Wormapalooza -- level 2

We have added the next level to our worm farm. We weren't really sure when to do it, but it seemed like the first level was getting pretty full of worms, so we decided to spread the love.

A few days later, the worms have traveled into the 2nd layer of the farm. C lifted up the top layer and they were like spaghetti coming out of the holes of the box. Pretty gnarly.

We have had the worm farm for a while now, and I am still pretty pleased with it. It does not smell. At least, not a gross smell. It has a pleasant earth odor, but really only when you open it. The worms do a good job of eating the food scraps we put in. I also chop up receipts, pieces of boxes with food residue that I can't recycle, and school handouts that have been colored on (only the scribbly drawings, not the good ones). I haven't tried orange peels. Any advice on those?

Vacation at Home

Have you changed your vacation plans because of high gas prices? Are you reluctant to fly because of the emissions? If so, fear not! You can vacation at home!

After a few expensive trips with little kids, we realized that we were flying across the country to do, in many cases, things that we could do at home. For example, we took two kids to Seattle. We walked around the city, went to the zoo on the bus, went to the farmer's market, visited the tower, drank lots of coffee, went to the farmer's market again, went to the park, Children's museum, went for a hike... you get the picture.

Now, I LOVED Seattle. Particularly considering that we went in August, and August in Austin is hell. But little kids don't really appreciate the wonder that is Seattle and maybe we could have saved ourselves a lot of money and some frustration by vacationing closer to home. A lot of it has to do with attitude. When you're on vacation, you're out to have fun and try the cool local stuff. You don't worry about paying bills and cleaning the house. You get to spend time together as a family, relatively free from other distractions. And if you want an ice cream, you get one.

For example, today we spent the day "vacationing" in Austin:
After breakfast at home, the kids and I rode bikes over to play mini-golf. This was an exciting first for my kids. Afterwards, we met C and the little one at the fountain park to run around in the fountain. We had a little snack while we were there, then headed over to the Children's museum. After the museum, we went out to lunch and even bought ice cream for dessert. We raced our bikes home and then collapsed. We'd spent the whole day out. The evening was dedicated to relaxing.

This would actually be a pretty good vacation day. We normally only eat one meal out when we go somewhere, because I don't have the patience or the money to take 3 kids out for all three meals, never mind the endless snacks.

You could be your own tour guide, and make a vacation plan for 2 or 3 days. Heck, you could even hire a housekeeper for a day... it's still less expensive than going to a hotel :)

When I'm on vacation, I like to mix it up. Do a little something cultural, a little something outdoorsy, and something indulgent. For example, each day you could do one thing from each of the following categories:

Cultural

• go to latest exhibition at the museum
• gallery hopping
• symphony
  
• live music of some other kind
• go dancing
• do some art/craft thing -- paint pottery, for example
• Sierra Club meeting
• movie
  

Outdoorsy

• go for a hike
• go for a bike ride
• fly on a zip line
• swim in a local swimming hole or springs
• go sailing or take a sailing lesson
• kayaking, or go out with friend on his/her boat :)
• camping (if it's not 100 degrees)
• rock climbing
  

Indulgent

• get a massage
• lay around and read a novel
• get an ice cream
• go somewhere amazing for dessert
• take a private dance lesson and finally learn to dip
• go to the farmer's market and don't worry about the price of berries

There's lots of other activities that are fun too, especially if you have kids:

• feed the ducks
• zoo
• bake cookies
• go to the store and trawl for free samples of food (WF is great for this)
• climb a tree
• putt-putt golf
• bowling
• summer musical
• visit a friend with a new puppy or kittens
• tube the river
• run under the sprinkler/borrow the neighbor's slip n slide (if you're not in a drought)
• garden
  

Of course, planning a vacation at home doesn't require a lot of study. But sometimes you do need to plan it. I happen to have a lot of vacation time (thanks, grad school!) but I find that if I don't make a plan, I tend to fritter it away.

Some vacation plans can't really be replaced, but if finances are tight, or you're really burnt out and need a weekend vacation, a well-planned vacation at home can be just the trick.

Do you have any other tips? Please share! (Can you tell I canceled a big vacation this summer?)

Mac and Cheese

A couple of years ago I was vegging out watching Alton Brown do a whole episode on how to make macaroni and cheese. I didn't write down the recipe, and I'm certainly not going to buy the expensive cheese he used, but I did learn how to make a mean mac and cheese.

I'm home with the little one today, and we wanted a quick lunch. Sliced fruit and mac and cheese. I grew up on Kraft, but it seems to be getting more and more expensive (around .80 a box.... seems extreme, considering what it is). I bought 3 boxes of the store brand on sale -- 3 for a dollar. Let me just say... BLECH!! (In case you're wondering, the store brand is from HEB. Their Hill Country Fare macaroni and cheese is punishment food).

