A Renaissance Canuck

Dairy free Eggnog

2010-12-24T12:03:00.003-05:00

As I start to explore all the ways to go dairy free (at least on a trial basis for now), and on Christmas Eve, there is no soy nog to be found in the stores. It's been sparse on the ground this year, at least anytime I've gone looking. So, I made my own. Easy peasy, and not half bad. It's not vegan (I'm not vegan at all), just dairy free.

Soy Nog

3 eggs
2 cups vanilla soy milk
1/2 cup vanilla soy cream (Silk for coffee is what I found)
3/4 cup icing sugar
tiny pinch salt
Nutmeg
Rum (extract if you are booze free as I am, or the good stuff)

I'm lucky enough to have a stand mixer, so I tossed things in there. Eggs first, mixed until they were pale. Then slowly add the sugar, milk, cream and salt. Mix for a while before adding in about a tablespoon of extract (real rum to taste) and a generous dollop of fresh grated nutmug. Perhaps a couple of teaspoons, but I'm bad at judging. Mix well and store in the fridge. Yes, this uses raw eggs. You have an immune system, make it work. (if you don't, then be careful) I expect it'll be even better tomorrow, if it lasts that long.

If you dont have vanilla soy milk and/or cream, then add a dollop of vanilla extract to touch up the flavour.

Enjoy!

Cornmeal bread

2010-08-27T21:57:00.002-04:00

1 1/2 cups whey
4 tsp yeast in 1/2 cup water
2 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
2 eggs
1 cup cornmeal
Flour 'til it looks right.. 5 cups ish? More?

Left to rise overnight.. left to rise 2 hours with saran wrap over it, then it was trying to take over the oven. Punched down and left to rise while I slept. About 8 hrs and it was trying to take over the oven again. This time with a damp tea towel over it. Peeled off the towel, punched down again. (Note to self.. less yeast next time), and then took a loaf ish size amount into the loaf pan, 12 (13 really, but one was sacrificed to the floor) egg sized balls into a muffin tin and then the rest as a lump on a baking pan. It's artisinal round loaf! It has nothing to do with my other loaf pan already being packed! Another hour in the oven to rise.. and then baking. It didnt rise much in the hour, a little but not much. 350F, and yes I'm lazy and left the pans in the oven while it preheated.

Well. The rolls barely rose at all and they are.. well they bounce. VERY crunchy on the outside, but like a thin crust of supercrunch and then squishy inside. They all baked about an hour.

Next time, I think perhaps more sugar, and not an overnight rise. First rise in the bowl, second rise in their baking dishes. I think that's how it should be done, and I probably could find recipes to take me by the hand, but I learn better by experimenting. Sooo.. we eat some very crusty rolls. It's all good.

Kitchen happenings

2010-08-20T18:33:00.005-04:00

If I don't keep track of what I'm doing in the kitchen somewhere, I will lose it. I'm gifted like that. So I thought I'd post it here. If anyone out there in the big wide world is curious, all the better. Otherwise I at least have a record of what silliness I've been up to in the kitchen, or at the sewing table, depending.

Cheese.

That's what I've been up to lately. I haven't get gotten my hands on rennet (I will be ordering some from this place, but there's a plethora of choices and I haven't yet decided what I want. So I've been making basic acid cheese. Which sounds entirely more psychodelic than it is. In a basic sense.. it takes the milk, adds acid (vinegar, lemon juice) to get the curds and whey to separate and then you can strain the curds out and have a lump of cheese.

The type of acid used affects the flavour of the cheese (uh duh) and the milk itself affects the consistancy of the cheese. (as I now know). Skim milk? Even with extra skim milk powder to give it a little more oomph? Rock solid little lumps of cheese. Yummy.. but solid and kinda rubbery. Sort of odd really. This most recent batch was 125 ml of 18% cream tossed into a bag of 2% milk. (er.. bag is 1.3 litres, welcome to Canada) So a total of about .. 1.45 litres of milk. Previously I used 1 bag of skim milk, 3 tablespoons of milk powder and 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar OR 3 tablespoons of lemon juice.

We liked the lemon juice better, so batch two is the higher fat milk and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice. Much softer curd, just looking at it while it's draining. I'm going to drain the daylights out of it again and see how it goes.

Right, draining. A clean hankie, in a strainer over a bowl. Once it's gotten the bulk of it strained out, I clip the corners of the hankie in a binder clip and hang it from the cupboard door with an elastic band. Oh yeah, I go high tech here.

K-cup review: Timothy's Mexican organic

2010-05-20T08:52:00.000-04:00

Finally I'm getting into some of the non-flavoured coffees, and I havent been keen on too many so far. I rarely like the organic ones, I find most of them are too.. dark roasted? Bitter? Something for my tastes.

Yes, I'm a coffee heathen (or heretic.. perhaps both), cope. I like my coffees lightly roasted. I like my black tea barely brewed too, so at least I'm consistant.

This one is probably the best organic I've found to my taste thus far. Hunh. Go Mexico! ;)

4 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Van Houtte Creme Caramel

2010-05-18T08:29:00.000-04:00

It smelled so good brewing too. It had all that sweet rich smell that I expected out of something labelled creme caramel. And then? The first sip?

Nothing. It gave up all its flavour in the smell and none of it in the tasting. So disappointing. Once I got past that, it was an adequate cup of coffee, but nothing special and barely flavoured. Woe. Woe woe.

