Crooked Kitchen

The Sushi Bar

One of the reasons I want to save money is to be able to splurge every now and then. One of the things I like to splurge on is good sushi. Eventually, I’ll be able to have my kidney transplant, and unfortunately, the resultant anti-rejection drugs will cause me to not be able to eat raw fish ever again. So before I have my transplant, I’m planning a huge splurge at a top-quality sushi restaurant.

Over the last couple months, I’ve visited a few sushi restaurants in the Santa Barbara area and had some of their best. I’d like to write about the sushi I’ve had.

Continue reading for pictures of all kinds of sushi and sashimi »

Free leg, thigh & tortillas on April 28

I’ve been hearing about this all day, and only now did it occur to me to blog about it. Today, KFC offered a free piece of their new grilled chicken to everyone who visited a location. Unfortunately, I missed it today. Not to be outdone, El Pollo Loco, a regional chain here in California and the Southwest, is giving two pieces of chicken, two tortillas (corn or flour, your choice), and salsa to anyone who asks for it tomorrow until 8:00 PM.

Free food deals like this are a great way to save a bit of money. If you were to buy the equivalent food at El Pollo Loco on a regular day, it would cost you somewhere around $2.50 – though this is an estimate, as they don’t post the price of tortillas on their menu. Unlike KFC’s offer of a single piece of chicken, El Pollo Loco’s promotion is enough for an actual meal. A drumstick, a thigh, two corn tortillas, and house salsa comes out to 436 calories, 21 grams of fat, 28 grams of carbs, and 35 grams of protein. That’s perfect for a light lunch. If you can find multiple El Pollo Loco locations to visit, you can try to take advantage of the offer multiple times (although it’s against the rules, so don’t tell them I gave you the idea).

As much time as I’ve spent on the Internet, I’ve never sold anything on eBay. I have bought a few things, but selling is new to me. Just this week, I finally posted my first two auctions.

I used to play Magic the Gathering. I started collecting the cards in 1997 and started playing shortly thereafter. I wasn’t very good at the game, and had no real idea of the range of value of the cards at the time. I stopped playing for a couple years, then picked it back up around 2001 and started buying newer cards. I collected and played until 2003, supporting my habit with the small local comic shop. That spring I graduated from high school and lost contact with all the people I used to play with, so I again stopped playing and collecting.

In October 2007, during a lull in my studies, I got addicted again and, now finally imbued with money, bought up a sizable number of cards. Unfortunately, I never really found anyone to play against, and all of my cards stayed in mint condition. By this point I knew more about the value of the cards, and I was able to find a price list and write scripts to price out my collection.

Now in April 2009, I find myself needing money, and looking at my collection to save me. My pricing script applied to the latest price lists tells me my collection of 340 recent rares comes out to about $425. Earlier this month I posted all the rares on CardShark, and so far I’ve sold just over $76 worth of cards. Selling off more of the less-valuable rares doesn’t look good, and I would like to monetize these cards sooner rather than later, so I’ve put the collection together and I’m selling it as one item on eBay. In addition to the rares, I’ve also tallied and posted my foil cards.

Update: The auctions have expired. The links are now dead.

I’m excited that so far the rares have 3 bids, up to $51. I’m hoping to get at least $250 for the collection, and there’s still 6 days for that to happen. There aren’t any bids on the foils yet, but it’s still early.

A great way to save money on food is to cook with cuts of meat you wouldn’t usually cook with. Some of the bony, fatty, ugly pieces of meat can be had very cheaply, and surprisingly, they have great potential in the kitchen if you know how to use them. Generally, the cheap meats have a lot of connective tissue, and are tough or hard to eat if you cook them the same way you’d cook an expensive cut.

The trick is braising. To braise a piece of meat is to cook it low and slow for a long time in a covered pot in a relatively small amount of flavorful liquid. The long slow cooking causes all the connective tissue to break down and turn into gelatin, which gives you that fall-off-the-bone consistency and nice savory flavor. Stewing is also an option – just the same method, but with much more liquid. Bony cuts contribute a lot of flavor to a stew’s broth.

Continue reading for examples, methods, and a recipe for pozole »

When I write blog posts, I like to include time-sensitive information. Blogs are inherently temporal. When I write more permanent pages, I tend to hold back what I really want to say for fear of including things that will be irrelevant, obsolete, or flat-out wrong in the future. Permanent pages aren’t dated – blog posts are, and readers take those dates into account.

That’s why I’m writing a post about my current situation, and not posting this information on the About page.

My name is Matt. I’m 23; I currently live in Santa Barbara, CA, but I’ll be moving back home to Los Angeles in the next month. I was a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but my academic career was rather choppy. No, I haven’t graduated. I’ve yet again been asked to remove myself from studies at UCSB until I can “provide convincing evidence” that I can do better than I have been.

Two years ago, I was diagnosed with end stage renal disease (ESRD). I currently have very little kidney function, and I wouldn’t last 3 weeks without dialysis. Over the last two months, I struggled with inadequate dialysis and resulting systemic problems, particularly lung issues. This caused me to miss a lot of class toward the end of the winter quarter, and I was unable to live up to the academic contract I was on (due to past poor performance because of similar complications).

So now I’m moving back home to LA to figure out what to do with my life. Getting back into school is in my plans, possibly at CSU Northridge. In the meantime, I intend to try to stay active and find ways to earn and save money, and stay healthy. One of those will be to cook for the household (I’ll be living with my mother and brother), which will be an improvement over their current diet. I’m also working on selling off some of my junk, most of all my collection of Magic the Gathering cards, on eBay.

I’ll be using this blog to document things as I go. I hope to show ways that I’ve saved or earned money, and I’ll be posting recipes and meal reports. If I get down to it, I’ll even make weekly meal menus and post those. I draw my inspiration from a few other blogs I’ve been looking at recently: The Frugal Girl, Mental Experiment, and Lunch in a Box.

For now, that’s it. I’m going to try to keep up my writing. Once I get started it’s not really too bad – of course, it’s always the starting that hurts the most.