Not wanting to toss the box or, God forbid, punish someone even less well-off than me, I decided to doctor up the Mac and cheese. Use the mac. Toss the gross "cheese sauce mix". Enter Alton with a simple bechamel sauce.

Usually this is the part of cooking shows where I start to laugh. Right... a "simple bechamel sauce". Has a French name -- can't be simple. Ah, but it is. And delicious.

Start with some butter and a little bit of flour. Melt the butter and stir in the flour, making a roux ( I think this is the correct spelling.)

Add some milk, stirring in between little pours. It will thicken as you stir. If it gets too thin, just stop adding milk, or sprinkle a LITTLE flour in. (Not too much, or it will get clumpy).

Add your favorite cheese, grated, or sliced thinly.

Alton and I like to put in some pepper and a little nutmeg. The nutmeg really makes the dish.

Pour this scrumdidilyicious cheese sauce over some macaroni. If you're feeling fancy, you can sprinkle additional cheese on top and pop it under the broiler for a minute or so. I don't usually (ever) feel fancy. This mac and cheese is delish on its own. The other beautiful thing about it is that I almost always have all the ingredients.

Bechamel sauce is one of those classic sauces that works for a lot of recipes. Want alfredo? Put in parmesan instead of cheddar. Use cream instead of milk if you want it to be creamier.

image from inmagine.com

Wear it Out!

In our society, we rarely wear things out anymore. When something has a problem, we tend to throw it away and get a new one. Or we upgrade. My parents got me a television during my first year of college and it's been my tv ever since. It was fine. It wasn't too big. It wasn't too small. It was made before there were DVDs, so I had to run the cable for the DVD player through the VCR. No need to upgrade. Maybe there was a resolution difference... I'm not sure. I don't really care about fine resolution or high definition or whatever....

A couple of years ago, my daughter smashed in the power button. To turn the TV on, we had to stick our finger inside the little hole and press.... something. It worked fine. I got really used to it. A few months ago, the TV started shorting out. We could hit it on the side and it would work again. My 2 yo daughter got pretty good at this (a little Fonz... remember how he would hit the jukebox on Happy Days?) Finally, it stopped working. We actually wore the TV out.

I wasn't too sad about this. We don't really watch that much TV and I've noticed that it makes my kids grumpy. They fight about TV and they seem to get in a bad mood when they watch. Yep... even when they watch movies. I also noticed that when the semester's out, I tend to veg out in front of the TV, even though I think it's pretty evil. So, when the TV died, we decided to just let it die. A couple days later, the kids stopped asking about it.

Since the TV died, several people offered us spare TVs they had laying around. We finally took someone up on the offer, and got a small Sharp TV. It's the exact same model that I had before, but even smaller. I am going to put it on a little cart in the closet. It's nice not to have to watch everything on the computer, but I don't want a TV-centric life.

Pretty soon, with the HD thing, my TV will only work for movies anyways, so we might as well get used to it.

If you have kids, do you have a TV policy? Do you think that it makes them act differently when they watch a certain amount of TV? What about when they go over to friends' houses?

So.... what else have I worn out?

My sneakers. I'm so proud. I've now downgraded them to water shoes (for when I go tubing).

Speaking of TV and movies....
I have some burning questions about the Disney Princesses:

• Why does Cinderella lose everything at midnight except the glass slippers?
• Why do Sleeping Beauty's parents bring her back for a party on her 16th birthday? Didn't the curse say she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel on her birthday? Couldn't they have waited one more day? And shouldn't someone have been watching her more carefully on that day?

My daughter's favorite princess (gag!) is the Little Mermaid. She has a series of books about the princesses with little "lessons" about kindness. I don't understand how the Little Mermaid can be part of this series. She is totally disobedient and decides to ditch EVERYTHING for a guy she's met one time. She leaves her family, her home, and her whole species (genus?). Bad role model.

June Food Challenge Update

Here's the short version:
I suck at this challenge and can NOT stop going to the grocery store.

I am having trouble keeping track of how much we spend because my husband has to keep running out for stuff (like milk, bread, emergency pizza, etc..) and we haven't always kept the receipt. I plan to do a monthly total using my credit card bill (don't worry! I pay it off every month).

But is it so bad to go to the grocery store ALL the time? Maybe not. The ExpensiveMart is down the street. Sure, it's expensive, but I don't buy very much there. The occasional gallon of milk or something small. WF is on the way home from work. I tend to drop by there frequently. Need some more gluten flour for the bread maker? WF. Need some lettuce? WF. Milk? WF. Yogurt? WF. The beauty of these stops is that for the things I buy, WF does not really cost that much. About the same and sometimes less than ExpensiveMart. And I get free samples as I walk around :) Because the things I don't need to buy are so expensive at WF, impulse purchases are kept to a minimum. $4 box of granola bars? Nope! $4/lb tomatoes? Nope! 9.99/lb olives? Yumm... nope!

