No One is Getting Takeout Anymore

Seriously. There are two microwaves on my floor, and good luck using one between 12-1 – usually 3 people are in line @each one. It’s not much better @breakfast time either – there’s a lot of oatmeal being made. Standing by a microwave is not a very productive use of time. It’s time to start using a hotpot to make food @work now.

It’s not easy being a yogurt maker

Since I got a yogurt maker a few months ago, a large chunk of my weekends have been devoted to the making of yogurt. It’s not complicated, just time-consuming.

The yogurt starter that you use has to be room temperature, which takes a while. Then you have to boil the milk then let it cool to 110 degrees. This takes about 40 minutes. After that it takes about 3-4 hours in the above yogurt maker, which keeps the yogurt jars @the right temperature. Most of this time you’re not doing anything except keeping an eye on it, but it’s still been an increasing time-sucker.

I like the EuroCuisine maker as the jars are made of glass instead of plastic that’s full of BPAs. Also convenient is the replacement set, which comes with eight jars instead of the usual seven – they assume that you’re buying the replacements because you broke a jar, which was the case with me. Brilliant!

MamboSprouts – BIG Boo!

If you’re unfamiliar w/MamboSprouts, they produce the coupon books you find @the front of WholeFoods stores. I like them because they have coupons for actual healthy food vs. the coupons for junk you get with your paper.

In the latest edition, there’s more helpful content such as recipes, BUT now you can only use the coupons @WholeFoods, whereas you used to be able to use them anywhere. BOO!

Showing some Mint love

I’ve been using Mint to track my expenses for almost a year and a half now. I’ve been appreciating the regular upgrades to their interface.

I’ve been using it mainly as a budgeting tool. The “Trends” feature is particularly helpful to compare your own budget on things like gas, food, etc. with Mint users in other parts of the country (I typically look @DC and Virginia, I’m nosy). I also like how you can now split transactions, because often when I go to the grocery store I get cash back and it used to count the cash back in the grocery total.

The only drawback for budgeting is that you can’t track cash purchases. I’ve been using a lot more cash lately as we’ve been regular visitors of the year-round Farmers’ Market in Falls Church. Overall though Mint has helped me be more in control of my budget, especially of the everyday things I’d buy without thinking (this phenomenon happened to me most often during work lunch breaks).

If I Die A Bacon-Related Death, Please Be Because of This

Bacon = Digg front page. Must write a bacon article.

read more | digg story

What Makes a Cheesecake? A serious question

I was trying to decide between making a cheesecake or making a pie for Thanksgiving. I ended up making a pie, but knowing that we’ve done store-bought up until this year, looking @the ingredient list for Costco’s pumpkin cheesecake, I’m certainly thankful for baking skills this year!

As an aside, we visit a Costco in Phoenix every year sometime in December. Every year the same woman is handing out cheesecake samples, and singing a song straight out of a David Lynch movie while she hands out chunks. Maybe too much guar gum does that to a person. Sad.

10 Unusual Items That’ve Really Been Donated To Food Drives

I’ve always wondered what kind of things end up in food donation bins. Four gallons of cake icing? Wow.

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SOLD OUT! – The Bacon – Flavored Chocolate Bar

Those wacky Brits. Someone brought this very bacon chocolate bar into the office a few days ago for a taste test. I wouldn’t eat it for breakfast, but the taste wasn’t unpleasant. But I do like sweet and salty things together.

read more | digg story

I’ve lost track of what stage of grief I’m in…

…as I’ve been in mourning for my investment savings, and therefore a future of retirement meals of cat food and peanut butter, for quite a while now. Each time the market does another dizzying drop, the grieving process starts all over again.

My fiancee and I have become even more frugal (with what’s left going into a safe cash stash), but @the same time as far as food goes we’re not sacrificing quality but buying smaller amounts of the best stuff we can get. For example, no more corn syrup masquerading as maple syrup, we’ve been getting smaller bottles of the real thing @Trader Joe’s for about $8. Since it tastes better, we end up using less on our Sunday French Toasts. Speaking of breakfast items that taste better, free range eggs don’t taste like fish. The farmer’s market eggs are even better. Just because the economy’s in the toilet and will be for a while, it doesn’t mean we all have to eat crap! Since we don’t own a house and can’t afford to travel right now, making food is the one thing we’ve both been enjoying doing together.

We’ve been making our own salad dressings, pickles, and pasta sauces – I made a mean carbonara sauce the other night that made a decent lunch the next day.

This week I found a new blog after my own heart – EconoWhiner – named as a “tribute” to one of the architects of this current mess, Phil Gramm. I’ve been enjoying the cheap wine series of posts in particular. Enjoy!

Squash – a most office-friendly veg

Great article in today’s SF Chronicle food section – all about squash, including some varieties I’ve never heard of. All the different kinds out there makes squashes really intimidating for me, and I have a hard time doing things to say, Acorn squash that don’t involve maple syrup and butter.

Squash cooks really well in microwaves, btw!