2 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Gloria Jean's Mudslide

2010-05-14T09:19:00.000-04:00

I think this is the first flavour I couldnt finish. The first time I drank it, I was mostly asleep and went 'enh', the second time I was quite awake and the 'enh' went to 'eww'. All I could smell or taste was some messed up interpretation of coconut. It just.. no. Bad. Not to my taste at all.

1 travel mug out of 5.

K-cup review: Van Houtte Creme brulee

2010-05-12T09:09:00.000-04:00

Alright, I had hoped I'd like this.. but I didn't. It's just not very good. It's not sweet or creamy, there's not much smell to it, there's just not much of anything to it beyond a kinda enh cup of coffee. It is for flavours like this that sound so promising and I just don't like that I'm keeping these records. I'm certain someone out there things its awesomesauce, but I am not that person.

2 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Van Houtte Madagascar vanilla nut

2010-05-11T09:02:00.002-04:00

I really wasn't hoping for much. Vanilla has a tendency to be kinda enh and I'm not often a fan of generic 'nut' flavour in my coffee, and somehow labelling it 'Madagascar' just seems like an excuse for a longer label. (Pecan seems to be a notable exception). This is, however, surprisingly good. It's not overly exciting, it's just solidly flavoured coffee flavoured. A little sweeter than regular coffee, nothing zowee, but nothing bad either. I dont think I'd dance in the kitchen for it, but I certainly wouldnt pour it down the sink either.

3 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Van Houtte Spicy Mayan Chocolate

2010-05-08T07:31:00.002-04:00

I do have to admit that this is the second time I've had this coffee, and I was too half asleep drinking it the first time to manage to come up with comments on it. I'm not sure I'm all that much more awake this time, but at least I'm half asleep with a coffee and a editing window in front of me. It's progress!

I'm not sure why it's supposed to be spicy. I think the name just sounds good. Perhaps there's hints of some sort of spice, but mostly this just screams chocolate at me. And for once, chocolate that doesnt have a nut component to it. It's closer to chocolate in my coffee (without being the cloying of actually tossing hot chocolate mix in there) than I think any other chocolate flavour I've tried. It's pretty pleasant really, and I do wonder how it'd do in a mocha. I think all the subtleties would be lost.

4 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Gloria Jean's Mudslide

2010-05-07T09:56:00.000-04:00

I was expecting a lot out of a coffee named 'Mudslide', with the creamy alcoholic drink of the same name resonating in my thoughts, I took a sip. Yeah. Nothing. Not exciting, not creamy, Kahlua inspired. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Timothy's Kahlua coffee pods, but this one just didn't match up to expectations. Perhaps when I try it again there might be more oomph.

2 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Van Houtte Winter Blend

2010-05-06T09:49:00.000-04:00

There are some distinct disadvantages to taking all my k-cup photos with the cell phone barely caffinated. Mostly those disadvantages have something to do with the photos being blurry as all hell. Squint. It helps.

Another 'normal' coffee, no flavour in this one. It's.. well.. just sort of normal. There's nothing spectacular about it, it's a very mild roast. It doesnt offend, it doesnt excite it just sort of exists. I wouldn't turn it down, but I don't know that I'd actively go out and buy it.

3 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Raspberry Chocolate Truffle

2010-05-05T07:47:00.001-04:00

Well, I know I said I don't much care for chocolate in my coffee. This is one spot where I'm glad I kept trying it just in case. Clearly raspberry offsets the chocolate quite nicely. It smelled delicious brewing and it was pretty damn good to drink too.

4 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Timothy's Donut Blend

2010-05-04T08:59:00.001-04:00

photo
Originally uploaded by Jazmin_

Someday I'll figure out how to make the photos from my phone not be blurry. Perhaps taking them when I'm not half asleep wanting a coffee would help.

Not flavoured, I do actually drink 'normal' coffee now and then. My first sip I was expecting a Tim Horton's clone.. and it's not. There's a little edge that the Tim's doesn't have.

Waiting a few minutes and reaching for it again still mostly asleep and no longer expecting it to be something it isn't.. it's very nice. Really mellow, really lightly roasted. Just gentle.

4 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Van Houtte Chocolate Almond

2010-05-03T11:12:00.002-04:00

photo
Originally uploaded by Jazmin_

I probably should have known better. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate coffee (although I keep drinking it in optimism that someday it'll be how my taste buds hope) and I'm not big fan of almond in my coffee.

Put the two together? It's enh. It's not terrible, but it's not for me. I hope I didn't order too many of them.

2 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Green Mountain Coffee Hot Cocoa

2010-05-02T09:00:00.002-04:00

photo
Originally uploaded by Jazmin_

Blogger and I seem to be having disagreements about how to post photos, which might mean a whole swack of articles all at once, or some without photos or something. Very odd, computers are very irritating.

Anyhow, I was so very very excited to find a box of these locally, as I kept wanting to try the Cocoa and it kept being sold out online anywhere I was ordering from. Lo and behold, there was a box at the local Future Shop. Which is akin to a Best Buy.

I have to say that I never once would have looked at Future Shop for k-cups. But we were walking through the kitchen appliance section on the way to the cash and they were right there. A better selection than the grocery store. Crazy.

