Thrift Stores, Armani Pants, Children's Clothing: Stress Relief

This is all one topic. I wish I were better at titles. This title problem has been a long-term affliction. Indeed, of all the papers I've written, only two titles were good: one for a graduate student paper on John Donne's poetry, the other an article on Edmund Spenser's sonnet sequence, the Amoretti.

I digress. With a pang, I just placed a pair of Armani pants in the donation bag. These are the real thing, Armani Collezione, beautiful olive wool crepe, fabulous detailing. Sadly, there are a few tiny moth holes.

Don't shed too many tears. I bought these a few years ago, with a new dry-cleaning label, at a thrift for under $3.00. These were for Frugal Son, in case he needed dress pants. As it happened, the only occasions where he wore dress pants were his proms, to which he sported a tuxedo and all the usual trimmings, all the booty of a year-long look-out undertaken by Frugal Mom (me). I have a post on this somewhere or other. Needless to say, the tux outfit required black pants.

Also needless to say, moths like the most expensive clothing. I keep things clean, and even brush items, but, like me, moths always choose the most exquisite fabrics.

The only reason I'm donating the pants is that someone--maybe--can use the fabric or the expensive zippers and buttons. Or even fix them--the holes are almost imperceptible.

Stress relief times two. First, because we had the pants in case Frugal Son needed them. It is SOOOO stressful to have to run to the store because of a sudden need: this is always expensive and often time-consuming. So this is another example of prophylactic shopping I wrote about a while ago: shopping to PREVENT shopping.

Second, because if the item gets ruined, no big deal. This was especially critical when my kids were younger. Although my fantasy was to have my children dressed in Euro-style clothing a la the Hanna Andersson catalog, they generally wore very nice clothing from various thrift stores. I usually went to the then-wonderful shop run by the Junior League in New Orleans, where I could find the occasional Petit Bateau item I craved.

What a relief though when the inevitable stain or snag occurred. I could just say (continuing the Euro-theme), "Tant pis!" Let's toss it. And I can pull out another backup item.

And it's not just children who stain and snag. Although I am often criticized for wearing too much black, I have noticed that when I wear a light color, especially white, I tend to spill an entire cup of coffee on my front.

Tant pis, I say once more.

Macrochiconomics

So was the message from my favorite store: United Apparel Liquidators. I TOLD you (in a prior post) that the BEST store in the world happens to be in my very town.

At UAL, we pride ourselves in our long-standing knowledge of chic-onomics.

We've known for a long time that it doesn't have to cost a lot of money
to have great quality, beautifully designed clothes.

In fact, we have plenty of items under $20!
Try our Blujeanious jeans. ALL STYLES just $9.99!
Many of our Hollywould shoes are on sale for under $10!
LnA tanks are just $5.99-$7.99!

And there's plenty more styles to choose from!

Hurry in to your favorite UAL for a lesson in chic-onomics!
2033 North Highway 190 in Covington, 985.871.0749
518 Chartres Street in New Orleans, 504.301.4437
1829 Hardy Street in Hattiesburg, 601.582.5141
2918 West End Avenue in Nashville, 615.340.9999

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The Angst of Actually Using the Emergency Fund

An emergency fund is a wondrous thing. Mr. FS and I have had a fairly hefty one for a long time. When we were in graduate school, we kept $1000.00 in a bank account--just in case. At that time, that represented 6 months rent! Then, when we finally were gainfully employed (sort of), we only had temp jobs for a while. In a panic, we put away enough to live on in graduate student poverty, JUST IN CASE we ever faced unemployment again. "We'll take a year off to write," we said. Thankfully, we never had to use it.

I am sitting here with a familiar ache in my gums that signals an eventual--and expensive--root canal. Evidently, the Baby Boomers, of which I am one, take out their stress in their mouths, by grinding teeth (NOT ME), thereby enriching their dentists and endontists. I did clench my jaw, however, through years of stress at work, to the same effect. I stopped that bad habit last year, after some expensive dental work and hoped that my root canals were at an end. Evidently not. So I suppose I will take some antibiotics to put off the inevitable for a bit, but I have learned to accept the eventual expense.

I guess that's why it's called an emergency fund: it's for emergencies. Emergencies are unpleasant, as a rule. This past year, in addition to my dental work, I experienced the even greater emergency of 3 expensive one-way plane tickets, first to see my father on life support after a blood vessel burst in his brain, then to Massachusetts where he was buried, and finally home.

It is so depressing to spend massive amounts on such awful stuff. I keep hoping that my emergency will consist of an unexpected $100.00 plane fare to Europe. So far that hasn't happened.

I try so hard to be Zen about all this. Thank heavens, I say to myself, that I didn't have to borrow the plane fare from my mother. Thanks heavens, I don't need to get a set of dentures. Thank heavens for my emergency fund.

