Crooked Kitchen

I have a bad habit.

It’s a habit a lot of people have. A habit that drains money faster than cable TV. Faster than broadband internet.

My name is Matt, and I’m addicted to Starbucks. (Hiiii Maaaatt.) That’s right. I pay $2.65 every weekday morning for a large (fine, venti) iced coffee.

But now I’m trying to get off that habit. I’m going back to making my own coffee (which, I have to admit, tastes much better than Starbucks’). Today I’ll cover my method for making hot coffee. Later I’ll write about cold-brewing, which is good for both hot coffee and iced coffee.

Continue reading to learn about The Beans, The Grind, and The Brew and see my method for hot coffee »

Over on The Simple Dollar, Trent writes about Eating What You Have On Hand. He knows that eating at home saves a lot of money over eating out, but what do you do when you’re too tired/sick/lazy to really cook dinner?

Along the same lines, I’ve come to realize that I tend to snack on and eat whatever’s convenient. For lunch, I’ll usually eat leftovers because it’s easy - it’s sitting in the fridge and usually only requires a bit of pepper and a trip to the microwave. At snack time, I’ll look at the fruit bowl and flip open the refrigerator door and grab whatever’s quick and at hand.

So why not combine the two and really crunch your food budget?

…

By a lucky coincidence, many of the healthiest foods are also quite cheap in their raw form.

So what I decided to do is start cooking some healthy and very inexpensive staple foods once a week in bulk, store them in containers in the fridge, and utilize them all throughout the week in various dishes.

He suggests cooking a big batch of a staple - something like beans, rice, or whole grains - then using that bit by bit through the week. You can combine it with any quick-to-cook vegetables you have on hand.

I like to do this too. I tend not to eat most leftovers, but if I have precooked base ingredients I’m happy to transmute them into something new.

Trent doesn’t mention meat. While cooking vegetarian meals is a really good way to save money, it’s not an option for me - not only because I’m a zealous omnivore, but I also need lots of protein from meat sources. In addition, his staple recommendations aren’t the best for me (I should be leaning more toward refined grains than whole grains), but for the average healthy person, his advice is very good.

One of the things I love is fragrant rice, either basmati or jasmine. When I cook rice, I’ll cook a big batch and save the extra rice. Reheated in the microwave with a bit of water, it comes back to life well enough to eat again plain. But my favorite thing to do with leftover rice is make fried rice. That uses up a good amount of rice, and little bits of leftover meat, vegetable, or practically anything else. Fried rice will be fully covered in another post soon.

Eating What You Have On Hand has made me think about what I currently have on hand. Tomorrow I’ll take a full inventory of my pantry, fridge, freezer, and spice cupboard, and see what I can make of that.

Recently the time between my posts has increased. In part, that’s due to lack of time and motivation, but the ultimate cause is lack of funds. I have lots of post ideas, but I don’t have the cash to go out and obtain the materials to make them work. Recipes I’d like to try, produce I’d like to do research on, and products I’d like to review - they’re all on the backburner until I can scrounge up enough change to fund the posts.

Starting today, and running for a week, I’ll be calling for donations. I’ve set up a permanent donations page that outlines what I’ll use the money for, and what perks you’ll receive if you help me fund my work. All donated money will go directly towards this site, and I will stay accountable by explicitly recording what the money has funded.

I ask only for a small donation - $1 can contribute to a recipe, $5 will pay for an entire single-serving recipe plus leftover ingredients, $10 will fund an entire multiple-serving recipe or a research post. If you donate, you’ll get acknowledgement and a link to your website or blog on the post that your donation made possible, and the top 5 fundraisers will have a link permanently posted on the donation page.

Please help me keep posts going. I don’t want to sound desperate. For now, my hosting costs are covered, but without more help than I’m getting, I’m afraid that my content will suffer.

One way to save money on food is to shop at local, independent markets, especially ethnic markets. When I was living in Santa Barbara, I did some exploring of the local markets, and found that prices on most real food were cheaper than prices at the chain supermarkets. Here in the LA area, I have a large ethnically-biased produce market that I do a lot of my shopping at.

Sunland Produce is a supermarket-sized business on the corner of a major intersection. I believe it’s owned by an Armenian family, and they seem to cater mostly to the local population of Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Hispanic customers. Aside from the namesake produce section, there are aisles of ethnic pantry items.