Anyhow, these are.. very cloying. Sweet and milky and cloying. Better than the white hot chocolate, but I couldnt finish a whole mug. I think I'd be happier with a shot of coffee in with it to cut the sweet cloy. I'm not sad that we got them, but it'll take some fiddling to drink all of them.

3 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Gloria Jean's Butter Toffee

2010-05-01T09:56:00.003-04:00

photo
Originally uploaded by Jazmin_

Oh my goodness. Oh. My. Goodness. I could stand by the coffee maker while this brews and sniff. It smells so very very good. So good. It tastes pretty good too, surprisingly so for a US supplier.

Which isn't a slam against US coffee roasters, but the starbucks tradition tends to be towards a darker roast, and my tastes prefer a lighter roast. I end up tasting burnt very very easily (much to the dismay of my spouse who does all the cooking).

Very nice coffee, high on the list. 4 travel mugs out of 5.

K-cup review: Emeril's Vanilla Bean BAM!

2010-04-30T07:41:00.007-04:00

Well the name in and of itself makes me smile. Which is entirely the point of Emeril's coffee being named as such, I'm certain. I have to admit I didn't really feel thrilled about wickedly branded coffee for the sake of branding, but it's perfectly adequate. It's a light roast, there's not much flavour, but it doesn't offend either. It just tastes mellow coffee-esque.

Which to be honest, is just fine by me. I didn't need sugar, which means it was flavoured enough. Of course french vanilla is a pretty non-flavour in coffee anyhow. Very neutral. 3 travel mugs out of 5.

Fancy coffee maker

2010-04-30T07:15:00.002-04:00

I realize I haven't posted in forever, and I have no readership anymore. That's fine. I understand. I'm back now because I think that the blog will be an easier archive for me to find things for myself. If anyone else is actually reading. Well hello there! Dont' mind the mess, it's rampant in all bits of my life.

Just in case I'm not only talking to myself, I'll give a tiny bit of background. (Important too that when I'm feeling particularly dim, I can remind myself of what I'm on about.)

I got a fancy dancy coffee maker. Spoiled. Eco terrorist expensive to buy and run coffee maker. One of the Keurig machines with the K-cup pods. One coffee per pod. Waste with each one.

I love it.

I'm the only coffee drinker in the house, the machine horks up super hot water in cup sized portions for tea as well and I get a single, hot, cup of coffee on demand. (Well with about 2 mins of wait if the machine is already on, I call that on demand.)

The key is that coffee comes in little k-cup pod things. And there's quite literally hundreds of options. (I also have the fill your own filter, but that's messy and I'm lazy. I'm glad to have it, but I'm generally willing to spend the money for pre-filled pods.)

I recently ordered a make your own variety pack from Tweed and Hickory and with perhaps 30 different varieties of coffee to consider, I will never keep them all straight if I don't write down what I think of each of them as I'm drinking.

I'd considered twitter, but I find that hard to find things in. So blog it is! The individual reviews will be twitter sized posts, probably. Unless of course a single cup of coffee makes me more than 140 characters worth of excited. I suppose that depends on how good the coffee is.

Sausage and tomato stew

2008-02-14T14:44:00.003-05:00

Alright, get the snickering over with off the top about posting a sausage recipe on Valentine's day. (Hee hee! She said sausage!) I'd be lying if I hadn't snickered myself. ;)

Anyhow! Right. Yummy, fast and (with luck) cheap food. I'm a serious crockpot fan. When I say fan, I really mean screaming fangrrrrl. (geek meets adult when you describe getting screaming fangrrrrl over kitchen appliances. )

I don't cook with precise recipes.. recipes in my world are general guidelines for experimentation. Cooking is an art in my world, much like my knitting (patterns? Also vague guidelines.) So adjust to suit what /you/ like. (Pardon the photo, I didn't to take a picture in the pretty bowls at home, so you're getting it in the plastic pots I bring my lunches in. Still tastes good!)

Sausage stew
1 small package of sausage. (Call it say half a kilo ish? About 4-6 solid sized uncooked sausage? Unless you have cooked ones, or only 3 left from a package.. you get the idea. I had a half price huge package of honey garlic sausage. I think I used 6.)

2 onions, chopped (I tossed in a handful and a half of the pre-chopped frozen onions that live in my freezer. Because if I have to chop onions, I will NEVER cook with onions again.)

1 728 ml tin of diced tomatoes. (I think this is 28 oz? The big tin. If you have stewed, fine. If you have stewed with seasonings, great. If you have crushed.. this won't have nice chunks.)

4 carrots (or however many are left in the package. Or a handful out of the package of frozen carrot rounds that lives in the freezer)

1/3 tin of tomato paste (about 1/4 cup.. ish. The small tin, as I've never found those wonderful squeeze tubes I've heard of.)

2 cups chicken broth (I gloop in a healthy dollop of liquid boullion extract and 2 cups of water)

2 cloves of garlic, minced (or a healthy shake shake of garlic powder)

2 tbsp italian seasoning (or find a recipe for what goes into it online.. basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder.. iirc)

pinch or two red pepper flakes (if you use hot sausage, you might not want this.. if you dont like a zip to your food, leave it out as well)

salt (just a smidge, mostly because we use unsalted canned food. You may find tinned tomatoes have more than enough salt already)

I hope I didnt forget anything, I'm going from memory here.

Chop up the sausage roughly and then fry up the onions and sausage. Not strictly required, but I find it's a nicer flavour. I use clean kitchen shears to cut up the sausage, I find raw sausage + knife = pain in the tush.