Edmund Andrews: Still Leaving Out Pertinent Information

Please forgive me. This guy still annoys me no end. I noticed that his sales rank at Amazon had gone up dramatically, so I figured that he had gotten some recent publicity. Here is his response to those who thought his wife's bankruptcies--particularly the one DURING their marriage--were pertinent to his story.

Dear Readers, save yourselves some time. What he leaves out is the fact that the second bankruptcy (during his marriage to the wife) involved discharging around $30,000 in debt to the wife's sister.

As every writing teachers says: if you are presenting an argument, you need to include--and to defuse--evidence that seems to go against your argument. You have to be a good writer to move up so high in journalism. So, Mr. Andrews, follow the rules for English 101.


Ok, folks. Here's the deal about the my wife's bankruptcies.
But first, I have to say that anyone who thinks I've glossed over the hard truth either hasn't read the book or isn't thinking straight.
As I've said before, the first bankruptcy was all the way back in 1998, when the IRS came after her then-husband, who hadn't paid his taxes in years. He'd actually have her sign the returns, but never filed them.
It was horrific, but what did it tell us about Patty, who was a stay-at-home mom and not earning any money at the time? More to the point, what did it tell us about our mortgage woes in 2009?
The second case was in 2007, but it was prompted entirely by debts Patty ran up in 2003 and 2004, when she was a single mom with four kids whose ex-husband (the aforementioned tax-challenged one) was a deadbeat dad.
Patty's problems weren't about wild spending. They were about poverty -- suddenly trying to support four kids while working for $10 an hour after having been a stay-at-home mom for 20 years.
I could have written a whole chapter on the deadbeat dad, who continues to defy one court order after another on child support.
But neither the bankruptcies nor the child support had any bearing on our mortgage problems.
What really did seal our fates -- and what I DO write about in detail -- was that Patty got fired from a well-paying job in 2006 and never came close to replacing that lost income.
Being fired was infinitely more agonizing and mortifying -- and relevant to our story -- than the problems caused by a deadbeat ex-husband.
All of this is somewhat besides the point. The whole book is based on a bad decision and an insane mortgage. I don't blame anybody else for our problems.
Those are the easy questions. The hard question is, why was it even possible?

$5.00 Grocery Budget aka Praise of Pantry

I fervently hope, Dear Readers, that you do not expect an explanation of how I combined coupons with store specials (a la The Grocery Game and free imitations thereof)to save 95% on groceries. Luckily, I was not in a financial bind either, forcing me to subsist on stale staples in my cupboard. In fact, my accomplishment was completely inadvertent: I got to the end of the week and realized that all I had bought was a gallon of milk and a few plums.

So, what did we eat this week?

2 dinners: I made a Greek macaroni and cheese that I retrieved from one of those Best American Recipes compilations. Basically, macaroni, sauce made just of milk and feta, cherry tomatoes, and spinach. I had the macaroni; the feta was from a large stash bought at Sam's Club (feta is an extremely good deal at the warehouse stores); cherry tomatoes were bought the previous week for $0.99; spinach was the last of our garden chard.

2 dinners: African peanut chicken soup. This is an Elizabeth Rozin recipe that I clipped from Gourmet more than 20 years ago. You can also find it in her Ethnic Cuisine. I had a bunch of chicken breasts on the bone (bought on sale natch) and I defrosted the lot and poached them. The soup consists of broth, onions (had) and peppers (garden), canned tomatoes (had), peanut butter and rice (had these). Oh, and some of the chicken of course. And red pepper flakes. This is soooooooo good.

1 meal: That Diana Kennedy Syrian chicken in yogurt sauce I posted a while ago. We make yogurt; had the onions. Used a bit of the chicken. Served with garden tomatoes.

1 meal: I found a single cup of lentils and so made that yummy "Food of the Poor" I posted about a while back. Needless to say, I had the rice. One truc involved roasting all our onions on that dread occasion when we had to turn on the oven. I used the onions in all the above concoctions. We had this with tomatoes too.

I can't remember what the seventh dinner consisted of. For lunch we had sandwiches made of tomatoes and our wonderful bread. Sometimes with cheese. Tomatoes are from our garden and will be kaput shortly. So we are living it up. For breakfast we had oatmeal, which we stock up on when we hit Whole Foods. We had some kind of fruit left from the previous week--can't remember what.

MY POINT? (That's what my dear children say). Cooking from the pantry and freezer (stocked with food on sale) is great--both when you are feeling poor and when you're not; when you are very busy or not; whenever. These meals would have been relatively cheap no matter when I bought the ingredients. They were very cheap because I had stocked up when the items were on sale!

