Being content with what you’ve got

My family has been asking each another what we want for Christmas lately, and the question usually makes me reflect on how much I actually already have. When I pause to think about it, I realize that I actually want very little.  Sure, there are some restrictions that go along with living within a tight budget, but overall I live a very full, abundant life.  It’s very humbling to realize that you’re actually content with what you own and are hard pressed to think about something you want, let alone need.

I think part of the reason I’m so content with what I have is because I’m not subjected to forms of media telling me otherwise.  I don’t have television.  I don’t read fashion magazines.  And I don’t go into malls.  I don’t go out of my way to avoid them, it’s just that I don’t pass by them on my way to work or during my normal routines, so I’m simply not tempted by all the beautiful things in the store windows.  It’s funny how, without the messages from media or malls being shoved down your throat, it’s a lot easier to be content with less.

What helps you to feel content with what you have?

Savings tips from Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon

I love watching The Big Bang Theory.  I especially love this show because I just finished working at a theoretical physics institute, so I can compare the characters to people I actually know. In this episode, one of the main characters, Sheldon, a physicist with very limited social skills, gives great advice on how to get “statistically significant savings” on groceries and personal care products.

How a mystery delivery led to the best soup I’ve ever made!

A few weeks ago, I opened my door to find two cloth bags full of delicious vegetables – parsnips, carrots, rutabegas, ambercup squashes, beets, garlic, potatoes and onions.  There was also a newsletter from a local CSA (community supported agriculture) farm.  At first I thought perhaps the food was meant to be delivered to someone else in my building, but after calling the farm and checking on their website, I realized that they didn’t deliver.  Then I wondered if maybe someone was making a delivery to a neighbour and had gotten the apartment number wrong.  But with no method of contacting them, I didn’t know how to correct the mistake.  After 24 hours and no word, I thought that perhaps the vegetables were a random act of kindness.  Regardless, I decided at that point that the vegetables were mine to enjoy.  So thank you to my mystery vegetable delivery person!

I’ve made several delicious dishes with my mystery delivery, including two soups.  I first made a Carrot Parsnip Ginger soup, and I thought it was the best soup I’d ever made, until I made the Ambercup Squash soup, which trumped its deliciousness.  Both soups were absolutely spectacular, but the Ambercup Squash soup certainly triumphs over anything I’ve ever made before.  It was so good that I had three bowls in a row.  I’ve never eaten three bowls of soup at once before.

So here’s the recipe.  Unfortunately I didn’t track exactly how much spice I used, because when I cook, I just go by what feels right.  But I’ve tried to estimate.  Experiment and you’ll come to your own conclusions about what works.

image courtesy of www.beawkuchni.com

Amazing Ambercup Squash Soup

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1-2 large cloves garlic, minced

3 medium red potatoes, cubed

1 medium Ambercup Squash

splash of cream (optional)

4 cups homemade chicken stock

1 tbsp curry (or less for those who don’t want too much spice)

1-2 tbsp fresh ginger (minced)

1/2 tsp tumeric

1/4 tsp freshly grated whole nutmeg

1 cinnamon stick

salt & pepper to taste

Directions

Prick the skin of the squash with a fork and place, whole, on a sheet pan in the oven at 400 degrees for approximately 45 minutes. When done, skin will have begun to blister.  Remove squash from oven and slice in half.  Remove seeds with a spoon, preserving seeds if desired.  The squash should be soft enough that the flesh is easily removed and the skin peels off and flakes away.

In a large stock pot, heat olive oil over low heat; cook onion, stirring occasionally, adding a little sprinkling of salt, approximately 1/2 tsp.  Add ginger, garlic and spices and stir.  Add the chicken stock, potato and squash.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently, until the potato is cooked and flavours have blended together, about 1/2 hour.  Check seasoning, adding more salt or spices if desired.

Remove from heat,  let cool ever so slightly.  Remove cinnamon stick and blend in a blender in batches. Return to pot, warm and serve.  If desired, stir in a splash of cream (this is optional.)

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This soup is incredibly nutritious and very, very cheap to make.  It’s an ideal healthy and affordable dish for fall & winter.