Add everything to the crock pot. Eye the level of it and decide if it looks alright. This time I added a bit more water, as it just looked like it needed it. (And I wanted a bit more broth to make it go a bit further as a soup).

Turn it on low, go away. Come back 6+ hrs later. (I put this in at about 7:30 am. I get home from work at 5:30 pm. It's in a 4 litre (quart.. whatever) crockpot.)

Take 1/4 cup or so of flour, mix it into a slurry with some hot water and pour it into the crockpot stirring stirring stirring. (we're not doing dumplings here, you want it to mix in, not cook right away). Turn to high for 15-20 mins to make it a smidge thicker. (I really only notice the thicker in leftovers.)

I got 5 good sized servings out of this. With sides (biscuits? Cornbread? Salad? Anything!), it could be 6 no problem, or even 7 or 8 if you dont have big eaters.

Rock Star, baybee!

2008-02-10T15:13:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting here watching my husband play guitar on rockband. I was singing earlier, but I'm tired and out of sorts, so he's working on his solo guitar tour. I was struck by the differences in our approaches. I was the first to make the jump to hard difficulty, and the first to jump back to medium when I got my tush handed to me. I rarely do a song more than once in a row. I'd say never off hand. He was slower to move to hard, slower to move back to medium and I listen to the same songs over and over and over again as he practices. He actually uses practice mode to slow some of the more challenging songs down to 70% (or slower) speed and work at just the guitar solo bit by bit by bit. I leap in, hope for the best and I've been practice mode exactly once. At his urging. It's a wonderful highlight about how two very different people can both approach one thing (the game) and enjoy it in very different ways. Equally, how two people can co-operate (we have three different bands where we both work together), even with very different approaches. His love of practice gets indulged when we get asked to do the same songs are different gigs, my impulsive nature adores (even if I complain!) the random set lists. We're both happy. I think this is the point at which I draw some warm fuzzy after school special conclusion about different people working together yadda yadda.. you're all big people. You made the leap already, I don't need to. Besides 'Maple Infusion' needs it's lead singer for a random set list. Cant talk! This virtual superstar life takes it outta a girl!

Old papers and impulse shopping

2008-01-25T13:58:00.000-05:00

I was doing some (very very very ... very) overdue filing today. Like.. 6 yr old bills and papers that got shoved in a drawer and ignored. Studiously. Today I moved them to a file folder to get ignored for a while. I was struck, however, about how many 'past due' and 'this will be sent to collections' notices there was. I was in this job already (clearly, as I was clearing out a desk drawer at work), but I couldnt get a grip on finances. We had no budget. We had no plan. We had no real idea what we were spending, and clearly we were not paying on time.

Woah /boy/ am I glad those days are over.

Of course.. we can quite be all sanctamonious.. you see last night there was an incident.

We'd been talking about it for a while, and had nearly talked ourselves into waiting, until we played it. And that was game over for the restraint. We are both video game fans, it's something we can play together (rare in the video game world) and I think I know where the entertainment budget is going for months and months to come to replenish the savings we used to buy it with. I'm calling not going into debt to do it a victory. If you'll excuse me, 'Ruled by Impulse' needs it's lead vocalist.

Monday monday...

2008-01-07T15:29:00.000-05:00

Bahhh baaaa.. baa daaaa daaa da. Monday, monday.. so good to me..

Okay Okay.. I'll stop singing. I may have discovered an unholy adoration for Singstar for my PS2 and have inflicted all sorts of barely in tune renditions of 80's tunes upon my longsuffering spouse and driven the cats into hiding.. but I digress.

In spite of the plague (why oh why did I spend my weekend sick and miserable and be healthy in time for work on Monday? I have paid sick leave! I have no qualms about using it! Bah! Cruel fates.), I still went out to spend my 25 bucks worth of gift certificate at the clothing store. They did caution me to use it 'soon' lest I lose it, as as it was already expired, I decided not to push what 'soon' actually meant.

I find out when I get there, that I need to spend 50 bucks to get the 25 dollars off. Hrm. Not ideal, but within my clothing budget for the month. I do need more than just the trousers (frugal is great, but even the most frugal need new undies eventually.) I find 3 pairs of jeans at varying amounts of discounted (two at half price, one at 10% off) and get to the trying on. Of course, because that's the way of the world, the only ones that don't look /awful/ are the ones the least discounted. 44.95. Well. That puts a good dent into my 50 buck requirement. 3 pairs of undies (regular price 3 for 15 buck) will easily put me over.. until I find the sale undie table. 3.97 a pair rather than 5 dollars.. that's a good start until I hit the jackpot of undie searching. 6 pairs in my size (and styles I'm willing to wear) are further marked down to a dollar each. Woot! (Okay, it really *is* a good word.) 44.95 for jeans (black jeans, with beads. Ooooh! Shiny!) and 6 pairs of undies takes me to 50.95. Perfect. And while the jeans weren't an great bargain, I can dance all over the place with the bargain of those panties. :)

One week of January down, and we're on track with the budget, and with the spending tracking. Go us!

It's too cold to go nekkid!

2008-01-04T08:55:00.000-05:00

Quote of the day: "I don't have an hourglass figure. I have an hour and a half." – Wendy Lieblman, American Comedy Award winner (I got a quote-a-day calendar for Christmas, can ya tell?)

