Mr FS's Onion Hack: No Tears!

One of Frugal Son's pals from high school is now in medical school. We seldom see him because he's so busy. He graced us with his presence last year. He told me that he learned a lot from me. I said What's the main thing?

Answer: If it's on sale, buy a lot.

In the 80/20 Pareto Principle of food frugality, that's probably most of the 80% right there.

I recently bought 12 pounds of onions for $4.00. I've already written about my main onion hack. (Now that I've used the word hack for the first time, it is probably no longer au courant. Oh well.) My hack: cook the onions with a little oil in your slow cooker, creating a facsimile of caramelized onions, which you freeze and use--in broken-off pieces--in many recipes. What a time saver! P.S. We slow cook onions on our front porch because they SMELL terrible.

Now Mr FS has a hack of his own. On a recent walk, Mr FS picked up a box fan. He said: I bet I can chop the onions on the porch and set the fan to blow AWAY from me, thereby minimizing tears. Reader: it worked. He chopped SIX POUNDS with nary a tear!

Now the onions are cooking away outside and I probably won't have to chop an onion for a month--maybe more.

Do you have an onion hack?

Quick Vegetarian Pleasures: Fast, Easy, Good, FRUGAL

Pseu of the wonderful blog wants a more plant-based diet. What to cook? Her readers are suggesting wonderful things, but, of course, I think my suggestion is the best: a book by Jeanne Lemlin, Quick Vegetarian Pleasures. I have more than 200 cookbooks (ummmmm...what's my excuse? I like to read them....) and this is one of my most used. In fact, I have backups for my children.

Lemlin should be better known than she is. Her recipes are indeed QUICK. They generally can be made with stuff you have around, so cheap. They always come out (not true of many cookbooks--nothing is more enraging to the frugal heart than wasting food).

The book just happened to be open on my desk. That is because I made a sauce a few days ago. It's for tortellini, but I used ravioli (beef-filled, actually. Sorry Jeanne). Here's the sauce: saute 4-6 scallions in a little butter. Add 2 chopped tomatoes (Jeanne says fresh, but I used diced, canned). Stir for a bit. Turn off. Add 2/3 cup sour cream, 2 TBS parmesan. Serve on pasta.

See what I mean? This recipe was first made by my daughter, Miss Em, in the dreary days post-Hurricane Katrina. We had no power. Our place of employ did, so we went back to work. Miss Em's friends had fled to nicer places. Her school was closed. She came to work with us each day. To mark time--and to get her mind off the Red Cross food we ate--she went through cookbooks and marked her favorite recipes. The next summer, she visited her beloved grandfather and cooked for him!

Here another with a sticky Miss Em note: polenta with spicy eggplant sauce. Here are some I've made: fettuccine margherita, rice, broccoli and feta cheese saute, Mexican red beans and rice.

The author lives in Great Barrington, MA, a wonderful town that I visit every summer. It has good, but not great grocery shopping. So you really can make most of these from supermarket ingredients. And the book can be had for a mere penny plus shipping. How crazy is that?

All her books are good, nay, great.

More Alice Munro Love: The Beggar Maid

I've read everything by Alice Munro--newest Nobel laureate--but probably the first story I read that simply blew me away was Royal Beatings. This was in the New Yorker. I stole some time from my graduate studies (not much time for recreational reading in grad school) and read it over and over and over. Later, I discovered the story in a book of interlocking stories called The Beggar Maid. I was at my first year in a "real" job and the book rep let me pick 5 books FOR FREE! I was so excited.

I still have my yellowing copy of that book. Somewhere. As the subtitle indicates, the stories center on Rose and her stepmother Flo. But the character of Royal Beatings who is most poignant is Rose's father, a poor working man, taciturn, abusive, and yet with a beautiful sensibility. Rose hears him recite lines of poetry as he works. One--the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces--is from Shakespeare's Tempest. This is easily findable nowadays with Google. But when I read it in grad school, I was thrilled to be able to identify it myself. I was such a serious student.

I Love Alice Munro

Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature! You can read about her in lots of places. You can--as of this writing--get some of her books from paperbackswap.com. You can--again, this may change--get her books used for supercheap on Amazon (as of this writing, the book pictured below can be had for a mere penny plus shipping). Or frugal fans: go to the library.