Thrifting delights

Above is a picture of a pretty antique class bowl that I discovered at a Salvation Army store in Guelph a few weeks ago.  The reason it caught my eye is that it is very similar to one that I already have in pale, translucent pink, which was passed down to me from my Nana.   I’m guessing this piece is from the 40s or 50s.  For now, it’s storing a small collection of jewelry that also belonged to my Nana. I paid $1.99 for this piece, but recently found the identical item on sale at an antiques store in Toronto for $10 (the same store also sold hobnail milk glass vases for $10, which pass for $1 at any thrift store.) The store was absolutely beautiful, and provided me with plenty of inspiration on how to better arrange and display my own antiques and collectibles.  However, it also made me realize that thrift store shopping really requires a great deal creativity.  Modern and trendy consignment, vintage and antiques stores often display thrift items that shoppers might otherwise easily miss.  When items are paired together, set under the proper backdrop and under flattering lighting, it’s much easier to imagine the item in your own home.  But you often pay a heftier price at such boutiques.  I prefer to use these stores for inspiration, and then dig through the racks and shelves of thrift stores to find my own treasures. Thrift store shopping requires us to think differently, and employ some imagination to figure out what could be done to enhance an object’s hidden beauty or value.  I adore this creative element so much that regular shopping has become completely uninteresting to me.  Coupled with the consideration for environmental impact, not to mention the difference in price, regular retail shopping has become a chore, whereas thrift store shopping – or should I say, hunting – remains a delight.

Calculating carbon: a frugal household is a green household

Shopping Golightly at The Thrifty Chicks encourages us to count carbon, just as we count calories. I wish I could take a literal approach to her idea. In particular, I wish there was a really good carbon footprint calculator out there that would let us track our monthly or yearly progress.  Sure, carbon footprint calculators are easily found on the internet, but most of them are too simplistic to give an accurate, complete picture.  A good many of them are only accessible to United States citizens, but even those that are applicable to Canadians are limited to calculating factors like transportation, gas, electricity and so on.  I have yet to find one that takes a variety of lifestyle choices into consideration.  Tracking progress and seeing results is such an important component to success; whether we’re talking about dieting, saving money, or putting extra hours in at work, we need to know that what we are doing is making a difference. It helps us to stay motivated.

I’m starting to wonder about what kind of inadvertent (positive) effect my frugal choices have had on the environment.  For example, I thrift instead of buying retail – in fact, during the last 6 months, I’ve only purchased three items of clothing from retail stores – the rest of my purchases have been made at thrift stores. I eat vegetarian about 80% of the time.  I usually drink coffee at home instead of buying out. I use the Garden Fresh Box program and frequently shop directly from market vendors or farms, which means that the bulk of my produce is local, and I rarely require plastic bags.  After learning a few tricks from my readers, I have reduced my electricity consumption and now air dry most of my laundry and dishes, avoiding the drying cycle in the dishwasher altogether.   After my old clunker of a car kicked the bucket, I bought a new, more efficient vehicle.  These are more obvious choices that help to reduce environmental impact – but what about waste reduction in the kitchen? My efforts to create a DIY-kitchen, with homemade foods of all kinds – including snacks, cereals, sauces, and junk food – means that I am less prone to buy ready-made food products that come a box, can, or plastic wrapping. In fact, I used to rely on a lot of pre-packaged, often individually-wrapped, wasteful products, which I now make from scratch.  What kind of impact is this having? Although it might be small, I wouldn’t doubt that the accumulation of this kind of living has got to make some kind of an impact over time.

Included in the carbon footprint calculator should be a question related to how many pets you have and what type.  I recently read in The Star that feeding a medium sized dog for one year has twice the environmental impact of driving a luxury SUV for 10,000 kilometres.  I must say that I question the research behind this finding – according to the article, the researchers “based their calculations on the amount of acreage needed to sustain the dog’s diet of 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kilograms of cereals in a year.”  But most dog food, if I’m not mistaken, does not use “meat”, it uses animal by-products. By-products include the leftover feet, necks, intestines and other “nasty bits” that are not considered usable meat.  So although it obviously takes energy to grind and process the by-products, we should not count the total amount of energy required to raise livestock.  The livestock would be raised for other purposes anyway – if we didn’t use the by-products for dog food, it would probably be thrown away.  This, I’m guessing, significantly reduces our pets’ carbon pawprints, so don’t feel too guilty about having your pet just yet.  Nevertheless, it is still another mouth to feed, and if we want to be realistic, we would want to include our pets as part of our households. So far I’ve yet to see a calculator that takes a dog or cat into account.

Which brings me to a final rant, ahem, point.  Pets are worth having. Children are worth having. I hate it when we get into these debates about whether or not we should just kill each other or off ourselves in order to save the planet. The point, I think, is that we need to rethink our values.  My frugal philosophy is to reduce waste and focus my financial resources on lifestyle choices that are consistent with my values.  Likewise, animals and families are worth fighting for – we don’t want or need to eliminate them altogether; quite the contrary.  The whole point of environmental sustainability is to keep on living, and living joyfully.  We need to sacrifice the things that matter less in order to keep the things that matter.

A frugal household, it seems, is a greener, less wasteful household.  I’d like to find a way to track just how much less wasteful it is.