I need new jeans. I work in a semi-professional capacity and while I can turn up in jeans and a t-shirt to work (and do), they need to be clean and neat jeans (holes in the thighs and butt of jeans are not neat) and a t-shirt that's not making snarky commentary. (Or a beholder holding beer in its eyestalks. Or a 5 headed dragon queen. Why yes, I am a gamer.. why do you ask?)

I have been losing weight. Very slowly. (5 yrs. 90 lbs. Now I'm just 'holy hell you're fat' rather than 'heeey…we could do an exploitive TV special on your fatness!') This means that there is exactly one store in my city where I can buy trousers (or skirts or shorts or anything for the bottom half.) Fortunately, they do have sales and they do have a rewards program. I (stupidly) lost my gift certificate from the rewards program. And then put off calling about it. It expired in November. The nice lady on the phone… told me if I went in and used it right away.. I could still use the reissued one! Woot! (Okay, perhaps I'm a little too fond of the word of the year from last year.) New jeans, here I come! 25 bonus dollars will go a long way in keeping the clothing budget of 30 dollars for the month at realistic numbers. Might I also give a happy shout out to the customer service at Penningtons for customer service above and beyond. I might have different words if the store gives me grief, but so far I'm thrilled.

I've also been considering adding to my wardrobe by digging out the sewing machine. I am a capable seamstress, not wow, but not inept. I have a healthy fabric stash. I have a lack of bottoms that fit. (Freecycle has helped me have a stash a size or two smaller than my current size. As soon as I work out how to drop inches from my hips on command, I'll let all of you know.) New jeans are coming with gift certificate, but a new skirt is within the realms of my sewing abilities. (Trousers are fussy.. that' s a lot of curving fabric to make it fit my curvy self. Skirts are more forgiving, they like to curve all by themselves.) I'll let you know how this cunning plan works when (if?) I get to it.

Day late and a dollar short.

2008-01-03T08:53:00.000-05:00

Alright so more like 2 days late and closer to 800 dollars short, but doesn't have nearly the same ring to it. Nor is it in the dictionary. (Okay, so a freaky idiom dictionary, but a dictionary none the less.)

Happy New Years! Yeah yeah, so it's the 3rd, it's still newish. The 800 bucks? That's how badly December's budget got shattered. And I do mean shattered. More like a fine mist of budgetary owwie. Some of that is legit unexpected expenses. (250 bucks for new tires on Boxing day on the freeway halfway to the relative's house (500 km away) we were expected to be doing holiday foo with that day.) This is why we /have/ an emergency fund, to cope with new tires halfway down the 401. Some was presents not entirely budgeted for earlier in the year. (I only started on this 'lets not go broke' plan in September) Listening to co-workers discuss presents they bought their spouses, we did really well in not going overboard. (about 150 ish for both of us.. we have no children). I'd like to point at one spot and go 'There! that's the culprit! EEEVVVIIIL!!!' but.. looking over things.. we just spent too much in every category. A hazard of not having an itemized budget just a 'dont' spend more than X amount'.

January.. we have an itemized budget. And we're tracking every penny that we spend. Both are new. (So far, we've spend 19.37 at the grocery store. Not bad for a quickie after work run to buy things for lunches for the rest of this week. All things that will continue to be lunch bits next week too. Woot!) We'll see if this itemized budget is on crack.. I sort of threw numbers at categories with very vague 'that seems about right'.. Febuary's budget might need a little tweaking to come in line with reality.. but that's why we're writing things down. OMG! This monkey /can/ be trained! (Stop snickering.. and don't remind me that I've only been trying this for 3 days and I'm still in bubble stage of enthusiasm. Shush!)

I'll have some more resolutions and goals tomorrow. Sneak preview.. regular posting. Wouldnt that be novel? M-W-F (This is Wednesday's post.. a day late.. get it? I'm so clever with the title thing..)

I am the leftover queen.

2007-12-30T13:30:00.000-05:00

After waaay too much time in a car, and a whole lot of rich food (shortbread.. not just for breakfast anymore), it's nice to get back to our house and our fridge and vaguely normal eating. (Yes, eggnog in coffee is normal. Move along, nothing to see here.) Not only do we have odd tidbits in the fridge leftover from quick meal preps, but we've got bits and pieces left over from various party dishes. Oh yes, and December's budget got absolutely shattered. I mean so badly shattered it's a fine mist. *sigh* We really didn't plan for Christmas very well, and we really really didn't plan for the flat tire on the highway that became two new tires halfway through the 6 hr drive on Boxing Day. (Okay, so perhaps we did plan for that. The emergency fund has enough to cover the tires and I'd call an unrepairable flat qualifies as what the EF is there for.) Sooooo, there's no room for groceries. Fortunately we've got a well stocked fridge, freezer and pantry. And it's the 30th. If you're going to be out of money for the month, doing it with plenty of stores with only a couple of days left in the month is a good place to be.

It does, however, mean that I'm bound and determined that those leftovers in the fridge shall not be wasted. Cause.. yeah.. nothing like watching your budget hemmorage to make you have a rush of ultra frugal moments. Some diced tomatoes, some roast beef, a roasted potato, a couple roasted carrots, some baked barley.. this sounds like either stew, soup or curry. Which, really, all amounts to about the same thing. Stew is thick soup, and curry is a stew with different spices served on rice. All three are excellent ways to use up the little bit of this and that which seem to be the bane of the back of the fridge. I'll also use bits and pieces into a quiche or baked egg dish. (The difference? For me.. quiche has a pie crust, baked egg dish does not.)

