On Monday, May 11, I will have been writing Savvy Housekeeping for six months. So happy half-year birthday, blog.
I am celebrating this milestone by … going on vacation. Not from the blog. My real life vacation just happened to correspond with its birthday. I am going to Puerto Rico for a week. Normal blogging will resume on May 19th. Adios!
Our beer is done! I have to say, it surprised me by how good it was. I tastes as good as most beers you get in a bar. The process, while complicated, has converted me to beer making. You really do get high quality beer for minimal actual work–it’s just the waiting to drink it that’s difficult.
I left off with the beer sitting in a bucket fermenting, which means the yeast is eating the sugar and converting it to alcohol. We left the beer in there for two weeks, until most of the bubbling activity stopped and the kreusen (the foam at the top) settled to the bottom of the bucket. That was how we knew the yeast was done eating the sugar. Then we transferred the beer to a secondary fermenter (a different bucket) so we could remove it from the yeast cake. You do that so that everything left suspended in the beer can settle out.
After a week, we took a couple of hydrometer readings to double check that the beer was done fermenting. It was, so it was time to bottle.
At this point the beer is flat, so we needed to add something to the party to get the yeast going again and make carbonation. That meant sugar water. So we made a syrup out of sugar and water and put it in the bucket. Then we carefully siphoned the beer on top of it into a sanitized bucket.
After that, you siphon the beer into the sanitized bottles and cap them with sanitized caps (we used a dishwasher to clean them using the “sanitize” option, no soap). The beer was now bottled! But we couldn’t drink it right away (of course…) because carbonation had to build up, so we let it sit in the bottle for 2 more weeks. Finally, it was ready to drink.
Overall, the beer took 5 weeks–2 weeks in the first bucket, 1 week in the second bucket, and 2 more weeks in the bottle. We ended up with 42 bottles of beer. It was a successful first time home brewing.
(Courtesy Attitude of Gratitude)
I like getting greeting cards. They are thoughtful and fun. But there are a lot of holidays in the year–birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc.–and most of them require giving a card of some kind. That can really add up. Usually I buy cards ahead of time, but Mother’s Day sneaked up on me and I had to buy the cards at a drugstore. I was surprised to see that some greeting cards are getting up to around $7 a card now. That’s a lot to pay for a piece of paper that most people will read once and throw away.
Even at the average $4 a card, greeting cards can cost a surprising amount of money. If I bought cards for all the people I love at that price, I would probably spend about $75 a year on cards, and I have a small family. My usual method is to spend under $10 a year on greeting cards, saving about $65. The trick is to think ahead and buy a lot of cards at a cheap resource. I usually get all my cards at once and keep them in a box in a drawer for when I need them. This is also more efficient and saves extra trips to the store.
But there to get cheap cards? Here is what I have discovered:
Make Your Own–If done correctly, a homemade card will illicit smiles and chuckles and cost about as much as a piece of paper. Homemade cards do look cheesier, but they are also more personal and thoughtful. I am sure you can make them for under $.10 each.
Card Outlets–This is an outlet store that just specializes in greeting cards. They cost about $.40 each. I usually go about once a year and get all of the cards I will need for about $8. If you have a card outlet near you, take advantage of it.
Boxed Cards–Boxed sets of cards are an efficient source for cards. About two years ago I bought a set of generic birthday cards with cakes on them for $8.99 and I am still using them. There were 16 cards in the box, which means each card costs $.56 each.
Blank Cards–There’s nothing wrong with using a blank cards. You can get interesting, beautiful cards in boxed sets that you can write your own message in. They cost about the same as my birthday cards, roughly $.60 a card.
Dollar Stores–If none of the above works, it’s still pretty common to find cards for $.99 each. Even the drugstore I was in yesterday had a $.99 section. Dollar stores are the most reliable source for this–sometimes they even have half-off sales, so keep an eye open.
Slate has an article comparing the prices of making vs buying basic things in the store. Writer Jennifer Reese looks into whether it’s always worth it to make things from scratch. You have to compare the cost of making something vs. the price of buying it to really know whether it’s worthwhile. Reese tried out several basic things in the kitchen and compared them to store prices. Her verdict?
Bagels–make
Cream Cheese–buy
Yogurt–make
Jam–make
Crackers–buy, but she seems on the fence
Granola–make
There are two intangibles to add in whenever you’re thinking about make vs. buy. One is quality. As Reese discovered, homemade often tastes drastically better than store bought, but not always. It’s important to weigh that into the final equation.
The other intangible is time. Some things take a lot of time to make, so even if it costs less to make from scratch, buying it can still be more efficient and cost-effective. On the other hand, if you can make something in 10 minutes that always saves you $5 over the store price, every time you invest that 10 minutes, you’re saving $5 ($30 an hour). Of course, then you have to compare that money with what else you could be doing with that time. As the article says, it’s not a great idea, financially speaking, to quit a job and make bagels from scratch in your home kitchen all day.