Two Frugal Recipes, Some Numbers, and Taxes

OK-it's absolutely PREPOSTEROUS*** that I haven't filed my taxes yet (for flip out of April 15 plus extension request, see earlier post). In honor of the preposterousness of the situation, I will do my topics from the end (post) to the beginning (pre).

***From George Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (1589): Ye have another manner of disordered speach, when ye misplace your words or clauses and set that before which should be behind & e converso, we call it in English proverbe, the cart before the horse, the Greeks call it Histeron proteron, we name it Preposterous, and if it be not too much used is tollerable enough, and many times scarse perceivable unlesse the sence be thereby made very abused (Poesie, 142).

TAXES: I retrieved the file box from its hiding place, and will attempt to do them myself. I will keep you posted. Wish me luck.

SOME NUMBERS: Talbots stock is $6.96. I was looking at it at $1.80. So, I would have almost quadrupled my money! Take that, Motley Fools (who labeled it their scary Halloween stock of 2008).

Edmund Andrews's Busted has an Amazon sales rank of 22,698. Did I tell you, Dear Readers, that I was so annoyed with the New York Times ombudsperson's defense of this guy that I fired off an email. Guess what: it was published online. Sadly, under my real name, rather than my blogger identity.

FRUGAL RECIPES: I hope some inexperienced cooks take a look at Burros's books. The commenters are all pros in the kitchen. Here's an easy one.

Chicken Oreganato: Rub 2 TBS oregano with some salt and pepper on 6 chicken thighs. Put on baking pan. Mix 1/4 cup olive oil with juice of 1/2 lemon. Drizzle half on chicken. Bake at 500 (what???seems kinda high, Marian) for 15 minutes. Turn thighs over; drizzle rest of stuff on and bake another 10-15 minutes, for 30 minutes total.

Marian provides recipes for side dishes (brussels sprouts and Greek salad), but those may be too much for beginners. I would just make rice to soak up all the yummy juices and have a salad of some kind. Or even just some sliced tomatoes.

FRUGAL RECIPE LAGNIAPPE. It is in the mid 90s here. Just miserable. So I am going to make granita. Coffee granita, which has the added bonus of using up all the leftover coffee.

All you do is take 3-4 cups coffee*, 1/3 cup milk or half and half, 1/4 cup sugar. Mix. Pour into a largish glass or metal baking pan. Freeze for about 30-45 minutes. Stir around with a fork to break up ice crystals. Return to freezer and repeat a few times.

*You're supposed to use espresso, but I'm going to stick to my coffee and chicory.

Maybe this concoction will see me through the misery of my taxes.

Save Money and Time: Frugal Cooking with Marian Burros

The other day, Philip Brewer, one of my favorite finance bloggers, posted on how cooking at home saves time as well as money. This was not news to me or to others who love to cook at home. For those who do not like to cook--and I wrote an earlier post on my sister-in-law's inefficient and expensive shopping and cooking--Brewer's point might be as mystifying as vectors might be to me.

It is worth your while to learn, however. I am a ridiculously un-domestic person, whose cleaning, organizing, and laundry habits would horrify most (including my sister-in-law, who is a model of efficiency and skill in these other areas). Still, I have learned to do it, the slow and painful way, starting with Julia Child. I remember working for several hours and presenting Mr. FS with a zucchini dish. I was too exhausted to do anything else.

Brewer mentions learning to cook from books and mentions a few--such as The Joy of Cooking. Cooking from books can be frustrating: not all recipes are well-tested, for one thing, and, The Joy of Cooking and Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything have thousands of recipes. Where to begin? The paradox of choice once more.

In my comment on Brewer's post, I mentioned one candidate for the cookbook to start with if you are totally clueless. Actually, I mentioned a cookbook writer: Marian Burros, who used to be the restaurant critic for the New York Times. The book I would start with is Keep it Simple: Thirty Minute Meals from Scratch.

This book is easy to find used, in your library, and even on paperbackswap.com.

Burros is not kidding. She has an excellent palate. Her recipes always come out. In fact, two years ago, Miss Em decided to visit her food-loving grandfather a bit earlier than the rest of us. She wanted to cook for him. I gave her a pile of cookbooks from which to copy recipes and she chose many from this book. This is a book that will give you confidence for the future.

Burros gives you a list of pantry staples and cooking equipment. Each menu has a list of staples and a shopping list. She provides a "game plan."

Most of her menus include a main dish, two sides, and dessert. I confess I usually stick to main dish and one side.

Here are a few sample dishes: chicken in lime, cinnamon chicken,snapper in orange sauce, zucchini and rotini, pork chops with apple, cabbage, cumin.

There are fewer than 60 menus, thereby minimizing the paralysis of choice, and EVERYTHING IS GOOD. There's even a quickie Thanksgiving menu.

If anyone is interested, I'll post a few of the recipes.

What is your favorite learn-how-to-cook book?