Beef and tomato and gravy with a damp day and a cold I'm pretending I dont have.. that screams soup to me. So in it all went into a pot together. Beef chopped up fine, potato, carrot, tomatoes, a few healthy (okay gravy can't be called healthy.. how about generous) spoonfuls of gravy, a handful of frozen peas, a handful of frozen corn, the 8 frozen green beans forgotten at the back of the freezer, some dried mushrooms, the plastic pot of baked barley.. some water to top it up, a healthy dollop of worchestershire sauce and beef broth concentrate.. simmer 'til yummy. :) Perfect!

Chapters coupon

2007-12-21T08:42:00.000-05:00

A couple of caveats on this coupon that I got in my email this morning. You need to be collecting air miles. You need to shop in store before Dec 24th. Oh and you need to spend 50 bucks. I wish that was harder in chapters, but.. yeah. Not hard at all! I suppose it also requires you to be shopping in Canada, as Chapters is a Canuck store. But! If you meet those criteria, then you get a free paperback. Can't argue with a free paperback. The link is here. I've a bunch of things I want from Chapters, but none are at my local store, so I can't make use of the coupon. I hope it helps someone!

Talking to the cable company..

2007-12-19T07:39:00.000-05:00

We recently gave a little more of our souls to the local cable company in the form of moving our land line over to them. It was the last hold out in not being owned by them body and soul (tv, internet, cell and now land line.. I'm surprised they don't offer me home and auto insurance, morgage and hydro as well. Sheesh.) This was the first bill since the change over and I thought I was reading War and Peace opening it up and facing the 8 pages. Prior to this, we got a discount for having more than one service with them. Reading the tome.. that'd been cancelled. Wait. We added services. We didn't take any away. Why should giving them more money and having a stranglehold on my life result in a loss of my discount? As the account is in my husband's name.. he's the one who gets to call. While making dinner, he gives them a call. (Yes, I'm spoiled rotten, why do you ask?) I heard him explain things to two different people. He's also very patient and doesn't lose his cool much, both excellent reasons to have him phone, and a few minutes later he comes back into the living room. "They fixed it. It was a mistake and as the payment hadn't come out of the account yet, they're going to take the right payment out." Woot! (Word of the year you know.. Look at me all hip or something..) It's only 14 bucks a month, but hey.. its 14 bucks a month!

Flaming dishwasher of death!

2007-12-18T10:42:00.000-05:00

Alright, so no.. not really. Although to read the recall notice and listen to the disclaimers I feel as though I should stand in my kitchen to wait for my dishwasher to burst into flames before my very eyes! Maytag has been quite insistant on getting a hold of me to tell me that my dishwasher has been recalled (kudos to them on that!), and give me a couple of options. (I tried to find a link on the Maytag site for the recall, but they list all sorts of other recalls, but not the one for my dishwasher. Odd.)

I can have a nice repair man come to fix my dishwasher at their expense, or I can have a 75 dollar credit towards a new dishwasher (subject to details I didn't entirely catch from the nice lady on the phone, although same brand I'd expect). As our dishwasher is 7 and a half years old (Have we really been in the house that long!? Goodness!), we decided to have a quick boo around the intranets and see what a new dishwasher runs for these days. Perhaps it might be worth replacing with a more efficient and quieter model if 75 buckaroos is a good deal.

Wowee! Goodness sake appliances are expensive suckers! How have I forgotten this in 7 and a half years? Heck, less than that as the fridge died not soooo long ago (3 yrs? Give or take ish?).. 75 bucks is barely a drip in the bucket of a new dishwasher. Especially with restrictions (no scratch and dent, no brand comparisons, probably a time limit which makes waiting for a sale much harder).

The part to repair our current one is in the post. :) Apparently we just call to set up an appointment with the repair guy (or gal) once it arrives. As much as my oooh shiney factor kinda wanted a new toy.. repairing is cheaper /and/ better than replacing a perfectly good dishwasher. Or what will be a perfectly good dishwasher when it no longer is likely to burst into flamey flamey death.

Another little step.

2007-12-17T15:35:00.000-05:00

Finally, after much procrastination and nerves, I got some photos taken and cropped and did my best to make them look anything like they do in the real world and opened up my little etsy store. For those who aren't familiar with etsy its a marketplace for handwork. As I knit lace and dye threads, this seems a good place to start making a foray into making my hobby pay for itself. Not that it will ever repay the time I put into my work, but materials certainly and a little extra would be appreciated. The way I look at it, I am going to do the knitting anyhow, I might as well not have the lace taking over my house. I've added it to the sidebar, feel free to have a look around and give me some feedback on how things look. Photography is not my strong point. I expect I'm going to have to learn!

Frugality 1, Time management 0.

2007-12-12T11:43:00.000-05:00

Making one's own presents: Good Idea!

Being halfway through a toddler sized sweater the night before the gift exchange: Bad Idea.

Using yarn from the (every growing.. I think yarn breeds) stash: Good Idea!

Realizing the toddler sweater is more newborn sized halfway through: Bad Idea.

The gift exchange was on the weekend, and thank goodness the mom of that toddler is also a knitter. She understands gift bags that have balls of yarn and needles and a half finished sweater. It'll have to get ripped out and made a couple sizes larger, but now I'm no longer on a time line.