Olive Oils

Some of the interesting things are the varieties of olive oils and vinegars. exotic pickles and peppers, cans of hummus and baba ghanoush, and all kinds of spices. There’s also a great bread aisle with all varieties of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern breads and pitas, and lots of interesting little cookies and desserts.

Continue reading to see the deli, meat counter, and huge produce section »

When I was young, I used to eat a quick breakfast of cold cereal, instant oatmeal, or a toaster item like frozen waffles or a Pop-Tart as soon as I got up, before rushing off to school. I was never especially hungry, but I knew I needed to eat something, because I wouldn’t have another opportunity for a meal for several hours. My first year of college, I had morning classes, and managed to get up early enough to get to the dining commons and have breakfast. Sometimes it was cereal and coffee, but often it was a larger breakfast of hot foods - eggs and pancakes, or a big bowl of oatmeal, or whatever else they had that day. After that, I started sleeping in more often, and eventually stopped really eating breakfast. When I did get up before lunch hours, I’d just have some coffee or tea.

More recently, I’ve gotten back to eating shortly after waking up. Many days, I find myself actually hungry in the morning. I think it has to do with my appetite being much better now that I’m getting adequate dialysis.

Several studies have shown that eating breakfast can help you eat fewer total calories during the day. Not only does that help a diet, but it means you probably also spend less on food. Not only that, but breakfast can often be made much cheaper than lunch or dinner. If you split your calories between three meals instead of two, and one is significantly less expensive, you save money.

I’ve worked out an example to illustrate my point. Let’s say you eat 2000 calories in one day. Let’s split that between lunch and dinner. For the sake of argument, we’ll say that lunch is constant, and you eat enough dinner to make up calories to reach a total of 2000.

• Lunch: cheeseburger and potato salad - 876 calories, $3.46
• Dinner: pot roast, vegetables, and a green salad - 1124 calories, $8.61
• Total: 2000 calories, $12.07

Now let’s add a typical hot breakfast, and adjust the amount of dinner eaten to stay at 2000 calories total:

• Breakfast: fried eggs, toast, and bacon - 417 calories, $1.06
• Lunch: cheeseburger and potato salad - 876 calories, $3.46
• Dinner: pot roast, vegetables, and a green salad - 707 calories, $5.41
• Total: 2000 calories, $9.93

You can see that, even though you consumed the same number of calories, there’s a 17.7% savings when you eat breakfast. Now, that’s not considering that you’ll tend to eat fewer calories. You might still be sated enough from lunch that you won’t eat that whole cheeseburger for lunch, or maybe you’ll snack less through the day (I haven’t accounted for snacking here, but if you snack, you could potentially save even more, as snacks tend to be more expensive per calorie than full meals).

Simple breakfasts are pretty cheap. Two eggs and toast comes out to a few cents (okay, maybe 50 cents). If you utilize leftovers, it gets even cheaper. An omelette using leftovers in half-free. Oatmeal is very thrifty too, as long as you don’t pile on the butter and out-of-season berries.

I had a plan to write a great post on shopping the grocery flyers. That was April 29th. But the infection I had been fighting flared up and made me not want to work all day, then put me in the ER that night. Since then it’s just been problem after problem, and only now am I finally able to get back to posting.

Since the last time I posted, I’ve moved out of my rented room in Santa Barbara and back in with my family in LA. it’s been a month, but I still have to move all my stuff in to where I want it. Health problems have kept me from doing that, but now I’m getting better. One of my major goals in moving in is to get my computers set up in a clean, organized environment, so I can be more productive, both with my blog and the other things I do.

Also, once I’m all moved in, I’ll take over the kitchen and start doing my own grocery shopping. My eventual goal is to do all the grocery shopping and cooking for the family, with my mother willing to finance the shopping. I think the best way to get that going is in stages. First I’ll do my own shopping, with my own money, and cook mostly for myself, but in larger portions than I’d usually cook. I’ll offer the extras to whoever wants them, or leave leftovers in the fridge (which my brother will probably eat). Eventually, when more of the food in the kitchen is “mine,” I’ll begin asking for input on what the family wants for dinner, and cook dinner for everyone. Hopefully once I’m doing that on a regular basis, I’ll be able to ask for funding to buy food each week.

Once I’m fully moved in (should be within the next couple days), I’ll post again about how I’ve organized my working space. I’ll also post once I’m on my way to cooking for the household.

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.