Here's what I love about Alice Munro, whom I discovered in a borrowed New Yorker as a college freshman: she is a wonderful, wonderful writer, but not at all difficult to read. And because she writes short stories, anyone can find a bit of time to read her.

I am someone who reads the Brothers Karamazov for fun. I even wrote about it. But it is a huge time investment, not to mention an emotional one. Same for another group of favorites: the late novels of Henry James.

I often say that the hardest type of literature to find is something that is good--very good, excellent--but not too intellectually or emotionally draining. I loved the title story in this collection. I read somewhere that a movie is in the works.

Why I Don't Like to Spend A Lot on Clothing: A True But Not Tragic Story from Serbia

While I was conflicted about wanting/not wanting half-price Eileen Fisher, an opportunity that appeared in my inbox one day, I got this little piece in a chat. Miss Em is in Serbia. Before she left, we took a load of clothing to the Buffalo Exchange. We mostly took cash, but she took a bit in credit to get one of those Eileen Fisher silk tees that is always touted as travel clothing par excellence. This new with tags shirt was only $12 at the Buf and it had been there a while. Perhaps it was too staid for their hipster clientele.

Not only did the shirt get damaged, but Miss Em was a bit disillusioned about its travelworthiness. This came under the title of Tragedy: Mini. Please excuse the no-caps style in which Miss Em and I--English majors both--conduct our rushed chats on-line.



i ruined my purple eileen fisher shirt :(
thank god i paid $12 for it and not $117
because i thought the container of bleach was laundry detergent--because it was on top of the washing machine
i can still wear it--but the fabric feels horrible and stretched out
no more of that great fall to it--though honestly it was not so good anyway because it was always wrinkled! even though it claims to resist wrinkles
i blame it on CYRILLIC


To me, having expensive clothing is stressful! For good reason.

Always Do the Math: Saying No to Bargains

I generally feature all my little frugalities as I wend my way through Big Lots, Goodwill, and similar venues. Nevertheless, I am full of material desires. Usually frugality wins out. That's good, because I have too much. Like many women of my age (middle) and class (middle), I yearn for Eileen Fisher clothes. But--and here's the frugal side--I don't find them a good value (your call may be different) and--sorry--I can't spend so much on a rayon tee shirt. It just bothers me.

Out of the blue, two weeks ago, I got an offer from the tempting catalog Garnet Hill--spend $100 on full-priced items and you would receive a $100 gift card to buy whatever by the end of October. Miss Em--who received the same offer and one with only a $50 gift card--urged me to do it. She said "Get some of the stuff you've been mooning over."

I didn't do it, however. I figured that--at best--unless something great was put on sale, I would be getting two items for half off--and that didn't count the shipping costs. Naturally, on Friday a new offer popped up: 40% off knit shirts, including two desired Eileen Fishers!! The perfect use for the gift card! Oh I felt sorry for myself. Miss Em emailed from Serbia, "I can't believe you turned down free money!"

So I did the math and now I feel better. To start, I would have bought an Eileen Fisher tee shirt dress for $100. With my gift card, I would have bought two EF shirts at 40% off, totaling around $130. With shipping, I would spend around $260 minus $100, for a total of $160.

Is that a great deal? The retail on the three items is around $320. So, really, even with the sale on the second set, I would have saved 50%. Good, but not great. I also would have bought 3 items, instead of the one (a long top) I really wanted.

Miss Em has the Eileen Fisher tee shirt dress and I've worn it a few times in her absence. She got it for $10.00 at Twice as Nice, a much-missed resale store in Alabama. I can wear it, but it's a little small (it's XS). When I showed Miss Em the math on the offer, she said the deal wasn't as good as it first seemed. And then she said, "You can have the tee shirt dress. I've got other black dresses."

I still kind of yearn for the EF pieces, but doing the math made me feel better. Also, I really don't need the items. I always do the math. Do you?

And, dear Miss Em, thanks for the beautiful dress. I love it.

P.S. No links. To keep you from temptation.

Cooking in the 'hood

From Serbia, Miss Em sends a link, "Mama, you could cook in the 'hood." Great advice for everyone on saving time and money, while eating for health.