Making holiday presents is an excellent way not only to turn your hobby into something that will save you money rather than cost you money, but to combine your entertainment into something tangible at the end. There are, however, a couple of major pitfalls.

Leave enough time. If you are planning on spinning, dyeing and knitting a sweater for Great Aunt Betty who wears a size 5X, do not order the fleece on Dec 20th. The handmade present plan is great, but the stressed out manic RSI inducing all nighters are not great. Start early. January's a good time. Not the best plan for children's clothes (they never seem to grow as you expect them to.. a year is a long time to predict sizes), but adults or household items are fair game for being knit all through the year.

Make sure it suits the recipient. If you've made a whole bunch of packed full of sugar treats, perhaps that's not the best gift for the diabetic on your list. The hand made casual sweater might be beautiful, but the trend aware and extremely picky 13 yr old might not love it. The couple with the loft styled ultra modern home might not be the best people to give a very traditional lace tablecloth. When you have a hobby that you adore, its sometimes hard to remember that not everyone appreciates the results as much as you do. You might have no trouble not selecting something inappropriate from a store, but when it's handmade... You dont want all of your hard work not to be appreciated and shoved in a drawer.. or worse.. thrown out. It's heartbreaking.

So remember, leave plenty of time (It's only the 12th! Still got time for some mittens.. children's things.. socks.. just not socks for EVERYONE on the list!), and match the project to the person, no matter how much you adore it. I'll be over here, ripping out half a toddler sweater.

Updated numbers

2007-11-30T12:13:00.000-05:00

Well. I dug out the lease document and things aren't quite as bad as I feared. It is, indeed, closer to the 9K end not the 10K end. And I'd forgotten about some tax refunds owed to us. So the revised numbers look more like this.

Current: 4200 on the LoC and 400 per month payments.

May 2008: Car gets added to LoC taking it to 11400 (Our LoC is an excellent interest rate, it's as good a place as any to borrow 9K from. I dont think I can get a 0% interest card with that kind of limit) Car payments get added to LoC payments bringing the per month up to 750 per month.

Sometime between now and then: 1200 dollars comes back to us as a refund from the govt. Which takes the loan down to 10200. 750 a month for the rest of 2008 leaves a 4200 debt at the end of 2008. Or about 323 a month over what we pay currently. (including December). This.. this is doable. I think. :) Another post will be crunching the budget numbers to see just how doable this really is.

The big picture...

2007-11-29T12:19:00.000-05:00

I'd like to retire in about 10 yrs (at age 45 ish) to a home outside of the city with no debt.

There. I've said it. That's the big broad sweeping goal. When I say 'retire' , I mean from my M-F 8:30 am - 5 pm wage slave job. I don't mean retire like play golf (too much boob in the way of swinging a club.. and oh the boredom) on a sunny tropical resort all winter sort of way. I want to be a stay at home mom to my cats. I want to pursue the creative pursuits that make my heart sing. I want to cope with people, or not, as I choose, not as their IT crises choose. (I work in full time front line IT support. I only get phoned by people with a problem. Oy stress.)

The how of getting there.. that's going to be the trick. As always, the devil's in the details and all that. *grin* We currently own a small home in the city, and the sale price of it is highly unlikely to fund the house of my dreams in the country. (Or it might.. you never know where housing prices are going to go around here in 5-8 yrs). Right! Back to baby steps. Retiring in 10 yrs is not going to happen without some baby steps along the way.

Paying off debt. Non morgage to start. We owe about $4200 to the line of credit. Our car lease (yeah yeah, I know I know.. it seemed like a good idea at the time) comes due in May and we intend to buy it out. We love our car. It suits our needs perfectly, its a good size, its pretty good on gas and we know exactly what's been done to it. (Good and bad. Stupid snowbank.) I need to contact the dealership and get a better total on how much that will be, but I've been guessing at 9 or 10K. So we owe, rough round numbers here.. 14200 dollars. The current budget has that getting paid off in just over 21 months or Sept 2009. I would like to start 2009 with that debt gone. On our current repayment schedule, we'll end 2008 with 6200 dollars still owing. Can I actually conjure 6200 dollars out of our spending and/or extra income in the next 13 months? That's an extra 477 dollars a month. To call this SMART might be a stretch. The A for attainable might be pushing it. I'll need to sit down a crunch some numbers and take a good hard look at the new budget. (Spouse recently changed companies without budging from his desk and exactly what benefits and deductions and and and are still settling in.) Heck, maybe we owe less on the car than I fear. Maybe we'll find that some of the more frugal life choices we've started making will pay off a little more than I expect. (Nothing earth shattering.. pay attention to coupons and sales more. Stop buying before the money runs out.)Maybe I'll get some sales on the etsy store I haven't finished setting up. (Now that /would/ be a trick!).

Gather Little by Little wanted to hear about other people's goals as part of the contest over at Cash Money Life.

So there we have it. Big picture, littler picture, somewhat ambitious. It'll be an adventure! Hopefully blogging about it will keep me on the straight and narrow.

Coffee coffee coffee!

