Collaborating for a more frugal, sustainable lifestyle

I’m really looking forward to implementing some exciting environmentally sound and frugal practices into my lifestyle for the spring and summer.  For one thing, my friend and I are talking about ways we can  share our resources.  A most generous person, my friend is also lucky enough to live in a house with a lawn and garden.  With my tiny condo balcony, I am more than thrilled to have the opportunity to help her with her vegetable and herb garden.

I really believe that collaboration is important to living a frugal, sustainable life.  We have travelled so far off track, with “success indicators” being private ownership.  In our consumerist culture, we promote the idea that the only way to access goods or resources is to buy them.  And the ownership of such things - not only cars and homes but all sorts of goods and services - become icons of financial success. But there are so many opportunities to share and collaborate with our friends and neighbors, by bartering, carpooling, sharing tasks like gardening or home repairs, babysitting and cooking.  And living this way reduces waste as well as cost.  In fact, collaboration is a cornerstone of frugality, and used to be a necessary part of survival.

It can be difficult to take initiative to create a collaborative lifestyle, but not impossible.  I don’t believe it’s necessary to live in a co-op or Kibbutz in order to implement these ideas.  Simply volunteering to share with willing neighbors, friends and family is enough to start.

Do you share or collaborate with anyone in order to save money or reduce waste?

Butternut squash soup, the lazy way

Tonight I was eating alone (Josh was working late) so I made a simple dinner of rice, broccoli, chick peas and a pre-made sauce.  I knew I needed to use up butternut squash in my fridge as I could tell it was nearly about to turn.  My favourite thing to do with butternut squash is to make soup.  It’s not hard, but too time consuming and demanding for a night like tonight.  I don’t know why but my flu bug is still hanging on.  I can’t seem to quell the headache, fatigue, and other nagging symptoms.

So I baked the squash, peeled and seeded it, and filled two containers with the cooked squash. Tomorrow I will make up a soup for lunch.  I call this my budget boosting butternut squash soup.  Care for a sneak preview?  Here’s my very own rendition.  I can’t wait to try it with my new curry powder and black peppercorns.

Budget Boosting Butternut Squash Soup

This delicious and satisfying soup is easy, requires few ingredients and is creamy and delicious.  The approximate cost is $1.40 per serving. It can be eaten as a meal or served as a delish side dish.

Ingredients

 2 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 stalk celery, finely sliced

1 medium potato, cubed

1 large Butternut Squash

1 cup sour cream

4 cups water

1 tbsp curry (or more to taste)

1/4 freshly ground nutmeg

salt & pepper to taste

 Directions

Place a whole butternut squash on a sheet pan in the oven at 400 degrees for approximately one hour.

 In a large stock pot, heat olive oil over low heat; cook onion and celery, stirring occasionally, adding a little sprinkling of salt, approximately 1/2 tsp.  

Remove squash from oven and slice in half.  Remove seeds with a spoon.  Scoop the rest of the squash out of the peel and add to the pot, along with the water, potato, garlic and spices.  

Cook uncovered on medium heat, until the potato is cooked, stirring occasionally.

Next, blend with a hand-blender or let cool slightly and blend in a blender in batches. Return to pot, warm, and mix in 1 cup of light sour cream.  Serve.

Makes 4 generous servings.

Frugal weekend bread making

On the weekend, Josh made pita bread.  Correction, he made the best pita bread in the world.  This was his very first try and I can’t believe how perfect it came out.  It really made me wonder why we’d ever buy store bought pita bread again, when it tastes this good fresh, and is so easy and cheap to make.  Rather than posting the recipe here, I will simply direct you to The Fresh Loaf - they have detailed instructions along with really beautiful pictures.

Josh also baked a whole wheat loaf - well, 20% whole wheat, anyway - and it was spectacular.  Really moist and fluffy on in the inside and nice and crusty on the outside.  He also made the best grilled cheese sandwiches with this bread and some old cheddar. It’s really a far cry from our first try back in October.

Meanwhile, Butternut enjoyed her own frugal luxury - namely, the paper that came with the spice package on Friday. Apparently, paper is the best toy in the world, and also the comfiest place to nap.  

What frugal activities did you do this weekend?

