only thing I would have bought was the polyacrylic. I painted the table legs blue, and used my old Eurail map as the top (I skipped building a second top, as the piece was unfinished). It’s a great way to give new life to old treasures and a facelift to old furniture.

If I was doing it again, I would:

-trim out the corner squares. My hospital corners didn't look as neat after the polyacrylic.

-dip the whole map in the medium (as one would for wall paper). I ended up with a few wrinkles, despite my best efforts.

Uplifting the mundane

This take on a dry erase board has been making the rounds of various ladies' magazines and blogs and it really is a nice addition to my kitchen.

Supplies:
large picture frame with glass
light colored fabric 1" larger than the back w(edges serged or treated with Fray check)
stapler
masking tape (optional)

Remove carboard backing. Wrap fabric around it, smoothing away any wrinkles. Open stapler, and staple fabric in place on reverse side. Place inside frame, fabric side forward, and seal back (either with masking tape, or replacing the original staples etc).

The whole process took 5 minutes, start to finish, and cost next to nothing. It would make a lovely hostess gift or dorm-warming present.

N.B. If you have little ones or a tile floor, I would recommend making sure the frame is hung with wire rather than relying on the backing loop for support, in case the frame gets knocked.

Making it beautiful

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

(Keats)

I have been occupied lately with an impending move, that has required packing up my beloved scullery.

In the process, I've come across a number of jars carefully saved. The jars themselves are quite lovely. (I haven't decided whether I buy Inglehoffer mustard for the mustard or the jar- I love their little potbelly shape, and they are the sweetest bud vase for a casual table.) Glass jars are so handy and timelessly beautiful for coralling sundries- but I didn't feel the need to annonce for eternity that this jar once contained creamy horseradish.

That's where my good friend contact paper comes in (and this was nothing fancy in the way of contact paper- my husband picked it up at the hardware store). I traced circles as large as the bottom diameter, then cut rectangular strips the same length as the circumference, and smoothed it all together.

Voila- pretty little jars for pennies. My next project will be to re-cover the lids of my spice jars, which are almost all re-purposed condiment jars, since I buy spices in bulk.

Also check out my new bud vase for larger blossoms (originally a bottle of Redemption bourbon). I like its lines.

Get rid of ants overnight!

Your mileage may vary, but this homemade ant trap literally worked that quickly for us. I mixed it up in the evening after ants had ruined my dinner plans (what kind of ants eat almonds, anyway?), and saw all of two the next day, both in the trap.

In a pint jar, add 1 tsp. Borax, 6 T sugar, and fill to the top with hot tap water. Shake until everything is dissolved, then fold or crumple up a paper towel in the solution, place it in a shallow dish (e.g., a tupperware lid) and place it along a major ant thoroughfare.

This cost us basically nothing, was more effective than most purchased ant traps I've encountered, and since one of the recommended uses for Borax is scrubbing stubborn dishes, I didn't even have to permanently sacrifice the dish!

(source)