2007-11-27T15:25:00.000-05:00

I am a java junkie. Anyone who knows me RL is quite well aware of this fact, and even my coffee detesting spouse has surrendered to the fact that a long trip in the car will come with coffee stops. Frugal is one thing, but coping with this canuck without her coffee is just not worth the dollar fifty eight. (XL Tims, 2 milk one sugar please) The jury is still out on if caffeine is going to cure me or kill me, but I'm addicted and while I've cut back, I haven't cut out.

What I have done is moved away from buying all my coffee and to making my own coffee. At work, at home, on vacation. At home, it's obvious enough.. if you can't face pouring water and measuring grounds first thing, then set it up the night before. Even if your coffee maker doesn't have a programmable setting, even the most diehard coffee junkie can usually manage to push the button to make it go pre-caffeine. Into a travel mug, and off you go. At work, much the same. I now have a Brew station style machine at work, which I've found is a much better prospect than dealing with a carafe. For those who haven't seen one, the coffee sits in a reservoir that's on a lower heat burner and you dispense it by pressing your mug up against a little lever. Not only is the burner hidden away (less fire risk), no glass carafes to get knocked onto office equipment and shatter but it's a bit more compact. While on vacation, it gets a bit more complex, but still is plenty doable. Part of the standard hotel kit is a kettle (more on that in another post) and I carry a one cup gravity drip filter holder and a reusable filter that I brew coffee straight into my travel mug with. There's a picture of one here. Convenient and far far cheaper than barely adequate coffee from some of the name brand shops (Not that I'm biased about my coffee or anything. )

A couple little tricks for making those grounds go further.. discover how little coffee you can use and still get a mug that makes you happy. If dropping even half a tablespoon turns it from 'yeah' to 'I'll stop on the way', then it's not frugal. I, on the other hand, discovered that instead of five scoops, four was just fine for the coffeemaker at work. Suddenly it was like a free extra pot on Fridays. I will also make my own custom coffee blends. Two scoops of an adequate and reasonably priced plain coffee and then two scoops of a flavoured or more expensive bean. Perhaps all plain and a shake of cinnamon into the grounds, or another spice. A shake of cinnamon can take a boring pot of enh coffee into something really quite interesting! Experiment with what flavours you like. As for me.. I'll be over here with my half caf custom blend in my giant travel mug. Cheers!

My Money Mistake and How to Avoid it

2007-11-26T11:43:00.000-05:00

As prompted by the contest over at The Canadian Capitalist and because being given a post topic eliminates the blank page syndrome (You know the one, where you sit staring at a blank page fairly begging the muses to give you an idea on command.. any idea.. and all you can think of is lyrics to bad elevator music songs and what you forgot to get while grocery shopping), apparently the blog is in finance mode today.

My biggest money mistake and how to avoid it. A hard one, there's no one thing that got us into the hole, no one 'I shouldn't have bought' moment.. which is my biggest money mistake. I can get it together. I can figure it all out. I can budget and plan and make all those numbers look fan/tas/tic. I can get little windfalls and pay everything off and get consolidation loans and then in 5 or 6 years time find myself right back in debt again. The devil is in the details, is how the old saying goes, and that's the truth of it for me. We get things paid off, we look at our finances and go 'hot diggedy! We've got some extra!' and then.. the budgeting slips (I'm sure we've got enough for just one little thing) and then the impulse buys slide in (GenCon dealer room.. nuff said.) and then an emergency hits (uhhh, is the spare room supposed to drip during every rainfall?) and then whammo, we're back in the hole. Rinse and repeat.

So that's my biggest mistake, I can't keep it together long term. Ultimately, I'm a creature of very little patience and a whole lot of 'ooh! Shiney!' and that's hard to batten down long term. How to avoid it? Bigger issue. I'm not sure I am very good at avoiding it. Making everything automatic helps a lot. The whole pay yourself first thing that everyone all over the place harps on and reinforces and hammers home. If things are automatic, then it's harder to wander off track too far. Involving my more level headed spouse also helps. He's a little less on the 'ooh shiney!' mentality, but unfortunately gives in to my whims perhaps easier than is sensible. :)

The beginning, a very good place to start.

2007-11-15T11:57:00.000-05:00

First post! WooT!

Well. Now that I have that geeky moment behind me, I feel obligated to go with the standard opening volley in this conversation. And I do hope it will be a conversation, on all sorts of topics with all sorts of people. I sat down to set up a new blog. A new place to discuss things that didn't fit in my more limited focus blog and I thought "Self.. what do you know a whole lot about that you might chat about at length".. and there was nothing. Not in the bad sense, not in the 'I know nothing! Oh noes!' sense, but in the 'jack of all trades' sense. I've got the focus of a ferret on pixie stix. I considered writing about any of the different topics that currently have my attention.. fibre, personal finance, healthy eating, frugality, body size acceptance, frugality, games of all sorts.. yikes! This is quite the list and the only real link between them all is me. My knowledge is like a swamp rather than a lake, wide but not very deep and requires a certain amount of poking and prodding to effectively get the water out.

Which brings me to the name of my blog, which conveniently also helps define the theme of the blog. The phrase 'renaissance man' has long been thought to be someone with a broad knowledge base.. someone who knows a lot about a lot of things. (Also could have been a polymath, according to wikipedia, but that's not nearly as nice a word). Well I'm not a man, and I know a little about a lot of things. I am a Canuck though (Canadian for those of you who aren't aware of the slang.), ergo Renaissance Canuck.

The current plan is to update 2-3 times a week, more if I'm inspired. Let's see where this journey takes us!