Spicing things up

On Friday, I received a nice surprise: a big box of spices showed up at my door from The Spice House.  Well, it wasn’t a total surprise.  Josh and I ordered a great big bunch of spices there earlier this week.  As you may or may not know, you can order fine quality spices online at affordable prices.  The Spice House is Alton Brown’s store of choice, which is why we decided to give it a try.  The shipping was expensive - almost $30 US - so I’m not convinced that it is the most frugal option ever, but I was certainly impressed with the quality of the spices.  I decided that since I am cooking more and more at home, I should enjoy the flavour of real spices, not the tasteless, stale and pre-ground kind you find at the grocery store. 

Now that I have my spices I need to figure out how to make a frugal spice rack.  One option is to make an Alton Brown style spice rack by attaching velcro to the spice jars and to the inside of a cupboard.  Or I suppose I could display my beautiful spices in cute jars.  Any suggestions of where to find affordable spice jars or spice racks? Or perhaps you have a good idea about how to build your own spice rack?  Please share!

Reducing waste & eating well for less

I realized that until my Fresh Box arrived, we had only spent $155 on the last four weeks of groceries (less than $39 a week).  Now granted, I had been absent for one week while on vacation.  Josh also bought his lunch quite a number of times.  But apart from that, we ate really healthy, delicious meals at home and almost never went for out to a restaurant.

How did I manage to feed two people on $155 a month?  I chalk it up to stocking up on basic and versatile ingredients, being creative in the kitchen, cooking with inexpensive foods, and reducing waste.  I have been aiming to produce zero edible food waste since writing What Are You Wasting on February 25.  Apart from a few cilantro leaves and half a baby eggplant that got tossed against my will (after which I promptly listed of all ways I was planning on using that eggplant) I achieved my goal.

Here are some ways I reduced waste during the last several weeks:

• Froze parmesan rinds, basil roots and even cauliflower greens for vegetable stock
• Used up cilantro stems in a cilantro chutney
• Made a chicken and vegetable stock 
• Used up stale pitas by making them into pita chips
• Discovered that shriveled ginger is fine, when the edges are peeled off

Because I want to eat really delicious, nutritious food, I worked hard to come up with great meal ideas using only the ingredients we had. This led me to try some new tasty recipes, like curried cauliflower soup, green lentil and vegetable curry, vegetable barley and red bean soup, homemade pizza from scratch (with a variety of delicious toppings) quiche with goat cheese, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and bacon, whole-wheat pasta with vegetables and parmesan, salmon-potato cakes,  carrot-ginger soup (I doubled the ginger and doubled the flavour this time) and deserts such as eggless oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, lemon loaf and apple crisp.  Although I was pleased with how much I saved, I was actually even happier about the fact that I am learning how to cook good food and am experimenting in the kitchen.

Other ways I reduced waste:

• Rewashed ziploc bags (thanks for my readers’ tips on how to dry them)
• Repurposed an empty tea box into a cute gift box
• Discovered that you need far less dish-detergent when your water is soft; I have reduced the amount of dish-detergent I use in the dishwasher by almost half
• Cut the amount of laundry detergent I use by about half, upon realizing that it really does not make a difference
• Learned how to put our Drobo to sleep during the day, so it doesn’t use so much energy when not in use (I’m convinced this thing wastes a ton of energy, since it’s constantly whirring and is always lit up.)
• Reused tea bags (I found that each tea bag is good for at least 2 cups of tea.)
• Josh fixed our dryer (it was taking forever to dry the clothes) and he cleaned out our vacuum cleaner too, resulting in less energy waste
• Used the dishwasher for small items and handwashed large items, to avoid excessive use of the dishwasher

What is your favourite tip for reducing the waste of food, electricity or other resources?

Today I’m at orgjunkie.com!

Today you can find me at a great blog called I’m an Organizing Junkie. Laura is a self-proclaimed organizing junkie who is addicted to organizing - her readers are better for it, because Laura shares her best tips on how to stay organized.  Check out my post on how to re-purpose a tea-box for home organization and read my tutorial on how to turn an empty tea-box and cut-up magazines into a pretty box for storage or gifts!

