I’m interested in making my own tofu. It is a good source of protein and great for vegetarian meals. And making your own tofu doesn’t look that hard. In fact, it looks easier than making cheese. All it takes to make tofu is nigori or epsom salt and dried soybeans:

According to a recipe or two online, the process of making tofu is a bit labor intensive. You soak the beans until they are soft, blend them, run them through a cheese cloth (at this point, you have soy milk), boil it with the salt so it coagulates, and run it through a cheese cloth again. Finally, you press the soy mixture out using some kind of heavy object to get the moisture out. Then it turns into tofu.

Here’s a video demonstrating how to do it (sorry about the music):

The video uses a special mold to press the tofu, but you can also use a heavy cast iron pot lid.

Soy-based products are pretty high priced. In my store, a package of tofu–which is not even a full pound–ranges around $3.99. By contrast, dried soy beans are about $.99 a pound. So making your own tofu is a potential money saver, and besides, it looks fun.

Have you ever made tofu? Any tips?

I enjoyed Julie Montgomery’s House Tour on Re-Nest this morning.

Julie Montgomery is a mom and an abstract artist who was “offered the chance to live at the base of a tropical fruit farm in Southern California, about a mile from the Pacific ocean. Included in the deal was a small studio within the packing facility to create her large–scale abstract paintings.” The only problem was she had to make a garden shed and an Airstream trailer into her home.

So she made the place into what Re-Nest calls “a dazzling gypsy caravan” by using painter’s drop cloth around the walls of the trailer to give it warmth and roll-out linoleum from Home Depot on the floor that looks like wood planks.

Combined with some well-placed rugs, furniture, and decorative touches, this is the coolest trailer I’ve ever seen. And it allows Julie to live the life she wants, or as she put it: “Living here has enabled me to raise my little boy from 2-5 yrs old instead of getting daycare while I worked. I have been able to thrive as a fine artist.”

See more of Julie’s house tour here.

I know it’s hot in parts of the United States right now, but I recently figured out how to make a Chai Latte and I can’t resist sharing.

The Chai Latte is a versatile drink. You can make them with whole or nonfat milk, and you can add more or less sugar and spices, depending on your taste. They are a great mid-afternoon pick-me-up, especially if you are on a diet–if you make the recipe the way I did, the drink only has 59 calories in it.

You could also make an Iced Chai Latte simply by adding some ice at the end.

This recipe uses foamed milk. I have an espresso machine, however you can make foamed milk using an inexpensive milk frother or through this method, which is essentially shaking the milk up in a jar and heating it up in the microwave.

How To Make A Chai Latte
(Makes one latte)

Ingredients:

1 packet chai tea
2 sugar cubes or 2 tsp sugar
1/3 c milk (I used nonfat, but you can also use whole or 2% milk)
1/3 c boiling water
Spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, etc. (optional)

Directions:

Put the tea packet and two sugar cubes in the cup you are going to drink from. Boil the water and pour in the cup. Steep the tea until it is at the desired strength.

Meanwhile, foam the milk either with an espresso machine, milk frother, or the above mentioned jar method.

Carefully pour the milk into the cup. Sprinkle on spices if desired. Enjoy!

Check out this Vampire Killing Kit from the 1800s. It has a Bible, holy water, a cross, silver bullets, a gun, candles, knives, garlic, and of course wooden stakes.

This particular kit sold for $15,000 in an antique auction, and for good reason–it’s awesome. And these vampire killing kits were apparently a thing in the 1800s. Check out more of them here and here and here.

The question remains, were these kits serious or a novelty? Since most of the kits are high quality and date from around the 1840s (the novel Dracula came out in 1897), it seems that these were intended to really protect people from vampires.

And since vampires don’t exist, let’s hope these kits were never used!

For the last few months I have been carefully whittling my wardrobe down to just the clothes I like and that look good on me. There is no use in keeping clothes I don’t wear, no matter how much I paid for them or how much I liked an item when I bought it. So I started going through and ruthlessly eliminating.

This hadn’t been an easy task, since there were years of clothes to go through and every time I thought I was done, I realized that there were still more clothes that I wasn’t wearing. But I think I have finally done it now and my wardrobe is down to just the “essentials,” or at least the stuff that fits and looks good.

Having my closet in this state is like a sigh of relief. Getting dressed is easier because everything in the closet is something I would actually wear. It sounds silly, but this has made my life simpler. I don’t need to worry whether X shirt is going to look good–I’ve already determined that it will. My bedroom is cleaner too. I recommend it.