Saturday I did a giant shopping trip and drove myself crazy. First, in a desperate attempt to give the farmer's market another shot, I hopped on my bike and rode downtown. I was there about 10 minutes before it opened. There were plenty of people. Some people were filming one of the stands. It seems like that is happening every time I go. I got some peaches ($5 for a small bag), lettuce ($5), squash, a red onion and supplementary tomatoes ($8 -- ouch!), and a bunch of chard ($2). Peaches were the only fruit available, and they were only being sold by one farmer, and they were selling out quickly. I now understand why I hadn't seen peaches at the farmer's market before.

Supposedly, our farmer's market is "award winning". I don't understand that. I am not really "wowed" by the selection, and certainly not by the prices. With the exception of the chard, the prices are the same at WF, and I do not have to get up early in the morning.

After the farmer's market, I stopped at WF for some bulk oil and gluten flour (love the bulk section). Then I came home, got the car, and went to HEB for a gigantic shopping trip with my daughter. We had to buy food for her birthday party, so we spent a LOT of money. I also felt ridiculous spending $4 for organic strawberries (the cheapest they have been all summer, and they were hard. Grrrr...) and then buying Oreos.

Maybe I'm a food hypocrite. Okay. I am. But I can NOT go on torturing myself in the grocery store. I am just going to buy what I can afford, avoid the dirty dozen when possible, eat very little meat, cook beans, make my own bread, and try to stick with actual food, rather than food products, the majority of the time. Saturday night we went on a picnic. We had homemade bread with tuna salad that I made at home, using green peppers from our garden, the freakin' expensive onion and lettuce from the farmer's market, and Hellmann's mayonnaise. I read the label and found out that Hellmann's has HFCS. What can I do? Am I going to make my own? No way. We had plums, chips and Oreos. It was delicious.

Random Stuff -- the Good, the Bad, the Totally Insane

Over the past couple of weeks, I've noticed the following things:

The good:
Lots of people seem to be using scooters and bicycles. Last year we were the only family I saw riding our bikes to the pool. This year, many people are going on bike (at least 10 bikes today).

Shoe repair: I re-soled a pair of shoes that I got at Goodwill. They are totally awesome. Shoe repair is a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, it is WAY expensive in the US. It cost $40 to have my shoes fixed. I have brought broken shoes with me to Latin America to have them repaired because it is a) usually done the same day and b) very reasonably priced. We need more affordable shoe repair.

Tomorrow is reusable bag day in Austin. Celebrate!

The bad:
HFCS is in everything. It's in my raspberry jam. Grrrrr.....
I am getting a complex about jam. My favorite flavors seem to be from fruits that are probably loaded with pesticides. The cheaper brands have HFCS. Pretty soon I'd like to try making my own jam to see how much it costs to make and how long it takes.

The Totally Insane:
Amy's, maker of the veggie frozen dinners, has a line of frozen bowls of oatmeal. Huh?

Whole Foods has its own lunchable in the prepared food section: in a transparent plastic shell shaped like a lunchbox, you get a organic juice box, a sandwich (wrapped in plastic), an applesauce (in plastic), and a bag of animal crackers (can't remember, probably organic).
Have they lost their minds? What is the message here?

Inherited Food

Three of my neighbors have moved away or left town on extended trips. They have brought over the food left in their refrigerators. Among other things, I have "inherited":

• apples
• frozen fish
• 2 lbs. frozen baby shrimp
• a jar of green olives
• iceberg lettuce
• a bag of rolls

It's hard to keep up with everything in your refrigerator, and often we are left having "overbought". I have a very full pantry and my fridge is just getting under control again, having eaten MANY leftovers recently. Then again, there is a fine line, especially if you have kids. You need to have food ready to make a quick meal when the savages get hungry or when there's an unexpected guest (or six). Summer in Texas means that you NEED popsicles. I think that this is not optional -- I am trying to prevent heat stroke. It's 100 degrees outside (literally). This may explain why I have inherited 3 containers of ice cream and a box of popsicles. :)

I like inheriting food. It's nice to get some extra, unexpected things. I don't complain that they're not organic -- after all, you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. It's much better than throwing the food in the trash, and it has injected a little variety into our diet. The other day, we made milanesa for the first time (it's a breaded meat cutlet -- these were frozen, and you are supposed to fry them in a little oil).

So, don't be shy. If you can't drink up all your milk before you leave town, give it to your neighbor. He/she will probably be happy to take it, and might have been on the way to the store to get milk anyway.