Also, I apologize for the lack of posts lately - I’ve been suffering from a terrible case of the flu and I’m still recovering.  I promise to be back posting again soon, answering my comments and emails!  Thanks!

More frugal luxuries

I’m taking notice of all the frugal luxuries in my life this week.  Yesterday one of my frugal luxuries was a surprise private session with my yoga instructor.  I was the only one to turn out at my therapeutic yoga class yesterday, and while everyone who takes the class is great, it was very special to have some one-on-one time with my favourite instructor.  It gave us time to move slowly, consciously, and talk.  I was able to share with her my biggest frugal luxury that I’ve been enjoying for about 6 weeks now - the fact that I’ve seen a 90% reduction in pain.  Living with chronic pain affects all areas of your life, including how you feel about yourself. I’ve carried a lot of guilt, frustration and embarrassment about the pain that I’ve been harbouring.  And now, I wake up in the morning feeling normal.  My body feels free, it feels light.  I hope that I can maintain this lightness, and I hope that I can help others who are struggling as well.

A few other frugal luxuries:

My friend from university came and stayed with me on Monday and Tuesday. She brought me these orchids. I’ve never had orchids before but I absolutely love them.  They have them at my yoga studio and I love meditating in front of them.  I love the tiny little clip that gently helps to guide and support the orchid as it grows.

This morning I sat my plants in front the window to catch the sun before it disappeared.  Then I decided I needed a little sun myself, so I sat and drank my coffee on my floor pillow, next to my plants. (Butternut joined me as well, of course.)  If that’s not a frugal luxury, I don’t know what is!

I hope you can enjoy some frugal luxuries today and take note of all the finer things in your life.

My Fresh Box!

Today’s frugal luxury is my fresh box! I picked it up at the Guelph Community Health Centre and was happy to discover all the fruits and veggies that had my name on them.  It felt like Christmas - only with more veggies and a lot less chocolate.

Here’s what I got for $15:

1 pint raspberries

1 quart jumbo cherry tomatoes

1 package (ziplock bag full) green pea sprouts

1 head cabbage

1 head broccoli

1 large (huge!) cucumber

3 large carrots

2 green pepper

3 large cooking onions

1 roma tomato

1 bag spinach

5 large apples

too many large, red potatoes to count! (I filled a large grocery bag.)

I am really impressed, especially with the size and the quality of all of the fruits and vegetables.  The box came with the newsletter, which contained recipes, information on how to best store your vegetables, and a list of where the produce came from.  Three of the suppliers were from Wellington County.

So, what are the benefits of the Fresh Box?  I think it is a great price.  It is partly so cheap because this is a nonprofit enterprise that is partly subsidized from the government.  But other benefits include the fact that you are supporting local farmers, cutting down on carbon emissions thanks to minimized transport, and using fewer plastic bags.  Even if you carry your own bags or boxes to the store, chances are that most of your produce comes in plastic bags, especially your potatoes, carrots, onions and apples, not to mention any other fruits or veggies you pick up using a produce bag in the store.  Using the fresh box system, you pile all your produce into your own box or bag.  The only items in a plastic bag were the spinach, cherry tomatoes and the sprouts, although the sprouts came in a ziplock bag, which will be reused.  The raspberries came in a plastic box that I will use for painting, and the cherry tomatoes came in a plastic box that will definitely be reused somehow (I’m sure I’ll find some kind of purpose for it!)

As soon as I got in the house I made myself a little sandwich with sliced tomato and some of the fresh sprouts. That was another little frugal luxury! It was delicious!

One of the only downfalls is, of course, not being able to choose your own food.  If you are a picky eater, this might not work for you. But knowing me, I will find away to eat every little bit.  I happen to already have a head of cabbage sitting in the fridge, so now I have two! Anyone have a great recipe for, well, anything that involves cabbage?

Saver Queen is visiting Frugal Girls!

Today’s post can be found at Frugal Girls -  a website dedicated to finding you freebies!  My post provides tips on how you to make money in your spare time by consigning.  Selling previously loved clothing to a consignment store is a great way to pick up a little extra money and my post tells you how.  Enjoy!

Saver Queen’s makeover!

Saver Queen just got a makeover!  Please bear with me as I sort out the technical difficulties to bring you a cleaner, nicer site. Thanks!