Having done this, I was curious about Miss Minimalist’s 10-Item Wardrobe. The above image is what she calls her core wardrobe. It consists of a black dress, a couple of shirts, pants, one skirt, and a jacket, plus shoes and a purse. That’s it.

That’s certainly some impressive minimalism there. She’s really thought it out too–she’s sticking to a main color (black) and picking items that can be dressed down or dressed up depending on the situation. If I feel like my life is simplified by fewer clothes in the closet, imagine how she must feel. Her wardrobe must not cost much and her laundry must be extremely simple to do. And she never has to worry about what to wear.

On the other hand, what a boring wardrobe! I’m no fashion plate, but these 10 items lack fun and color. Plus there’s a range that this wardrobe doesn’t covers: sometimes you want to wear jeans and other times, you really do need a cocktail dress. (Well, I do anyway.) Personally, I would not want to be business casual all the time.

The idea of rejecting the pressures and politics of fashion is interesting to me. There are lots of ways to do it–buy no new clothes for example or wear the same thing every day for a year. This is another way, and if you have the discipline, or just really don’t care about clothes, it might be a good option.

What do you think? Would you ever have a 10-item wardrobe?

I love the Thomas Paul Bedding Preview on Design Sponge this morning. It gives us a peek into Thomas Paul’s fall bedding line.

Very cool.

I like his pillows too.

Our shower is finished!

I have mentioned our ongoing bathroom remodel before on here. It is taking a long time because Mr. Savvy only has time to work on it one day a week. Also, our bathroom was really gross and needed a lot of work. Here is the original tub:

Here is what it looks like now:

Before:

After:

It’s sad that I can’t get better pictures of the finished shower (it’s cramped in there), because it looks great. Also, putting the new shower in was a lot of work. We had to remove the old tub and linoleum, plumb the new shower head and faucet, and put in new cement board behind the tub. Then we had to tile:

It took three months.

Next we’re starting tiling the floor.

My goal is to get the bathroom completely done this year. I hope we make it.

It’s a common frugal tip to save money by making your own coffee instead of buying $3.50 drinks every day. But that is sometimes easier said than done, especially if you like harder-to-reproduce drinks like Starbucks Frappuccino.

Luckily, Squawkfox has figured out how make a Frappuccino for 92% less the cost of buying them in the store. The secret ingredient? Xanthan gum, a food thickener. With a little bit of that plus coffee, milk, and sugar, this recipe is supposed to taste just like the Starbucks version:

Starbucks Frappuccino

Ingredients:

1 C double-strength Starbucks coffee OR 3/4 cup fresh espresso (cold)
3/4 C milk
3 Tbs sugar (or to taste)
2 C ice
Pinch of xanthan gum OR 1 tsp dry pectin

Direction:

Brew the coffee. Combine ingredients in a blender with the ice. Blend. Pour the drink into a cup. Top with whip cream and chocolate syrup, if desired.

Looks tasty, doesn’t it? [Lifehacker]

I was saying the other day that I thought having an ice cream maker was one of the best “extras” you can have in a kitchen. After all, nothing beats homemade ice cream. But if you don’t want to buy one, you can try to make your own ice cream maker like this guy did. And then make his awesome-looking Elderflower Ice Cream.

Or you can ditch the machine altogether and make ice cream by hand using basic kitchen implements and the freezer. The results look tasty:

Here’s another method to make ice cream without the machine using evaporated milk and ice cube trays. I’m not sure how it tastes, but it looks good:

Personally, if I didn’t want to spring for a new ice cream maker, I would skip all this and look around some thrift stores for a hand crank model. They show up more often than you would think.

Savvy Housekeeping Ice Cream Recipes Round-Up:

• Pliny the Elder Beer Ice Cream
• Strawberry Lavender Ice Cream
• Snow Ice Cream
• Cranberry Sorbet
• Bourbon Ice Cream

I recently stumbled upon the idea of using a Dynamic Frame for displaying kid’s art. The frame has a latch that easily opens so that you can insert a new drawing. That way you can change out the artwork whenever there’s a new creation ready to be displayed.

On top of that, the Dynamic Frame acts as an album, storing up to 50 drawings at a time. So not only is this a good way to display the child’s art, it reduces clutter too.

Dynamic Frames start at $25 and go up, so they aren’t the cheapest products out there, but they definitely beat slapping the kid’s art up on a refrigerator.