I don’t snack as a general rule, but I will eat popcorn from time to time. I used to use an oil popper for making popcorn, but I recently switched to a bag method that works just as well as the microwavable bags from the store. In fact, it’s so easy and cheap that I can’t help wondering if there is some sort of popcorn conspiracy out there. Why, exactly, do we need special poppers or bags full of chemicals when popcorn is so incredibly easy to make on its own?
First, of course, you need the kernels. I bought unpopped popcorn kernels in the bulk section of the grocery store for $.99/pound. You will also need an ordinary paper bag.
To make the popcorn, I took 1/3 cup of kernels and mixed about 1 tsp of vegetable oil with it. Then I added the popcorn to the bag and sprinkled some salt on top. If I had wanted to I might have added other seasoning at this point, including curry powder, cayenne pepper, garlic salt, cheese powder, and so on, but I was feeling basic. So I mixed it all together and folded down the bag, like so:
Next step, I put the bag in the microwave and cooked it on high for about 3 minutes.
The key here is to listen. Don’t leave, don’t walk away, just stand by the microwave and listen to the popping. You want to wait until the popping slows down to about a second between pops. As soon as that happens, open the door.
It took my kernels exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds to be completely popped.
This is certainly the lowest calorie snack I know of. According to my calorie calculator, 1/3 cup of unpopped kernels is about 31 calories, 1 tsp of oil has about 36 calories, and salt has no calories to speak of. So 1 bag of homemade microwavable popcorn has about 67 calories. A bag of the low-fat stuff from the store doesn’t go below 96 calories per bag–believe me, I’ve checked. On top of that, mine doesn’t have any weird chemicals in it.
But the real savings here is in the price. One box of microwavable popcorn costs $4.29 for three bags, or $1.43 per bag. My popcorn kernels cost $.16 and the vegetable oil was under $.05. Together, my microwavable popcorn cost $.21, meaning a savings of $1.22 a bag. If you consume popcorn in any capacity, those are savings you can’t ignore.
Cost of Dish: Popcorn: $.16 for 1/3 cup of kernels; oil: $.05; salt: so cheap it’s not worth mentioning.
Total Cost of Dish: $.21
Cost in Store: $1.43 per bag
Total savings: $1.22 per bag of popcorn
I’ve started saving more water lately. When I steam veggies I let the water cool down and dump it in the herb garden. When I wash out my espresso cups in the morning, I usually put the water in the basil plants on my window sill. So I was interested in the hughie, which fits inside your sink to collect grey water.
The hughie has handles and a drain so that you can water you can easily water your plants:
It costs $25 and $15 shipping. I’m pretty sure I can find some Tupperware with a drain in it for less than that. Still, this is a great idea. (Via Sunset.)
I am loving this peacock baby sling over at Serena and Lily. It costs $130. For the record, a plain white sling costs $30 and embroidery thread is about $2. Still, this is pretty sweet. As a young mother, you’re going to have that sling on a lot–you ought to like it.
(Courtesy Bay Weekly)
Tomorrow is the Kentucky Derby so the Internet is covered with recipes for mint juleps. This happens to be one of my favorite cocktails. It is a refreshing balance of bourbon, mint, and ice. Here’s the basic recipe:
Mint Julep
Ingredients:
Directions:
Simple right? Still, people manage to mess mint juleps up! Here are some common mistakes people make with mint juleps:
* They don’t use fresh mint. Mint syrup, mint liqueur, or anything other than actual mint leaves is going to taste wrong in the drink.
* They don’t muddle the mint enough. If you don’t actually break the mint leaves down so that the oil gets into the drink, you won’t have any mint flavor.
* They over-muddle the mint. While you need to break the mint down, you don’t want it so pulverized that people will be sucking little pieces of mint into their throats.
* They use sugar/water instead of simple syrup. The sugar might not dissolve and leave a granular syrup at the bottom of the glass. Even powdered sugar can do this in my experience. Stick to simple syrup.
* They use bad bourbon. As with any simple recipe, what you put in will be very prominent on the tastebuds. So I suggest staying away from cheaper, burny-tasting bourbons (Jim Beam, I’m looking at you) and buy an affordable, quality bourbon instead. Black Maple Hill and Woodford Reserve are two excellent choices. Trust me, good bourbon makes all the difference in this case.
There you go. Avoid these mistakes and you will have one delicious drink. Wow I really want a mint julep now…
I want to use an antique library catalogue in my house. Being the book lover than I am, every time I see one of these catalogues in an antique or thrift store, I get excited and want to bring it home. The problem is that library catalogues aren’t much good for storing anything other than library cards. The drawers are flimsy and often don’t even have sides, leaving me wondering what I could possibly put into them.
One solution is to use them for wine. Of course, the drawers of a library catalogue is the perfect size for a wine bottle! You could even use the label space on the front of the drawer to remind you what’s in each drawer. I like this idea so much that I would almost get rid of our existing wine-cellar to do it.
I also liked the idea of turning a library catalogue into a coffee table. Summerswann came upon a library catalogue in a thrift store, took it home, sanded, stained it, and put legs on it–voila, instant coffee table. (Via Casa Sugar.)
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